when we are
tickled to be linked with affairs of gallantry, no matter how.

With him now the Eastbound departed slowly into that distance whence
I had come. I stared after it as it went its way to the far shores of
civilization. It grew small in the unending gulf of space, until all
sign of its presence was gone save a faint skein of smoke against the
evening sky. And now my lost trunk came back into my thoughts, and
Medicine Bow seemed a lonely spot. A sort of ship had left me marooned
in a foreign ocean; the Pullman was comfortably steaming home to port,
while I--how was I to find Judge Henry's ranch? Where in this unfeatured
wilderness was Sunk Creek? No creek or any water at all flowed here that
I could perceive. My host had written he should meet me at the station
and drive me to his ranch. This was all that I knew. He was not here.
The baggage-man had not seen him lately. The ranch was almost certain
to be too far to walk to, to-night. My trunk--I discovered myself still
staring dolefully after the vanished East-bound; and at the same instant
I became aware that the tall man was looking gravely at me,--as
gravely as he had looked at Uncle Hughey throughout their remarkable
conversation.

To see his eye thus fixing me and his thumb still hooked in his
cartridge-belt, certain tales of travellers from these parts forced
themselves disquietingly into my recollection. Now that Uncle Hughey was
gone, was I to take his place and be, for instance, invited to dance on
the platform to the music of shots nicely aimed?

"I reckon I am looking for you, seh," the tall man now observed.

II. "WHEN YOU CALL ME THAT, SMILE!"

We cannot see ourselves as other see us, or I should know what
appearance I cut at hearing this from the tall man. I said nothing,
feeling uncertain.

"I reckon I am looking for you, seh," he repeated politely.

"I am looking for Judge Henry," I now replied.

He walked toward me, and I saw that in inches he was not a giant. He was
not more than six feet. It was Uncle Hughey that had made him seem to
tower. But in his eye, in his face, in his step, in the whole man,
there dominated a something potent to be felt, I should think, by man or
woman.

"The Judge sent me afteh you, seh," he now explained, in his civil
Southern voice; and he handed me a letter from my host. Had I not
witnessed his facetious performances with Uncle Hughey, I should have
judged him wholly ungifted with such powers. T