harm until they found themselves resisted.  Then presently happened that affair of the cow-catcher; and later a too-zealous marshal, come about a mail-car they had side-tracked and held with fiddles, drink, and petticoats, met his death accidentally, at which they were sincerely sorry for about five minutes.  They valued their own lives as little, and that lifts them forever from baseness at least.  So the company, concluding such things must be endured for a while yet, wrote their letter, and you have seen how wrong the letter went.  All it would do would be from now on to fasten upon Separ its code of recklessness; to make shooting the water-tank (for example) part of a gentleman’s deportment when he showed himself in town.

It was not now the season of heavy shipping; to-night their work would be early finished, and then they were likely to play after their manner.  To arrive in such a place on her way to her brother, the felon in jail, made the girl’s journey seem doubly forlorn to me as I wandered down to the corrals.

A small, bold voice hailed me.  “Hello, you!” it said; and here was Billy Lusk, aged nine, in boots and overalls, importantly useless with a stick, helping the men prod the steers at the chute.

“Thought you were at school,” said I.

“Ah, school’s quit,” returned Billy, and changed the subject.  “Say, Lin’s hunting you.  He’s angling to eat at the hotel.  I’m grubbing with the outfit.”  And Billy resumed his specious activity.

Mr. McLean was in the ticket-office, where the newspaper had transiently reminded him of politics.  “Wall Street,” he was explaining to the agent, “has been lunched on by them Ross-childs, and they’re moving on.  Feeding along to Chicago.  We want—­” Here he noticed me and, dragging his gauntlet off, shook my hand with his lusty grasp.

“Your eldest son just said you were in haste to find me,” I remarked.

“Lose you, he meant.  The kid gets his words twisted.”

“Didn’t know you were a father, Mr. McLean,” simpered the agent.

Lin fixed his eye on the man.  “And you don’t know it now,” said he.  Then he removed his eye.  “Let’s grub,” he added to me.  My friend did not walk to the hotel, but slowly round and about, with a face overcast.  “Billy is a good kid,” he said at length, and, stopping, began to kick small mounds in the dust.  Politics floated lightly over him, but here was a matter dwelling with him, heavy and real.  “He’s dead stuck on being a cow-puncher,” he presently said.

“Some day—­” I began.

“He don’t want to wait that long,” Lin said, and smiled affectionately.  “And, anyhow, what is ‘some day’?  Some day we punchers will not be here.  The living will be scattered, and the dead—­well, they’ll be all right.  Have yu’ studied the wire fence?  It’s spreading to catch us like nets do the salmon in the Columbia River.  No more salmon, no more cow-punchers,” stated Mr. McLean,