ting of hoofs. The sounds approached
together like a sort of charge, and I stepped between the freight-cars,
where I heard Lin ordering the girl inside to lie down flat, and could
see the agent running about in the dust, flapping his arms to signal
with as much coherence as a chicken with its head off. I had very short
space for wonder or alarm. The edge of one of my freight-cars glowed
suddenly with the imminent headlight, and galloping shots invaded the
place. The horsemen flew by, overreaching, and leaning back and lugging
against their impetus. They passed in a tangled swirl, and their dust
coiled up thick from the dark ground and luminously unfolded across the
glare of the sharp-halted locomotive. Then they wheeled, and clustered
around it where it stood by our cars, its air-brake pumping deep
breaths, and the internal steam humming through its bowels; and I came
out in time to see Billy Lusk climb its front with callow, enterprising
shouts. That was child's play; and the universal yell now raised by
the horsemen was their child's play too; but the whole thing could so
precipitately reel into the fatal that my thoughts stopped. I could only
look when I saw that they had somehow recognized the man on the
engine for a sheriff. Two had sprung from their horses and were making
boisterously toward the cab, while Lin McLean, neither boisterous nor
joking, was going to the cab from my side, with his pistol drawn, to
keep the peace. The engineer sat with a neutral hand on the lever, the
fireman had run along the top of the coal in the tender and descended
and crouched somewhere, and the sheriff, cool, and with a good-natured
eye upon all parties, was just beginning to explain his errand, when
some rider from the crowd cut him short with an invitation to get down
and have a drink. At the word of ribald endearment by which he named the
sheriff, a passing fierceness hardened the officer's face, and the new
yell they gave was less playful. Waiting no more explanations, they
swarmed against the locomotive, and McLean pulled himself up on the
step. The loud talking fell at a stroke to let business go on, and in
this silence came the noise of a sliding-door. At that I looked, and
they all looked, and stood harmless, like children surprised. For there
on the threshold of the freight-car, with the interior darkness behind
her, and touched by the headlight's diverging rays, stood Jessamine
Buckner.

"Will you gentlemen do me a favor