A shrewed man might have guessed this young man—­he was no more than twenty-eight—­to have got some military air on a border opposite to that of Oregon; the far Southwest, where Taylor and Scott and the less known Doniphan and many another fighting man had been adding certain thousands of leagues to the soil of this republic.  He rode a compact, short-coupled, cat-hammed steed, coal black and with a dashing forelock reaching almost to his red nostrils—­a horse never reared on the fat Missouri corn lands.  Neither did this heavy embossed saddle with its silver concho decorations then seem familiar so far north; nor yet the thin braided-leather bridle with its hair frontlet band and its mighty bit; nor again the great spurs with jingling rowel bells.  This rider’s mount and trappings spoke the far and new Southwest, just then coming into our national ken.

The young man himself, however, was upon the face of his appearance nothing of the swashbuckler.  True, in his close-cut leather trousers, his neat boots, his tidy gloves, his rather jaunty broad black hat of felted beaver, he made a somewhat raffish figure of a man as he rode up, weight on his under thigh, sidewise, and hand on his horse’s quarters, carelessly; but his clean cut, unsmiling features, his direct and grave look out of dark eyes, spoke him a gentleman of his day and place, and no mere spectacular pretender assuming a virtue though he had it not.

He swung easily out of saddle, his right hand on the tall, broad Spanish horn as easily as though rising from a chair at presence of a lady, and removed his beaver to this frontier woman before he accosted her husband.  His bridle he flung down over his horse’s head, which seemingly anchored the animal, spite of its loud whinnying challenge to these near-by stolid creatures which showed harness rubs and not whitened saddle hairs.

“Good morning, madam,” said he in a pleasant, quiet voice.  “Good morning, sir.  You are Mr. and Mrs. Jesse Wingate, I believe.  Your daughter yonder told me so.”

“That’s my name,” said Jesse Wingate, eyeing the newcomer suspiciously, but advancing with ungloved hand.  “You’re from the Liberty train?”

“Yes, sir.  My name is Banion—­William Banion.  You may not know me.  My family were Kentuckians before my father came out to Franklin.  I started up in the law at old Liberty town yonder not so long ago, but I’ve been away a great deal.”

“The law, eh?” Jesse Wingate again looked disapproval of the young man’s rather pronouncedly neat turnout.  “Then you’re not going West?”

“Oh, yes, I am, if you please, sir.  I’ve done little else all my life.  Two years ago I marched with all the others, with Doniphan, for Mexico.  Well, the war’s over, and the treaty’s likely signed.  I thought it high time to march back home.  But you know how it is—­the long trail’s in my blood now.  I can’t settle down.”

Wingate nodded.  The young man smilingly went on: