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I wished to say, “Treat me as ‘folks around,'” but this tall country girl had put us on other terms. On discovering I was not “folks around,” she had taken refuge in deriding me, but swiftly feeling no solid ground there, she drew a firm, clear woman’s line between us. Plainly she was a comrade of men, in her buoyant innocence secure, yet by no means in the dark as to them.

“Yes, unescorted two thousand miles,” she resumed, “and never as far as twenty from home till last Tuesday. I expect you’ll have to be scandalized, for I’d do it right over again to-morrow.”

“You’ve got me all wrong,” said I. “I’m not English; I’m not New York. I am good American, and not bounded by my own farm either. No sectional line, or Mason and Dixon, or Missouri River tattoos me. But you, when you say United States, you mean United Kentucky!”

“Did you ever!” said she, staring at what was Greek to her–as it is to most Americans. “And so if you had a sister back East, and she and you were all there was of you any more, and she hadn’t seen you since–not since you first took to staying out nights, and she started to visit you, you’d not tell her ‘Fie for shame’?”

“I’d travel my money’s length to meet her!” said I.

A wave of pain crossed her face. “Nate didn’t know,” she said then, lightly. “You see, Nate’s only a boy, and regular thoughtless about writing.”

Ah! So this Nate never wrote, and his sister loved and championed him! Many such stray Nates and Bobs and Bills galloped over Wyoming, lost and forgiven.

“I’m starting for him in the Buffalo stage,” continued the girl.

“Then I’ll have your company on a weary road,” said I; for my journey was now to that part of the cattle country.

“To Buffalo?” she said, quickly. “Then maybe you–maybe–My brother is Nate Buckner.” She paused. “Then you’re not acquainted with him?”

“I may have seen him,” I answered, slowly. “But faces and names out here come and go.”

I knew him well enough. He was in jail, convicted of forgery last week, waiting to go to the penitentiary for five years. And even this wild border community that hated law courts and punishments had not been sorry, for he had cheated his friends too often, and the wide charity of the sage-brush does not cover that sin. Beneath his pretty looks and daring skill with horses they had found vanity and a cold, false heart; but his sister could not. Here she was, come to find him after lonely years, and to this one soul that loved him in the world how was I to tell the desolation and the disgrace? I was glad to hear her ask me if the stage went soon after supper.

“Now isn’t that a bother?” said she, when I answered that it did not start till morning. She glanced with rueful gayety at the hotel. “Never mind,” she continued, briskly; “I’m used to things. I’ll just sit up somewhere. Maybe the agent will let me stay in the office. You’re sure all that shooting’s only jollification?”

“Certain,” I said. “But I’ll go and see.”

“They always will have their fun,” said she. “But I hate to have a poor boy get hurt–even him deserving it!”

“They use pistols instead of fire-crackers,” said I. “But you must never sleep in that office. I’ll see what we can do.”

“Why, you’re real kind!” she exclaimed, heartily. And I departed, wondering what I ought to do.

Perhaps I should have told you before that Separ was a place once–a sort of place; but you will relish now, I am convinced, the pithy fable of its name.

Midway between two sections of this still unfinished line that, rail after rail and mile upon mile, crawled over the earth’s face visibly during the constructing hours of each new day, lay a camp. To this point these unjoined pieces were heading, and here at length they met. Camp Separation it had been fitly called, but how should the American railway man afford time to say that? Separation was pretty and apt, but needless; and with the sloughing of two syllables came the brief, businesslike result–Separ. Chicago, 1137-1/2 miles. It was labelled on a board large almost as the hut station. A Y-switch, two sidings, the fat water-tank and steam-pump, and a section-house with three trees before it composed the north side. South of the track were no trees. There was one long siding by the corrals and cattle-chute, there were a hovel where plug tobacco and canned goods were for sale, a shed where you might get your horse shod, a wire fence that at shipping times enclosed bales of pressed hay, the hotel, the stage stable, and the little station–some seven shanties all told. Between them were spaces of dust, the immediate plains engulfed them, and through their midst ran the far-vanishing railroad, to which they hung like beads on a great string from horizon to horizon. A great east-and-west string, one end in the rosy sun at morning, and one in the crimson sun at night. Beyond each sky-line lay cities and ports where the world went on out of sight and hearing. This lone steel thread had been stretched across the continent because it was the day of haste and hope, when dollars seemed many and hard times were few; and from the Yellowstone to the Rio Grande similar threads were stretching, and little Separs by dispersed hundreds hung on them, as it were in space eternal. Can you wonder that vigorous young men with pistols should, when they came to such a place, shoot them off to let loose their unbounded joy of living?