ead again and looked at
his potato.

"You _can't guess_?" The tone was the one commonly employed for the
encouragement, and consequent demoralization of, a primary class. Andy
realized that he was being talked down to, and his combativeness
awoke. "Well, away back in my home town, a woman's club has been
thinking of all you lonely fellows, and have felt their hearts swell
with a desire to help you--so far from home and mother's influence,
with only the coarse pleasures of the West, and amid all the
temptations that lie in wait--" She caught herself back from
speech-making--"and they have sent _me_--away out here--to be your
_friend_; to help you to help yourselves become better, truer men
and--" She did not say women, though, poor soul, she came near it.
"So, I am going to be your friend. I want to get in touch with you
all, first; to win your confidence and teach you to look upon me in
the light of a mother. Then, when I have won your confidence, I want
to organize a Cowboys' Mutual Improvement and Social Society, to help
you in the way of self-improvement and to resist the snares laid for
homeless boys like you. Don't you think I'm very--_brave_?" She was
smiling at him again, leaning back in her chair and regarding him
playfully over her glasses.

"You sure are," Andy assented, deliberately refraining from saying
"yes, ma'am," as had been his impulse.

"To come away out here--_all alone_--among all you wild cowboys with
your guns buckled on and your wicked little mustangs--Are you sure you
won't shoot me?"

Andy eyed her pityingly. If she meant it, he thought, she certainly
was wabbly in her mind. If she thought that was the only kind of talk
he could savvy, then she was a blamed idiot; either way, he felt
antagonistic. "The law shall be respected in your case," he told her,
very gravely.

She smiled almost as if she could see the joke; after which she became
twitteringly, eagerly in earnest. "Since you live near here, you must
know the Whitmores. Miss Whitmore came out here, two or three years
ago, and married her brother's coachman, I believe--though I've heard
conflicting stories about it; some have said he was an artist, and
others that he was a jockey, or horse-trainer. I heard too that he was
a cowboy; but Miss Whitmore certainly wrote about this young man
driving her brother's carriage. However, she is married and I have a
letter of introduction to her. The president of our club used to be a
schoolmate