“He’s one game steer,” said McCoyne, when later he found him there in place, in solitary grandeur. “If five hundred dollars will buy that steer he’s mine right now, and I’ll keep him as long as he lives. Hurrah for old Alamo, the first steer up the trail! Strike up some more music again, fellows; he can’t get away now. Show my friends from Texas what a Fourth of July can be in Abilene.” But a certain thought came to the mind of Mr. McCoyne upon the instant. “We’ve forgot about that young lady in the cart,” said he. “Anyhow, she ain’t stampeded. I told you we had a woman along, and now I’ll prove it. Come on, men, march in front and play your damnedest. I’m going to fetch her up to the Cottage.” The landlord and manager of the Drovers’ Cottage was an Eastern man imported for this special purpose of running a hostelry devoted to trail men, and now on his trial trip. His name—which so far as he is concerned is of no consequence—was Gore. His wife’s name, which for years was of very great consequence in all Kansas, was Lou Gore. A portly woman she was, with a heart as large as that of any ox that ever came up the trail. Of Lou Gore’s countless acts of charity, of her unceasing ministrations to the ill and the afflicted, the wounded and the impoverished men of the old trail, history has written all too little. She was known sometimes as the Mother of Abilene, sometimes as the Mother of Kansas; more often as the Mother of the Cowboys. As yet Lou Gore had small acquaintance of those mad scenes which so soon were to become a regular experience with her. But now the carpenters had her new hotel almost completed, nearly ready for occupancy. Somewhat flustered that she had not quite finished sweeping out after the carpenters, not quite put up all her curtains—for curtains she insisted upon at the cottage—the landlady of that edifice came to the front door in time to see some of the incidents above recorded. Therefore, duly, as she hid her hands under her apron, she heard the reassembled musicians once more essaying sweet sounds, saw the procession of pedestrians advancing toward her door. And then Lou Gore saw, after a second and more careful look, what she had not expected to see—a tall and beautiful young girl, an astonishingly and strikingly beautiful young girl, who now for the first time parted the curtains of her conveyance and sprang lightly to the ground. Taisie Lockhart, in men’s clothing—a thing then almost equivocal for a woman—stood looking about her as though about to fly. She seemed so much alone, so helpless, so appealing, that the only other real woman of Abilene ran to her and took her into her hospitable arms. “Why, you poor dear!” said she. “You poor dear! You’re a girl, ain’t you! Of course, I knew! Now you come right on in!”