woman.  She pricked up her ears, meanwhile, at some of the purchases made by the cow-boys for their camp-larders—­devilled ham, sardines, canned tomatoes heading the list as prime favorites.  Did these strapping border lads live by the fruit of the tin alone?  Apparently yes, with the sophisticated accompaniment of soda biscuit, to judge by the quantity of baking-powder they invested in—­literally pounds of it.  Men in any other condition of life would have died of slow poisoning as the result of it.

There were other customers at Hugous’ that morning besides the spurred and booted cow-puncher and his despised compeer, the sheep-herder.  That restless emigrant class, whose origin, as a class, lay in the community of its own uncertain schemes of fortune; the West, with her splendid, lavish promises, called them from their thriftless farms in the South and their gray cabins in New England.  They began their journeying towards the land of promise long before the Indians had ever seen the shrieking “fire-wagon.”  All day they would toil over the infinitude of prairie, the sun that hid nightly behind that maddeningly elusive vanishing-point, the horizon, their only guide.  But the makeshifts of the wagon life were not without charm.  They began to wander in quest of they knew not precisely what, and from these vague beginnings there had sprung into existence that nomadic population that was once such a feature of the far West, but is now going the way of the Indians and the cow-boys.

This breathing-space in the long journey had for them the stimulus of a holiday-making.  They bought their sides of bacon and their pounds of coffee as merrily as if they were playing a game of forfeits, the women fingering the calico they did not want for the joy of pricing and making shoppers’ talk.

The scene had a scriptural flavor that not even the blue overalls of the men nor the calico gowns of the women could altogether eliminate.  Their wagons, bulging with household goods and trailing with kitchen utensils secured by bits of rope, were drawn up in front of the trading-store.  From a pump, at some little distance, the pilgrims filled their stone water-bottles, for the wise traveller does not trust to the chance springs of the desert.  Baskets of chickens were strapped to many of the wagons, but whether the unhappy fowls were designed to supply fresh eggs and an occasional fricassee, or were taken for the pleasure of their company, there was no means of determining short of impertinent cross-questioning.  Sometimes a cow, and invariably a dog, formed one of the family party, and an edifying esprit de corps seemed to dwell among them all.

Lone Tooth Hank, in his capacity of man about town, stood on the steps of Hugous’ watching the preparations; and, seeing Miss Carmichael, approached with the air of an old and tried family friend.