River, and Tommy he has just laid over too, yu' see, holdin' the mail
back on us twenty-four hours--and that's your postmaster!"

It was our postmaster, and this he had done, quite as the virtuously
indignant McLean surmised. Had I taken the same interest in the new girl,
I suppose that I too should have felt virtuously indignant.

Lin and I stood outside to receive the travellers. As their cavalcade
drew near, Mr. McLean grew silent and watchful, his whole attention
focused upon the Taylors' vehicle. Its approach was joyous. Its gear made
a cheerful clanking, Taylor cracked his whip and encouragingly chirruped
to his buckskins, and Tommy's apparatus jingled musically. For Tommy wore
upon himself and his saddle all the things you can wear in the Wild West.
Except that his hair was not long, our postmaster might have conducted a
show and minted gold by exhibiting his romantic person before the eyes of
princes. He began with a black-and-yellow rattlesnake skin for a
hat-band, he continued with a fringed and beaded shirt of buckskin, and
concluded with large, tinkling spurs. Of course, there were things
between his shirt and his heels, but all leather and deadly weapons. He
had also a riata, a cuerta, and tapaderos, and frequently employed these
Spanish names for the objects. I wish that I had not lost Tommy's
photograph in Rocky Mountain costume. You must understand that he was
really pretty, with blue eyes, ruddy cheeks, and a graceful figure; and,
besides, he had twenty-four hours' start of poor dusty Lin, whose best
clothes were elsewhere.

You might have supposed that it would be Mrs. Taylor who should present
us to her friend from Sidney, Nebraska; but Tommy on his horse undertook
the office before the wagon had well come to a standstill. "Good friends
of mine, and gentlemen, both," said he to Miss Peck; and to us, "A lady