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“What?” I said at length.

I don’t know that he heard me. He stooped over Billy and shook him gently. “Wake, son,” said he. “You and I must get to our camp now.”

“Now?” said Billy. “Can’t we wait till morning?”

“No, son. We can’t wait here any more. Go and get the horses and put the saddles on.” As Billy obeyed, Lin looked at the lighted window. “She is in there,” he said. “She’s in there. So near.” He looked, and turned to the hotel, from which he brought his chaps and spurs and put them on. “I understand her words,” he continued. “Her words, the meaning of them. But not what she means, I guess. It will take studyin’ over. Why, she don’t blame me!” he suddenly said, speaking to me instead of to himself.

“Lin,” I answered, “she has only just heard this, you see. Wait awhile.”

“That’s not the trouble. She knows what kind of man I have been, and she forgives that just the way she did her brother. And she knows how I didn’t intentionally conceal anything. Billy hasn’t been around, and she never realized about his mother and me. We’ve talked awful open, but that was not pleasant to speak of, and the whole country knew it so long–and I never thought! She don’t blame me. She says she understands; but she says I have a wife livin’.”

“That is nonsense,” I declared.

“Yu’ mustn’t say that,” said he. “She don’t claim she’s a wife, either. She just shakes her head when I asked her why she feels so. It must be different to you and me from the way it seems to her. I don’t see her view; maybe I never can see it; but she’s made me feel she has it, and that she’s honest, and loves me true–” His voice broke for a moment. “She said she’d wait.”

“You can’t have a marriage broken that was never tied,” I said. “But perhaps Governor Barker or Judge Henry–“

“No,” said the cow-puncher. “Law couldn’t fool her. She’s thinking of something back of law. She said she’d wait–always. And when I took it in that this was all over and done, and when I thought of my ranch and the chickens–well, I couldn’t think of things at all, and I came and waked Billy to clear out and quit.”

“What did you tell her?” I asked.

“Tell her? Nothin’, I guess. I don’t remember getting out of the room. Why, here’s actually her pistol, and she’s got mine!”

“Man, man!” said I, “go back and tell her to keep it, and that you’ll wait too–always!”

“Would yu’?”

“Look!” I pointed to Jessamine standing in the door.

I saw his face as he turned to her, and I walked toward Billy and the horses. Presently I heard steps on the wooden station, and from its black, brief shadow the two came walking, Lin and his sweetheart, into the moonlight. They were not speaking, but merely walked together in the clear radiance, hand in hand, like two children. I saw that she was weeping, and that beneath the tyranny of her resolution her whole loving, ample nature was wrung. But the strange, narrow fibre in her would not yield! I saw them go to the horses, and Jessamine stood while Billy and Lin mounted. Then quickly the cow-puncher sprang down again and folded her in his arms.

“Lin, dear Lin! dear neighbor!” she sobbed. She could not withhold this last good-bye.

I do not think he spoke. In a moment the horses started and were gone, flying, rushing away into the great plain, until sight and sound of them were lost, and only the sage-brush was there, bathed in the high, bright moon. The last thing I remember as I lay in my blankets was Jessamine’s window still lighted, and the water-tank, clear-lined and black, standing over Separ.