“Unescorted all that way!” I exclaimed.

“Isn’t it awful?” said she, tilting her head with a laugh, and showing the pistol she carried.  “But we’ve always been awful in Kentucky.  Now I suppose New York would never speak to poor me as it passed by?” And she eyed me with capable, good-humored satire.

“Why New York?” I demanded.  “Guess again.”

“Well,” she debated, “well, cowboy clothes and city language—­he’s English!” she burst out; and then she turned suddenly red, and whispered to herself, reprovingly, “If I’m not acting rude!”

“Oh!” said I, rather familiarly.

“It was, sir; and please to excuse me.  If you had started joking so free with me, I’d have been insulted.  When I saw you—­the hat and everything—­ I took you—­You see I’ve always been that used to talking to—­to folks around!” Her bright face saddened, memories evidently rose before her, and her eyes grew distant.

I wished to say, “Treat me as ‘folks around,’” but this tall country girl had put us on other terms.  On discovering I was not “folks around,” she had taken refuge in deriding me, but swiftly feeling no solid ground there, she drew a firm, clear woman’s line between us.  Plainly she was a comrade of men, in her buoyant innocence secure, yet by no means in the dark as to them.

“Yes, unescorted two thousand miles,” she resumed, “and never as far as twenty from home till last Tuesday.  I expect you’ll have to be scandalized, for I’d do it right over again to-morrow.”

“You’ve got me all wrong,” said I.  “I’m not English; I’m not New York.  I am good American, and not bounded by my own farm either.  No sectional line, or Mason and Dixon, or Missouri River tattoos me.  But you, when you say United States, you mean United Kentucky!”

“Did you ever!” said she, staring at what was Greek to her—­as it is to most Americans.  “And so if you had a sister back East, and she and you were all there was of you any more, and she hadn’t seen you since—­not since you first took to staying out nights, and she started to visit you, you’d not tell her ’Fie for shame’?”

“I’d travel my money’s length to meet her!” said I.

A wave of pain crossed her face.  “Nate didn’t know,” she said then, lightly.  “You see, Nate’s only a boy, and regular thoughtless about writing.”

Ah!  So this Nate never wrote, and his sister loved and championed him!  Many such stray Nates and Bobs and Bills galloped over Wyoming, lost and forgiven.

“I’m starting for him in the Buffalo stage,” continued the girl.

“Then I’ll have your company on a weary road,” said I; for my journey was now to that part of the cattle country.

“To Buffalo?” she said, quickly.  “Then maybe you—­maybe—­My brother is Nate Buckner.”  She paused.  “Then you’re not acquainted with him?”

“I may have seen him,” I answered, slowly.  “But faces and names out here come and go.”