The savage, who had regarded him—­or rather looked beyond him—­with the tolerating indifference of one interrupted by a frisking inferior animal, here suddenly changed his expression.  A look of childish eagerness came into his gloomy face; he reached out his hand for the trinket.

“Hol’ on!” said Boyle, hesitating for a moment; then he suddenly ejaculated, “Well! take it, and one o’ these,” and drew a business card from his pocket, which he stuck in the band of the battered tall hat of the aborigine.  “There! show that to your friends, and when you’re wantin’ anything in our line”—­

The interrupting roar of laughter, coming from the box seat of the coach, was probably what Boyle was expecting, for he turned away demurely and walked towards the coach.  “All right, boys!  I’ve squared the noble red man, and the star of empire is taking its westward way.  And I reckon our firm will do the ‘Great Father’ business for him at about half the price that it is done in Washington.”

But at this point the ostlers came hurrying out of the stables.  “She’s comin’,” said one.  “That’s her dust just behind the Lone Pine—­and by the way she’s racin’ I reckon she’s comin’ in mighty light.”

“That’s so,” said the mail agent, standing up on the box seat for a better view, “but darned ef I kin see any outside passengers.  I reckon we haven’t waited for much.”

Indeed, as the galloping horses of the incoming vehicle pulled out of the hanging dust in the distance, the solitary driver could be seen urging on his team.  In a few moments more they had halted at the lower end of the station.

“Wonder what’s up!” said the mail agent.

“Nothin’!  Only a big Injin scare at Pine Barrens,” said one of the ostlers.  “Injins doin’ ghost dancin’—­or suthin like that—­and the passengers just skunked out and went on by the other line.  Thar’s only one ez dar come—­and she’s a lady.”

“A lady?” echoed Boyle.

“Yes,” answered the driver, taking a deliberate survey of a tall, graceful girl who, waiving the gallant assistance of the station keeper, had leaped unaided from the vehicle.  “A lady—­and the fort commandant’s darter at that!  She’s clar grit, you bet—­a chip o’ the old block.  And all this means, sonny, that you’re to give up that box seat to her.  Miss Julia Cantire don’t take anythin’ less when I’m around.”

The young lady was already walking, directly and composedly, towards the waiting coach—­erect, self-contained, well gloved and booted, and clothed, even in her dust cloak and cape of plain ashen merino, with the unmistakable panoply of taste and superiority.  A good-sized aquiline nose, which made her handsome mouth look smaller; gray eyes, with an occasional humid yellow sparkle in their depths; brown penciled eyebrows, and brown tendrils of hair, all seemed to Boyle to be charmingly framed in by the silver gray veil twisted around her neck and under her oval chin.  In her sober tints she appeared to him to have evoked a harmony even out of the dreadful dust around them.  What he appeared to her was not so plain; she looked him over—­he was rather short; through him—­he was easily penetrable; and then her eyes rested with a frank recognition on the driver.