g hers,
though she could not look up from the ground when she had given her
little bow. She heard him say:

"I already met your daughter, sir, at the mouth of the canon."

She went on toward the house, hearing them resume their talk, the
stranger saying, "That horse can sure carry all the weight you want to
put on him and step away good; he'll do it right at both ends,
too--Dandy will--and he's got a mighty tasty lope."

Later she brought him a towel when he had washed himself in the tin
basin on the bench outside the house. He had doffed the "chapps" and
hung them on a peg, the scarlet kerchief was also off, his shirt was
open at the neck, and soap and water had played freely over his head. He
took the towel from her with a sputtering, "Thank you," and with a pair
of muscular, brown hands proceeded to scour himself dry until the yellow
hair stood about him as a halo--without, however, in the least
suggesting the angelic or even saintly: for his face, from the friction
inflamed to a high degree, was now a mass of red with two inquiring
spots of blue near the upper edge. But then the clean mouth opened in
its frank smile, and her own dark lashes had to fall upon her cheeks
until she turned away.

At supper and afterwards Mr. Follett talked freely of himself, or seemed
to. He was from the high plains and the short-grass country, wherever
that might be--to the east and south she gathered. He had grown up in
that country, working for his father, who had been an overland
freighter, until the day the railroad tracks were joined at Promontory.
He, himself, had watched the gold and silver spikes driven into the tie
of California mahogany two years before; and then, though they still
kept a few wagon trains moving to the mining camps north and south of
the railroad, they had looked for other occupations.

Now their attention was chiefly devoted to mines and cattle. There were
great times ahead in the cattle business. His father remembered when
they had killed cattle for their hides and tallow, leaving the meat to
the coyotes. But now, each spring, a dozen men, like himself, under a
herd boss, would drive five thousand head to Leavenworth, putting them
through ten or twelve miles a day over the Abiline trail, keeping them
fat and getting good prices for them. There was plenty of room for the
business. "Over yonder across the hills," as Mr. Follett put it. There
was a herding ground four hundred miles wide, east and west, and