have eight miles yet."

"Oh, very well!"

So for eight miles of a road that led between green fields on our right
and a rolling expanse of sagebrush on our left, I heard something like
this:

"Well, this prominent club lady had been out on the Coast for some time
heading movements and telling people how to do things, and she had got
run down. She's a friend of Mrs. W.B. Hemingway, the well-known social
leader and club president of Yonkers, who is an old friend of mine; and
Mrs. W.B. writes that dear Julia is giving her life to the cause--I
forget what cause it was right then--and how would it be for me to have
her up here on the ranch for a vacation, where she could recover her
spirits and be once more fitted to enter the arena. I say I'm only too
glad to oblige, and the lady comes along.

"She seemed right human at first--kind of haggard and overtrained, but
with plenty of fights left in her; a lady from forty-eight to fifty-four,
with a fine hearty manner that must go well on a platform, and a kind
of accusing face. That's the only word I can think of for it. She'd be
pretty busy a good part of the day with pamphlets and papers that she or
someone else had wrote, but I finally managed to get her out on a gentle
old horse--that one you're riding--so she could liven up some; and we got
along quite well together.

"The only thing that kind of went against me was, she's one of them that
thinks a kind word and a pleasant smile will get 'em anywhere, and she
worked both on me a little too much like it was something professional.

"Still, I put it by and listened to her tell about the awful state the
world is in, and how a few earnest women could set it right in a week if
it wasn't for the police.

"Prison reform, for instance. That was the first topic on which she
delivered addresses to me. I couldn't make much out of it, except that we
don't rely enough on our convicts' rugged honour. It was only a side line
with her; still, she didn't slight it. She could talk at length about the
innate sterling goodness of the misunderstood burglar. I got tired of it.
I told her one day that, if you come right down to it, I'd bet the men
inside penitentiaries didn't average up one bit higher morally than the
men outside. She said, with her pleasantest smile, that I didn't
understand; so I never tried to after that.

"The lady had a prowling mind. Mebbe that ain't the right word, but
it come to me soon after she got here. I think