“I am sure you can ride finely, Mr. Lusk. Maybe you and I can take a ride together. Pleasant dreams!”
She nodded and smiled to him, and slid her door to; and Billy considered it, remarking: “I like her. What makes her live in a car?”
But he was drowsing while I told him; and I lifted him up to Lin, who took him in his own blankets, where he fell immediately asleep. One distant whistle showed how far the late engine had gone from us. We left our car open, and I lay enjoying the cool air. Thus was I drifting off, when I grew aware of a figure in the door. It was Lin, standing in his stockings and not much else, with his pistol. He listened, and then leaped down, light as a cat. I heard some repressed talking, and lay in expectancy; but back he came, noiseless in his stockings, and as he slid into bed I asked what the matter was. He had found the Texas boy, Manassas Donohoe, by the girl's car, with no worse intention than keeping a watch on it. “So I gave him to understand,” said Lin, “that I had no objection to him amusing himself playing picket-line, but that I guessed I was enough guard, and he would find sleep healthier for his system.” After this I went to sleep wholly; but, waking once in the night, thought I heard some one outside, and learned in the morning from Lin that the boy had not gone until the time came for him to join his outfit at the corrals. And I was surprised that Lin, the usually good-hearted, should find nothing but mirth in the idea of this unknown, unthanked young sentinel. “Sleeping's a heap better for them kind till they get their growth,” was his single observation.
But when Separ had dwindled to toys behind us in the journeying stage I told Miss Jessamine, and although she laughed too, it was with a note that young Texas would have liked to hear; and she hoped she might see him upon her return, to thank him.
“Any Jack can walk around all night,” said Mr. McLean, disparagingly.
“Well, then, and I know a Jack who didn't,” observed the young lady.
This speech caused her admirer to be full of explanations; so that when she saw how readily she could perplex him, and yet how capable and untiring he was about her comfort, helping her out or tucking her in at the stations where we had a meal or changed horses, she enjoyed the hours very much, in spite of their growing awkwardness.
But oh, the sparkling, unbashful Lin! Sometimes he sat himself beside her to be close, and then he would move opposite, the better to behold her.
Never, except once long after (when sorrow manfully borne had still further refined his clay), have I heard Lin's voice or seen his look so winning. No doubt many a male bird cares nothing what neighbor bird overhears his spring song from the top of the open tree, but I extremely doubt if his lady-love, even if she be a frank, bouncing robin, does not prefer to listen from some thicket, and not upon the public lawn. Jessamine grew silent and almost peevish; and from discourse upon man and woman she hopped, she skipped, she flew. When Lin looked at his watch and counted the diminished hours between her and Buffalo, she smiled to herself; but from mention of her brother she shrank, glancing swiftly at me and my well-assumed slumber.
And it was with indignation and self-pity that I climbed out in the hot sun at last beside the driver and small Billy.