“Well, well!” she rallied. “I should have thought that even to the innocent gaze of a tenderfoot––Let me hasten to explain that the common or garden variety of cowshepherd is to be distinguished in many respects from his predecessor of the Texas trail.”
“Texas trail?” he rejoined. “Now I know you’re trying to string me. This Gowan can’t be much older than I am.”
The girl dropped her bantering tone, and answered soberly: “He is only twenty-five, and yet he is a full generation older than you. He was born and raised in a cow camp. He is one of the few men of the type that remain to link the range of today with the vanished world of the cattle frontier.”
“Yet you say that the fellow is only my age?”
“In years, yes. But in type he belongs to the generation that is past––the generation of longhorns, long drives, long Colt’s, and short lives; of stampedes, and hats like yours, badmen, and Injins.”
“Surely you cannot mean that this––You called him ‘Kid.’”
“Kid Gowan,” she confirmed. “Yes, he holds to the old traditions even in that. There are six notches on the hilt of his ‘gun,’ if you count the two little ones he nicked for his brace of Utes.”
“What! He is a real Indian fighter, like Kit Carson?” 23
“Oh, no, it was merely a band of hide hunters that came over the line from Utah, and Mr. Gowan helped the game warden run them back to their reservation.”
“He actually killed two of them?”