Lin looked out of the window. "It's more than Tommy," said he, at once;
and his eyes made it out before mine could. "It's a wagon. That's Tommy's
bald-faced horse alongside. He's fooling to the finish," Lin severely
commented, as if, after all this delay, there should at least be a
homestretch.

Presently, however, a homestretch seemed likely to occur. The bald-faced
horse executed some lively manoeuvres, and Tommy's voice reached us
faintly through the light spring air. He was evidently howling the
remarkable strain of yells that the cow-punchers invented as the speech
best understood by cows--"Oi-ee, yah, whoop-yahye-ee, oooo-oop, oop,
oop-oop-oop-oop-yah-hee!" But that gives you no idea of it. Alphabets are
worse than photographs. It is not the lungs of every man that can produce
these effects, nor even from armies, eagles, or mules were such sounds
ever heard on earth. The cow-puncher invented them. And when the last
cow-puncher is laid to rest (if that, alas! have not already befallen)
the yells will be forever gone. Singularly enough, the cattle appeared to
appreciate them. Tommy always did them very badly, and that was plain
even at this distance. Nor did he give us a homestretch, after all. The
bald-faced horse made a number of evolutions and returned beside the
wagon.

"Showin' off," remarked Lin. "Tommy's showin' off." Suspicion crossed his
face, and then certainty. "Why, we might have knowed that!" he exclaimed,
in dudgeon. "It's her." He hastened outside for a better look, and I came
to the door myself. "That's what it is," said he. "It's the girl. Oh yes.
That's Taylor's buckskin pair he traded Balaam for. She come by the stage
all right yesterday, yu' see, but she has been too tired to travel, yu'
see, or else, maybe, Taylor wanted to rest his buckskins--they're
four-year-olds. Or else--anyway, they laid over last night at Powder