The Fighting Shepherdess

The look that his guest sent after him was not pleasant, if Bowers had chanced to see it, but since he did not, he was in a somewhat better humor by the time he hung out of the wagon and called with a degree of cordiality: "Come and git it!"

The visitor arose with alacrity.

"Want a warsh?"

The stranger inspected a pair of hands that looked as if they had been greasing axles.

"No, I ain't very dirty."

"Grab a root and pull!" Bowers urged with all the hospitality he could inject into his voice, as the guest squeezed in between the table and the sideboard. "Jest bog down in that there honey, pardner--it's something special--cottonwood blossoms and alfalfy. And here's the turnips!"

* * * * * Conversation was suspended until a pan of biscuits had vanished along with the fried mutton, when Bowers, feeling immeasurably better natured, inquired sociably as he passed the broom: "Where have I saw you before, feller? Your countenance seems kind of familiar."

The stranger looked up quickly.

"I don't think it. I'm a long way off my own range."

He averted his eyes from Bowers's puzzled inquiring gaze and focused his attention upon the business of extracting a suitable straw from the politely tendered broom. When he had found one to his liking, he leaned back and operated with a large air of nonchalance.

"You're fixed pretty comfortable here," he commented, as his roving eye took in the interior of the wagon.

"'Tain't bad," Bowers agreed, prying into the broom for a straw that was clean, comparatively.

"Is them all kin o' yourn?" The stranger pointed to a wire rack suspended from a nail on the opposite side of the wagon in which was thrust some two dozen photographs, fly-specked and yellow, while the cut of the subjects' clothes bore additional evidence of their antiquity.

"Lord, no! I don't know none of 'em. There was a couple of travelin' photygraphers got snowed up here several year ago and I bought ten dollars' worth of old pictures off 'em for company. I got 'em all named, and it's real entertainin' settin' here evenin's makin' up yarns about 'em that's more'n half true, maybe--Mis' Taylor over to Happy Wigwam says I'm kind of a medium."

Glancing at his guest he observed that his eyes were fixed intently upon a photograph in the center and his expression was so peculiar that Bowers asked, curiously: "Ary friend o' yours in my gallery?"

"Not to say friend, exactly," was the dry answer, "but what-fer-a-yarn have you made up about that feller?"

"Well, sir," Bowers said whimsically, "I'm sorry to tell you but that feller had a bad endin'. He had everything done fur him, too--good raisin' and an education, but it was all wasted. That horse there was, as you might say, his undoin'. It was just fast enough to be beat everywhur he run him. But he kept on backin' him till it broke him--no, sir, he hadn't a dollar! Lost everything his Old Man left him and then took to drinkin'. His wife quit him and his only child died callin' for its father. After that he drunk harder than ever, and finally died in the asylum thinkin' he was Marcus Daly." He demanded eagerly, "How clost have I come to it?"