"My address?" She searched my face in manner startled. "You'll have no difficulty finding me; not in Benton. But I'll make an appointment with you in event"--and she smiled archly--"you are not afraid of strange women." "I have been taught to respect women, madam," said I. "And my respect is being strengthened." "Oh!" I seemed to have pleased her. "You have been carefully brought up, sir." "To fear God, respect woman, and act the man as long as I breathe," I asserted. "My mother is a saint, my father a nobleman, and what I may have learned from them is to their credit." "That may go excellently in the East," she answered. "But we in the West favor the Persian maxim--to ride, to shoot, and to tell the truth. With those three qualities even a tenderfoot can establish himself." "Whether I can ride and shoot sufficient for the purpose, time will show," I retorted. "At least," and I endeavored to speak with proper emphasis, "you hear the truth when I say that I anticipate much pleasure as well as renewed health, in Benton." "Were we by ourselves we would seal the future in another 'smile' together," she slyly promised. "Unless that might shock you." "I am ready to fall in with the customs of the country," I assured. "I certainly am not averse to smiles, when fittingly proffered." So we exchanged fancies while the train rolled over a track remarkable for its smoothness and leading ever onward across the vast, empty plains bare save for the low shrubs called sage-brush, and rising here and there into long swells and abrupt sandstone pinnacles. We stopped near noon at the town of Cheyenne, in Wyoming Territory. Cheyenne, once boasting the title (I was told) "The Magic City of the Plains," was located upon a dreary flatness, although from it one might see, far southwest, the actual Rocky Mountains in Colorado Territory, looking, at this distance of one hundred miles, like low dark clouds. The up grade in the west promised that we should soon cross over their northern flanks, of the Black Hills. Last winter, Cheyenne, I was given to understand, had ten thousand inhabitants; but the majority had followed the railroad west, so that now there remained only some fifteen hundred. After dinner we, too, went west. We overcame the Black Hills Mountains about two o'clock, having climbed to the top with considerable puffing of the engine but otherwise almost imperceptibly to the passengers. When we were halted, upon the crown, at Sherman Station, to permit us to alight and see for ourselves, I scarcely might believe that we were more than eight thousand feet in air. There was nothing to indicate, except some little difficulty of breath; not so much as I had feared when in Cheyenne, whose six thousand feet gave me a slightly giddy sensation.