"Elsewhere!Yes,keep starting till all the elsewheres know him like Powder River knows him.But she!I have had to sit and hear her tell and tell about him;all about back in Kentucky playin'around the farm,and how she raised him after the old folks died.Then he got bigger and made her sell their farm,and she told how it was right he should turn it into money and get his half.I did not dare say a word,for she'd have just bit my head off,and--and that would sure hurt me now!"Lin brought up with a comical chuckle."And she went to work,and he cleared out,and no more seen or heard of him.That's for five years,and she'd given up tracing him,when one morning she reads in the paper about how her long-lost brother is convicted for forgery.That's the way she knows he's not dead,and she takes her savings off her railroad salary and starts for him.She was that hasty she thought it was Buffalo,New York,till she got in the cars and read the paper over again.But she had to go as far as Cincinnati,either way.She has paid every cent of the money he stole."We had come to the bridge,and Lin jerked a stone into the quick little river."She's awful strict in some ways.Thought Buffalo must be a wicked place because of the shops bein'open Sunday.Now if that was all Buffalo's wickedness!And she thinks divorce is mostly sin.But her heart is a shield for Nate.""Her face is as beautiful as her actions,"he added.
"Well,"said I,"and would you make such a villain your brother-in-law?"He whirled round and took both my shoulders."Come walking!"he urged."Imust talk some."So we followed the stream out of town towards the mountains."I came awful near asking her in the stage,"said he.
"Goodness,Lin!give yourself time!"
"Time can't increase my feelings."
"Hers,man,hers!How many hours have you known her?""Hours and hours!You're talking foolishness!What have they got to do with it?And she will listen to me.I can tell she will.I know I can be so she'll listen,and it will go all right,for I'll ask so hard.And everything'll come out straight.Yu'see,I've not been spending to speak of since Billy's on my hands,and now I'll fix up my cabin and finish my fencing and my ditch--and she's going to like Box Elder Creek better than Shawhan.She's the first I've ever loved.""Then I'd like to ask--"I cried out.
"Ask away!"he exclaimed,inattentively,in his enthusiasm.
"When you--"but I stopped,perceiving it impossible.It was,of course,not the many transient passions on which he had squandered his substance,but the one where faith also had seemed to unite.Had he not married once,innocent of the woman's being already a wife?But I stopped,for to trench here was not for me or any one.
And my pause strangely flashed on him something of that I had in my mind.
"No,"he said,his eyes steady and serious upon me,"don't you ask about the things you're meaning."Then his face grew radiant and rather stern.
"Do you suppose I don't know she's too good for me?And that some bygones can't ever be bygones?But if you,"he said,"never come to look away up to a woman from away down,and mean to win her just the same as if you did deserve her,why,you'll make a turruble mess of the whole business!"When we walked in silence for a long while,he lighted again with the blossoming dawn of his sentiment.I thought of the coarse yet taking vagabond of twenty I had once chanced upon,and hunted and camped with since through the years.Decidedly he was not that boy to-day!It is not true that all of us rise through adversity,any more than that all plants need shadow.Some starve out of the sunshine;and I have seen misery deaden once kind people to everything but self--almost the saddest sight in the world!But Lin's character had not stood well the ordeal of happiness,and for him certainly harsh days and responsibility had been needed to ripen the spirit.Yes,Jessamine Buckner would have been much too good for him before that humiliation of his marriage,and this care of young Billy with which he had loaded himself."Lin,"said I,"I will drink your health and luck.""I'm healthy enough,"said he;and we came back to the main street and into the main saloon.
"How d'ye,boys?"said some one,and there was Nate Buckner."It's on me to-day,"he continued,shoving whiskey along the bar;and I saw he was a little drunk."I'm setting 'em up,"he continued."Why?Why,because"--he looked around for appreciation--"because it's not every son-of-a-gun in Wyoming gets pardoned by Governor Barker.I'm important,I want you to understand,"he pursued to the cold bystanders."They'll have a picture of me in the Cheyenne paper.'The Bronco-buster of Powder River!'They can't do without me!If any son-of-a-gun here thinks he knows how to break a colt,"he shouted,looking around with the irrelevant fierceness of drink--and then his challenge ebbed vacantly in laughter as the subject blurred in his mind."You're not drinking,Lin,"said he.
"No,"said McLean,"I'm not."
"Sworn off again?Well,water never did agree with me.""Yu'never gave water the chance,"retorted the cow-puncher,and we left the place without my having drunk his health.
It was a grim beginning,this brag attempt to laugh his reputation down,with the jail door scarce closed behind him."Folks are not going to like that,"said Lin,as we walked across the bridge again to the hotel.Yet the sister,left alone here after an hour at most of her brother's company,would pretend it was a matter of course.Nate was not in,she told us at once.He had business to attend to and friends to see he must get back to Riverside and down in that country where colts were waiting for him.He was the only one the E.K.outfit would allow to handle their young stock.Did we know that?And she was going to stay with a Mrs.
