“Em’ly has not been solitary,” I replied. “There are forty chickens here.” “That’s so,” said he. “It don’t explain her.” He fell silent again, riding beside me, easy and indolent in the saddle. His long figure looked so loose and inert that the swift, light spring he made to the ground seemed an impossible feat. He had seen an antelope where I saw none. “Take a shot yourself,” I urged him, as he motioned me to be quick. “You never shoot when I’m with you.” “I ain’t hyeh for that,” he answered. “Now you’ve let him get away on yu’!” The antelope had in truth departed. “Why,” he said to my protest, “I can hit them things any day. What’s your notion as to Em’ly?” “I can’t account for her,” I replied. “Well,” he said musingly, and then his mind took one of those particular turns that made me love him, “Taylor ought to see her. She’d be just the schoolmarm for Bear Creek!” “She’s not much like the eating-house lady at Medicine Bow,” I said. He gave a hilarious chuckle. “No, Em’ly knows nothing o’ them joys. So yu’ have no notion about her? Well, I’ve got one. I reckon maybe she was hatched after a big thunderstorm.” “In a big thunderstorm!” I exclaimed. “Yes. Don’t yu’ know about them, and what they’ll do to aiggs? A big case o’ lightnin’ and thunder will addle aiggs and keep ’em from hatchin’. And I expect one came along, and all the other aiggs of Em’ly’s set didn’t hatch out, but got plumb addled, and she happened not to get addled that far, and so she just managed to make it through. But she cert’nly ain’t got a strong haid.” “I fear she has not,” said I. “Mighty hon’ble intentions,” he observed. “If she can’t make out to lay anything, she wants to hatch somethin’, and be a mother anyways.” “I wonder what relation the law considers that a hen is to the chicken she hatched but did not lay?” I inquired. The Virginian made no reply to this frivolous suggestion. He was gazing over the wide landscape gravely and with apparent inattention. He invariably saw game before I did, and was off his horse and crouched among the sage while I was still getting my left foot clear of the stirrup. I succeeded in killing an antelope, and we rode home with the head and hind quarters. “No,” said he. “It’s sure the thunder, and not the lonesomeness. How do yu’ like the lonesomeness yourself?” I told him that I liked it. “I could not live without it now,” he said. “This has got into my system.” He swept his hand out at the vast space of world. “I went back home to see my folks onced. Mother was dyin’ slow, and she wanted me. I stayed a year. But them Virginia mountains could please me no more. Afteh she was gone, I told my brothers and sisters good-by. We like each other well enough, but I reckon I’ll not go back.” We found Em’ly seated upon a collection of green California peaches, which the Judge had brought from the railroad. “I don’t mind her any more,” I said; “I’m sorry for her.”