grave near
by, and wrote the name and date upon it by scratching with a stone.

"She was sure one of us," said Chalkeye. "Let's give her the Lament."

And they followed his lead:

"Once in the saddle, I used to go dashing,
Once in the saddle, I used to go gay;
First took to drinking, and then to card-playing;
Got shot in the body, and now here I lay.

"Beat the drum slowly, Play the fife lowly,
Sound the dead march as you bear me along.
Take me to Boot-hill, and throw the sod over me--
I'm but a poor cow-boy, I know I done wrong."

When the song was ended, they left the graveyard quietly and went down
the hill. The morning was growing warm. Their work waited them across
many sunny miles of range and plain. Soon their voices and themselves
had emptied away into the splendid vastness and silence, and they were
gone--ready with all their might to live or to die, to be animals or
heroes, as the hours might bring them opportunity. In Drybone's deserted
quadrangle the sun shone down upon Lusk still sleeping, and the wind
shook the aces and kings in the grass.

PART IV

Over at Separ, Jessamine Buckner had no more stockings of Billy's to
mend, and much time for thinking and a change of mind. The day after
that strange visit, when she had been told that she had hurt a good
man's heart without reason, she took up her work; and while her hands
despatched it her thoughts already accused her. Could she have seen that
visitor now, she would have thanked her. She looked at the photograph on
her table. "Why did he go away so quickly?" she sighed. But when young
Billy returned to his questions she was buoyant again, and more than a
match for him. He reached the forbidden twelfth time of asking why Lin
McLean did not come back and marry her. Nor did she punish him as she
had threatened. She looked at him confidentially, and he drew near, full
of hope.

"Billy, I'll tell you just why it is," said she. "Lin thinks I'm not a
real girl."

"A--ah," drawled Billy, backing from her with suspicion.

"Indeed that's what it is, Billy. If he knew I was a real girl--"

"A--ah," went the boy, entirely angry. "Anybody can tell you're a girl."
And he marched out, mystified, and nursing a sense of wrong. Nor did his
dignity allow him to reopen the subject.

To-day, two miles out in the sage-brush by himself, he was shooting
jack-rabbits, but began suddenly to run in toward Separ. A horseman had
pa