“They’ve caved!” he shouted.

“Who?” I cried, thus awakened.

“Ah, the fool company,” said he, quieting his voice as he drew near.  “They’ve shed their haughtiness,” he added, confidingly, as if I must know all about it.

“Where did they learn that wisdom?” I asked, not knowing in the least.

“Experience,” he called over his shoulder (for already we had met and passed); “nothing like experience for sweating the fat off the brain.”

He yelled me a brotherly good-bye, and I am sorry never to have known more of him, for I incline to value any stranger so joyous.  But now I waked the pony and trotted briskly, surmising as to the company and its haughtiness.  I had been viewing my destination across the sagebrush for so spun-out a time that (as constantly in Wyoming journeys) the emotion of arrival had evaporated long before the event, and I welcomed employment for my otherwise high-and-dry mind.  Probably he meant the railroad company; certainly something large had happened.  Even as I dismounted at the platform another hilarious cow-puncher came out of the station, and, at once remarking, “They’re going to leave us alone,” sprang on his horse and galloped to the corrals down the line, where some cattle were being loaded into a train.  I went inside for my mail, and here were four more cow-punchers playing with the agent.  They had got a letter away from him, and he wore his daily look of anxiety to appreciate the jests of these rollicking people.  “Read it!” they said to me; and I did read the private document, and learned that the railroad was going to waive its right to enforce law and order here, and would trust to Separ’s good feeling.  “Nothing more,” the letter ran, “will be done about the initial outrage or the subsequent vandalisms.  We shall pass over our wasted outlay in the hope that a policy of friendship will prove our genuine desire to benefit that section.

“‘Initial outrage,’” quoted one of the agent’ large playmates.  “Ain’t they furgivin’?”

“Well,” said I, “you would have some name for it yourself if you sent a deputy sheriff to look after your rights, and he came back tied to the cow-catcher!”

The man smiled luxuriously over this memory.

“We didn’t hurt him none.  Just returned him to his home.  Hear about the label Honey Wiggin pinned on to him?  ’Send us along one dozen as per sample.’  Honey’s quaint!  Yes,” he drawled judicially, “I’d be mad at that.  But if you’re making peace with a man because it’s convenient why, your words must be pleasanter than if you really felt pleasant.”  He took the paper from me, and read, sardonically:  “’Subsequent vandalisms ... wasted outlay.’  I suppose they run this station from charity to the cattle.  Saves the poor things walking so far to the other railroad ’Policy of friendship ... genuine desire’—­oh mouth-wash!” And, shaking his bold, clever head, he daintily flattened the letter upon the head of the agent.  “Tubercle,” said he (this was their name for the agent, who had told all of us about his lungs), “it ain’t your fault we saw their fine letter.  They just intended you should give it out how they wouldn’t bother us any more, and then we’d act square.  The boys’ll sit up late over this joke.”