terrified tenderfoot to put a little more spirit into his Highland fling,
"by request." She remembered their merrymaking with Simpson at breakfast.
What did they intend to do with her belongings? And as she remembered the
little plaid sewing-bag that Aunt Adelaide had made for
her—surreptitiously drying her tears in the mean time—when she remembered
that bag and the possibility of its being submitted to ignominy, she could
have cried or done murder, she wasn’t sure which.

"Well, ’pon my wohd, heah ah the boys with yo’ baggage. How time du fly!"

"Oh!" she gasped, "what are they going to do with it?"

"Place it on the stage, awaitin’ yo’ ohdahs." And to her expression of
infinite relief—"Yo’ didn’t think any disrepec’ would be shown the baggage
of a lady honorin’ this hyeh metropolis with her presence?"

She thanked the knights of the lariat the more warmly for her unjust
suspicions. They stowed away the luggage with the deft capacity of men who
have returned to the primitive art of using their hands. She climbed
beside the driver on the box of the stage. Lone Tooth Hank and the
cow-punchers chivalrously raised their sombreros with a simultaneous
spontaneity that suggested a flight of rockets. The driver cracked his
whip and turned the horses’ heads towards the billowing sea of foot-hills,
and the last cable that bound Mary Carmichael to civilization was cut.





III