“No, yu’ oughtn’t!” said Lin, with sudden ardor; and then, in a voice of deprecation, “You’ll think us plumb ignorant.”

“You know enough to be kind to folks,” said she.

“We’d like to.”

“It’s the only thing makes the world go round!” she declared, with an emotion that I had heard in her tone once or twice already.  But she caught herself up, and said gayly to me, “And where’s that house you were going to build for a lone girl to sleep in?”

“I’m afraid the foundations aren’t laid yet,” said I.

“Now you gentlemen needn’t bother about me.”

“We’ll have to, m’m.  You ain’t used to Separ.”

“Oh, I am no—­tenderfoot, don’t you call them?” She whipped out her pistol, and held it at the cow-puncher, laughing.

This would have given no pleasure to me; but over Lin’s features went a glow of delight, and he stood gazing at the pointed weapon and the girl behind it.  “My!” he said, at length, almost in a whisper, “she’s got the drop on me!”

“I reckon I’d be afraid to shoot that one of yours,” said Miss Buckner.  “But this hits a target real good and straight at fifteen yards.”  And she handed it to him for inspection.

He received it, hugely grinning, and turned it over and over.  “My!” he murmured again.  “Why, shucks!” He looked at Miss Buckner with stark rapture, caressing the polished revolver at the same time with a fond, unconscious thumb.  “You hold it just as steady as I could,” he said with pride, and added, insinuatingly, “I could learn yu’ the professional drop in a morning.  This here is a little dandy gun.”

“You’d not trade, though,” said she, “for all your flattery.”

“Will yu’ trade?” pounced Lin.  “Won’t yu’?”

“Now, Mr. McLean, I am afraid you’re thoughtless.  How could a girl like me ever hold that awful .45 Colt steady?”

“She knows the brands, too!” cried Lin, in ecstasy.  “See here,” he remarked to me with a manner that smacked of command, “we’re losing time right now.  You go and tell the agent to hustle and fix his room up for a lady, and I’ll bring her along.”

I found the agent willing, of course, to sleep on the floor of the office.  The toy station was also his home.  The front compartment held the ticket and telegraph and mail and express chattels, and the railing, and room for the public to stand; through a door you then passed to the sitting, dining, and sleeping box; and through another to a cooking-stove in a pigeon-hole.  Here flourished the agent and his lungs, and here the company’s strict orders bade him sleep in charge; so I helped him put his room to rights.  But we need not have hurried ourselves.  Mr. McLean was so long in bringing the lady that I went out and found him walking and talking with her, while fifty yards away skulked poor Texas, alone.  This boy’s name was, like himself, of the somewhat unexpected order, being Manassas Donohoe.