“Good-day, m'm.”
“Thank yu', m'm.”
They got themselves out of the station and into their saddles.
“No, she don't understand things yet,” soliloquized the Virginian. “Oh dear, no.” He turned his slow, dark eyes upon us. “You Lin McLean,” said he, in his gentle voice, “you have cert'nly fooled me plumb through this mawnin'.”
Then the horde rode out of town, chastened and orderly till it was quite small across the sagebrush, when reaction seized it. It sped suddenly and vanished in dust with far, hilarious cries and here were Lin and I, and here towered the water-tank, shining and shining.
Thus did Separ's vigilante take possession and vindicate Lin's knowledge of his kind. It was not three days until the Virginian, that lynx observer, fixed his grave eyes upon McLean “'Neighbor' is as cute a name for a six-shooter as ever I heard,” said he. “But she'll never have need of your gun in Separ—only to shoot up peaceful playin'-cyards while she hearkens to your courtin'.”
That was his way of congratulation to a brother lover. “Plumb strange,” he said to me one morning after an hour of riding in silence, “how a man will win two women while another man gets aged waitin' for one.”
“Your hair seems black as ever,” said I.
“My hopes ain't so glossy any more,” he answered. “Lin has done better this second trip.”
“Mrs. Lusk don't count,” said I.