The Fighting Shepherdess

Aside from the circumstances which in any event would have attracted more than a little attention to Kate, the extent of the recognition and the courtesy extended to her was a personal triumph. Her simplicity and good sense, her reserve, together with a kind of timid, questioning friendliness, her unconsciousness of being in any way unusual, made her an instantaneous and complete success with those she met the following day, and a celebrity in the yards.

Her business was finished within a few hours and when she made her adieu, Kate looked for Bowers to tell him that she was leaving for Prouty on a night train, presuming that he would wish to do likewise. But Bowers appeared to have vanished as entirely as though he had been shanghaied and was a hundred miles at sea. It was singular that he had not first learned her plans before leaving the stockyards.

The omission hurt Kate, for they had talked much of what they would do and see when they reached Omaha. Bowers, with his superior knowledge of city life, was to show her about; they were to dine together in one of the best restaurants, to see a play and look in the shops. Kate never had been on a street car or in a "machine," so she had counted on him to pilot her from South Omaha to the city proper. Disappointed and hurt by Bowers's neglect, she wandered aimlessly about the streets in the vicinity of her hotel, stopping occasionally to look at the cheap wares displayed in the windows of the small shops of South Omaha.

The hurrying passersby slackened their steps to stare at her in candid interest, and she wondered if it were possible that her conspicuousness had anything to do with Bowers's mysterious disappearance. It seemed an ungenerous thought, but how else account for it, knowing as she did that he had no friends, no business in Omaha, and in the past there never had been a time when he had not preferred her society to that of everyone else?

The elation consequent upon her day of triumph gradually oozed out, to be replaced by the sense of dreariness that comes from being alone in a crowd. Then, too, she had a feeling of contempt for herself for the swift dreams of something different aroused by the day's events. Optimism had come to be synonymous with weakness to Kate. Now, as she stared indifferently at a display of tawdry blouses, she was asking herself if she had not yet learned her lesson, but that upon the strength of a little ephemeral happiness she must needs begin and build air castles again.