amusement; a long laugh, and
stopped. "Did anybody ever!" she said.

"We can call each other neighbors now, yu' see," said the cow-puncher.

"Oh no! oh no!" Jessamine declared. "Though how am I ever to thank you?"

"By not argufying," Lin answered.

"Oh no, no! I can do no such thing. Don't you see I can't? I believe you
are crazy."

"I've been waiting to hear yu' say that," said the complacent McLean.
"I'm not argufying. We'll eat supper now. The east-bound is due in an
hour, and I expect you'll be wanting to go on it."

"And I expect I'll go, too," said the girl.

"I'll be plumb proud to have yu'," the cow-puncher assented.

"I'm going to get my ticket to Chicago right now," said Jessamine, again
laughing, sunny and defiant.

"You bet you are!" said the incorrigible McLean. He let her go into
the station serenely. "You can't get used to new ideas in a minute," he
remarked to me. "I've figured on all that, of course. But that's why,"
he broke out, impetuously, "I quit you on Bear Creek so sudden. 'When
she goes back away home,' I'd been saying to myself every day, 'what'll
you do then, Lin McLean?' Well, I knew I'd go to Kentucky too. Just
knew I'd have to, yu' see, and it was inconvenient, turruble
inconvenient--Billy here and my ranch, and the beef round-up comin'--but
how could I let her go and forget me? Take up, maybe, with some
Blue-grass son-of-a-gun back there? And I hated the fix I was in till
that morning, getting up, I was joshin' the Virginia man that's after
Miss Wood. I'd been sayin' no educated lady would think of a man who
talked with an African accent. 'It's repotted you have a Southern rival
yourself,' says he, joshin' back. So I said I guessed the rival would
find life uneasy. 'He does,' says he. 'Any man with his voice broke in
two halves, and one down in his stomach and one up among the angels, is
goin' to feel uneasy. But Texas talks a heap about his lady vigilante in
the freight-car.' 'Vigilante!' I said; and I must have jumped, for they
all asked where the lightning had struck. And in fifteen minutes after
writing you I'd hit the trail for Separ. Oh, I figured things out on
that ride!" (Mr. McLean here clapped me on the back.) "Got to Separ. Got
the sheriff's address--the sheriff that saw her that night they held up
the locomotive. Got him to meet me at Edgeford and make a big talk to
the superintendent. Made a big talk myself. I said, 'Put that girl in
charge of Separ, and the boys'l