Lou Gore kissed Taisie Lockhart for the last time, tears in the eyes of both; then wiped her hands and eyes upon her apron and turned back to build up her reputation as the biggest-hearted woman on the Plains. What friend she was to the wild men of the trail, countless wounded, crippled, ill and helpless cowmen learned in the years to come; years of swift changes on the upper range. A good soul, a strong heart of the frontier, she left a beloved and covetable memory.
The ambulances, each drawn by four sleek mules, stood in the street waiting, flanked by stalwart troopers. In the foremost vehicle, on a middle seat, hidden from view, sat Sim Rudabaugh, and gyves were on his wrists. Thongs of rawhide, right and left, bound his hands to the seat ends. Other thongs fastened his ankles and passed back under the seat to a cross pole. In the seat behind sat Dan McMasters and the boy Cinquo, both armed. Rudabaugh could never have escaped. The ruthless trail bandit, who never took a prisoner, himself was a prisoner at last. To all his sobbings, his expostulations, his execrations and his questions, no one made any answer. Of friends he had none in all the world. He was at the end of the trail of the transgressor.
This ambulance, of course, must drive faster than the others, which would hold back with the Del Sol carts. In the second ambulance, well escorted, Taisie was to ride with her foreman, Nabours. In this was stowed a certain trunk covered with rawhide.
But as this little cavalcade stood halted in midstreet of the cloudless morning, most of the remaining men of Abilene came clamoring for the privilege of one more farewell to the Texas girl. Taisie leaned forward to greet them as they came, herself beautiful as the dawn, in spite of the new droop at the corners of her mouth.
Dan McMasters had said his own good-bys briefly, coldly—the coldest man in all the world, she thought. He never once had met her for a moment alone. Of that swift brief fire of two earlier times only ashes remained, unblown of any gust of passion.
McCoyne flitted from one vehicle to the other, excitedly making his adieus.
“Come back again!” said he. “We’ll be waiting for you next year. Tell every ranch in Texas to send up their herds. You’ll see Abilene with a jail and a church and a school and a graveyard the next time you come. I have been so busy——”
Came among the very last a woman of the Silver Moon, young in years but weary and old at this hour of the morning. Timidly she reached out her hand through the curtains of the ambulance and Taisie took it.
“Good-by,” said the girl; “good-by, my dear. You’re the first woman ever came to Abilene. Don’t come back again,”—and so departed to the Silver Moon, herself once a woman, and seeing Taisie’s eyes following the tall young man.
Pattison, the Northern stockman, spent some time in final conversation with Mr. Dan McMasters.