Part 29 (2/2)

”Man, man!” said I, ”go back and tell her to keep it, and that you'll wait too--always!”

”Would yu'?”

”Look!” I pointed to Jessamine standing in the door.

I saw his face as he turned to her, and I walked toward Billy and the horses. Presently I heard steps on the wooden station, and from its black, brief shadow the two came walking, Lin and his sweetheart, into the moonlight. They were not speaking, but merely walked together in the clear radiance, hand in hand, like two children. I saw that she was weeping, and that beneath the tyranny of her resolution her whole loving, ample nature was wrung. But the strange, narrow fibre in her would not yield! I saw them go to the horses, and Jessamine stood while Billy and Lin mounted. Then quickly the cow-puncher sprang down again and folded her in his arms.

”Lin, dear Lin! dear neighbor!” she sobbed. She could not withhold this last good-bye.

I do not think he spoke. In a moment the horses started and were gone, flying, rus.h.i.+ng away into the great plain, until sight and sound of them were lost, and only the sage-brush was there, bathed in the high, bright moon. The last thing I remember as I lay in my blankets was Jessamine's window still lighted, and the water-tank, clear-lined and black, standing over Separ.

DESTINY AT DRYBONE

PART I

Children have many special endowments, and of these the chiefest is to ask questions that their elders must skirmish to evade. Married people and aunts and uncles commonly discover this, but mere instinct does not guide one to it. A maiden of twenty-three will not necessarily divine it. Now except in one unhappy hour of stress and surprise, Miss Jessamine Buckner had been more than equal to life thus far. But never yet had she been shut up a whole day in one room with a boy of nine.

Had this experience been hers, perhaps she would not have written to Mr.

McLean the friendly and singular letter in which she hoped he was well, and said that she was very well, and how was dear little Billy? She was glad Mr. McLean had stayed away. That was just like his honorable nature, and what she expected of him. And she was perfectly happy at Separ, and ”yours sincerely and always, 'Neighbor.'” Postscript. Talking of Billy Lusk--if Lin was busy with gathering the cattle, why not send Billy down to stop quietly with her. She would make him a bed in the ticket-office, and there she would be to see after him all the time. She knew Lin did not like his adopted child to be too much in cow-camp with the men. She would adopt him, too, for just as long as convenient to Lin--until the school opened on Bear Creek, if Lin so wished. Jessamine wrote a good deal about how much better care any woman can take of a boy of Billy's age than any man knows. The stage-coach brought the answer to this remarkably soon--young Billy with a trunk and a letter of twelve pages in pencil and ink--the only writing of this length ever done by Mr. McLean.

”I can write a lot quicker than Lin,” said Billy, upon arriving. ”He was fussing at that away late by the fire in camp, an' waked me up crawling in our bed. An' then he had to finish it next night when he went over to the cabin for my clothes.”

”You don't say!” said Jessamine. And Billy suffered her to kiss him again.

When not otherwise occupied Jessamine took the letter out of its locked box and read it, or looked at it. Thus the first days had gone finely at Separ, the weather being beautiful and Billy much out-of-doors.

But sometimes the weather changes in Wyoming; and now it was that Miss Jessamine learned the talents of childhood.

Soon after breakfast this stormy morning Billy observed the twelve pages being taken out of their box, and spoke from his sudden brain. ”Honey Wiggin says Lin's losing his grip about girls,” he remarked. ”He says you couldn't 'a' downed him onced. You'd 'a' had to marry him. Honey says Lin ain't worked it like he done in old times.”

”Now I shouldn't wonder if he was right,” said Jessamine, buoyantly.

”And that being the case, I'm going to set to work at your things till it clears, and then we'll go for our ride.”

”Yes,” said Billy. ”When does a man get too old to marry?”

”I'm only a girl, you see. I don't know.”

”Yes. Honey said he wouldn't 'a' thought Lin was that old. But I guess he must be thirty.”

”Old!” exclaimed Jessamine. And she looked at a photograph upon her table.

”But Lin ain't been married very much,” pursued Billy. ”Mother's the only one they speak of. You don't have to stay married always, do you?”

”It's better to,” said Jessamine.

”Ah, I don't think so,” said Billy, with disparagement. ”You ought to see mother and father. I wish you would leave Lin marry you, though,”

said the boy, coming to her with an impulse of affection. ”Why won't you if he don't mind?”

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