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“Mosquitoes’ll be due in about three weeks,” said Lin. “Yu’ might leave a man rest till then.”

“I want your opinion,” said I.

“Oh, misery! Well, a raise in the price of steers.”

“No.”

“Yu’ said yu’ wanted my opinion,” said Lin. “Seems like yu’ merely figure on givin’ me yours.”

“Very well,” said I. “Very well, then.”

I took up a copy of the Cheyenne Sun. It was five weeks old, and I soon perceived that I had read it three weeks ago; but I read it again for some minutes now.

“I expect a railroad would be more important,” said Mr. McLean, persuasively, from the floor.

“Than a rise in steers?” said I, occupied with the Cheyenne Sun. “Oh yes. Yes, a railroad certainly would.”

“It’s got to be money, anyhow,” stated Lin, thoroughly wakened. “Money in some shape.”

“How little you understand the real wants of the country!” said I, coming to the point. “It’s a girl.”

Mr. McLean lay quite still on the floor.

“A girl,” I repeated. “A new girl coming to this starved country.”

The cow-puncher took a long, gradual stretch and began to smile. “Well,” said he, “yu’ caught me–if that’s much to do when a man is half-witted with dinner and sleep.” He closed his eyes again and lay with a specious expression of indifference. But that sort of thing is a solitary entertainment, and palls. “Starved,” he presently muttered. “We are kind o’ starved that way I’ll admit. More dollars than girls to the square mile. And to think of all of us nice, healthy, young–bet yu’ I know who she is!” he triumphantly cried. He had sat up and levelled a finger at me with the throw-down jerk of a marksman. “Sidney, Nebraska.”

I nodded. This was not the lady’s name–he could not recall her name–but his geography of her was accurate.

One day in February my friend, Mrs. Taylor over on Bear Creek, had received a letter–no common event for her. Therefore, during several days she had all callers read it just as naturally as she had them all see the new baby, and baby and letter had both been brought out for me. The letter was signed,

“Ever your afectionite frend.

“Katie Peck,”

and was not easy to read, here and there. But you could piece out the drift of it, and there was Mrs. Taylor by your side, eager to help you when you stumbled. Miss Peck wrote that she was overworked in Sidney, Nebraska, and needed a holiday. When the weather grew warm she should like to come to Bear Creek and be like old times. “Like to come and be like old times” filled Mrs. Taylor with sentiment and the cow-punchers with expectation. But it is a long way from February to warm weather on Bear Creek, and even cow-punchers will forget about a new girl if she does not come. For several weeks I had not heard Miss Peck mentioned, and old girls had to do. Yesterday, however, when I paid a visit to Miss Molly Wood (the Bear Creek schoolmistress), I found her keeping in order the cabin and the children of the Taylors, while they were gone forty-five miles to the stage station to meet their guest.

“Well,” said Lin, judicially, “Miss Wood is a lady.”

“Yes,” said I, with deep gravity. For I was thinking of an occasion when Mr. McLean had discovered that truth somewhat abruptly.

Lin thoughtfully continued. “She is–she’s–she’s–what are you laughin’ at?”

“Oh, nothing. You don’t see quite so much of Miss Wood as you used to, do you?”

“Huh! So that’s got around. Well, o’ course I’d ought t’ve knowed better, I suppose. All the same, there’s lots and lots of girls do like gettin’ kissed against their wishes–and you know it.”

“But the point would rather seem to be that she–“

“Would rather seem! Don’t yu’ start that professor style o’ yours, or I’ll–I’ll talk more wickedness in worse language than ever yu’ve heard me do yet.”

“Impossible!” I murmured, sweetly, and Master Lin went on.