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“Livin’ or dead do you want ’em?” inquired Lin.

“Oh, I’ll not bother you. Mr. Donohoe says he will–“

“Texas? Chickens? Him? Then he’ll have to steal ’em!” And we all laughed together.

“You won’t make me go back to Laramie, will you?” spoke Billy, suddenly, from his stool.

“I’d like to see anybody try to make you?” exclaimed Jessamine. “Who says any such thing?”

“Lin did,” said Billy.

Jessamine looked at her lover reproachfully. “What a way to tease him!” she said. “And you so kind. Why, you’ve hurt his feelings!”

“I never thought,” said Lin the boisterous. “I wouldn’t have.”

“Come sit here, Billy,” said Jessamine. “Whenever he teases, you tell me, and we’ll make him behave.”

“Honest?” persisted Billy.

“Shake hands on it,” said Jessamine.

“Cause I’ll go to school. But I won’t go back to Laramie for no one. And you’re a-going to be Lin’s wife, honest?”

“Honest! Honest!” And Jessamine, laughing, grew red beside her lamp.

“Then I guess mother can’t never come back to Lin, either,” stated Billy, relieved.

Jessamine let fall the child’s hand.

“Cause she liked him onced, and he liked her.”

Jessamine gazed at Lin.

“It’s simple,” said the cow-puncher. “It’s all right.”

But Jessamine sat by her lamp, very pale.

“It’s all right,” repeated Lin in the silence, shifting his foot and looking down. “Once I made a fool of myself. Worse than usual.”

“Billy?” whispered Jessamine. “Then you–But his name is Lusk!”

“Course it is,” said Billy. “Father and mother are living in Laramie.”

“It’s all straight,” said the cow-puncher. “I never saw her till three years ago. I haven’t anything to hide, only–only–only it don’t come easy to tell.”

I rose. “Miss Buckner,” said I, “he will tell you. But he will not tell you he paid dearly for what was no fault of his. It has been no secret. It is only something his friends and his enemies have forgotten.”

But all the while I was speaking this, Jessamine’s eyes were fixed on Lin, and her face remained white.

I left the girl and the man and the little boy together, and crossed to the hotel. But its air was foul, and I got my roll of camp blankets to sleep in the clean night, if sleeping-time should come; meanwhile I walked about in the silence To have taken a wife once in good faith, ignorant she was another’s, left no stain, raised no barrier. I could have told Jessamine the same old story myself–or almost; but what had it to do with her at all? Why need she know? Reasoning thus, yet with something left uncleared by reason that I could not state, I watched the moon edge into sight, heavy and rich-hued, a melon-slice of glow, seemingly near, like a great lantern tilted over the plain. The smell of the sage-brush flavored the air; the hush of Wyoming folded distant and near things, and all Separ but those three inside the lighted window were in bed. Dark windows were everywhere else, and looming above rose the water-tank, a dull mass in the night, and forever somehow to me a Sphinx emblem, the vision I instantly see when I think of Separ. Soon I heard a door creaking. It was Billy, coming alone, and on seeing me he walked up and spoke in a half-awed voice.

“She’s a-crying,” said he.

I withheld from questions, and as he kept along by my side he said: “I’m sorry. Do you think she’s mad with Lin for what he’s told her? She just sat, and when she started crying he made me go away.”

“I don’t believe she’s mad,” I told Billy; and I sat down on my blanket, he beside me, talking while the moon grew small as it rose over the plain, and the light steadily shone in Jessamine’s window. Soon young Billy fell asleep, and I looked at him, thinking how in a way it was he who had brought this trouble on the man who had saved him and loved him. But that man had no such untender thoughts. Once more the door opened, and it was he who came this time, alone also. She did not follow him and stand to watch him from the threshold, though he forgot to close the door, and, coming over to me, stood looking down.