I don’t know how long after it was that I sprang from my blankets in half-doubting fright.  But I had dreamed nothing.  A second long, wild yell now gave me (I must own to it) a horrible chill.  I had no pistol—­ nothing.  In the hateful brightness of the moon my single thought was “House!  House!” and I fled across the lane in my underclothes to the cabin, when round the corner whirled the two cow-punchers, and I understood.  I saw the Virginian catch sight of me in my shirt, and saw his teeth as he smiled.  I hastened to my blankets, and returned more decent to stand and watch the two go shooting and yelling round the cabin, crazy with their youth.  The door was opened, and Taylor courageously emerged, bearing a Winchester.  He fired at the sky immediately.

“B’ gosh!” he roared.  “That’s one.”  He fired again.  “Out and at ’em.  They’re running.”

At this, duly came Mrs. Taylor in white with a pistol, and Miss Peck in white, staring and stolid.  But no Tommy.  Noise prevailed without, shots by the stable and shots by the creek.  The two cow-punchers dismounted and joined Taylor.  Maniac delight seized me, and I, too, rushed about with them, helping the din.

“Oh, Mr. Taylor!” said a voice.  “I didn’t think it of you.”  It was Molly Wood, come from her cabin, very pretty in a hood-and-cloak arrangement.  She stood by the fence, laughing, but more at us than with us.

“Stop, friends!” said Taylor, gasping.  “She teaches my Bobbie his A B C. I’d hate to have Bobbie—­”

“Speak to your papa,” said Molly, and held her scholar up on the fence.

“Well, I’ll be gol-darned,” said Taylor, surveying his costume, “if Lin McLean hasn’t made a fool of me to-night!”

“Where has Tommy got?” said Mrs. Taylor.

“Didn’t yus see him?” said the biscuit-shooter speaking her first word in all this.

We followed her into the kitchen.  The table was covered with tin plates.  Beneath it, wedged knelt Tommy with a pistol firm in his hand; but the plates were rattling up and down like castanets.

There was a silence among us, and I wondered what we were going to do.

“Well,” murmured the Virginian to himself, “if I could have foresaw, I’d not—­it makes yu’ feel humiliated yu’self.”

He marched out, got on his horse, and rode away.  Lin followed him, but perhaps less penitently.  We all dispersed without saying anything, and presently from my blankets I saw poor Tommy come out of the silent cabin, mount, and slowly, very slowly, ride away.  He would spend the night at Riverside, after all.

Of course we recovered from our unexpected shame, and the tale of the table and the dancing plates was not told as a sad one.  But it is a sad one when you think of it.

I was not there to see Lin get his bride.  I learned from the Virginian how the victorious puncher had ridden away across the sunny sagebrush, bearing the biscuit-shooter with him to the nearest justice of the peace.  She was astride the horse he had brought for her.