[Illustration]

 THE PRAIRIE MOTHER

[Illustration: "Swing twenty paces out from one another and circle thisshack!"]

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 THE PRAIRIE MOTHER

 _By_ ARTHUR STRINGER

 AUTHOR OF THE PRAIRIE WIFE, THE HOUSE OF INTRIGUE THE MAN WHO COULDN'T SLEEP, ETC. 

 ILLUSTRATED BY ARTHUR E. BECHER

 INDIANAPOLIS THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY PUBLISHERS

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 Copyright 1920 The Pictorial Review Company

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 Copyright 1920 The Bobbs-Merrill Company

 _Printed in the United States of America_

 PRESS OF BRAUNWORTH & CO. BOOK MANUFACTURERS BROOKLYN, N. Y. 

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 THE PRAIRIE MOTHER

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 The Prairie Mother

 _Sunday the Fifteenth_

I opened my eyes and saw a pea-green world all around me. Then I heardthe doctor say: "Give 'er another whiff or two. " His voice soundedfar-away, as though he were speaking through the Simplon Tunnel, andnot merely through his teeth, within twelve inches of my nose. 

I took my whiff or two. I gulped at that chloroform like a thirstyBedouin at a wadi-spring. I went down into the pea-green emptinessagain, and forgot about the Kelly pad and the recurring waves of painthat came bigger and bigger and tried to sweep through my racked oldbody like breakers through the ribs of a stranded schooner. I forgotabout the hateful metallic clink of steel things against aninstrument-tray, and about the loganberry pimple on the nose of thered-headed surgical nurse who'd been sent into the labor room to help. 

I went wafting off into a feather-pillowy pit of infinitude. I evenforgot to preach to myself, as I'd been doing for the last month ortwo. I knew that my time was upon me, as the Good Book says. There area lot of things in this life, I remembered, which woman is able tosquirm out of. But here, Mistress Tabbie, was one you couldn't escape. Here was a situation that _had_ to be faced. Here was a time I had toknuckle down, had to grin and bear it, had to go through with it tothe bitter end. For other folks, whatever they may be able to do foryou, aren't able to have your babies for you. 

Then I ebbed up out of the pea-green depths again, and was troubled bythe sound of voices, so thin and far-away I couldn't make out whatthey were saying. Then came the beating of a tom-tom, so loud that ithurt. When that died away for a minute or two I caught the sound ofthe sharp and quavery squall of something, of something which hadnever squalled before, a squall of protest and injured pride, ofmaltreated youth resenting the ignominious way it must enter theworld. Then the tom-tom beating started up again, and I opened my eyesto make sure it wasn't the Grenadiers' Band going by. 

I saw a face bending over mine, seeming to float in space. It was thecolor of a half-grown cucumber, and it made me think of a tropicalfish in an aquarium when the water needed changing. 

"She's coming out, Doctor, " I heard a woman's voice say. It was avoice as calm as God's and slightly nasal. For a moment I thought I'ddied and gone to Heaven. But I finally observed and identified theloganberry pimple, and realized that the tom-tom beating was merelythe pounding of the steam-pipes in that jerry-built western hospital, and remembered that I was still in the land of the living and that thered-headed surgical nurse was holding my wrist. I felt infinitely hurtand abused, and wondered why my husband wasn't there to help me withthat comforting brown gaze of his. And I wanted to cry, but didn'tseem to have the strength, and then I wanted to say something, butfound myself too weak. 

It was the doctor's voice that roused me again. He was standing besidemy narrow iron bed with his sleeves still rolled up, wiping his armswith a big white towel. He was smiling as he scrubbed at the cornersof his nails, as though to make sure they were clean. The nurse on theother side of the bed was also smiling. So was the carrot-top with theloganberry beauty-spot. All I could see, in fact, was smiling faces. 

But it didn't seem a laughing matter to me. I wanted to rest, tosleep, to get another gulp or two of that God-given smelly stuff outof the little round tin can. 

"How're you feeling?" asked the doctor indifferently. He nodded downat me as he proceeded to manicure those precious nails of his. Theywere laughing, the whole four of them. I began to suspect that Iwasn't going to die, after all. 

"Everything's fine and dandy, " announced the barearmed farrier as hesnapped his little pen-knife shut. But that triumphant grin of hisonly made me more tired than ever, and I turned away to the tall youngnurse on the other side of my bed. 

There was perspiration on her forehead, under the eaves of the palehair crowned with its pointed little cap. She was still smiling, butshe looked human and tired and a little fussed. 

"Is it a girl?" I asked her. I had intended to make that query acrushingly imperious one. I wanted it to stand as a reproof to them, as a mark of disapproval for all such untimely merriment. But myvoice, I found, was amazingly weak and thin. And I wanted to know. 

"_It's both_, " said the tired-eyed girl in the blue and white uniform. And she, too, nodded her head in a triumphant sort of way, as thoughthe credit for some vast and recent victory lay entirely in her ownnarrow lap. 

"It's both?" I repeated, wondering why she too should fail to give asimple answer to a simple question. 

"It's twins!" she said, with a little chirrup of laughter. 

"Twins?" I gasped, in a sort of bleat that drove the last of thepea-green mist out of that room with the dead white walls. 

"Twins, " proclaimed the doctor, "_twins_!" He repeated the monosyllable, converting it into a clarion-call that made me think of a roostercrowing. 

"A lovely boy and girl, " cooed the third nurse with a bottle ofolive-oil in her hand. And by twisting my head a little I was able tosee the two wire bassinets, side by side, each holding a little moundof something wrapped in a flannelette blanket. 

I shut my eyes, for I seemed to have a great deal to think over. Twins! A boy and girl! Two little new lives in the world! Two warm andcuddling little bairns to nest close against my mother-breast. 

"I see _your_ troubles cut out for you, " said the doctor as he rolleddown his shirt-sleeves. 

They were all laughing again. But to me it didn't seem quite such alaughing matter. I was thinking of my layette, and trying to countover my supply of binders and slips and shirts and nighties andwondering how I could out-Solomon Solomon and divide the little dottedSwiss dress edged with the French Val lace of which I'd been so proud. Then I fell to pondering over other problems, equally prodigious, sothat it was quite a long time before my mind had a chance to meanderon to Dinky-Dunk himself. 

And when I did think of Dinky-Dunk I had to laugh. It seemed a joke onhim, in some way. He was the father of twins. Instead of one littlesnoozer to carry on his name and perpetuate his race in the land, henow had _two_. Fate, without consulting him, had flung him doublemeasure. No wonder, for the moment, those midnight toilers in thatwhite-walled house of pain were wearing the smile that refused to comeoff! That's the way, I suppose, that all life ought to be welcomedinto this old world of ours. And now, I suddenly remembered, I couldspeak of _my children_--and that means so much more than talking aboutone's child. Now I was indeed a mother, a prairie mother with threeyoung chicks of her own to scratch for. 

I forgot my anxieties and my months of waiting. I forgot those weeksof long mute protest, of revolt against wily old Nature, who socleverly tricks us into the ways she has chosen. A glow of glory wentthrough my tired body--it was hysteria, I suppose, in the basicmeaning of the word--and I had to shut my eyes tight to keep the tearsfrom showing. 

But that great wave of happiness which had washed up the shore of mysoul receded as it came. By the time I was transferred to therubber-wheeled stretcher they called "the Wagon" and trundled off to abed and room of my own, the reaction set in. I could think moreclearly. My Dinky-Dunk didn't love me, or he'd never have left me atsuch a time, no matter what his business calls may have been. TheTwins weren't quite so humorous as they seemed. There was evensomething disturbingly animal-like in the birth of more offspring thanone at a time, something almost revolting in this approach to thelittering of one's young. They all tried to unedge that animality bytreating it as a joke, by confronting it with their conspiracies ofjocularity. But it would be no joke to a nursing mother in the middleof a winter prairie with the nearest doctor twenty long miles away. 

I countermanded my telegram to Dinky-Dunk at Vancouver, and criedmyself to sleep in a nice relaxing tempest of self-pity which my"special" accepted as calmly as a tulip-bed accepts a shower. Butlawdy, lawdy, how I slept! And when I woke up and sniffed warm air andthat painty smell peculiar to new buildings, and heard the radiatorssing with steam and the windows rattle in the northeast blizzard thatwas blowing, I slipped into a truer realization of the intricatemachinery of protection all about me, and thanked my lucky stars thatI wasn't in a lonely prairie shack, as I'd been when my almostthree-year-old Dinkie was born. I remembered, with little tidal wavesof contentment, that my ordeal was a thing of the past, and that I wasa mother twice over, and rather hungry, and rather impatient to get apeek at my God-given little babes. 

Then I fell to thinking rather pityingly of my forsaken little Dinkieand wondering if Mrs. Teetzel would keep his feet dry and cook hiscream-of-wheat properly, and if Iroquois Annie would have brainsenough not to overheat the furnace and burn Casa Grande down to theground. Then I decided to send the wire to Dinky-Dunk, after all, forit isn't every day in the year a man can be told he's the father oftwins. .. . 

I sent the wire, in the secret hope that it would bring my lord andmaster on the run. But it was eight days later, when I was up on aback-rest and having my hair braided, that Dinky-Dunk put in anappearance. And when he did come he chilled me. I can't just say why. He seemed tired and preoccupied and unnecessarily self-consciousbefore the nurses when I made him hold Pee-Wee on one arm and Poppsyon the other. 

"Now kiss 'em, Daddy, " I commanded. And he had to kiss them both ontheir red and puckered little faces. Then he handed them over with alltoo apparent relief, and fell into a brown study. 

"What are you worrying over?" I asked him. 

"I'm wondering how in the world you'll ever manage, " he solemnlyacknowledged. I was able to laugh, though it took an effort. 

"For every little foot God sends a little shoe, " I told him, remembering the aphorism of my old Irish nurse. "And the sooner youget me home, Dinky-Dunk, the happier I'll be. For I'm tired of thisplace and the smell of the formalin and ether and I'm nearly worriedto death about Dinkie. And in all the wide world, O Kaikobad, there'sno place like one's own home!"

Dinky-Dunk didn't answer me, but I thought he looked a little wan andlimp as he sat down in one of the stiff-backed chairs. I inspected himwith a calmer and clearer eye. 

"Was that sleeper too hot last night?" I asked, remembering what a badnight could do to a big man. 

"I don't seem to sleep on a train the way I used to, " he said, but hiseye evaded mine. And I suspected something. 

"Dinky-Dunk, " I demanded, "did you have a berth last night?"

He flushed up rather guiltily. He even seemed to resent my questioninghim. But I insisted on an answer. 

"No, I sat up, " he finally confessed. 

"Why?" I demanded. 

And still again his eye tried to evade mine. 

"We're a bit short of ready cash. " He tried to say it indifferently, but the effort was a failure. 

"Then why didn't you tell me that before?" I asked, sitting up andspurning the back-rest. 

"You had worries enough of your own, " proclaimed my weary-eyed lordand master. It gave me a squeezy feeling about the heart to see himlooking so much like an unkempt and overworked and altogetherneglected husband. And there I'd been lying in the lap of luxury, withquick-footed ladies in uniform to answer my bell and fly at mybidding. 

"But I've a right, Dunkie, to know your worries, and stand my share of'em, " I promptly told him. "And that's why I want to get out of thissmelly old hole and back to my home again. I may be the mother oftwins, and only too often reminded that I'm one of the Mammalia, butI'm still your cave-mate and life-partner, and I don't think childrenought to come between a man and wife. I don't intend to allow _my_children to do anything like that. "

I said it quite bravely, but there was a little cloud of doubtdrifting across the sky of my heart. Marriage is so different fromwhat the romance-fiddlers try to make it. Even Dinky-Dunk doesn'tapprove of my mammalogical allusions. Yet milk, I find, is one of themost important issues of motherhood--only it's impolite to mention thefact. What makes me so impatient of life as I see it reflected infiction is its trick of overlooking the important things andover-accentuating the trifles. It primps and tries to be genteel--forBiology doth make cowards of us all. 

I was going to say, very sagely, that life isn't so mysterious afteryou've been the mother of three children. But that wouldn't be quiteright. It's mysterious in an entirely different way. Even love itselfis different, I concluded, after lying there in bed day after day andthinking the thing over. For there are so many different ways, I find, of loving a man. You are fond of him, at first, for what you considerhis perfections, the same as you are fond of a brand-new travelingbag. There isn't a scratch on his polish or a flaw in his make-up. Then you live with him for a few years. You live with him and findthat life is making a few dents in his loveliness of character, thatthe edges are worn away, that there's a weakness or two where youimagined only strength to be, and that instead of standing a saint andhero all in one, he's merely an unruly and unreliable human being withhis ups and downs of patience and temper and passion. But, bless hisbattered old soul, you love him none the less for all that. You nolonger fret about him being unco guid, and you comfortably give uptrying to match his imaginary virtues with your own. You still lovehim, but you love him differently. There's a touch of pity in yourrespect for him, a mellowing compassion, a little of the eternalmother mixed up with the eternal sweetheart. And if you are wise youwill no longer demand the impossible of him. Being a woman, you willstill want to be loved. But being a woman of discernment, you willremember that in some way and by some means, if you want to be loved, you must remain lovable. 

 _Thursday the Nineteenth_

I had to stay in that smelly old hole of a hospital and in that baldlittle prairie city fully a week longer than I wanted to. I tried torebel against being bullied, even though the hand of iron was paddedwith velvet. But the powers that be were too used to handling perverseand fretful women. They thwarted my purpose and broke my will and keptme in bed until I began to think I'd take root there. 

But once I and my bairns were back here at Casa Grande I could seethat they were right. In the first place the trip was tiring, tootiring to rehearse in detail. Then a vague feeling of neglect anddesolation took possession of me, for I missed the cool-handedefficiency of that ever-dependable "special. " I almost surrendered tofunk, in fact, when both Poppsy and Pee-Wee started up a steady duetof crying. I sat down and began to sniffle myself, but my sense ofhumor, thank the Lord, came back and saved the day. There wassomething so utterly ridiculous in that briny circle, soon augmentedand completed by the addition of Dinkie, who apparently felt as lonelyand overlooked as did his spineless and sniffling mother. 

So I had to tighten the girths of my soul. I took a fresh grip onmyself and said: "Look here, Tabbie, this is never going to do. Thisis not the way Horatius held the bridge. This is not the spirit thatbuilt Rome. So, up, Guards, and at 'em! Excelsior! _Audaces fortunajuvat!_"

So I mopped my eyes, and readjusted the Twins, and did what I could toplacate Dinkie, who continues to regard his little brother and sisterwith a somewhat hostile eye. One of my most depressing discoveries ongetting back home, in fact, was to find that Dinkie has grown awayfrom me in my absence. At first he even resented my approaches, and hestill stares at me, now and then, across a gulf of perplexity. But theice is melting. He's beginning to understand, after all, that I'm hisreally truly mother and that he can come to me with his troubles. He'slost a good deal of his color, and I'm beginning to suspect that hisfood hasn't been properly looked after during the last few weeks. It'sa patent fact, at any rate, that my house hasn't been properly lookedafter. Iroquois Annie, that sullen-eyed breed servant of ours, willnever have any medals pinned on her pinny for neatness. I'd love toship her, but heaven only knows where we'd find any one to take herplace. And I simply _must_ have help, during the next few months. 

Casa Grande, by the way, looked such a little dot on the wilderness, as we drove back to it, that a spear of terror pushed its way throughmy breast as I realized that I had my babies to bring up away out hereon the edge of this half-settled no-man's land. If only our dreams hadcome true! If only the plans of mice and men didn't go so aft agley!If only the railway had come through to link us up with civilization, and the once promised town had sprung up like a mushroom-bed about ourstill sad and solitary Casa Grande! But what's the use of repining, Tabbie McKail? You've the second-best house within thirty miles ofBuckhorn, with glass door-knobs and a laundry-chute, and a brood torear, and a hard-working husband to cook for. And as the kiddies getolder, I imagine, I'll not be troubled by this terrible feeling ofloneliness which has been weighing like a plumb-bob on my heart forthe last few days. I wish Dinky-Dunk didn't have to be so much awayfrom home. .. . 

Old Whinstane Sandy, our hired man, has presented me with a hand-madeswing-box for Poppsy and Pee-Wee, a sort of suspended basket-bed thatcan be hung up in the porch as soon as my two little snoozers are ableto sleep outdoors. Old Whinnie, by the way, was very funny when Ishowed him the Twins. He solemnly acknowledged that they were nae saebad, conseederin'. I suppose he thought it would be treason to Dinkieto praise the newcomers who threatened to put little Dinkie's nose outof joint. And Whinnie, I imagine, will always be loyal to Dinkie. Hesays little about it, but I know he loves that child. He loves him invery much the same way that Bobs, our collie dog, loves me. It wasreally Bobs' welcome, I think, across the cold prairie air, that tookthe tragedy out of my homecoming. There were gladness and trust inthose deep-throated howls of greetings. He even licked the snow off myovershoes and nested his head between my knees, with his bob-tailthumping the floor like a flicker's beak. He sniffed at the Twinsrather disgustedly. But he'll learn to love them, I feel sure, as timegoes on. He's too intelligent a dog to do otherwise. .. . 

I'll be glad when spring comes, and takes the razor-edge out of thisnorthern air. We'll have half a month of mud first, I suppose. But"there's never anything without something, " as Mrs. Teetzel verysagely announced the other day. That sour-apple philosopher, by theway, is taking her departure to-morrow. And I'm not half so sorry as Ipretend to be. She's made me feel like an intruder in my own home. Andshe's a soured and venomous old ignoramus, for she sneered openly atmy bath-thermometer and defies Poppsy and Pee-Wee to survive thewinter without a "comfort. " After I'd announced my intention ofputting them outdoors to sleep, when they were four weeks old, shelugubriously acknowledged that there were more ways than one ofmurderin' infant children. _Her_ ideal along this line, I'vediscovered, is slow asphyxiation in a sort of Dutch-oven made of aneider-down comforter, with as much air as possible shut off from theiruncomfortable little bodies. But the Oracle is going, and I intend tobring up my babies in my own way. For I know a little more about thegame now than I did when little Dinkie made his appearance in thisvale of tears. And whatever my babies may or may not be, they are atleast healthy little tikes. 

 _Sunday the Twenty-second_

I seem to be fitting into things again, here at Casa Grande. I've gotmy strength back, and an appetite like a Cree pony, and the day's workis no longer a terror to me. I'm back in the same old rut, I was goingto say--but it is not the same. There is a spirit of unsettlednessabout it all which I find impossible to define, an air of somethingimpending, of something that should be shunned as long as possible. Perhaps it's merely a flare-back from my own shaken nerves. Or perhapsit's because I haven't been able to get out in the open air as much asI used to. I am missing my riding. And Paddy, my pinto, will give us amorning of it, when we try to get a saddle on his scarred little back, for it's half a year now since he has had a bit between his teeth. 

It's Dinky-Dunk that I'm really worrying over, though I don't knowwhy. I heard him come in very quietly last night as I was tuckinglittle Dinkie up in his crib. I went to the nursery door, half hopingto hear my lord and master sing out his old-time "Hello, Lady-Bird!"or "Are you there, Babushka?" But instead of that he climbed thestairs, rather heavily, and passed on down the hall to the little roomhe calls his study, his sanctum-sanctorum where he keeps his desk andpapers and books--and the duck-guns, so that Dinkie can't get at them. I could hear him open the desk-top and sit down in the squeaky Bank ofEngland chair. 

When I was sure that Dinkie was off, for good, I tiptoed out and shutthe nursery door. Even big houses, I began to realize as I stood therein the hall, could have their drawbacks. In the two-by-four shackwhere we'd lived and worked and been happy before Casa Grande wasbuilt there was no chance for one's husband to shut himself up in hisprivate boudoir and barricade himself away from his better-half. So Idecided, all of a sudden, to beard the lion in his den. There was sucha thing as too much formality in a family circle. Yet I felt a bitaudacious as I quietly pushed open that study door. I even weakened inmy decision about pouncing on Dinky-Dunk from behind, like aleopardess on a helpless stag. Something in his pose, in fact, broughtme up short. 

Dinky-Dunk was sitting with his head on his hand, staring at thewall-paper. And it wasn't especially interesting wall-paper. He wassitting there in a trance, with a peculiar line of dejection about hisforward-fallen shoulders. I couldn't see his face, but I felt sure itwas not a happy face. 

I even came to a stop, without speaking a word, and shrank ratherguiltily back through the doorway. It was a relief, in fact, to findthat I was able to close the door without making a sound. 

When Dinky-Dunk came down-stairs, half an hour later, he seemed hissame old self. He talked and laughed and inquired if Nip andTuck--those are the names he sometimes takes from his team and pins onPoppsy and Pee-Wee--had given me a hard day of it and explained thatFrancois--our man on the Harris Ranch--had sent down a robe of plaitedrabbit-skin for them. 

I did my best, all the time, to keep my inquisitorial eye fromfastening itself on Dunkie's face, for I knew that he was playing upto me, that he was acting a part which wasn't coming any too easy. Buthe stuck to his rôle. When I put down my sewing, because my eyes weretired, he even inquired if I hadn't done about enough for one day. 

"I've done about half what I ought to do, " I told him. "The troubleis, Dinky-Dunk, I'm getting old. I'm losing my bounce!"

That made him laugh a little, though it was rather a wistful laugh. 

"Oh, no, Gee-Gee, " he announced, momentarily like his old self, "whatever you lose, you'll never lose that undying girlishness ofyours!"

It was not so much what he said, as the mere fact that he could sayit, which sent a wave of happiness through my maternal old body. So Imade for him with my Australian crawl-stroke, and kissed him on bothsides of his stubbly old face, and rumpled him up, and went to bedwith a touch of silver about the edges of the thunder-cloud stillhanging away off somewhere on the sky-line. 

 _Wednesday the Twenty-fifth_

There was indeed something wrong. I knew that the moment I heardDinky-Dunk come into the house. I knew it by the way he let thestorm-door swing shut, by the way he crossed the hall as far as theliving-room door and then turned back, by the way he slowly mountedthe stairs and passed leaden-footed on to his study. And I knew thatthis time there'd be no "Are you there, Little Mother?" or "Wherebeest thou, _Boca Chica_?"

I'd Poppsy and Pee-Wee safe and sound asleep in the swing-box thatdour old Whinstane Sandy had manufactured out of a packing-case, withFrancois' robe of plaited rabbit-skin to keep their tootsies warm. I'dfinished my ironing and bathed little Dinkie and buttoned him up inhis sleepers and made him hold his little hands together while I saidhis "Now-I-lay-me" and tucked him up in his crib with his brokenmouth-organ and his beloved red-topped shoes under the pillow, so thathe could find them there first thing in the morning and bestow on themhis customary matutinal kiss of adoration. And I was standing at thenursery window, pretty tired in body but foolishly happy and serene inspirit, staring out across the leagues of open prairie at the last ofthe sunset. 

It was one of those wonderful sunsets of the winter-end that throwwine-stains back across this bald old earth and make you remember thatalthough the green hasn't yet awakened into life there's release onthe way. It was a sunset with an infinite depth to its opal and goldand rose and a whisper of spring in its softly prolonged afterglow. Itmade me glad and sad all at once, for while there was a hint of vastre-awakenings in the riotous wine-glow that merged off into pale greento the north, there was also a touch of loneliness in the flat andfar-flung sky-line. It seemed to recede so bewilderingly and sooppressively into a silence and into an emptiness which the lonelyplume of smoke from one lonely shack-chimney both crowned andaccentuated with a wordless touch of poignancy. 

That pennon of shack-smoke, dotting the northern horizon, seemed tobecome something valorous and fine. It seemed to me to typify thespirit of man pioneering along the fringes of desolation, adventuringinto the unknown, conquering the untamed realms of his world. And itwas a good old world, I suddenly felt, a patient and bountiful oldworld with its Browningesque old bones set out in the last of thesun--until I heard my Dinky-Dunk go lumbering up to his study andquietly yet deliberately shut himself in, as I gave one last look atPoppsy and Pee-Wee to make sure they were safely covered. Then I stoodstock-still in the center of the nursery, wondering whether, at such atime, I ought to go to my husband or keep away from him. 

I decided, after a minute or two of thought, to bide a wee. So Islipped quietly down-stairs and stowed Dinkie's overturned kiddie-caraway in the cloak-room and warned Iroquois Annie--the meekest-lookingRedskin ever togged out in the cap and apron of domestic servitude--notto burn my fricassee of frozen prairie-chicken and not to scorch thescones so beloved by my Scotch-Canadian lord and master. Then Iinspected the supper table and lighted the lamp with the Ruskin-greenshade and supplanted Dinky-Dunk's napkin that had a coffee-stain alongits edge with a fresh one from the linen-drawer. Then, after airing thehouse to rid it of the fumes from Iroquois Annie's intemperate griddleand carrying Dinkie's muddied overshoes back to the kitchen andlighting the Chinese hall-lamp, I went to the bottom of the stairs tocall my husband down to supper. 

But still again that wordless feeling of something amiss prompted meto hesitate. So instead of calling blithely out of him, as I hadintended, I went silently up the stairs. Then I slipped along the halland just as silently opened his study door. 

My husband was sitting at his desk, confronted by a litter of papersand letters, which I knew to be the mail he had just brought home andflung there. But he wasn't looking at anything on his desk. He wasmerely sitting there staring vacantly out of the window at the palinglight. His elbows were on the arms of his Bank of England swivel-chairfor which I'd made the green baize seat-pad, and as I stared in athim, half in shadow, I had an odd impression of history repeatingitself. This puzzled me, for a moment, until I remembered havingcaught sight of him in much the same attitude, only a few days before. But this time he looked so tired and drawn and spineless that afish-hook of sudden pity tugged at my throat. For my Dinky-Dunk satthere without moving, with the hope and the joy of life drawn utterlyout of his bony big body. The heavy emptiness of his face, as ruggedas a relief-map in the side-light, even made me forget the smell ofthe scones Iroquois Annie was vindictively scorching down in thekitchen. He didn't know, of course, that I was watching him, for hejumped as I signaled my presence by slamming the door after steppingin through it. That jump, I knew, wasn't altogether due to edgynerves. It was also an effort at dissimulation, for his suddenstruggle to get his scattered lines of manhood together still carrieda touch of the heroic. But I'd caught a glimpse of his soul when itwasn't on parade. And I knew what I knew. He tried to work his poorold harried face into a smile as I crossed over to his side. But, likeTopsy's kindred, it died a-borning. 

[Illustration: "What's happened?" I asked]

"What's happened?" I asked, dropping on my knees close beside him. 

Instead of answering me, he swung about in the swivel-chair so that hemore directly faced the window. The movement also served to pull awaythe hand which I had almost succeeded in capturing. Nothing, I'vefound, can wound a real man more than pity. 

"What's happened?" I repeated. For I knew, now, that something wasreally and truly and tragically wrong, as plainly as though Dinky-Dunkhad up and told me so by word of mouth. You can't live with a man fornearly four years without growing into a sort of clairvoyant knowledgeof those subterranean little currents that feed the wells of mood andtemper and character. He pushed the papers on the desk away from himwithout looking at me. 

"Oh, it's nothing much, " he said. But he said it so listlessly I knewhe was merely trying to lie like a gentleman. 

"If it's bad news, I want to know it, right slam-bang out, " I toldhim. And for the first time he turned and looked at me, in ameditative and impersonal sort of way that brought the fish-hooktugging at my thorax again. He looked at me as though some inner partof him were still debating as to whether or not he was about to beconfronted by a woman in tears. Then a touch of cool desperation creptup into his eyes. 

"Our whole apple-cart's gone over, " he slowly and quietly announced, with those coldly narrowed eyes still intent on my face, as thoughvery little and yet a very great deal depended on just how I was goingto accept that slightly enigmatic remark. And he must have noticed thequick frown of perplexity which probably came to my face, for thatright hand of his resting on the table opened and then closed again, as though it were squeezing a sponge very dry. "They've got me, " hesaid. "They've got me--to the last dollar!"

I stood up in the uncertain light, for it takes time to digest strongwords, the same as it takes time to digest strong meat. 

I remembered how, during the last half-year, Dinky-Dunk had been on thewing, hurrying over to Calgary, and Edmonton, flying east to Winnipeg, scurrying off to the Coast, poring over township maps and blue-printsand official-looking letters from land associations and banks and loancompanies. I had been called in to sign papers, with bread-dough on myarms, and asked to witness signatures, with Dinkie on my hip, andcommanded by my absent hearth-mate to send on certain documents by thenext mail. I had also gathered up scattered sheets of paper coveredwith close-penciled rows of figures, and had felt that Dinky-Dunk for ayear back had been giving more time to his speculations than to hishome and his ranch. I had seen the lines deepen a little on that leanand bony face of his and the pepper-and-salt above his ears turninginto almost pure salt. And I'd missed, this many a day, the old boyishnote in his laughter and the old careless intimacies in his talk. Andbeing a woman of almost ordinary intelligence--preoccupied as I waswith those three precious babies of mine--I had arrived at the notunnatural conclusion that my spouse was surrendering more and more tothat passion of his for wealth and power. 

Wealth and power, of course, are big words in the language of any man. But I had more than an inkling that my husband had been taking agambler's chance to reach the end in view. And now, in that twilitshadow-huddled cubby-hole of a room, it came over me, all of a heap, that having taken the gambler's chance, we had met a fate not uncommonto gamblers, and had lost. 

"So we're bust!" I remarked, without any great show of emotion, feeling, I suppose, that without worldly goods we might consistentlybe without elegance. And in the back of my brain I was silentlyrevising our old Kansas pioneer couplet into

 In land-booms we trusted And in land-booms we busted. 

But it wasn't a joke. You can't have the bottom knocked out of yourworld, naturally, and find an invisible Nero blithely fiddling on yourheart-strings. And I hated to see Dinky-Dunk sitting there with thatdead look in his eyes. I hated to see him with his spirit broken, withthat hollow and haggard misery about the jowls, which made me think ofa hound-dog mourning for a dead master. 

But I knew better than to show any pity for Dinky-Dunk at such a time. It would have been effective as a stage-picture, I know, my reachingout and pressing his tired head against a breast sobbing withcomprehension and shaking with compassion. But pity, with realmen-folks in real life, is perilous stuff to deal in. I was equallyafraid to feel sorry for myself, even though my body chilled with thesudden suspicion that Casa Grande and all it held might be taken awayfrom me, that my bairns might be turned out of their warm andcomfortable beds, overnight, that the consoling sense of securitywhich those years of labor had builded up about us might vanish in abreath. And I needed new flannelette for the Twins' nighties, and areefer for little Dinky-Dunk, and an aluminum double-boiler thatdidn't leak for me maun's porritch. There were rafts of things Ineeded, rafts and rafts of them. But here we were bust, so far as Icould tell, on the rocks, swamped, stranded and wrecked. 

I held myself in, however, even if it _did_ take an effort. I crossedcasually over to the door, and opened it to sniff at the smell ofsupper. 

"Whatever happens, Dinky-Dunk, " I very calmly announced, "we've got toeat. And if that she-Indian scorches another scone I'll go down thereand scalp her. "

My husband got slowly and heavily up out of the chair, which gave outa squeak or two even when relieved of his weight. I knew by his facein the half-light that he was going to say that he didn't care to eat. 

But, instead of saying that, he stood looking at me, with a tragicallyhumble sort of contriteness. Then, without quite knowing he was doingit, he brought his hands together in a sort of clinch, with his facetwisted up in an odd little grimace of revolt, as though he stoodashamed to let me see that his lip was quivering. 

"It's such a rotten deal, " he almost moaned, "to you and the kiddies. "

"Oh, we'll survive it, " I said with a grin that was plainly forced. 

"But you don't seem to understand what it means, " he protested. Hisimpatience, I could see, was simply that of a man overtaxed. And Icould afford to make allowance for it. 

"I understand that it's almost an hour past supper-time, my Lord, andthat if you don't give me a chance to stoke up I'll bite the edges offthe lamp-shade!"

I was rewarded by just the ghost of a smile, a smile that was much toowan and sickly to live long. 

"All right, " announced Dinky-Dunk, "I'll be down in a minute or two. "

There was courage in that, I saw, for all the listlessness of the tonein which it had been uttered. So I went skipping down-stairs andclosed my baby grand and inspected the table and twisted the glassbowl that held my nasturtium-buds about, to the end that the telltaleword of "Salt" embossed on its side would not betray the fact that ithad been commandeered from the kitchen-cabinet. Then I turned up thelamp and smilingly waited until my lord and master seated himself atthe other side of the table, grateful beyond words that we had atleast that evening alone and were not compelled to act up to a partbefore the eyes of strangers. 

Yet it was anything but a successful meal. Dinky-Dunk's pretense ateating was about as hollow as my pretense at light-heartedness. Weeach knew that the other was playing a part, and the time came when tokeep it up was altogether too much of a mockery. 

"Dinky-Dunk, " I said after a silence that was too abysmal to beignored, "let's look this thing squarely in the face. "

"I can't!"

"Why not?"

"I haven't the courage. "

"Then we've got to get it, " I insisted. "I'm ready to face the music, if you are. So let's get right down to hard-pan. Have they--have theyreally cleaned you out?"

"To the last dollar, " he replied, without looking up. 

"What did it?" I asked, remaining stubbornly and persistently ox-likein my placidity. 

"No one thing did it, Chaddie, except that I tried to bite off toomuch. And for the last two years, of course, the boom's beenflattening out. If our Associated Land Corporation hadn't goneunder--"

"Then it _has_ gone under?" I interrupted, with a catch of the breath, for I knew just how much had been staked on that venture. 

Dinky-Dunk nodded his head. "And carried me with it, " he grimlyannounced. "But even that wouldn't have meant a knock-out, if thegovernment had only kept its promise and taken over my VancouverIsland water-front. "

That, I remembered, was to have been some sort of a shipyard. Then Iremembered something else. 

"When the Twins were born, " I reminded Dunkie, "you put the ranch hereat Casa Grande in my name. Does that mean we lose our home?"

I was able to speak quietly, but I could hear the thud of my ownheart-beats. 

"That's for you to decide, " he none too happily acknowledged. Then headded, with sudden decisiveness: "No, they can't touch anything of_yours_! Not a thing!"

"But won't that hold good with the Harris Ranch, as well?" I furtherinquired. "That was actually bought in my name. It was deeded to mefrom the first, and always has been in my name. "

"Of course it's yours, " he said with a hesitation that was slightlypuzzling to me. 

"Then how about the cattle and things?"

"What cattle?"

"The cattle we've kept on it to escape the wild land tax? Aren't thoseall legally mine?"

It sounded rapacious, I suppose, under the circumstances. It must haveseemed like looting on a battlefield. But I wasn't thinking entirelyabout myself, even though poor old Dinky-Dunk evidently assumed so, from the look of sudden questioning that came into his stricken eyes. 

"Yes, they're yours, " he almost listlessly responded. 

"Then, as I've already said, let's look this thing fairly and squarelyin the face. We've taken a gambler's chance on a big thing, and we'velost. We've lost our pile, as they phrase it out here, but if what yousay is true, we haven't lost our home, and what is still moreimportant, we haven't lost our pride. "

My husband looked down at his plate. 

"That's gone, too, " he slowly admitted. 

"It doesn't sound like my Dinky-Dunk, a thing like that, " I promptlyadmonished. But I'd spoken before I caught sight of the tragic look inhis eyes as he once more looked up at me. 

"If those politicians had only kept their word, we'd have had ourshipyard deal to save us, " he said, more to himself than to me. Yetthat, I knew, was more an excuse than a reason. 

"And if the rabbit-dog hadn't stopped to scratch, he might have caughtthe hare!" I none too mercifully quoted. My husband's face hardened ashe sat staring across the table at me. 

"I'm glad you can take it lightly enough to joke over, " he remarked, as he got up from his chair. There was a ponderous sort of bitternessin his voice, a bitterness that brought me up short. I had to fightback the surge of pity which was threatening to strangle my voice, pity for a man, once so proud of his power, standing stripped andnaked in his weakness. 

"Heaven knows I don't want to joke, Honey-Chile, " I told him. "Butwe're not the first of these wild-catting westerners who've come acropper. And since we haven't robbed a bank, or--"

"It's just a little worse than that, " cut in Dinky-Dunk, meeting myastonished gaze with a sort of Job-like exultation in his own misery. I promptly asked him what he meant. He sat down again, beforespeaking. 

"I mean that I've lost Allie's money along with my own, " he veryslowly and distinctly said to me. And we sat there, staring at eachother, for all the world like a couple of penguins on a sub-Arcticshingle. 

Allie, I remembered, was Dinky-Dunk's English cousin, Lady AliciaElizabeth Newland, who'd made the Channel flight in a navy plane andthe year before had figured in a Devonshire motor-car accident. Dinky-Dunk had a picture of her, from _The Queen_, up in his studysomewhere, the picture of a very debonair and slender young woman onan Irish hunter. He had a still younger picture of her in a tweedskirt and spats and golf-boots, on the brick steps of a Sussexcountry-house, with the jaw of a bull-dog resting across her knee. Itwas signed and dated and in a silver frame and every time I'd foundmyself polishing that oblong of silver I'd done so with a wifelyruffle of temper. 

"How much was it?" I finally asked, still adhering to my rôle of theimperturbable chorus. 

"She sent out over seven thousand pounds. She wanted it invested outhere. "

"Why?"

"Because of the new English taxes, I suppose. She said she wanted aranch, but she left everything to me. "

"Then it was a trust fund!"

Dinky-Dunk bowed his head, in assent. 

"It practically amounted to that, " he acknowledged. 

"And it's gone?"

"Every penny of it. "

"But, Dinky-Dunk, " I began. I didn't need to continue, for he seemedable to read my thoughts. 

"I was counting on two full sections for Allie in the Simmond's Valleytract. That land is worth thirty dollars an acre, unbroken, at anytime. But the bank's swept that into the bag, of course, along withthe rest. The whole thing was like a stack of nine-pins--when onetumbled, it knocked the other over. I thought I could manage to savethat much for her, out of the ruin. But the bank saw the land-boom waspetering out. They shut off my credit, and foreclosed on the cityblock--and that sent the whole card-house down. "

I had a great deal of thinking to do, during the next minute or two. 

"Then isn't it up to us to knuckle down, Dinky-Dunk, and make good onthat Lady Alicia mistake? If we get a crop this year we can--"

But Dinky-Dunk shook his head. "A thousand bushels an acre couldn'tget me out of this mess, " he maintained. 

"Why not?"

"Because your Lady Alicia and her English maid have already arrived inMontreal, " he quietly announced. 

"How do you know that?"

"She wrote to me from New York. She's had influenza, and it left herwith a wheezy tube and a spot on her lungs, as she put it. Her doctortold her to go to Egypt, but she says Egypt's impossible, just now, and if she doesn't like our West she says she'll amble on to Arizona, or try California for the winter. " He looked away, and smiled ratherwanly. "She's counting on the big game shooting we can give her!"

"Grizzly, and buffalo, and that sort of thing?"

"I suppose so!"

"And she's on her way out here?"

"She's on her way out here to inspect a ranch which doesn't exist!"

I sat for a full minute gaping into Dinky-Dunk's woebegone face. Andstill again I had considerable thinking to do. 

"Then we'll _make_ it exist, " I finally announced. But Dinky-Dunk, staring gloomily off into space, wasn't even interested. They hadstunned the spirit out of him. He wasn't himself. They'd put him whereeven a well-turned Scotch scone couldn't appeal to him. 

"Listen, " I solemnly admonished. "If this Cousin Allie of yours iscoming out here for a ranch, she's got to be presented with one. "

"It sounds easy!" he said, not without mockery. 

"And apparently the only way we can see that she's given her money'sworth is to hand Casa Grande over to her. Surely if she takes this, bag and baggage, she ought to be half-satisfied. "

Dinky-Dunk looked up at me as though I were assailing him with theravings of a mad-woman. He knew how proud I had always been of thatprairie home of ours. 

"Casa Grande is yours--yours and the kiddies, " he reminded me. "You'veat least got that, and God knows you'll need it now, more than ever, God knows I've at least kept my hands off _that_!"

"But don't you see it can't be ours, it can't be a home, when there'sa debt of honor between us and every acre of it. "

"You're in no way involved in that debt, " cried out my lord andmaster, with a trace of the old battling light in his eyes. 

"I'm so involved in it that I'm going to give up the glory of atwo-story house with hardwood floors and a windmill and a laundrychute and a real bathroom, before that English cousin of yours canfind out the difference between a spring-lamb and a jack-rabbit!" Iresolutely informed him. "And I'm going to do it without a whimper. Doyou know what we're going to do, O lord and master? We're going totake our kiddies and our chattels and our precious selves over to thatHarris Ranch, and there we're going to begin over again just as we didnearly four years ago!" Dinky-Dunk tried to stop me, but I warned himaside. "Don't think I'm doing anything romantic. I'm doing somethingso practical that the more I think of it the more I see it's the onlything possible. "

He sat looking at me as though he had forgotten what my features werelike and was, just discovering that my nose, after all, hadn't reallybeen put on straight. Then the old battling light grew stronger thanever in his eyes. 

"It's _not_ going to be the only thing possible, " he declared. "AndI'm not going to make _you_ pay for my mistakes. Not on your life! Icould have swung the farm lands, all right, even though they did haveme with my back to the wall, if only the city stuff hadn't gonedead--so dead that to-day you couldn't even give it away. I'm not anembezzler. Allie sent me out that money to take a chance with, and bytaking a double chance I honestly thought I could get her doublereturns. As you say, it was a gambler's chance. But the cards brokeagainst me. The thing that hurts is that I've probably just aboutcleaned the girl out. "

"How do you know that?" I asked, wondering why I was finding it sohard to sympathize with that denuded and deluded English cousin. 

"Because I know what's happened to about all of the older families andestates over there, " retorted Dinky-Dunk. "The government has prettywell picked them clean. "

"Could I see your Cousin Allie's letters?"

"What good would it do?" asked the dour man across the table from me. "The fat's in the fire, and we've got to face the consequences. "

"And that's exactly what I've been trying to tell you, you foolish oldcalvanistic autocrat! We've got to face the consequences, and the onlyway to do it is to do it the way I've said. "

Dinky-Dunk's face softened a little, and he seemed almost ready tosmile. But he very quickly clouded up again, just as my own heartclouded up. For I knew, notwithstanding my willingness to deny it, that I was once more acting on impulse, very much as I'd acted onimpulse four long years ago in that residuary old horse-hansom inCentral Park when I agreed to marry Duncan Argyll McKail before I waseven in love with him. But, like most women, I was willing to letReason step down off the bridge and have Intuition pilot me throughthe more troubled waters of a life-crisis. For I knew that I was doingthe right thing, even though it seemed absurd, even though at firstsight it seemed too prodigious a sacrifice, just as I'd done the rightthing when in the face of tribal reasoning and logic I'd gone kitingoff to a prairie-ranch and a wickiup with a leaky roof. It was atumble, but it was a tumble into a pansy-bed. And I was thinking thatluck would surely be with me a second time, though thought skidded, like a tire on a wet pavement, every time I tried to foresee what thisnewer change would mean to me and mine. 

"You're not going to face another three years of drudgery andshack-dirt, " declared Dinky-Dunk, following, oddly enough, my own lineof thought. "You went through that once, and once was enough. It's notfair. It's not reasonable. It's not even thinkable. You weren't madefor that sort of thing, and--"

"Listen to me, " I broke in, doing my best to speak calmly and quietly. "Those three years were really the happiest three years of all my life. I love to remember them, for they mean so much more than all the others. There were a lot of the frills and fixin's of life that we had to dowithout. But those three years brought us closer together, Dinky-Dunk, than we have ever been since we moved into this big house and got onbowing terms again with luxury. I don't know whether you've given itmuch thought or not, husband o' mine, but during the last year or twothere's been a change taking place in us. You've been worried and busyand forever on the wing, and there have been days when I've felt youwere almost a stranger to me, as though I'd got to be a sort of accidentin your life. Remember, Honey-Chile, I'm not blaming you; I'm onlypointing out certain obvious truths, now the time for a little honesttalk seems to have cropped up. You were up to your ears in a fight, in atremendously big fight, for success and money; and you were doing itmore for me and Dinkie and Poppsy and Pee-Wee than for yourself. Youcouldn't help remembering that I'd been a city girl and imagining thatprairie-life was a sort of penance I was undergoing before passing on tothe joys of paradise in an apartment-hotel with a mail-chute outside thedoor and the sound of the Elevated outside the windows. And you wereterribly wrong in all that, for there have been days and days, Dinky-Dunk, when I've been homesick for that old slabsided ranch-shackand the glory of seeing you come in ruddy and hungry and happy for theham and eggs and bread I'd cooked with my own hands. It seemed to bringus so gloriously close together. It seemed so homy and happy-go-luckyand soul-satisfying in its completeness, and we weren't forever frettingabout bank-balances and taxes and over-drafts. I was just a rancher'swife then--and I can't help feeling that all along there was somethingin that simple life we didn't value enough. We were just rubes and hicksand clodhoppers and hay-tossers in those days, and we weren't stayingawake nights worrying about land-speculations and water-fronts andtrying to make ourselves millionaires when we might have been makingourselves more at peace with our own souls. And now that our card-houseof high finance has gone to smash, I realize more than ever that I'vegot to be at peace with my own soul and on speaking terms with my ownhusband. And if this strikes you as an exceptionally long-winded sermon, my beloved, it's merely to make plain to you that I haven't surrenderedto any sudden wave of emotionalism when I talk about migrating over tothat Harris Ranch. It's nothing more than good old hard-headed, practical self-preservation, for I wouldn't care to live without you, Dinky-Dunk, any more than I imagine you'd care to live without your ownself-respect. "

I sat back, after what I suppose was the longest speech I ever made inmy life, and studied my lord and master's face. It was not an easy mapto decipher, for man, after all, is a pretty complex animal and evenin his more elemental moments is played upon by pretty complex forces. And if there was humility on that lean and rock-ribbed countenance ofmy soul-mate there was also antagonism, and mixed up with theantagonism was a sprinkling of startled wonder, and tangled up withthe wonder was a slightly perplexed brand of contrition, andinterwoven with that again was a suggestion of allegiance revived, asthough he had forgotten that he possessed a wife who had a heart andmind of her own, who was even worth sticking to when the rest of theworld was threatening to give him the cold shoulder. He feltabstractedly down in his coat pocket for his pipe, which is always ahelpful sign. 

"It's big and fine of you, Chaddie, to put it that way, " he began, rather awkwardly, and with just a touch of color coming to his rathergray-looking cheek-bones. "But can't you see that now it's thechildren we've got to think of?"

"I _have_ thought of them, " I quietly announced. As though any mother, on prairie or in metropolis, didn't think of them first and last andin-between-whiles! "And that's what simplifies the situation. I wantthem to have a fair chance. I'd rather they--"

"It's not quite that criminal, " cut in Dinky-Dunk, with almost anangry flush creeping up toward his forehead. 

"I'm only taking your own word for that, " I reminded him, deliberatelysteeling my heart against the tides of compassion that were trying todissolve it. "And I'm only taking what is, after all, the easiestcourse out of the situation. "

Dinky-Dunk's color receded, leaving his face even more than ever thecolor of old cheese, for all the tan of wind and sun which customarilytinted it, like afterglow on a stubbled hillside. 

"But Lady Alicia herself still has something to say about all this, "he reminded me. 

"Lady Alicia had better rope in her ranch when the roping is good, " Iretorted, chilled a little by her repeated intrusion into thesituation. For I had no intention of speaking of Lady Alicia Newlandwith bated breath, just because she had a title. I'd scratched danceswith a duke or two myself, in my time, even though I could already seemyself once more wielding a kitchen-mop and tamping a pail against ahog-trough, over at the Harris Ranch. 

"You're missing the point, " began Dinky-Dunk. 

"Listen!" I suddenly commanded. A harried roebuck has nothing on ayoung mother for acuteness of hearing. And thin and faint, fromabove-stairs, I caught the sound of a treble wailing which waspromptly augmented into a duet. 

"Poppsy's got Pee-Wee awake, " I announced as I rose from my chair. Itseemed something suddenly remote and small, this losing of a fortune, before the more imminent problem of getting a pair of crying babiessafely to sleep. I realized that as I ran upstairs and started theswing-box penduluming back and forth. I even found myself much calmerin spirit by the time I'd crooned and soothed the Twins off again. AndI was smiling a little, I think, as I went down to my poor oldDinky-Dunk, for he held out a hand and barred my way as I rounded thetable to resume my seat opposite him. 

"You don't despise me, do you?" he demanded, holding me by the sleeveand studying me with a slightly mystified eye. It was an eye aswistful as an old hound's in winter, an eye with a hunger I'd not seenthere this many a day. 

"Despise you, Acushla?" I echoed, with a catch in my throat, as myarms closed about him. And as he clung to me, with a forlorn sort ofdesperation, a soul-Chinook seemed to sweep up the cold fogs that hadgathered and swung between us for so many months. I'd worried, insecret, about that fog. I'd tried to tell myself that it was thecoming of the children that had made the difference, since a bigstrong man, naturally, had to take second place to those helplesslittle mites. But my Dinky-Dunk had a place in my heart which nosnoozerette could fill and no infant could usurp. He was my man, mymate, my partner in this tangled adventure called life, and so long asI had him they could take the house with the laundry-chute and thelast acre of land. 

"My dear, my dear, " I tried to tell him, "I was never hungry formoney. The one thing I've always been hungry for is love. What'd bethe good of having a millionaire husband if he looked like a man in ahair-shirt on every occasion when you asked for a moment of his time?And what's the good of life if you can't crowd a little affection intoit? I was just thinking we're all terribly like children in a Maypoledance. We're so impatient to get our colored bands wound neatly abouta wooden stick, a wooden stick that can never be ours, that we make amad race of what really ought to be a careless and leisurely joy. Wedon't remember to enjoy the dancing, and we seem to get so mixed inour ends. So _carpe diem_, say I. And perhaps you remember thatsentence from Epictetus you once wrote out on a slip of paper andpinned to my bedroom door: 'Better it is that great souls should livein small habitations than that abject slaves should burrow in greathouses!'"

Dinky-Dunk, as I sat brushing back his top-knot, regarded me with asad and slightly acidulated smile. 

"You'd need all that philosophy, and a good deal more, before you'dlived for a month in a place like the Harris shack, " he warned me. 

"Not if I knew you loved me, O Kaikobad, " I very promptly informedhim. 

"But you do know that, " he contended, man-like. I was glad to find, though, that a little of the bitterness had gone out of his eyes. 

"Feather-headed women like me, Diddums, hunger to hear that sort ofthing, hunger to hear it all the time. On that theme they want theirhusbands to be like those little Japanese wind-harps that don't evenknow how to be silent. "

"Then why did you say, about a month ago, that marriage was likeHogan's Alley, the deeper one got into it the tougher it was?"

"Why did you go off to Edmonton for three whole days without kissingme good-by?" I countered. I tried to speak lightly, but it took aneffort. For my husband's neglect, on that occasion, had seemed thefirst intimation that the glory was over and done with. It had givenme about the same feeling that we used to have as flapperettes whenthe circus-manager mounted the tub and began to announce theafter-concert, all for the price of ten cents, one dime!

"I wanted to, Tabbie, but you impressed me as looking ratherunapproachable that day. "

"When the honey is scarce, my dear, even bees are said to be cross, " Ireminded him. "And that's the thing that disturbs me, Dinky-Dunk. Itmust disturb any woman to remember that she's left her happiness inone man's hand. And it's more than one's mere happiness, for mixed upwith that is one's sense of humor and one's sense of proportion. Theyall go, when you make me miserable. And the Lord knows, my dear, thata woman without a sense of humor is worse than a dipper without ahandle. "

Dinky-Dunk sat studying me. 

"I guess it was my own sense of proportion that got out of kilter, Gee-Gee, " he finally said. "But there's one thing I want you toremember. If I got deeper into this game than I should have, it wasn'tfor what money meant to me. I've never been able to forget what I tookyou away from. I took you away from luxury and carted you out here tothe end of Nowhere and had you leave behind about everything that madelife decent. And the one thing I've always wanted to do is make goodon that over-draft on your bank-account of happiness. I've wanted togive back to you the things you sacrificed. I knew I owed you that, all along. And when the children came I saw that I owed it to you morethan ever. I want to give Dinky-Dink and Poppsy and Pee-Wee a fairchance in life. I want to be able to start them right, just as much asyou do. And you can't be dumped back into a three-roomed wickiup, withthree children to bring up, and feel that you're doing the right thingby your family. "

It wasn't altogether happy talk, but deep down in my heart I was gladwe were having it. It seemed to clear the air, very much as a goodold-fashioned thunder-storm can. It left us stumbling back to theessentials of existence. It showed us where we stood, and what wemeant to each other, what we must mean to each other. And now that thechance had come, I intended to have my say out. 

"The things that make life decent, Dinky-Dunk, are the things that wecarry packed away in our own immortal soul, the homely old things likehonesty and self-respect and contentment of mind. And if we've got tocut close to the bone before we can square up our ledger of life, let's start the carving while we have the chance. Let's get ourconscience clear and know we're playing the game. "

I was dreadfully afraid he was going to laugh at me, it sounded somuch like pulpiteering. But I was in earnest, passionately in earnest, and my lord and master seemed to realize it. 

"Have you thought about the kiddies?" he asked me, for the secondtime. 

"I'm always thinking about the kiddies, " I told him, a trifle puzzled bythe wince which so simple a statement could bring to his face. Hiswondering eye, staring through the open French doors of the living-room, rested on my baby grand. 

"How about _that_?" he demanded, with a grim head-nod toward thepiano. 

"That may help to amuse Lady Alicia, " I just as grimly retorted. 

He stared about that comfortable home which we had builded up out ofour toil, stared about at it as I've seen emigrants stare back at thereceding shores of the land they loved. Then he sat studying my face. 

"How long is it since you've seen the inside of the Harris shack?" hesuddenly asked me. 

"Last Friday when I took the bacon and oatmeal over to Soapy andFrancois and Whinstane Sandy, " I told him. 

"And what did you think of that shack?"

"It impressed me as being sadly in need of soap and water, " I calmlyadmitted. "It's like any other shack where two or three men have beenbatching--no better and no worse than the wickiup I came to here on myhoneymoon. "

Dinky-Dunk looked about at me quickly, as though in search of sometouch of malice in that statement. He seemed bewildered, in fact, tofind that I was able to smile at him. 

"But that, Chaddie, was nearly four long years ago, " he reminded me, with a morose and meditative clouding of the brow. And I knew exactlywhat he was thinking about. 

"I'll know better how to go about it this time, " I announced with mystubbornest Doctor Pangless grin. 

"But there are two things you haven't taken into consideration, "Dinky-Dunk reminded me. 

"What are they?" I demanded. 

"One is the matter of ready money. "

"I've that six hundred dollars from my Chilean nitrate shares, " Iproudly announced. "And Uncle Carlton said that if the Company evergets reorganized it ought to be a paying concern. "

Dinky-Dunk, however, didn't seem greatly impressed with either theparade of my secret nest-egg or the promise of my solitary plunge intofinance. "What's the other?" I asked as he still sat frowning over hisempty pipe. 

"The other is Lady Alicia herself, " he finally explained. 

"What can she do?"

"She may cause complications. "

"What kind of complications?"

"I can't tell until I've seen her, " was Dinky-Dunk's none too definitereply. 

"Then we needn't cross that bridge until we come to it, " I announcedas I sat watching Dinky-Dunk pack the bowl of his pipe and strike amatch. It seemed a trivial enough movement. Yet it was monumental inits homeliness. It was poignant with a power to transport me back toearlier and happier days, to the days when one never thought offeathering the nest of existence with the illusions of old age. Avague loneliness ate at my heart, the same as a rat eats at a cellarbeam. 

I crossed over to my husband's side and stood with one hand on hisshoulder as he sat there smoking. I waited for him to reach out for myother hand. But the burden of his troubles seemed too heavy to let himremember. He smoked morosely on. He sat in a sort of self-immuringtorpor, staring out over what he still regarded as the wreck of hiscareer. So I stooped down and helped myself to a very smoky kissbefore I went off up-stairs to bed. For the children, I knew, wouldhave me awake early enough--and nursing mothers needs must sleep!

 _Thursday the Second_

I have won my point. Dinky-Dunk has succumbed. The migration is underway. The great trek has begun. In plain English, we're moving. 

I rather hate to think about it. We seem so like the Children of Israelbundled out of a Promised Land, or old Adam and Eve turned out of theGarden with their little Cains and Abels. "We're up against it, Gee-Gee, " as Dinky-Dunk grimly observed. I could see that we were, without his telling me. But I refused to acknowledge it, even tomyself. And it wasn't the first occasion. This time, thank heaven, Ican at least face it with fortitude, if not with relish. I don't likepoverty. And I don't intend to like it. And I'm not such a hypocrite asto make a pretense of liking it. But I do intend to show my Dinky-Dunkthat I'm something more than a household ornament, just as I intend toshow myself that I can be something more than a breeder of children. Ihave given my three "hostages to fortune"--and during the last few dayswhen we've been living, like the infant Moses, in a series of rushes, Ihave awakened to the fact that they are indeed hostages. For the littletikes, no matter how you maneuver, still demand a big share of yourtime and energy. But one finally manages, in some way or another. Dinky-Dunk threatens to expel me from the Mothers' Union when I workover time, and Poppsy and Pee-Wee unite in letting me know when I'vebeen foolish enough to pass my fatigue-point. Yet I've been sloughingoff some of my old-time finicky ideas about child-raising and revertingto the peasant-type of conduct which I once so abhorred in my FinnishOlga. And I can't say that either I or my family seem to have sufferedmuch in the process. I feel almost uncannily well and strong now, andam a wolf for work. If nothing else happened when our apple-cart wentover, it at least broke the monotony of life. I'm able to wring, infact, just a touch of relish out of all this migrational movement andstir, and Casa Grande itself is already beginning to remind me of aliner's stateroom about the time the pilot comes aboard and thedonkey-engines start to clatter up with the trunk-nets. 

For three whole days I simply ached to get at the Harris Ranch shack, just to show what I could do with it. And I realized when Dinky-Dunkand I drove over to it in the buckboard, on a rather nippy morningwhen it was a joy to go spanking along the prairie trail with the coldair etching rosettes on your cheek-bones, that it was a foeman wellworthy of my steel. At a first inspection, indeed, it didn't look anytoo promising. It didn't exactly stand up on the prairie-floor andshout "Welcome" into your ears. There was an overturned windmill and abroken-down stable that needed a new roof, and a well that had a pumpwhich wouldn't work without priming. There was an untidy-lookingcorral, and a reel for stringing up slaughtered beeves, and anoverturned Red River cart bleached as white as a buffalo skeleton. Asfor the wickiup itself, it was well-enough built, but lacking inwindows and quite unfinished as to the interior. 

I told Dinky-Dunk I wanted two new window-frames, beaverboard forinside lining, and two gallons of paint. I have also demanded alean-to, to serve as an extra bedroom and nursery, and a brand-newbunk-house for the hired "hands" when they happen to come along. Ihave also insisted on a covered veranda and sleeping porch on thesouth side of the shack, and fly-screens, and repairs to the chimneyto stop the range from smoking. And since the cellar, which is merelytimbered, will have to be both my coal-hole and my storage-room, itmost assuredly will have to be cemented. I explained to Dinky-Dunkthat I wanted eave-troughs on both the shack and the stable, for thesake of the soft-water, and proceeded to point out the need of a newwashing-machine, and a kiddie-coop for Poppsy and Pee-Wee as soon asthe weather got warm, and a fence, hog-tight and horse-high, about myhalf-acre of kitchen garden. 

Dinky-Dunk sat staring at me with a wry though slightly woebegoneface. 

"Look here, Lady-Bird, all this sort of thing takes 'rhino, ' whichmeans ready money. And where's it going to come from?"

"I'll use that six hundred, as long as it lasts, " I blithely retorted. "And then we'll get credit. "

"But my credit is gone, " Dinky-Dunk dolorously acknowledged. 

"Then what's the matter with mine?" I demanded. I hadn't meant to hurthim, when I said that. But I refused to be downed. And I intended tomake my ranch a success. 

"It's still quite unimpaired, I suppose, " he said in a thirty-below-zerosort of voice. 

"Goose!" I said, with a brotherly pat on his drooping shoulder. But mylord and master refused to be cheered up. 

"It's going to take more than optimism to carry us through this firstseason, " he explained to me. "And the only way that I can see is forme to get out and rustle for work. "

"What kind of work?" I demanded. 

"The kind there's a famine for, at this very moment, " was Dinky-Dunk'sreply. 

"You don't mean being somebody else's hired man?" I said, aghast. 

"A hired man can get four dollars a day and board, " retorted myhusband. "And a man and team can get nine dollars a day. We can't keepthings going without ready money. And there's only one way, out here, of getting it. "

Dinky-Dunk was able to laugh at the look of dismay that came into myface. I hadn't stopped to picture myself as the wife of a hired"hand. " I hadn't quite realized just what we'd descended to. I hadn'timagined just how much one needed working capital, even out here onthe edge of Nowhere. 

"But never that way, Diddums!" I cried out in dismay, as I pictured myhusband bunking with a sweaty-smelling plowing-gang of Swedes andFinns and hoboing about the prairie with a thrashing outfit of theGreat Unwashed. He'd get cooties, or rheumatism, or a sunstroke, or aknife between his ribs some fine night--and then where'd I be? Icouldn't think of it. I couldn't think of Duncan Argyll McKail, thedescendant of Scottish kings and second-cousin to a title, hiring outto some old skinflint of a farmer who'd have him up at four in themorning and keep him on the go until eight at night. 

"Then what other way?" asked Dinky-Dunk. 

"You leave it to me, " I retorted. I made a bluff of saying it bravelyenough, but I inwardly decided that instead of sixteen yards of freshchintz I'd have to be satisfied with five yards. Poverty, after all, is not a picturesque thing. But I didn't intend to be poor, Iprotested to my troubled soul, as I went at that Harris Ranch wickiup, tooth and nail, while Iroquois Annie kept an eye on Dinkie and theTwins. 

These same Twins, I can more than ever see, are going to be somewhatof a brake on the wheels of industry. I have even been feeding on"slops, " of late, to the end that Poppsy and Pee-Wee may thrive. Andalready I see sex-differences asserting themselves. Pee-Wee is a bitof a stoic, while his sister shows a tendency to prove a bit of asquealer. But Poppsy is much the daintier feeder of the two. I'llprobably have to wean them both, however, before many more weeks slipby. As soon as we get settled in our new shack and I can be sure of aone-cow supply of milk I'll begin a bottle-feed once in everytwenty-four hours. Dinky-Dunk says I ought to take a tip from theIndian mother, who sometimes nurses her babe until he's two and threeyears old. I asked Ikkie--as Dinkie calls Iroquois Annie--about thisand Ikkie says the teepee squaw has no cow's milk and has to keep onthe move, so she feeds him breast-milk until he's able to eat meat. Ikkie informs me that she has seen a papoose turn away from itsmother's breast to take a puff or two at a pipe. From which I assumethat the noble Red Man learns to smoke quite early in life. 

Ikkie has also been enlightening me on other baby-customs of herancestors, explaining that it was once the habit for a mother to nameher baby for the first thing seen after its birth. That, I toldDinky-Dunk, was probably why there were so many "Running Rabbits, " and"White Pups" and "Black Calfs" over on the Reservation. And thatstarted me maun enlarging on the names of Indians he'd known, the mostelongated of which, he acknowledged, was probably "The-Man-Who-Gets-Up-In-The-Middle-Of-The-Night-To-Feed-Oats-To-His-Pony, " while the mostdescriptive was "Slow-To-Come-Over-The-Hill, " though "Shot-At-Many-Times"was not without value, and "Long-Time-No-See-Him, " as the appellative fora disconsolate young squaw, carried a slight hint of the Indian's geniusfor nomenclature. Another thing mentioned by Dunkie, which has stuck inmy memory, was his running across a papoose's grave in an Indianburying-ground at Pincer Creek, when he was surveying, where the Indianbaby had been buried--above-ground, of course--_in an old Saratogatrunk_. That served to remind me of Francois' story about "Old Sun, " whopreceded "Running Rabbit"--note the name--as chief of the AlbertaBlackfoot tribe, and always carried among his souvenirs of conquest abeautiful white scalp, with hair of the purest gold, very long and fine, but would never reveal how or where he got it. Many a night, when Icouldn't sleep, I've worried about that white scalp, and dramatizedthe circumstances of its gathering. Who was the girl with the long andlovely tresses of purest gold? And did she die bravely? And did shemeet death honorably and decently, or after the manner of certain ofthe Jesuits' _Relations_?. .. 

I have had a talk with Whinnie, otherwise Whinstane Sandy, who hasbeen ditching at the far end of our half-section. I explained thesituation to him quite openly, acknowledging that we were on the rocksbut not yet wrecked, and pointing out that there might be a few monthsbefore the ghost could walk again. And Whinstane Sandy has promised tostick. Poor old Whinnie not only promised to stick, but volunteeredthat if he could get over to Seattle or 'Frisco and raise some moneyon his Klondike claim our troubles would be a thing of the past. ForWhinnie, who is an old-time miner and stampeder, is, I'm afraid, a weebit gone in the upper story. He dreams he has a claim up North wherethere's millions and millions in gold to be dug out. On his moose-hidewatch-guard he wears a nugget almost half as big as a praline, anugget he found himself in ninety-nine, and he'd part with his life, Ibelieve, before he'd part with that bangle of shiny yellow metal. Inhis chest of black-oak, too, he keeps a package of greasy anddog-eared documents, and some day, he proclaims, those papers willbring him into millions of money. 

I asked Dinky-Dunk about the nugget, and he says it's genuine gold, without a doubt. He also says there's one chance in a hundred ofWhinnie actually having a claim up in the gold country, but doubts ifthe poor old fellow will ever get up to it again. It's about on thesame footing, apparently, as Uncle Carlton's Chilean nitrate mines. ForWhinnie had a foot frozen, his third winter on the Yukon, and this, ofcourse, has left him lame. It means that he's not a great deal of goodwhen it comes to working the land, but he's a clever carpenter, and agood cement-worker, and can chore about milking the cows and lookingafter the stock and repairing the farm implements. Many a night, aftersupper, he tells us about the Klondike in the old days, about thestampedes of ninety-eight and ninety-nine, and the dance-halls andhardships and gamblers and claim-jumpers. I have always had a weaknessfor him because of his blind and unshakable love for my little Dinkie, for whom he whittles out ships and windmills and decoy-ducks. But whenI explained things to simple-minded old Whinnie, and he offered to handover the last of his ready money--the money he was hoarding dollar bydollar to get back to his hidden _El Dorado_--it brought a lump up intomy throat. 

I couldn't accept his offer, of course, but I loved him for making it. And whatever happens, I'm going to see that Whinnie has patches on hispanties and no holes in his socks as long as he abides beneath ourhumble roof-tree. I intend to make the new bunk-house just as homy andcomfortable as I can, so that Whinnie, under that new roof, won't feelthat he's been thrust out in the cold. But I must have my own housefor myself and my babes. Soapy Stennet, by the way, has been paid offby Dinky-Dunk and is moving on to the Knee-Hill country, where he sayshe can get good wages breaking and seeding. Soapy, of course, was agood man on the land, but I never took a shine to that hard-eyedCanuck, and we'll get along, in some way or other, without him. For, in the language of the noble Horatius, "I'll find a way, or make it!"

On the way back to Casa Grande to-night, after a hard day's work, Iasked Dinky-Dunk if we wouldn't need some sort of garage over at theHarris Ranch, to house our automobile. He said he'd probably put doorson the end of one of the portable granaries and use that. When Iquestioned if a car of that size would ever fit into a granary heinformed me that we couldn't keep our big car. 

"I can get seventeen hundred dollars for that boat, " he explained. "We'll have to be satisfied with a tin Lizzie, and squander less ongasoline. "

So once again am I reminded that the unpardonable crime of poverty isnot always picturesque. But I wrestled with my soul then and there, and put my pride in my pocket and told Dinky-Dunk I didn't give a ripwhat kind of a car I rode in so long as I had such a handsome_chauffeur_. And I reached out and patted him on the knee, but he wastoo deep in his worries about business matters, I suppose, to pay anyattention to that unseemly advance. 

To-night after supper, when the bairns were safely in bed, I opened upthe baby grand, intent on dying game, whatever happened or was tohappen. But my concert wasn't much of a success. When you do a thingfor the last time, and know it's to be the last time, it gives you agraveyardy sort of feeling, no matter how you may struggle against it. And the blither the tune the heavier it seemed to make my heart. So Iswung back to the statelier things that have come down to us out ofthe cool and quiet of Time. I eased my soul with the _SonataAppassionata_ and lost myself in the _Moonlight_ and pounded out the_Eroica_. But my fingers were stiff and my touch was wooden--so it wassmall wonder my poor lord and master tried to bury himself in hisfour-day-old newspaper. Then I tried Schubert's _Rosamonde_, thoughthat wasn't much of a success. So I wandered on through Liszt toChopin. And even Chopin struck me as too soft and sugary and far-awayfor a homesteader's wife, so I sang

 "In the dead av the night, acushla, When the new big house is still, "--

to see if it would shake any sign of recognition out of my harried oldDinky-Dunk. 

As I beheld nothing more than an abstracted frown over the tip-top edgeof his paper, I defiantly swung into _The Humming Coon_, whichapparently had no more effect than Herman Lohr. So with maliceaforethought I slowly and deliberately pounded out the Beethoven FuneralMarch. I lost myself, in fact, in that glorious and melodic wail ofsorrow, merged my own puny troubles in its god-like immensities, and wasbrought down to earth by a sudden movement from Dinky-Dunk. 

"Why rub it in?" he almost angrily demanded as he got up and left theroom. .. . 

But that stammering little soul-flight has done me good. It has givenme back my perspective. I refuse to be downed. I'm still the captainof my soul. I'm still at the wheel, no matter if we are rolling a bit. And life, in some way, is still going to be good, still well worth theliving!

 _Wednesday the Eighth_

Dinky-Dunk has had word that Lady Alicia is on her way west. He seemsto regard that event as something very solemn, but I refuse to takeseriously either her ladyship or her arrival. To-night, I'm moreworried about Dinkie, who got at the floor-shellac with which I'd beenfurbishing up the bathroom at Casa Grande. He succeeded in giving hisface and hair a very generous coat of it--and I'm hoping against hopehe didn't get too much of it in his little stomach. He seems normalenough, and in fairly good spirits, but I had to scrub his face withcoal-oil, to get it clean, and his poor little baby-skin is burntrather pink. 

The winter has broken, the frost is coming out of the ground and themud is not adding to our joy in life. Our last load over to the Harrisshack was ferried and tooled through a batter. On the top of it (the_load_, and not the batter!) I placed Olie's old banjo, for whateverhappens, we mustn't be entirely without music. 

Yesterday Dinky-Dunk got Paddy saddled and bridled for me. Paddybucked and bit and bolted and sulked and tried to brush his rider offagainst the corral posts. But Dinky-Dunk fought it out with him, andwinded him, and mastered him, and made him meek enough for me to slipup into the saddle. My riding muscles, however, have gone flabby, andtwo or three miles, for the first venture, was all I cared to stand. But I'm glad to know that Paddy can be pressed into service again, whenever the occasion arises. Poor old Bobs, by the way, keeps lookingat me with a troubled and questioning eye. He seems to know that someunsettling and untoward event is on the way. When a coyote howled lastnight, far off on the sky-line, Bobs poured out his soul in ananswering solo of misery. This morning, when I was pretty busy, hepoked his head between my knees. I had a dozen things calling me, butI took the time to rub his nose and brush back his ears and tell himhe was the grandest old dog on all God's green earth. And he repaid mewith a look of adoration that put springs under my heels for the restof the morning, and came and licked Pee-Wee's bare heels, and laterPoppsy's, when I was giving them their bath. 

 _Friday the Tenth_

Lady Alicia has arrived. So have her trunks, eleven in number--count'em!--trunks of queer sizes and shapes, of pigskin and patent leatherand canvas, with gigantic buckles and straps, and all gaudilyinitialed and plastered with foreign labels. Her ladyship had to come, of course, at the very worst time of year, when the mud was at itsmuckiest and the prairie was at its worst. The trails were simplyawful, with the last of the frost coming out of the ground and motherearth a foot-deep sponge of engulfing stickiness. All the world seemedturned to mud. I couldn't go along, of course, when Dinky-Dunk startedoff in the Teetzels' borrowed spring "democrat" to meet his Englishcousin at the Buckhorn station, with Whinstane Sandy and the wagontrailing behind for the luggage. 

We expected a lady in somewhat delicate health, so I sent along plentyof rugs and a foot-warmer, and saw that the house was well heated, andthe west room bed turned down. Even a hot-water bottle stood ready andwaiting to be filled. 

But Lady Alicia, when she arrived with Dinky-Dunk just beforenightfall, didn't impress me as very much of an invalid. She struck memore as a very vital and audacious woman, neither young nor old, withan odd quietness of manner to give a saber-edge to her audacity. Icould hear her laughing, musically and not unpleasantly, at themud-coated "democrat, " which on its return looked a good deal like a'dobe hut mounted on four chariot wheels. But _everything_, for thatmatter, was covered with mud, horses and harness and robes and eventhe blanket in which Lady Alicia had wrapped herself. She had donethis, I could see, to give decent protection to a Redfern coat ofplucked beaver with immense reveres, though there was mud enough onher stout tan shoes, so unmistakably English in their common-sensesolidity, and some on her fur turban and even a splash or two on herface. That face, by the way, has an apple-blossom skin of which I cansee she is justly proud. And she has tourmaline eyes, with reddishhazel specks in an iris of opaque blue, and small white teeth and lipswith a telltale curve of wilfulness about them. She isn't exactlygirlish, but with all her worldly wisdom she has a touch of theclinging-ivy type which must make her inordinately appealing to men. Her voice is soft and full-voweled, with that habitual risinginflection characteristic of the English, and that rather insolentdrawl which in her native land seems the final flower of unchallengedprivilege. Her hands are very white and fastidious looking, and mostcarefully manicured. She is, in fact, wonderful in many ways, but Ihaven't yet decided whether I'm going to like her or not. Her smilestrikes me as having more glitter than warmth, and although she isneither tall nor full-bodied, she seems to have the power of makingpoint take the place of weight. Yet, oddly enough, there is anoccasional air of masculine loose-jointedness about her movements, ahalf-defiant sort of slouch and swagger which would probably carrymuch farther in her Old World than in our easier-moving New World, where disdain of decorum can not be regarded as quite such a novelty. 

It wasn't until she was within the protecting door of Casa Grande thatI woke up to the fact of how incongruous she stood on a northwestranch. She struck me, then, as distinctly an urban product, as one ofthose lazy and silk-lined and limousiny sort of women who could facean upholstery endurance-test without any apparent signs ofheart-failure, but might be apt to fall down on engine-performance. Yet I was determined to suspend all judgment, even after I could seethat she was making no particular effort to meet me half-way, thoughshe did acknowledge that Dinkie, in his best bib and tucker, was a"dawling" and even proclaimed that his complexion--due, of course, tothe floor-shellac and coal-oil--reminded her very much of thehigher-colored English children. She also dutifully asked about Poppsyand Pee-Wee, after announcing that she found the house uncomfortablyhot, and seemed surprised that Dinky-Dunk should descend to thestabling and feeding and watering of his own horses. 

She appeared rather constrained and ill-at-ease, in fact, untilDinky-Dunk had washed up and joined us. Yet I saw, when we sat down toour belated supper, that the fair Allie had the abundant and honestappetite of a healthy boy. She also asked if she might smoke betweencourses--which same worried the unhappy Dinky-Dunk much more than itdid me. My risibilities remained untouched until she languidlyremarked that any woman who had twins on the prairie ought to get aV. C. 

But she automatically became, I retorted, a K. C. B. This seemed topuzzle the cool-eyed Lady Alicia. 

"That means a Knight Commander of the Bath, " she said with her Englishliteralness. 

"Exactly, " I agreed. And Dinky-Dunk had to come to her rescue andexplain the joke, like a court-interpreter translating Cree to thecircuit judge, so that by the time he got through it didn't seem ajoke at all and his eyes were flashing me a code-signal not to be toohard on a tenderfoot. When, later on, Lady Alicia looked about CasaGrande, which we'd toiled and moiled and slaved to make like thehomestead prints in the immigration pamphlets, she languidlyacknowledged that it was rather ducky, whatever that may mean, andasked Dinky-Dunk if there'd be any deer-shooting this spring. Inotice, by the way, that she calls him "Dooncan" and sometimes "CousinDoonk, " which strikes me as being over-intimate, seeing he's reallyher second cousin. It seems suggestive of some hidden joke betweenthem. And Duncan addresses her quite openly as "Allie. "

This same Allie has brought a lady's maid with her whom she addresses, _more Anglico_, simply by her surname of "Struthers. " Struthers is asubmerged and self-obliterating and patient-eyed woman of nearlyforty, I should say, with a face that would be both intelligent andattractive, if it weren't so subservient. But I've a floaty sort offeeling that this same maid knows a little more than she lets on toknow, and I'm wondering what western life will do to her. In oneyear's time, I'll wager a plugged nickel against an English sovereign, she'll not be sedately and patiently dining at second-table andmurmuring "Yes, me Lady" in that meek and obedient manner. But itfairly took my breath, the adroit and expeditious manner in whichStruthers had that welter of luggage unstrapped and unbuckled andwarped into place and things stowed away, even down to her ladyship'srather ridiculous folding canvas bathtub. In little more than twoshakes she had a shimmering litter of toilet things out on the dressertops, and even a nickel alcohol-lamp set up for brewing the apparentlyessential cup of tea. It made me wish that I had a Struthers or two ofmy own on the string. And that made my thoughts go hurtling back to myold Hortense and how we had parted at the Hotel de L'Athenee, and toTheobald Gustav and his aunt the Baroness, and the old lost life thatseemed such years and years away. .. . 

But I promptly put the lid down on those over-disturbing reminiscences. There should be no _post-mortems_ in this family circle, no jeremiadsover what has gone before. This is the New World and the new age wherelife is too crowded for regrets. I am a woman twenty-seven years old, married and the mother of three children. I am the wife of a rancherwho went bust in a land-boom and is compelled to start life over again. I must stand beside him, and start from the bottom. I must also carryalong with me all the hopes and prospects of three small lives. This, however, is something which I refuse to accept as a burden and ahandicap. It is a weight attached to me, of course, but it's only thestabilizing weight which the tail contributes to the kite, allowing it, in the end, to fly higher and keep steadier. It won't seem hard to dowithout things, when I think of those kiddies of mine, and hard workshould be a great and glorious gift, if it is to give them the start inlife which they deserve. We'll no longer quarrel, Diddums and I, aboutwhether Dinkie shall go to Harvard or McGill. There'll be much closerproblems than that, I imagine, before Dinkie is out of his knickers. Fate has shaken us down to realities--and my present perplexity is toget possession of six new milk-pans and that new barrel-churn, not tomention the flannelette I simply must have for the Twins' newnighties!. .. 

 _Saturday the Eleventh_

These imperturbable English! I didn't know whether I should take offmy hat to 'em or despise 'em. They seem to come out of a differentmold to what we Americans do. Lady Alicia takes everything as a matterof course. She seems to have accepted one of the finest ranches westof the Peg as impassively as an old work-horse accepts a new shoe. Even the immensity of our western prairie-land hasn't quite stumpedher. She acknowledged that Casa Grande was "quaint, " and is obviouslymuch more interested in Iroquois Annie, the latter being partly aRedskin, than in my humble self. I went up in her estimation a little, however, when I coolly accepted one of her cigarettes, of which shehas brought enough to asphyxiate an army. I managed it all right, though it was nearly four long years since I'd flicked the ash off theend of one--in Chinkie's yacht going up to Monte Carlo. But I was gladenough to drop the bigger half of it quietly into my nasturtiumwindow-box, when the lady wasn't looking. 

The lady in question, by the way, seems rather disappointed to findthat Casa Grande has what she called "central heating. " About themiddle of next February, when the thermometer is flirting with theforty-below mark, she may change her mind. I suppose the lady expectedto get a lodge and a deer-park along with her new home, to say nothingof a picture 'all--open to the public on Fridays, admission oneshilling--and a family ghost, and, of course, a terrace for theaforesaid ghost to ambulate along on moonlight nights. 

But the thing that's been troubling me, all day long, is: Now thatLady Alicia has got her hand-made ranch, what's she going to do withit? I scarcely expect her to take me into her confidence on thematter, since she seems intent on regarding me as merely a bit of thelandscape. The disturbing part of it all is that her aloofness is sounstudied, so indifferent in its lack of deliberation. It makes mefeel like a bump on a log. I shouldn't so much mind being actively andmartially snubbed, for that would give me something definite andtangible to grow combative over. But you can't cross swords with aScotch mist. 

With Dinky-Dunk her ladyship is quite different. I never see that lookof mild impatience in her opaque blue eyes when he is talking. Sheflatters him openly, in fact, and a man takes to flattery, of course, as a kitten takes to cream. Yet with all her outspokenness I amconscious of a tremendous sense of reservation. Already, more thanonce, she has given me a feeling which I'd find it very hard todescribe, a feeling as though we were being suspended over peril bysomething very fragile. It's the feeling you have when you stand onone of those frail little Alpine bridges that can sway so forebodinglywith your own weight and remind you that nothing but a rustic palingor two separates you from the thousand-footed abysses below yourheels. 

But I mustn't paint the new mistress of Casa Grande all in darkcolors. She has her good points, and a mind of her own, and a thoughtor two of her own. Dinky-Dunk was asking her about Egypt. Thatcountry, she retorted, was too dead for her. She couldn't wipe out ofher heart the memory of what man had suffered along the banks of theNile, during the last four thousand years, what millions of men hadsuffered there because of religion and war and caste. 

"I could never be happy in a country of dead races and dead creeds anddead cities, " protested Lady Alicia, with more emotion than I hadexpected. "And those are the things that always stare me in the faceout there. "

This brought the talk around to the New World. 

"I rather fancy that a climate like yours up here, " she coollyobserved, "would make luxuries of furniture and dress, and convertwhat should be the accidents of life into essentials. You will alwayshave to fight against nature, you know, and that makes man attach moreimportance to the quest of comfort. But when he lives in the tropics, in a surrounding that leaves him with few desires, he has time to sitdown and think about his soul. That's why you can never have a greatmusician or a great poet in your land of blizzards, Cousin Dooncan. You are all kept too busy laying up nuts for the winter. You can'tafford to turn gipsy and go off star-gazing. "

"You can if you join the I. W. W. , " I retorted. But the allusion waslost on her. 

"I can't imagine a Shelley or a Theocritus up here on your prairie, "she went on, "or a Marcus Aurelius in the real-estate business inWinnipeg. "

Dinky-Dunk was able to smile at this, though I wasn't. 

"But we have the glory of doing things, " I contended, "and somebody, Ibelieve, has summed up your Marcus Aurelius by saying he left behindhim a couple of beautiful books, an execrable son, and a decayingnation. And we don't intend to decay! We don't live for the moment, it's true. But we live for To-morrow. We write epics in railway lines, and instead of working out sonnets we build new cities, and instead ofsitting down under a palm-tree and twiddling our thumbs we turn awilderness into a new nation, and grow grain and give bread to thehungry world where the gipsies don't seem quite able to make both endsmeet!"

I had my say out, and Lady Alicia sat looking at me with a sort ofmild and impersonal surprise. But she declined to argue about it all. And it was just as well she didn't, I suppose, for I had my Irish upand didn't intend to sit back and see my country maligned. 

But on the way home to the Harris Ranch last night, with Dinky-Dunksilent and thoughtful, and a cold star or two in the high-archingheavens over us, I found that my little fire of enthusiasm had burntitself out and those crazy lines of John Davidson kept returning to mymind:

 "After the end of all things, After the years are spent, After the loom is broken, After the robe is rent, Will there be hearts a-beating, Will friend converse with friend, Will men and women be lovers, After the end?"

I felt very much alone in the world, and about as cheerful as amoonstruck coyote, after those lines had rattled in my empty brain likea skeleton in the wind. It wasn't until I saw the light in our wickiupwindow and heard Bobs' bay of welcome through the crystal-cleartwilight that the leaden weight of desolation slipped off the ledge ofmy heart. But as I heard that deep-noted bark of gladness, thatfriendly intimation of guardianship unrelaxed and untiring, Iremembered that I had one faithful and unexacting friend, even thoughit was nothing better than a dog. 

 _Sunday the Twelfth_

Dinky-Dunk rather surprised me to-day by asking why I was sostand-offish with his Cousin Allie. I told him that I wasn't in thehabit of curling up like a kitten on a slab of Polar ice. 

"But she really likes you, Tabbie, " my husband protested. "She wantsto know you and understand you. Only you keep intimidating her, andplacing her at a disadvantage. "

This was news to me. Lady Alicia, I'd imagined, stood in awe ofnothing on the earth beneath nor the heavens above. She can speak verysharply, I've already noticed, to Struthers, when the occasion arises. And she's been very calm and deliberate, as I've already observed, inher manner of taking over Casa Grande. For she _has_ formally taken itover, Dinky-Dunk tells me, and in a day or two we all have to trek totown for the signing of the papers. She is, apparently, going to runthe ranch on her own hook, and in her own way. It will be well worthwatching. 

I was rather anxious to hear the particulars of the transfer to LadyAllie, but Dinky-Dunk seemed a little reluctant to go into details, and I didn't intend to make a parade of my curiosity. I can bide mytime. .. . Yesterday I put on my old riding-suit, saddled Paddy, fed theTwins to their last mouthful, and went galloping off through the mudto help bring the cattle over to the Harris Ranch. I was a sight, inthat weather-stained old suit and ragged toppers, even before I gotfreckled and splashed with prairie-mud. I was standing up in thestirrups laughing at Francois, who'd had a bad slip and fallen in apuddle just back of our old corral, when her Ladyship came out. Shemust have taken me for a drunken cowboy who'd rolled into a sheep-dip, for my nose was red and my old Stetson sombrero was crooked on theback of my head and even my hair was caked with mud. She called to me, rather imperiously, so I went stampeding up to her, and let Paddyindulge in that theatrical stop-slide of his, on his haunches, so thatit wasn't until his nose was within two feet of her own that she couldbe quite sure she wasn't about to be run down. 

Her eyes popped a little when she saw it was a woman on Paddy, thoughshe'd refused to show a trace of fear when we went avalanching down onher. Then she studied my get-up. 

"I should rather like to ride that way, " she coolly announced. 

"It's the only way, " I told her, making Paddy pirouette by pressing aheel against his short-ribs. She meant, of course, riding astride, which must have struck her as the final word in audacity. 

"I like your pony, " next remarked Lady Alicia, with a somewhat wistfulintonation in her voice. 

"He's a brick, " I acknowledged. Then I swung about to help Francoishead off a bunch of rampaging steers. "Come and see us, " I called backover my shoulder. If Lady Alicia answered, I didn't have time to catchwhat she said. 

But that romp on Paddy has done me good. It shook the solemnity out ofme. I've just decided that I'm not going to surrender to thismiddle-aged Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire stuff before my time. I'm going torefuse to grow old and poky. I'm going to keep the spark alive, thesacred spark of youth, even though folks write me down as the biggestloon west of the Dirt Hills. So dear Lord--this is my prayer--whateverYou do to me, keep me _alive_. O God, don't let me, in Thy divine mercy, be a Dead One. Don't let me be a soured woman with a self-murdered soul. Keep the wine of youth in my body and the hope of happiness in my heart. Yea, permit me deeply to live and love and laugh, so that youth mayabide in my bones, even as it did in that once-renowned Duchess ofLienster, Who lived to the age of a hundred and ten, To die of a fall from a cherry-tree then!

My poor old Dinky-Dunk, by the way, meanders about these days so moodyand morose it's beginning to disturb me. He's at the end of hisstring, and picked clean to the bone, and I'm beginning to see thatit's my duty to buoy that man up, to nurse him back into a respectablebelief in himself. His nerves are a bit raw, and he's not alwaysresponsible for his manners. The other night he came in tired, andtried to read, when Poppsy and Pee-Wee were both going it like theRussian Balalaika. To tell the truth, their little tummies were a bitupset, because the food purveyor had had too strenuous a day to beregular in her rounds. 

"Can't you keep those squalling brats quiet?" Dinky-Dunk called out tome. It came like a thunder clap. It left me gasping, to think that hecould call his own flesh and blood "squalling brats. " And I wasshocked and hurt, but I decided not to show it. 

"Will somebody kindly page Lord Chesterfield?" I quietly remarked as Iwent to the Twins and wheeled them out to the kitchen, where I gavethem hot peppermint and rubbed their backs and quieted them downagain. 

I suppose there's no such thing as a perfect husband. That's a lessonwe've all got to learn, the same as all children, apparently, have tofind out that acorns and horse-chestnuts aren't edible. For the napwears off men the same as it does off clothes. I dread to have towrite it down, but I begin to detect thinnesses in Dinky-Dunk, and adisturbing little run or two in the even web of his character. But heknows when he's played Indian and attempts oblique and rathershamefaced efforts to make amends, later on, when it won't be toonoticeable. Last night, as I sat sewing, our little Dinkie must havehad a bad dream, for he wakened from a sound sleep with a scream ofterror. Dinky-Dunk went to him first, and took him up and sang to him, and when I glanced in I saw a rumply and tumbly and sleepy-eyed totwith his kinky head against his father's shoulder. As I took up mysewing again and heard Dinky-Dunk singing to his son, it seemed aproud and happy and contented sort of voice. It rose and fell in thatnext room, in a sort of droning bass, and for the life of me I can'ttell why, but as I stopped in my sewing and sat listening to thatfather singing to his sleepy-eyed first-born, it brought the suddentears to my eyes. It has been a considerable length of time, _enpassant_, since I found myself sitting down and pumping the brine. Imust be getting hardened in my old age. 

 _Tuesday the Fourteenth_

Lady Allie sent over for Dinky-Dunk yesterday morning, to fix thewindmill at Casa Grande. They'd put it out of commission in the firstweek, and emptied the pressure-tank, and were without water, and wereas helpless as a couple of canaries. We have a broken windmill of ourown, right here at home, but Diddums went meekly enough, although hewas in the midst of his morning work--and work is about to loom bigover this ranch, for we're at last able to get on the land. And thesooner you get on the land, in this latitude, the surer you are ofyour crop. We daren't shave down any margins of chance. We need thatcrop. .. . 

I am really beginning to despair of Iroquois Annie. She is the onlything I can get in the way of hired help out here, and yet she ishopeless. She is sullen and wasteful, and she has never yet learned tobe patient with the children. I try to soften and placate her with thegift of trinkets, for there is enough Redskin in her to make herinordinately proud of anything with a bit of flash and glitter to it. But she is about as responsive to actual kindness as a diamond-backrattler would be, and some day, if she drives me too far, I'm goingoff at half-cock and blow that breed into mince-meat. 

By the way, I can see myself writ small in little Dinkie, my moods andwaywardnesses and wicked impulses, and sudden chinooks of tendernessalternating with a perverse sort of shrinking away from love itself, even when I'm hungering for it. I can also catch signs of his pater'smasterfulness cropping out in him. Small as he is, he disturbs me bythat combative stare of his. It's almost a silent challenge I see inhis eyes as he coolly studies me, after a proclamation that he will bespanked if he repeats a given misdeed. 

I'm beginning to understand the meaning of that very old phrase aboutone's chickens coming home to roost. I can even detect sudden impulsesof cruelty in little Dinkie, when, young and tender as he appears tothe casual eye, a quick and wilful passion to hurt something takespossession of him. Yesterday I watched him catch up his one-eyed TeddyBear, which he loves, and beat its head against the shack-floor. Sometimes, too, he'll take possession of a plate and fling it to thefloor with all his force, even though he knows such an act is surelyfollowed by punishment. It's the same with Poppsy and Pee-Wee, withwhom he is apt to be over-rough, though his offenses in that directionmay still be touched with just a coloring of childish jealousy, longand arduously as I struggle to implant some trace of fraternal feelingin his anarchistic little breast. There are even times, after he'sbeen hugging my knees or perhaps stroking my cheek with his littlevelvet hands and murmuring "Maaa-maa!" in his small and bird-like coo, when he will suddenly turn savage and try to bite my patella or pullmy ear out by the root. 

Most of this cruelty, I think, is born of a sheer excess of animalspirits. But not all of it. Some of it is based on downrightwilfulness. I have seen him do without things he really wanted, ratherthan unbend and say the necessary "Ta-ta" which stands for both"please" and "thanks" in his still limited vocabulary. The little Hunwill also fall on his picture-books, at times, and do his best to tearthe linen pages apart, flailing them about in the air with genuineBerserker madness. But along with this, as I've already said, he hashis equally sudden impulses of affection, especially when he firstwakens in the morning and his little body seems to be singing with thepure joy of living. He'll smooth my hair, after I've lifted him fromthe crib into my bed, and bury his face in the hollow of my neck andkiss my cheek and pat my forehead and coo over me until I squeeze himso hard he has to grunt. Then he'll probably do his best to pick myeyes out, if I pretend to be asleep, or experiment with the end of mynose, to see why it doesn't lift up like a door-knocker. Then he'llsnuggle down in the crook of my arm, perfectly still except for thewriggling of his toes against my hip, and croon there with happinessand contentment, like a ring-neck dove. 

 _Friday the Seventeenth_

Lady Allie couldn't have been picked quite clean to the bone by theMcKails, for she's announced her intention of buying a touring-car anda gasoline-engine and has had a conference with Dinky-Dunk on thematter. She also sent to Montreal for the niftiest little Englishsailor suit, for Dinkie, together with a sailor hat that has"Agamemnon" printed in gold letters on its band. 

I ought to be enthusiastic about it, but I can't. Dinkie himself, however, who calls it his "new nailor nuit"--not being yet able tomanage the sibilants--struts about in it proud as a peacock, andrefuses to sit down in his supper-chair until Ikkie has carefullywiped off the seat of the same, to the end that the beloved nailornuit might remain immaculate. He'll lose his reverence for it, ofcourse, when he knows it better. It's a habit men have, big or little. 

Lady Allie has confessed that she is succumbing to the charm ofprairie life. It ought to make her more of a woman and less of asilk-lined idler. Dinky-Dunk still nurses the illusion that she isdelicate, and manages to get a lot of glory out of that clinging-vinepose of hers, big oak that he is! But it is simply absurd, the way hefalls for her flattery. She's making him believe that he's atwentieth-century St. Augustine and a Saint Christopher all rolledinto one. Poor old Dinky-Dunk, I'll have to keep an eye on him orthey'll be turning his head, for all its gray hairs. He is wax in thehand of designing beauty, as are most of the race of man. And the fairAllie, I must acknowledge, is dangerously appealing to the eye. It'sno wonder poor old Dinky-Dunk nearly broke his neck trying to teachher to ride astride. But I intend to give her ladyship an inkling, before long, that I'm not quite so stupid as I seem to be. She mustn'timagine she can "vamp" my Kaikobad with impunity. It's a case of anyport in a storm, I suppose, for she has to practise on somebody. But Imust say she looks well on horseback and can lay claim to a poise thatalways exacts its toll of respect. She rides hard, though I imagineshe would be unwittingly cruel to her mount. Yet she has been moreoffhanded and friendly, the last two or three times she has droppedover to the shack, and she is kind to the kiddies, especially Dinkie. She seems genuinely and unaffectedly fond of him. As for me, shethinks I'm hard, I feel sure, and is secretly studying me--trying todecipher, I suppose, what her sainted cousin could ever see in me tokick up a dust about!

Lady Allie's London togs, by the way, make me feel rather shoddy andslattern. I intend to swing in a little stronger for personaladornment, as soon as we get things going again. When a woman givesup, in that respect, she's surely a goner. And I may be a hard-handedand slabsided prairie huzzy, but there was a time when I stood besidethe big palms by the fountain in the conservatory of Prince Ernest deLigne's Brussels house in the _Rue Montoyer_ and the Marquis ofWhat-Ever-His-Name-Was bowed and set all the orders on his chestshaking when he kissed my hand and proclaimed that I was the mostbeautiful woman in Belgium!

Yes, there was such a time. But it was a long, long time ago, and Inever thought then I'd be a rancher's wife with a barrel-churn toscald out once a week and a wheezy old pump to prime in the morningand a little hanging garden of Babylon full of babies to keep warm andto keep fed and to keep from falling on their boneless little cocos! Imight even have married Theobald Gustav von Brockdorff and turned intoan embassy ball lizard and ascended into the old family landau of hisaunt the baroness, to disport along the boulevards therein very muchlike an oyster on the half-shell. I might have done all that, and Imight not. But it's all for the best, as the greatest pessimist whoever drew the breath of life once tried to teach in his _Candide_. Andin my career, as I have already written, there shall be no jeremiads. 

 _Sunday the Nineteenth_

I've been trying to keep tab on the Twins' weight, for it's importantthat they should gain according to schedule. But I've only Dinky-Dunk'sbulky grain-scales, and it's impossible to figure down to anything asfine as ounces or even quarter-pounds on such a balancer. Yet mybabies, I'm afraid, are not gaining as they ought. Poppsy is especiallyfretful of late. Why can't somebody invent children without colic, anyway? I have a feeling that I ought to run on low gear for a while. But that's a luxury I can't quite afford. 

Last night, when I was dead-tired and trying to give the last licks tomy day's work without doing a Keystone fall over the kitchen table, Dinky-Dunk said: "Why haven't you ever given a name to this new place?They tell me you have a genius for naming things--and here we arestill dubbing our home the Harris shack. "

"I suppose it ought to be an Indian name, in honor of Ikkie?" Isuggested, doing my best to maintain an unruffled front. And DuncanArgyll absently agreed that it might just as well. 

"Then what's the matter with calling it Alabama?" I mordantlysuggested. "For as I remember it, that means 'Here we rest. ' And I canimagine nothing more appropriate. "

I was half-sorry I said it, for the Lord deliver me always from asarcastic woman. But I've a feeling that the name is going to stick, whether we want it or not. At any rate, Alabama Ranch has rather amusical turn to it. .. . 

I wonder if there are any really perfect children in the world? Or dothe good little boys and girls only belong to that sentimentalizedmid-Victorian fiction which tried so hard to make the world like across between an old maid's herb-garden and a Sunday afternoon in aLondon suburb? I have tried talking with little Dinkie, and reasoningwith him. I have striven long and patiently to blow his little sparkof conscience into the active flame of self-judgment. And averse as Iam to cruelty and hardness, much as I hate the humiliation of physicalpunishment, my poor kiddie and I can't get along without the slipper. I have to spank him, and spank him soundly, about once a week. I'mdriven to this, or there'd be no sleep nor rest nor roof about ourheads at Alabama Ranch. I don't give a rip what Barrie may havewritten about the bringing up of children--for he never had any of hisown! He never had an imperious young autocrat to democratize. He neverhad a family to de-barbarize, even though he did write very prettybooks about the subject. It's just another case, I suppose, wherefiction is too cowardly or too finicky to be truthful. I had theoriesabout this child-business myself, at one time, but my pipe of illusionhas plumb gone out. It wasn't so many years ago that I imagined aboutall a mother had to do was to dress in clinging _negligees_, such asyou see in the toilet-soap advertisements, and hold a spotless littlesaint on her knee, or have a miraculously docile nurse in cap andapron carry in a little paragon all done up in dotted Swiss androse-pink, and pose for family groups, not unlike popular prints ofthe royal family in full evening dress, on _Louis Quinze_ settees. Andlater on, of course, one could ride out with a row of sedate littleprincelings at one's side, so that one could murmur, when the worldmarveled at their manners, "It's blood, my dears, merely blood!"

But fled, and fled forever, are all such dreams. Dinkie preferstreading on his bread-and-butter before consuming it, and does hisbest to consume the workings of my sewing-machine, and pokes thespoons down through the crack in the kitchen floor, and betrays aweakness for yard-mud and dust in preference to the well-scrubbedboards of the sleeping porch, which I've tried to turn into a sort ofnursery by day. Most fiction, I find, glides lightly over this eternalWaterloo between dirt and water--for no active and healthy child iseasy to keep clean. That is something which you never, never, reallysucceed at. All that you can do is to keep up the struggle, consolingyourself with the memory that cleanness, even surgical cleanness, isonly an approximation. The plain everyday sort of cleanness promptlyresolves itself into a sort of neck and neck race with dirt anddisorder, a neck and neck race with the soap-bar habitually runningsecond. Sometimes it seems hopeless. For it's incredible what canhappen to an active-bodied boy of two or three years in one brief butcrowded afternoon. It's equally amazing what can happen to arespectably furnished room after a healthy and high-spirited youngTurk has been turned loose in it for an hour or two. 

It's a battle, all right. But it has its compensations. It _has_ to, or the race would wither up like an unwatered cucumber-vine. Whodoesn't really love to tub a plump and dimpled little body like myDinkie's? I'm no petticoated Paul Peel, but I can see enough beauty inthe curves of that velvety body to lift it up and bite it on itspromptly protesting little flank. And there's unclouded glory inoccasionally togging him out in spotless white, and beholding him asimmaculate as a cherub, if only for one brief half-hour. It's thetransiency of that spotlessness, I suppose, which crowns it withglory. If he was forever in that condition, we'd be as indifferent toit as we are to immortelles and wax flowers. If he was always cherubicand perfect, I suppose, we'd never appreciate that perfection or knowthe joy of triumphing over the mother earth that has an affinity forthe finest of us. 

But I _do_ miss a real nursery, in more ways than one. The absence ofone gives Dinkie the range of the whole shack, and when on the rangehe's a timber-wolf for trouble, and can annoy his father even morethan he can me by his depredations. Last night after supper I heard anicy voice speaking from the end of the dining-room where Dinky-Dunkhas installed his desk. 

"Will you kindly come and see what your son has done?" my husbanddemanded, with a sort of in-this-way-madness-lies tone. 

I stepped in through the kitchen door, ignoring the quite unconscioushumor of "_my_ son" under the circumstances, and found that Dinkie hadprovided a novel flavor for his dad by emptying the bottle of ink intohis brand-new tin of pipe-tobacco. There was nothing to be done, ofcourse, except to wash as much of the ink as I could off Dinkie'sface. Nor did I reveal to his father that three days before I hadcarefully compiled a list of his son and heir's misdeeds, for oneround of the clock. They were, I find, as follows:

Overturning a newly opened tin of raspberries, putting bread-dough inhis ears; breaking my nail-buffer, which, however, I haven't used fora month and more; paring the bark, with the bread-knife, off thelonely little scrub poplar near the kitchen door, our one and onlyshade; breaking a drinking-glass, which was accident; cutting holeswith the scissors in Ikkie's new service-apron; removing the coversfrom two of his father's engineering books; severing the wire joint inmy sewing-machine belt (expeditiously and secretly mended by Whinnie, however, when he came in with the milk-pails); emptying what was leftof my bottle of vanilla into the bread mixer; and last but not least, trying to swallow and nearly choking on my silver thimble, in which heseems to find never-ending disappointment because it will not remainfixed on the point of his nose. 

It may sound like a busy day, but it was, on the whole, merely anaverage one. Yet I'll wager a bushel of number one Northern winterwheat to a doughnut ring that if Ibsen had written an epilogue for_The Doll's House_, Nora would have come crawling back to her home andher kiddies, in the end. 

 _Wednesday the Twenty-second_

Lady Allie is either dunderheaded or designing. She has calmlysuggested that her rural phone-line be extended from Casa Grande toAlabama Ranch so that she can get in touch with Dinky-Dunk when sheneeds his help and guidance. Even as it is, he's called on about fivetimes a week, to run to the help of that she-remittance-man incorduroy and dog-skin gauntlets and leggings. 

She seems thunderstruck to find that she can't get the hired help shewants, at a moment's notice. Dinky-Dunk says she's sure to be imposedon, and that although she's as green as grass, she's really anxious tolearn. He feels that it's his duty to stand between her and theoutsiders who'd be only too ready to impose on her ignorance. 

She rode over to see the Twins yesterday, who were sleeping out underthe fly-netting I'd draped over them, the pink-tinted kind they putover fruit-baskets in the city markets and shops. Poppsy and Pee-Weelooked exactly like two peaches, rosy and warm and round. 

Lady Allie stared at them with rather an abstracted eye, and then, idiot that she is, announced that she'd like to have twelve. But talkis cheap. The modern woman who's had even half that number has prettywell given up her life to her family. It's remarkable, by the way, thesilent and fathomless pity I've come to have for childless women. Thethought of a fat spinster fussing over a French poodle or a fadedblond forlornly mothering a Pekinese chow gives me a feeling that isat least first cousin to sea-sickness. 

Lady Allie, I find, has very fixed and definite theories as to therearing of children. They should never be rocked or patted, or begiven a "comfort, " and they should be in bed for the night at sundown. There was a time I had a few theories of my own, but I've pretty wellabandoned them. I've been taught, in this respect, to travel light, asthe overland voyageurs of this country would express it, to travellight and leave the final resort to instinct. 

 _Friday the Twenty-fourth_

I was lazy last night, so both the ink-pot and its owner had a rest. Or perhaps it wasn't so much laziness as wilful revolt against themonotony of work, for, after all, it's not the 'unting as 'urts the'osses, but the 'ammer, 'ammer, 'ammer on the 'ard old road! I loafedfor a long time in a sort of sit-easy torpor, with Bobs' head betweenmy knees while Dinky-Dunk pored over descriptive catalogues aboutfarm-tractors, for by hook or by crook we've got to have a tractor forAlabama Ranch. 

"Bobs, " I said after studying my collie's eyes for a good manyminutes, "you are surely one grand old dog!"

Whereupon Bobs wagged his tail-stump with sleepy content. As I bentlower and stared closer into those humid eyes of his, it seemed asthough I were staring down into a bottomless well, through a peep-holeinto Infinity, so deep and wonderful was that eye, that dusky pool oflove and trust. It was like seeing into the velvet-soft recesses of asoul. And I could stare into them without fear, just as Bobs couldstare back without shame. That's where dogs are slightly differentfrom men. If I looked into a man's eye like that he'd either rudelyinquire just what the devil I was gaping at or he'd want to ask me outto supper in one of those Pompeian places where a bald-headed waiterserves lobsters in a _chambre particulière_. 

But all I could see in the eye of my sedate old Bobs was love, loveinfinite and inarticulate, love too big ever to be put into words. 

"Dinky-Dunk, " I said, interrupting my lord and master at his reading, "if God is really love, as the Good Book says, I don't see why theyever started talking about the Lamb of God. "

"Why shouldn't they?" asked Diddums, not much interested. 

"Because lambs may be artless and innocent little things, but whenyou've got their innocence you've got about everything. They're notthe least bit intelligent, and they're self-centered and self-immured. Now, with dogs it's different. Dogs love you and guard you and ache toserve you. " And I couldn't help stopping to think about the dogs I'dknown and loved, the dogs who once meant so much in my life: Chinkie'sBingo, with his big baptizing tongue and his momentary rainbow as heemerged from the water and shook himself with my stick still in hismouth; Timmie with his ineradicable hatred for cats; Maxie with allhis tricks and his singsong of howls when the piano played; Schnider, with his mania for my slippers and undies, which he carried into mostunexpected quarters; and Gyp, God bless him, who was so homely of faceand form but so true blue in temper and trust. 

"Life, to a dog, " I went on, "really means devotion to man, doesn'tit?"

"What are you driving at, anyway?" asked Dinky-Dunk. 

"I was just wondering, " I said as I sat staring into Bobs' eyes, "howstrange it would be if, after all, God was really a dog, the lovingand faithful Watch-Dog of His universe!"

"Please don't be blasphemous, " Dinky-Dunk coldly remarked. 

"But I'm not blasphemous, " I tried to tell him. "And I was never moreserious in my life. There's even something sacred about it, once youlook at it in the right way. Just think of the Shepherd-Dog of theStars, the vigilant and affectionate Watcher who keeps the wanderingworlds in their folds! That's not one bit worse than the lamb idea, only we've got so used to the lamb it doesn't shock us into attentionany more. Why, just look at these eyes of Bobs right now. There's morenobility and devotion and trust and love in them than was ever in allthe eyes of all the lambs that ever frisked about the fields andsheep-folds from Dan to Beersheba!"

"Your theory, I believe, is entertained by the Igorrotes, " remarkedDinky-Dunk as he made a pretense of turning back to histractor-pamphlet. "The Igorrotes and other barbarians, " he repeated, so as to be sure the screw was being turned in the proper direction. 

"And now I know why she said the more she knew about men the bettershe liked dogs, " I just as coldly remarked, remembering Madame deStael. "And I believe you're jealous of poor old Bobs just because heloves me more than you do. "

Dinky-Dunk put down his pamphlet. Then he called Bobs over to his sideof the table. But Bobs, I noticed, didn't go until I'd noddedapproval. So Dinky-Dunk took his turn at sitting with Bobs' nose inhis hand and staring down into the fathomless orbs that stared up athim. 

"You'll never get a lady, me lud, to look up at you like that, " I toldhim. 

"Perhaps they have, " retorted Dinky-Dunk, with his face slightlyaverted. 

"And having done so in the past, there's the natural chance thatthey'll do so in the future, " I retorted, making it half a questionand half a statement. But he seemed none too pleased at that thrust, and he didn't even answer me when I told him I supposed I was hisAiredale, because they say an Airedale is a one-man dog. 

"Then don't at least get distemper, " observed my Kaikobad, veryquietly, over the top of his tractor-catalogue. 

I made no sign that I had heard him. But Dinky-Dunk would never havespoken to me that way, three short years ago. And I imagine he knowsit. For, after all, a change has been taking place, insubstantial andunseen and subterranean, a settling of the foundations of life whichcomes not only to a building as it grows older but also to the heartas it grows older. And I'm worried about the future. 

 _Monday the--Monday the I-forget-what_

It's Monday, blue Monday, that's all I remember, except that there's arift in the lute of life at Alabama Ranch. Yesterday of course wasSunday. And out of that day of rest Dinky-Dunk spent just five hoursover at Casa Grande. When he showed up, rather silent and constrainedand an hour and a half late for dinner, I asked him what had happened. 

He explained that he'd been adjusting the carbureter on Lady Alicia'snew car. 

"Don't you think, Duncan, " I said, trying to speak calmly, though Iwas by no means calm inside, "that it's rather a sacrifice of dignity, holding yourself at that woman's beck and call?"

"We happen to be under a slight debt of obligation to _that woman_, "my husband retorted, clearly more upset than I imagined he could be. 

"But, Dinky-Dunk, you're not her hired man, " I protested, wonderinghow, without hurting him, I could make him see the thing from mystandpoint. 

"No, but that's about what I'm going to become, " was his altogetherunexpected answer. 

"I can't say that I quite understand you, " I told him, with a sickfeeling which I found it hard to keep under. Yet he must have noticedsomething amusingly tragic in my attitude, for he laughed, though itwasn't without a touch of bitterness. And laughter, under thecircumstances, didn't altogether add to my happiness. 

"I simply mean that Allie's made me an offer of a hundred and fiftydollars a month to become her ranch-manager, " Dinky-Dunk announcedwith a casualness that was patently forced. "And as I can't wring thatmuch out of this half-section, and as I'd only be four-flushing if Ilet outsiders come in and take everything away from a tenderfoot, Idon't see--"

"And such a lovely tenderfoot, " I interrupted. 

"--I don't see why it isn't the decent and reasonable thing, " concludedmy husband, without stooping to acknowledge the interruption, "toaccept that offer. "

I understood, in a way, every word he was saying; yet it seemedseveral minutes before the real meaning of a somewhat startlingsituation seeped through to my brain. 

"But surely, if we get a crop, " I began. It was, however, a lamebeginning. And like most lame beginnings, it didn't go far. 

"How are we going to get a crop when we can't even raise money enoughto get a tractor?" was Dinky-Dunk's challenge. "When we haven't help, and we're short of seed-grain, and we can't even get a gang-plow oncredit?"

It didn't sound like my Dinky-Dunk of old, for I knew that he wasequivocating and making excuses, that he was engineering our ill luckinto an apology for worse conduct. But I was afraid of myself, evenmore than I was afraid of Dinky-Dunk. And the voice of Instinct keptwhispering to me to be patient. 

"Why couldn't we sell off some of the steers?" I valiantly suggested. 

"It's the wrong season for selling steers, " Dinky-Dunk replied with aponderous sort of patience. "And besides, those cattle don't belong tome. "

"Then whose are they?" I demanded. 

"They're yours, " retorted Dinky-Dunk, and I found his hair-splitting, at such a time, singularly exasperating. 

"I rather imagine they belonged to the family, if you intend it toremain a family. "

He winced at that, as I had proposed that he should. 

"It seems to be getting a dangerously divided one, " he flung back, with a quick and hostile glance in my direction. 

I was ready to fly to pieces, like a barrel that's lost its hoops. Buta thin and quavery and over-disturbing sound from the swing-box out onthe sleeping-porch brought me up short. It was a pizzicato note whichI promptly recognized as the gentle Pee-Wee's advertisement ofwakefulness. So I beat a quick and involuntary retreat, knowing onlytoo well what I'd have ahead of me if Poppsy joined in to make thatsolo a duet. 

But Pee-Wee refused to be silenced, and what Dinky-Dunk had just saidfelt more and more like a branding-iron against my breast. So Icarried my wailing infant back to the dinner-table where my husbandstill stood beside his empty chair. The hostile eye with which heregarded the belcantoing Pee-Wee reminded me of the time he'd spokenof his own off-spring as "squalling brats. " And the memory wasn't atranquillizing one. It was still another spur roweling me back to thering of combat. 

"Then you've decided to take that position?" I demanded as I surveyedthe cooling roast-beef and the fallen Yorkshire pudding. 

"As soon as they can fix up my sleeping-quarters in the bunk-houseover at Casa Grande, " was Dinky-Dunk's reply. He tried to say itcasually, but didn't quite succeed, for I could see his color deepen alittle. And this, in turn, led to a second only too obvious gesture ofself-defense. 

"My monthly check, of course, will be delivered to you, " he announced, with an averted eye. 

"Why to me?" I coldly inquired. 

"It wouldn't be of much use to me, " he retorted. And I resented hisbasking thus openly in the fires of martyrdom. 

"In that case, " I asked, "what satisfaction are you getting out ofyour new position?"

That sent the color ebbing from his face again, and he looked at me asI'd never seen him look at me before. We'd both been mauled by the pawof Destiny, and we were both nursing ragged nerves and oversensitizedspirits, facing each other as irritable as teased rattlers, ready tothump rocks with our head. More than once I'd heard Dinky-Dunkproclaim that the right sort of people never bickered and quarreled. And I remembered Theobald Gustav's pet aphorism to the effect that_Hassen machts nichts_. But life had its limits. And I wasn't one ofthose pink-eared shivery little white mice who could be intimidatedinto tears by a frown of disapproval from my imperial mate. Andmarried life, after all, is only a sort of _guerre d'usure_. 

"And you think you're doing the right thing?" I demanded of myhusband, not without derision, confronting him with a challenge on myface and a bawling Pee-Wee on my hip. 

Dinky-Dunk sniffed. 

"That child seems to have its mother's disposition, " he murmured, ignoring my question. 

"The prospects of its acquiring anything better from its father seemrather remote, " I retorted, striking blindly. For that over-deftadding of insult to injury had awakened every last one of my sevensleeping devils. It was an evidence of cruelty, cold and calculatedcruelty. And by this time little waves of liquid fire were runningthrough my tingling body. 

"Then I can't be of much service to this family, " announced Dinky-Dunk, with his maddening note of mockery. 

"I fail to see how you can be a retriever for a flabby-minded idlerand the head of this household at one and the same time, " I said outof the seething crater-fogs of my indignation. 

"She's never impressed me as being flabby, " he ventured, with aquietness which only a person who knew him would or could recognize asdangerous. 

"Well, I don't share your admiration for her, " I retorted, letting thetide of vitriol carry me along in its sweep. 

Dinky-Dunk's face hardened. 

"Then what do you intend doing about it?" he demanded. 

That was a poser, all right. That was a poser which, I suppose, many awoman at some time in her life has been called on to face. What did Iintend doing about it? I didn't care much. But I at least intended tosave the bruised and broken hulk of my pride from utter annihilation. 

"I intend, " I cried out with a quaver in my voice, "since you're notable to fill the bill, to be head of this household myself. "

"That sounds like an ultimatum, " said Dinky-Dunk very slowly, his facethe sickly color of a meerschaum-pipe bowl. 

"You can take it any way you want to, " I passionately proclaimed, compelled to raise my voice to the end that it might surmountPee-Wee's swelling cries. "And while you're being lackey for LadyAlicia Newland I'll run this ranch. I'll run it in my own way, andI'll run it without hanging on to a woman's skirt!"

Dinky-Dunk stared at me as though he were looking at me through aleper-squint. But he had been brutal, was being brutal. And it was acase of fighting fire with fire. 

"Then you're welcome to the job, " I heard him proclaiming out of hisblind white heat of rage. "After _that_, I'm through!"

"It won't be much of a loss, " I shot back at him, feeling that he'dsoured a bright and sunny life into eternal blight. 

"I'll remember that, " he said with his jaw squared and his head down. I saw him push his chair aside and wheel about and stride away fromthe Yorkshire pudding with the caved-in roof, and the roast-beef thatwas as cold as my own heart, and the indignantly protesting Pee-Weewho in some vague way kept reminding me that I wasn't quite asfree-handed as I had been so airily imagining myself. For I mistilyremembered that the Twins, before the day was over, were going to findit a very flatulent world. But I wasn't crushed. For there are timeswhen even wives and worms will turn. And this was one of them. 

 _Thursday the Thirtieth_

It's a busy three days I've been having, and if I'm a bit tuckered outin body I'm still invincible in spirit. For I've already triumphedover a tangle or two and now I'm going to see this thing through. I'mgoing to see Alabama Ranch make good. 

I teamed in to Buckhorn, with Dinkie and the Twins and Ikkie beddeddown in the wagon-box on fresh wheat-straw, and had a talk with SydWoodward, the dealer there. It took me just about ten minutes to getdown to hard-pan with him, once he was convinced that I meantbusiness. He's going to take over my one heavy team, Tumble-Weed andCloud-Maker, though it still gives my heart a wrench to think ofparting with those faithful animals. I'm also going to sell offfifteen or eighteen of the heaviest steers and turn back the tinLizzie, which can be done without for a few months at least. 

But, on the other hand, I'm going to have an 8-16 tractor that'll turnover an acre of land in little more than an hour's time, and turn itover a trifle better than the hired hand's usual "cut and cover"method, and at a cost of less than fifty cents an acre. Later on, Ican use my tractor for hauling, or turn it to practically any otherform of farm-power there may be a call for. I'm also getting a specialgrade of seed-wheat. There was a time when I thought that wheat wasjust merely wheat. It rather opened my eyes to be told that in oneseason the Shippers' Clearance Association definitely specified andduly handled exactly four hundred and twenty-eight grades of thisparticular grain. Even straight Northern wheat, without the taint ofweed-seed, may be classified in any of the different numbers up tosix, and also assorted into "tough, " "wet, " "damp, " "musty, ""binburnt" and half a dozen other grades and conditions, according tothe season. But since I'm to be a wheat-grower, it's my duty to findout all I can about the subject. 

I am also the possessor of three barrels of gasoline, and a newdisk-drill, together with the needed repairs for the old drill whichworked so badly last season. I've got Whinstane Sandy patching up theheavy sets of harness, and at daybreak to-morrow I'm going to have himout on the land, and also Francois, who has promised to stay with usanother two weeks. It may be that I'll put Ikkie in overalls and gether out there too, for there's not a day, not an hour, to be lost. Iwant my crop in. I want my seed planted, and the sooner the better. 

Whinstane Sandy, on account of his lame foot, can't follow a plow. Butthere's no reason he shouldn't run a tractor. If it wasn't for mybairns, of course, I'd take that tractor in hand myself. But my twolittle hostages to fortune cut off that chance. I've decided, however, to have Whinnie build a canopy-top over the old buckboard, and fit twostrong frames, just behind the dashboard, that will hold a couple ofwillow-baskets, end to end. Then I can nest Poppsy and Pee-Wee inthese two baskets, right under my nose, with little Dinkie beside mein the seat, and drive from one end of the ranch to the other and seethat the work is being done, and done right. The Lord knows how I'llget back to the shack in time to rustle the grub--but we'll manage, insome way. 

The Twins have been doing better, the last week or two. And I ratherdread the idea of weaning them. If I had somebody to look after them Icould, I suppose, get a breast-pump and leave their mid-morning andmid-afternoon luncheons in cold-storage for them, and so ride mytractor without interruption. I remember a New York woman who didthat, left the drawn milk of her breast on ice, so that she might gadand shop for a half-day at a time. But the more I think it over themore unnatural and inhuman it seems. Yet to hunt for help, in thisbusy land, is like searching for a needle in a hay-stack. Already, inthe clear morning air, one can hear the stutter and skip and cough ofthe tractors along the opalescent sky-line, accosting the morning sunwith their rattle and tattle of harvests to be. And I intend to be inon the game. 

 _Sunday the Second_

I'm too busy to puddle in spilt milk or worry over things that arepast. I can't even take time to rhapsodize over the kitchen-cabinet towhich Whinnie put the finishing touches to-day at noon, though I knowit will save me many a step. Poor old Whinnie, I'm afraid, is more aputterer than a plowman. He's had a good deal of trouble with thetractor, and his lame foot seems to bother him, on account of the longhours, but he proclaims he'll see me through. 

Tractor-plowing, I'm beginning to discover, isn't the simple operationit sounds, for your land, in the first place, has to be staked off andmarked with guidons, since you must know your measurements and haveyour headlands uniform and your furrows straight or there'll be awoeful mix-up before you come to the end of your job. The greattrouble is that a tractor can't turn in its own length, as a team ofhorses can. Hence this deploying space must be wasted, or plowed laterwith horses, and your headlands themselves must be wide enough for theturning radius of your tractor. Some of the ranchers out here, Iunderstand, even do their tractor-plowing in the form of a series ofelongated figure-eights, beginning at one corner of their tract, claiming this reduces the time spent with plows out of the ground. Butthat looked too complex for me to tackle. 

Then, too, machinery has one thing in common with man: they occasionallyget out of kilter at the very time you expect most from them. So thismorning I had to bend, if I did not actually break, the Sabbath byworking on my tractor-engine. I put on Ikkie's overalls--for I _have_succeeded in coercing Ikkie into a jumper and the riding-seat of the oldgang-plow--and went out and studied that tractor. I was determined tounderstand just what was giving the trouble. 

It was two hours before I located the same, which was caused by thetimer. But I've conquered the doggoned thing, and got her to sparkright, and I went a couple of rounds, Sunday and all, just to makesure she was in working order. And neither my actions nor my language, I know, are those of a perfect lady. But any one who'd lamped me inthat get-up, covered with oil and dust and dirt, would know that neveragain could I be a perfect lady. I'm a wiper, a greaser, a clodhopper, and, according to the sullen and brooding-eyed Ikkie, a bit of aslave-driver. And the odd part of it all is that I'm wringing aperverse sort of enjoyment out of the excitement and the novelty ofthe thing. I'm being something more than a mere mollusk. I'm making mypower felt, and producing results. And self-expression, I find, is thebreath of life to my soul. But I've scarcely time to do my hair, andmy complexion is gone, and I've got cracks in my cheek-skin. I'mgetting old and ugly, and no human being will ever again love me. Evenmy own babies gape at me kind of round-eyed when I take them in myarms. 

But I'm wrong there, and I know I'm wrong. My little Dinkie willalways love me. I know that by the way his little brown arms clingabout my wind-roughened neck, by the way he burrows in against mybreast and hangs on to me and hollers for his Mummsy when she's out ofsight. He's not a model youngster, I know. I'm afraid I love him toomuch to demand perfection from him. It's the hard and selfish women, after all, who make the ideal mothers--at least from the standpoint ofthe disciplinarian. For the selfish woman refuses to be blinded bylove, just as she refuses to be imposed upon and declines to betroubled by the thought of inflicting pain on those perverse littletoddlers who grow so slowly into the knowledge of what is right andwrong. It hurts me like Sam-Hill, sometimes, to have to hurt my littleman-child. When the inevitable and slow-accumulating spanking _does_come, I try to be cool-headed and strictly just about it--for one lookout of a child's eyes has the trick of bringing you suddenly to thejudgment-bar. Dinkie, young as he is, can already appraise and arraignme and flash back his recognition of injustice. More than once he'smade me think of those lines of Frances Lyman's:

 "Just a look of swift surprise From the depths of childish eyes, Yet my soul to judgment came, Cowering, as before a flame. Not a word, a lisp of blame: Just a look of swift surprise In the quietly lifted eyes!"

 _Saturday the Twenty-second_

I've got my seed in, glory be! The deed is done; the mad scramble isover. And Mother Earth, as tired as a child of being mauled, liessleeping in the sun. 

If, as some one has said, to plow is to pray, we've been doing a heapof mouth-worship on Alabama Ranch this last few weeks. But the finalacre has been turned over, the final long sea of furrows disked andplank-dragged and seeded down, and after the heavy rains of Thursdaynight there's just the faintest tinge of green, here and there, alongmy billiard-table of a granary-to-be. 

But the mud is back, and to save my kitchen floor, last night, Itrimmed down a worn-out broom, cut off most of the handle, andfastened it upside down in a hole I'd bored at one end of the lowerdoor-step. 

All this talk of mine about wheat sounds as though I were what theycall out here a Soil Robber, or a Land Miner, a get-rich-quicksquatter who doesn't bother about mixed farming or the rotation ofcrops, with no true love for the land which he impoverishes and leavesbehind him when he's made his pile. I want to make my pile, it's true, but we'll soon have other things to think about. There's my homegarden to be made ready, and the cattle and pigs to be looked after, and a run to be built for my chickens. The latter, for all theirneglect, have been laying like mad and I've three full crates of eggsin the cellar, all dipped in water-glass and ready for barter atBuckhorn. If the output keeps up I'll store away five or six crates ofthe treated eggs for Christmas-season sale, for in midwinter theyeasily bring eighty cents a dozen. 

And speaking of barter reminds me that both Dinkie and the Twins aregrowing out of their duds, and heaven knows when I'll find time to makemore for them. They'll probably have to promenade around like Ikkie'sancestors. I've even run out of safety-pins. And since the enduringnecessity for the safety-pin is evidenced by the fact that it's evenfound on the baby-mummies of ancient Egypt, and must be a good fourthousand years old, I've had Whinnie supply me with some home-made ones, manufactured out of hair-pins. .. . My little Dinkie, I notice, is goingto love animals. He seems especially fond of horses, and is fearlesswhen beside them, or on them, or even under them--for he walked calmlyin under the belly of Jail-Bird, who could have brained him with onepound of his wicked big hoof. But the beast seemed to know that it was afriend in that forbidden quarter, and never so much as moved untilDinkie had been rescued. It won't be long now before Dinkie has a pintoof his own and will go bobbing off across the prairie-floor, I suppose, like a monkey on a circus-horse. Even now he likes nothing better thancoming with his mother while she gathers her "clutch" of eggs. He canscramble into a manger--where my unruly hens persist in making anoccasional nest--like a marmoset. The delight on his face at thediscovery of even two or three "cackle-berries, " as Whinnie calls them, is worth the occasional breakage and yolk-stained rompers. For I sharein that delight myself, since egg-gathering always gives me the feelingthat I'm partaking of the bounty of Nature, that I'm getting somethingfor next-to-nothing. It's the same impulse, really, which drives citywomen to the bargain-counter and the auction-room, the sublimatedpassion to adorn the home teepee-pole with the fruits of their cunning!

 _Tuesday the Twenty-fifth_

Yesterday I teamed in to Buckhorn, for supplies. And as I drove downthe main street of that squalid little western town I must have lookedlike something the crows had been roosting on. But just as I wasswinging out of Syd Woodward's store-yard I caught sight of Lady Alliein her big new car, drawn up in front of the modestly denominated "NewYork Emporium. " What made me stare, however, was the unexpected visionof Duncan Argyll McKail, emerging from the aforesaid "Emporium" ladendown with parcels. These he carried out to the car and was dutifullystowing away somewhere down in the back seat, when he happened to lookup and catch sight of me as I swung by in my wagon-box. He turned asort of dull brick-red, and pretended to be having a lot of troublewith getting those parcels where they ought to be. But he lookedexactly like a groom. And he knew it. And he knew that I knew he knewit. And if he was miserable, which I hope he was, I'm pretty sure hewasn't one-half so miserable as I was--and as I am. "_Damn thatwoman!_" I caught myself saying, out loud, after staring at my mottledold map in my dressing-table mirror. 

I've been watching the sunset to-night, for a long time, and thinkingabout things. It was one of those quiet and beautiful prairie sunsetswhich now and then flood you with wonder, in spite of yourself, andgive you an achey little feeling in the heart. It was a riot of orangeand Roman gold fading out into pale green, with misty opal andpearl-dust along the nearer sky-line, then a big star or two, and thensilence, the silence of utter peace and beauty. But it didn't bringpeace to my soul. I could remember watching just such a sunset with mylord and master beside me, and turning to say: "Don't you sometimesfeel, Lover, that you were simply made for joy and rapture in momentslike this? Don't you feel as though your body were a harp that couldthrob and sing with the happiness of life?"

And I remembered the way my Dunkie had lifted up my chin and kissedme. 

But that seemed a long, long time ago. And I wasn't in tune with theInfinite. And I felt lonely and old and neglected, with callouses onmy hands and the cords showing in my neck, and my nerves not exactlywhat they ought to be. For Sunday, which is reckoned as a day of rest, had been a long and busy day for me. Dinkie had been obstreperous andhad eaten most of the paint off his Noah's Ark, and had later burnthis fingers pulling my unbaked loaf-cake out of the oven, aftereventually tiring of breaking the teeth out of my comb, one by one. Poppsy and Pee-Wee had been peevish and disdainful of each other'ssociety, and Iroquois Annie had gruntingly intimated that she wasabout fed up on trekking the floor with wailing infants. But I'd hadmy week's mending to do, and what was left of the ironing to getthrough and Whinnie's work-pants to veneer with a generous new patch, and thirteen missing buttons to restore to the kiddies' differentgarments. My back ached, my finger-bones were tired, and there was ajumpy little nerve in my left temple going for all the world like atelegraph-key. And then I gave up. 

I sat down and stared at that neatly folded pile of baby-clothes twofeet high, a layer-cake of whites and faded blues and pinks. I staredat it, and began to gulp tragically, wallowing in a wave of self-pity. I felt so sorry for myself that I let my flat-iron burn a hole cleanthrough the ironing-sheet, without even smelling it. That, I toldmyself, was all that life could be to me, just a round of washing andironing and meal-getting and mending, fetch and carry, work and worry, from sun-up until sun-down, and many a time until midnight. 

And what, I demanded of the frying-pan on its nail above thestove-shelf, was I getting out of it? What was it leading to? And whatwould it eventually bring me? It would eventually bring me crabbed andcrow-footed old age, and fallen arches and a slabsided figure that arange-pinto would shy at. It would bring me empty year after year outhere on the edge of Nowhere. It would bring me drab and spiritlessdrudgery, and faded eyes, and the heart under my ribs slowly butsurely growing as dead as a door-nail, and the joy of living just asslowly but surely going out of my life, the same as the royal blue hadfaded out of Dinkie's little denim jumpers. 

At that very moment, I remembered, there were women listening tosymphony music in Carnegie Hall, and women sitting in willow-rockersat Long Beach contentedly listening to the sea-waves. There were womendriving through Central Park, soft and lovely with early spring, ormotoring up to the Clairemont for supper and watching the searchlightsfrom the war-ships along the Hudson, and listening to the music on theroof-gardens and dancing their feet off at that green-topped heaven ofyouth which overlooks the Plaza where Sherman's bronze horse forevertreads its spray of pine. There were happy-go-lucky girls crowding thesoda-fountains and regaling themselves on fizzy water and fruitsirups, and dropping in at first nights or motoring out for sea-fooddinners along lamp-pearled and moonlit boulevards of smooth asphalt. And here I was planted half-way up to the North Pole, with coyotes forcompany, with a husband who didn't love me, and not a jar of decentface-cream within fifteen miles of the shack! I was lost there in asea of flat desolation, without companionable neighbors, without anidea, without a chance for any exchange of thought. I had no time forreading, and what was even worse, I had no desire for reading, butplodded on, like the stunned ox, kindred to the range animals andsister to the cow. 

Then, as I sat luxuriating before my crowded banquet-table of misery, as I sat mopping my nose--which was getting most unmistakably roughwith prairie-winds and alkali-water--and thinking what a fine mess I'dmade of a promising young life, I fancied I heard an altogether toofamiliar C-sharp cry. So I got wearily up and went tiptoeing in to seeif either Poppsy or Pee-Wee were awake. 

But they were there, safe and sound and fast asleep, curled up like twoplump little kittens, with their long lashes on their cheeks ofpeach-blow pink and their dewy little lips slightly parted and fourlittle dimples in the back of each of the four little hands. And as Istood looking down at them, with a shake still under my breastbone, Icouldn't keep from saying: "God bless your sleepy old bones!" Somethingmelted and fell from the dripping eaves of my heart, and I felt that itwas a sacred and God-given and joyous life, this life of being amother, and any old maid who wants to pirouette around the Plaza roofwith a lounge-lizard breathing winy breaths into her false hair waswelcome to her choice. I was at least in the battle of life--and lifeis a battle which scars you more when you try to keep out of it thanwhen you wade into it. I was a mother and a home-maker and the hope andbuttress of the future. And all I wanted was a good night's sleep andsome candid friend to tell me not to be a feather-headed idiot, but asensible woman with a sensible perspective on things!

 _Friday the Twenty-seventh--Or Should It Be the Twenty-eighth_

It has turned quite cold again, with frosts sharp enough at night tofreeze a half-inch of ice on the tub of soft-water I've been socarefully saving for future shampoos. It's just as well I didn't try torush the season by getting too much of my truck-garden planted. We'reglad of a good fire in the shack-stove after sun-down. I've rentedthirty acres from the Land Association that owns the half-section nextto mine and am going to get them into oats. If they don't ripen upbefore the autumn frosts come and blight them, I can still use thestuff for green feed. And I've bargained for the hay-rights from theupper end of the section, but heaven only knows how I'll ever get itcut and stacked. 

Whinnie had to kill a calf yesterday, for we'd run out of meat. Aswe're in a district that's too sparsely settled for a Beef Ring, wehave to depend on ourselves for our roasts. But whatever happens, Ibelieve in feeding my workers. I wonder, by the way, how the fair LadyAllie is getting along with her _cuisine_. Is she giving Dinky-Dunk aBeautiful Thought for breakfast, instead of a generous plate of hamand eggs? If she is, I imagine she's going to blight Romance in thebud. 

I've just had a circular letter from the Women Grain Growers'Association explaining their fight for community medical service and asystem of itinerant rural nurses. They're organized, and they're inearnest, and I'm with them to the last ditch. They're fighting for thethings that this raw new country is most in need of. It will take ussome time to catch up with the East. But the westerner's a scrambler, once he's started. 

I can't get away from the fact, since I know them both, that there's abig gulf between the East and the West. It shouldn't be there, ofcourse, but that doesn't seem to affect the issue. It's the oppositionof the New to the Old, of the Want-To-Bes to the Always-Has-Beens, ofthe young and unruly to the settled and sedate. We seem to wantfreedom, and they seem to prefer order. We want movement, and theywant repose. We look more feverishly to the future, and they dwellmore fondly on the past. They call us rough, and we try to get even byterming them _effete_. They accentuate form, and we remain satisfiedwith performance. We're jealous of what they have and they're jealousof what we intend to be. We're even secretly envious of certain thingspeculiarly theirs which we openly deride. We're jealous, at heart, oftheir leisure and their air of permanence, of their accomplishmentsand arts and books and music, of their buildings and parks and townswith the mellowing tone of time over them. And as soon as we makemoney enough, I notice, we slip into their neighborhood for a gulp ortwo at their fountains of culture. Some day, naturally, we'll be morealike, and have more in common. The stronger colors will fade out ofthe newer fabric and we'll merge into a more inoffensive monotone ofrespectability. Our Navajo-blanket audacities will tone down towall-tapestry sedateness--but not too, too soon, I pray the gods!

Speaking of Navajo reminds me of Redskins, and Redskins take mythoughts straight back to Iroquois Annie, who day by day becomessullener and stupider and more impossible. I can see positive dislikefor my Dinkie in her eyes, and I'm at present applying zinc ointmentto Pee-Wee's chafed and scalded little body because of her neglect. I'll ring-welt and quarter that breed yet, mark my words! As it is, there's a constant cloud of worry over my heart when I'm away from theshack and my bairns are left behind. This same Ikkie, apparently, tried to scald poor old Bobs the other day, but Bobs dodged most ofthat steaming potato-water and decided to even up the ledger ofill-usage by giving her a well-placed nip on the hip. Ikkie now sitsdown with difficulty, and Bobs shows the white of his eye when shecomes near him, which isn't more often than Ikkie can help--And ofsuch, in these troublous Ides of March, and April and May, is thekingdom of Chaddie McKail!

 _Tuesday the Second_

I may as well begin at the beginning, I suppose, so as to get thewhole thing straight. And it started with Whinstane Sandy, who brokethe wheel off the spring-wagon and the third commandment at one andthe same time. So I harnessed Slip-Along up to the buckboard, and putthe Twins in their two little crow's-nests and started out to help getmy load out of that bogged trail, leaving Dinkie behind with IroquoisAnnie. 

There was a chill in the air and I was glad of my old coonskin coat. It was almost two hours before Whinnie and I got the spring-wagon outof its mud-bath, and the load on again, and a willow fence-post lashedunder the drooping axle-end to sustain it on its journey back toAlabama Ranch. The sun was low, by this time, so I couldn't wait forWhinnie and the team, but drove on ahead with the Twins. 

I was glad to see the smoke going up from my lonely littleshack-chimney, for I was mud-splashed and tired and hungry, and thethought of fire and home and supper gave me a comfy feeling just underthe tip of the left ventricle. I suppose it was the long eveningshadows and the chill of the air that made the shack look sounutterably lonely as I drove up to it. Or perhaps it was because Istared in vain for some sign of life. At any rate, I didn't stop tounhitch Slip-Along, but gathered up my Twins and made for the door, and nearly stumbled on my nose over the broom-end boot-wiper whichhadn't proved such a boon as I'd expected. 

I found Iroquois Annie in front of my home-made dressing-table mirror, with my last year's summer hat on her head and a look of placidadmiration on her face. The shack seemed very quiet. It seemed sodisturbingly quiet that I even forgot about the hat. 

"Where's Dinkie?" I demanded, as I deposited the Twins in theirswing-box. 

"He play somew'ere roun', " announced Ikkie, secreting the purloinedhead-gear and circling away from the forbidden dressing-table. 

"But where?" I asked, with exceptional sharpness, for my eye hadalready traversed the most of that shack and had encountered no signof him. 

That sloe-eyed breed didn't know just where, and apparently didn'tcare. He was playing somewhere outside, with three or four old woodendecoy-ducks. That was all she seemed to know. But I didn't stop toquestion her. I ran to the door and looked out. Then my heart begangoing down like an elevator, for I could see nothing of the child. SoI made the rounds of the shack again, calling "Dinkie!" as I went. 

Then I looked through the bunk-house, and even tried the cellar. ThenI went to the rainwater tub, with my heart up in my throat. He wasn'tthere, of course. So I made a flying circle of the out-buildings. Butstill I got no trace of him. 

I was panting when I got back to the shack, where Iroquois Annie wasfussing stolidly over the stove-fire. I caught her by the snake-likebraid of her hair, though I didn't know I was doing it, at the moment, and swung her about so that my face confronted hers. 

"Where's my boy?" I demanded in a sort of shout of mingled terror andrage and dread. "Where is he, you empty-eyed idiot? _Where is he?_"

But that half-breed, of course, couldn't tell me. And a wave of sickfear swept over me. My Dinkie was not there. He was nowhere to befound. He was lost--lost on the prairie. And I was shouting all thisat Ikkie, without being quite conscious of what I was doing. 

"And remember, " I hissed out at her, in a voice that didn't sound likemy own as I swung her about by her suddenly parting waist, "ifanything has happened to that child, _I'll kill you!_ Do youunderstand, I'll kill you as surely as you're standing in thoseshoes!"

I went over the shack, room by room, for still the third time. Then Iwent over the bunk-house and the other buildings, and every corner ofthe truck-garden, calling as I went. 

But still there was no answer to my calls. And I had to face thesteel-cold knowledge that my child was lost. That little toddler, scarcely more than a baby, had wandered away on the open prairie. 

For one moment of warming relief I thought of Bobs. I remembered whata dog is sometimes able to do in such predicaments. But I alsoremembered that Bobs was still out on the trail with Whinnie. So Icircled off on the undulating floor of the prairie, calling "Dinkie"every minute or two and staring into the distance until my eyes ached, hoping to see some moving dot in the midst of all that silence andstillness. 

"My boy is lost, " I kept saying to myself, in sobbing little whimpers, with my heart getting more and more like a ball of lead. And therecould only be an hour or two of daylight left. If he wasn't foundbefore night came on--I shut the thought out of my heart, and startedback for the shack, in a white heat of desperation. 

"If you want to live, " I said to the now craven and shrinking Ikkie, "you get in that buckboard and make for Casa Grande. Drive there asfast as you can. Tell my husband that our boy, that my boy, is lost onthe prairie. Tell him to get help, and come, come quick. And stop atthe Teetzel ranch on your way. Tell them to send men on horses, andlanterns! But move, woman, move!"

Ikkie went, with Slip-Along making the buckboard skid on the uneventrail as though he were playing a game of crack-the-whip with thatfrightened Indian. And I just as promptly took up my search again, forgetting about the Twins, forgetting about being tired, forgettingeverything. 

Half-way between the fenced-in hay-stacks and the corral-gate I founda battered decoy-duck with a string tied to its neck. It was one of aset that Francois and Whinstane Sandy had whittled out over a yearago. It was at least a clue. Dinkie must have dropped it there. 

It sent me scuttling back among the hay-stacks, going over the groundthere, foot by foot and calling as I went, until my voice had an eeriesound in the cold air that took on more and more of a razor-edge asthe sun and the last of its warmth went over the rim of the world. Itseemed an empty world, a plain of ugly desolation, unfriendly andpitiless in its vastness. Even the soft green of the wheatlands tookon a look like verdigris, as though it were something malignant andpoisonous. And farther out there were muskegs, and beyond thethree-wire fence, which would stand no bar to a wandering child, therewere range-cattle, half-wild cattle that resented the approach ofanything but a man on horseback. And somewhere in those darkeningregions of peril my Dinky-Dink was lost. 

I took up the search again, with the barometer of hope falling lowerand lower. But I told myself that I must be systematic, that I mustnot keep covering the same ground, that I must make the most of whatwas left of the daylight. So I blocked out imaginary squares and keptrunning and calling until I was out of breath, then resting with myhand against my heart, and running on again. But I could find no traceof him. 

He was such a little tot, I kept telling myself. He was not warmlydressed, and night was coming on. It would be a cold night, withseveral degrees of frost. He would be alone, on that wide and emptyprairie, with terror in his heart, chilled to the bone, wailing forhis mother, wailing until he was able to wail no more. Already thelight was going, I realized with mounting waves of desperation, and nochild, dressed as Dinkie was dressed, could live through the night. Even the coyotes would realize his helplessness and come and pick hisbones clean. 

I kept thinking of Bobs, more than of anything else, and wondering whyWhinnie was so slow in getting back with his broken wagon, andworrying over when the men would come. I told myself to be calm, to bebrave, and the next moment was busy picturing a little dead body witha tear-washed face. But I went on, calling as I went. Then suddenly Ithought of praying. 

"O God, it wouldn't be fair, to take that little mite away from me, " Ikept saying aloud. "O God, be good to me in this, be merciful, andlead me to him! Bring him back before it is too late! Bring him back, and do with me what You wish, but have pity on that poor littletoddler! What You want of me, I will do, but don't, O God, don't takemy boy away from me!"

I made promises to God, foolish, desperate, infantile promises; tryingto placate Him in His might with my resolutions for better things, trying to strike bargains, at the last moment, with the Master of Lifeand Death--even protesting that I'd forgive Dinky-Dunk for anythingand everything he might have done, and that it was the Evil Onespeaking through my lips when I said I'd surely kill Iroquois Annie. 

Then I heard the signal-shots of a gun, and turned back toward theshack, which looked small and squat on the floor of the palingprairie. I couldn't run, for running was beyond me now. I heard Bobsbarking, and the Twins crying, and I saw Whinnie. I thought for onefond and foolish moment, as I hurried toward the house, that they'dfound my Dinkie. But it was a false hope. Whinnie had been frightenedat the empty shack and the wailing babies, and had thought somethingmight have happened to me. So he had taken my duck-gun and fired thosesignal-shots. 

He leaned against the muddy wagon-wheel and said "Guid God! Guid God!"over and over again, when I told him Dinkie was lost. Then he flungdown the gun and drew his twisted old body up, peering through thetwilight at my face. 

I suppose it frightened him a little. 

"Dinna fear, lassie, dinna fear, " he said. He said it in such a deepand placid voice that it carried consolation to my spirit, and broughta shadow of conviction trailing along behind it. "We'll find him. Isay it before the livin' God, _we'll find him_!"

But that little candle of hope went out in the cold air, for I couldsee that night was coming closer, cold and dark and silent. I forgotabout Whinnie, and didn't even notice which direction he took when hestrode off on his lame foot. But I called Bobs to me, and tried toquiet his whimpering, and talked to him, and told him Dinkie was lost, the little Dinkie we all loved, and implored him to go and find my boyfor me. 

But the poor dumb creature didn't seem to understand me, for hecringed and trembled and showed a tendency to creep off to the stableand hide there, as though the weight of this great evil which hadbefallen his house lay on him and him alone. And I was trying to coaxthe whimpering Bobs back to the shack-steps when Dinky-Dunk himselfcame galloping up through the uncertain light, with Lady Alicia a fewhundred yards behind him. 

"Have you found him?" my husband asked, quick and curt. But there wasa pale greenish-yellow tint to his face that made me think ofRocquefort cheese. 

"No, " I told him. I tried to speak calmly, determined not to breakdown and make a scene there before Lady Alicia, who'd reined up, stock-still, and sat staring in front of her, without a spoken word. 

I could see Dinky-Dunk's mouth harden. 

"Have you any clue--any hint?" he asked, and I could catch the quaverin his voice as he spoke. 

"Not a thing, " I told him, remembering that we were losing time. "Hesimply wandered off, when that Indian girl wasn't looking. He didn'teven have a cap or a coat on. "

I heard Lady Alicia, who had slipped down out of the saddle, make alittle sound as I said this. It was half a gasp and half a groan ofprotest. For one brief moment Dinky-Dunk stared at her, almostaccusingly, I thought. Then he swung his horse savagely about, andcalled out over our heads. Other horsemen, I found, had come loping upin the ghostly twilight where we stood. I could see the breath fromtheir mounts' nostrils, white in the frosty air. 

"You, Teetzel, and you, O'Malley, " called my husband, in an oddlyauthoritative and barking voice, "and you on the roan there, swingtwenty paces out from one another and circle the shack. Then widen thecircle, each turn. There's no use calling, for the boy'll be down. He'll be done out. But don't speak until you see something. And forthe love of God, watch close. He's not three yet, remember. Hecouldn't have got far away!"

I should have found something reassuring in those quick and purposefulwords of command, but they only served to bring the horror of thesituation closer home to me. They brought before me more graphicallythan ever the thought that I'd been trying to get out of my head, thepicture of a huddled small body, with a tear-washed face, growingcolder and colder, until the solitary little flame of life wentcompletely out in the midst of that star-strewn darkness. Only toowillingly, I knew, I would have covered that chilling body with thewarmth of my own, though wild horses rode over me until the end oftime. I tried to picture life without Dinkie. I tried to imagine myhome without that bright and friendly little face, without the patterof those restless little feet, without the sound of those beleagueringlittle coos of child-love with which he used to burrow his head intothe hollow of my shoulder. 

It was too much for me. I had to lean against the wagon-wheel andgulp. It was Lady Alicia, emerging from the shack, who brought me backto the world about me. I could just see her as she stood beside me, for night had fallen by this time, night nearly as black as theblackness of my own heart. 

"Look here, " she said almost gruffly. "Whatever happens, you've got tohave something to drink. I've got a kettle on, and I'm going back tomake tea, or a pot of coffee, or whatever I can find. "

"Tea?" I echoed, as the engines of indignation raced in my shakenbody. "Tea? It sounds pretty, doesn't it, sitting down to a pink tea, when there's a human being dying somewhere out in that darkness!"

My bitterness, however, had no visible effect on Lady Alicia. 

"Perhaps coffee would be better, " she coolly amended. "And thosebabies of yours are crying their heads off in there, and I don't seemto be able to do anything to stop them. I rather fancy they're in needof feeding, aren't they?"

It was then and then only that I remembered about my poor neglectedTwins. I groped my way in through the darkness, quite calm again, andsat down and unbuttoned my waist and nursed Poppsy, and then took upthe indignant and wailing Pee-Wee, vaguely wondering if the milk in mybreast wouldn't prove poison to them and if all my blood hadn't turnedto acid. 

I was still nursing Pee-Wee when Bud Teetzel came into the shack andasked how many lanterns we had about the place. There was a sullenlook on his face, and his eyes refused to meet mine. So I knew hissearch had not succeeded. 

Then young O'Malley came in and asked for matches, and I knew evenbefore he spoke, that he too had failed. They had all failed. 

I could hear Dinky-Dunk's voice outside, a little hoarse and throaty. I felt very tired, as I put Pee-Wee back in his cradle. It seemed asthough an invisible hand were squeezing the life out of my body andmaking it hard for me to breathe. I could hear the cows bawling, reminding the world that they had not yet been milked. I could smellthe strong coffee that Lady Alicia was pouring out into a cup. Shestepped on something as she carried it to me. She stopped to pick itup--and it was one of Dinkie's little stub-toed button shoes. 

"Let me see it, " I commanded, as she made a foolish effort to get itout of sight. I took it from her and turned it over in my hand. Thatwas the way, I remembered, mothers turned over the shoes of thechildren they had lost, the children who could never, never, so longas they worked and waited and listened in this wide world, come backto them again. 

Then I put down the shoe, for I could hear one of the men outside saythat the upper muskeg ought to be dragged. 

"Try that cup of coffee now, " suggested Lady Alicia. I liked herquietness. I admired her calmness, under the circumstances. And Iremembered that I ought to give some evidence of this by accepting thehot drink she had made for me. So I took the coffee and drank it. Thebawling of my milk-cows, across the cold night air, began to annoy me. 

"My cows haven't been milked, " I complained. It was foolish, but Icouldn't help it. Then I reached out for Dinkie's broken-toed shoe, and studied it for a long time. Lady Alicia crossed to the shack door, and stood staring out through it. .. . 

She was still standing there when Whinnie came in, with the stablelantern in his hand, and brushed her aside. He came to where I wassitting and knelt down in front of me, on the shack-floor, with hisheavy rough hand on my knee. I could smell the stable-manure thatclung to his shoes. 

"God has been guid to ye, ma'am!" he said in a rapt voice, which waslittle more than an awed whisper. But it was more his eyes, with theuncanny light in them making them shine like a dog's, that brought meto my feet. For I had a sudden feeling that there was Something justoutside the door which he hadn't dared to bring in to me, a littledead body with pinched face and trailing arms. 

I tried to speak, but I couldn't. I merely gulped. And Whinnie's roughhand pushed me back into my chair. 

"Dinna greet, " he said, with two tears creeping crookedly down his ownseamed and wind-roughened face. 

But I continued to gulp. 

"Dinna greet, for _your laddie's safe and sound_!" I heard the raptvoice saying. 

I could hear what he'd said, quite distinctly, yet his words seemedwithout color, without meaning, without sense. 

"Have you found him?" called out Lady Alicia sharply. 

"Aye, he's found, " said Whinnie, with an exultant gulp of his own, butwithout so much as turning to look at that other woman, who, apparently, was of small concern to him. His eyes were on me, and hewas very intimately patting my leg, without quite knowing it. 

"He says that the child's been found, " interpreted Lady Alicia, obviously disturbed by the expression on my face. 

"He's just yon, as warm and safe as a bird in a nest, " furtherexpounded Whinstane Sandy. 

"Where?" demanded Lady Alicia. But Whinnie ignored her. 

"It was Bobs, ma'am, " were the blessed words I heard the old lipssaying to me, "who kept whimper-in' and grievin' about the upperstable door, which had been swung shut. It was Bobs who led me backyon, fair against my will. And there I found our laddie, asleep in themanger of Slip-Along, nested deep in the hay, as safe and warm as ifin his own bed. "

I didn't speak or move for what must have been a full minute. Icouldn't. I felt as though my soul had been inverted and emptied ofall feeling, like a wine-glass that's turned over. For a full minute Isat looking straight ahead of me. Then I got up, and went to where Iremembered Dinky-Dunk kept his revolver. I took it up and started tocross to the open door. But Lady Alicia caught me sharply by the arm. 

"What are you doing?" she gasped, imagining, I suppose, that I'd gonemad and was about to blow my brains out. She even took the firearmfrom my hand. 

"It's the men, " I tried to explain. "They should be told. Give themthree signal-shots to bring them in. " Then I turned to Whinnie. Henodded and took me by the hand. 

"Now take me to my boy, " I said very quietly. 

I was still quite calm, I think. But deep down inside of me I couldfeel a faint glow. It wasn't altogether joy, and it wasn't altogetherrelief. It was something which left me just a little bewildered, agood deal like a school-girl after her first glass of champagne atChristmas dinner. It left me oddly self-immured, miles and miles fromthe figures so close to me, remote even from the kindly old man whohobbled a little and went with a decided list to starboard as he ledme out toward what he always spoke of as the upper stable. 

[Illustration: He was warm and breathing, and safe and sound]

Yet at the back of my brain, all the while, was some shadow of doubt, of skepticism, of reiterated self-warning that it was all too good tobe true. It wasn't until I looked over the well-gnawed top rail ofSlip-Along's broken manger and saw that blessed boy there, by thelight of Whinnie's lantern, saw that blessed boy of mine half buriedin that soft and cushioning prairie-grass, saw that he was warm andbreathing, and safe and sound, that I fully realized how he had beensaved for me. 

"The laddie'd been after a clutch of eggs, I'm thinkin', " whisperedWhinnie to me, pointing to a yellow stain on his waist, which wasclearly caused by the yolk of a broken egg. And Whinnie stooped overto take Dinkie up in his arms, but I pushed him aside. 

"No, I'll take him, " I announced. 

He'd be the hungry boy when he awakened, I remembered as I gathered himup in my arms. My knees were a bit shaky, as I carried him back to theshack, but I did my best to disguise that fact. I could have carriedhim, I believe, right on to Buckhorn, he seemed such a precious burden. And I was glad of that demand for physical expenditure. It seemed tobring me down to earth again, to get things back into perspective. Butfor the life of me I couldn't find a word to say to Lady Allie as Iwalked into my home with Dinky-Dink in my arms. She stood watching mefor a moment or two as I started to undress him, still heavy withslumber. Then she seemed to realize that she was, after all, anoutsider, and slipped out through the door. I was glad she did, for aminute later Dinkie began to whimper and cry, as any child would withan empty stomach and an over-draft of sleep. It developed into a goodlusty bawl, which would surely have spoilt the picture to an outsider. But it did a good turn in keeping me too busy to pump any more brine onmy own part. 

When Dinky-Dunk came in I was feeding little Dinkie a bowl of hottapioca well drowned in cream and sugar. My lord and master took offhis hat--which struck me as funny--and stood regarding us from justinside the door. He stood there by the door for quite a long while. 

"Hadn't I better stay here with you to-night?" he finally asked, in avoice that didn't sound a bit like his own. 

I looked up at him. But he stood well back from the range of thelamplight and I found it hard to decipher his expression. The onefeeling I was certain of was a vague feeling of disappointment. Whatcaused it, I could not say. But it was there. 

"After what's happened, " I told him as quietly as I could, "I thinkI'd rather be alone!"

He stood for another moment or two, apparently letting this sink in. It wasn't until he'd turned and walked out of the door that I realizedthe ambiguity of that retort of mine. I was almost prompted to goafter him. But I checked myself by saying: "Well, if the shoe fits, put it on!" But in my heart of hearts I didn't mean it. I wanted himto come back, I wanted him to share my happiness with me, to sit andtalk the thing over, to exploit it to the full in a sweet retrospectof relief, as people seem to want to do after they've safely passedthrough great peril. 

It wasn't until half an hour later, when Dinkie was sound asleep againand tucked away in his crib, that I remembered my frantic promises toGod to forgive Dinky-Dunk everything, if He'd only bring my boy backto me. And there'd been other promises, equally foolish and frantic. I've been thinking them over, in fact, and I _am_ going to make aneffort to keep them. I'm so happy that it hurts. And when you'rehappy, you want other people to be that way, too. 

 _Wednesday the Third_

Humor is the salt of life. The older I grow the more I realize thattruth. And I'm going to keep more of it, if I can, in the work-room ofmy soul. Last night, when Dinky-Dunk and I were so uppish with eachother, one single clap of humor might have shaken the solemnity out ofthe situation and shown us up for the poseurs we really were. ButPride is the mother of all contention. If Dinky-Dunk, when I was soimperially dismissing him from his own home, had only up and said:"Look here, Lady-bird, this is as much my house as it is yours, youfeather-headed little idiot, and I'll put a June-bug down your neck ifyou don't let me stay here!" If he'd only said that, and sat down andbeen the safety-valve to my emotions which all husbands ought to be toall wives, the igloo would have melted about my heart and left menothing to do but crawl over to him and tell him that I missed himmore than tongue could tell, and that getting Dinkie's daddy back wasalmost as good as getting Dinkie himself back to me. 

But we missed our chance. And I suppose Lady Allie sat up until allhours of the night, over at Casa Grande, consoling my Diddums andtalking things over. It gives me a sort of bruised feeling, for I'venobody but Whinstane Sandy to unbosom my soul to. .. . 

Iroquois Annie has flown the coop. She has gone for good. I must havestruck terror deeper into the heart of that Redskin than I imagined, for rather than face death and torture at my hands she left Slip-Alongand the buckboard at the Teetzel Ranch and vamoosed off into the greatunknown. I have done up her valuables in an old sugar-sack, and ifthey're not sent for in a week's time I'll make a bonfire of thetruck. Whinnie, by the way, is to help me with the house-work. He ismuch better at washing dishes than I ever thought he could be. And heannounces he can make a fair brand of bannock, if we run out of bread. 

 _Tuesday the Ninth_

I've got a hired man. He dropped like manna, out of the skies, or, rather, he emerged like a tadpole out of the mud. But there'ssomething odd about him and I've a floaty idea he's a refugee fromjustice and that some day one of the Mounties will come riding up tomy shack-door and lead my farm-help away in handcuffs. 

Whatever he is, I can't quite make him out. But I have my suspicions, and I'm leaving everything in abeyance until they're confirmed. 

I was on Paddy the other morning, in my old shooting-jacket andStetson, going like the wind for the Dixon Ranch, after hearing theyhad a Barnado boy they wanted to unload on anybody who'd undertake tokeep him under control. The trail was heavy from the night rain thathad swept the prairie like a new broom, but the sun was shining againand the air was like champagne. The ozone and the exercise and Paddy's_legato_ stride all tended to key up my spirits, and I went alonghumming:

 "Bake me a bannock, And cut me a callop, For I've stole me a grey mare And I'm off at a gallop!"

It wasn't until I saw Paddy's ear prick up like a rabbit's that Inoticed the gun-boat on the trail ahead. At least I thought it was agun-boat, for a minute or two, until I cantered closer and saw that itwas a huge gray touring-car half foundered in the prairie-mud. Besideit sat a long lean man in very muddy clothes and a ratherdisreputable-looking hat. He sat with a ridiculously contented look onhis face, smoking a small briar pipe, and he laughed outright as Icircled his mud-hole and came to a stop opposite the car with its nosepoked deep down in the mire, for all the world like a rooting shote. 

"Good morning, Diana, " he said, quite coolly, as he removed hisbattered-looking cap. 

His salutation struck me as impertinent, so I returned it in thecurtest of nods. 

"Are you in trouble?" I asked. 

"None whatever, " he airily replied, still eying me. "But my car seemsto be, doesn't it?"

"What's wrong?" I demanded, determined that he shouldn't elbow me outof my matter-of-factness. 

He turned to his automobile and inspected it with an indifferent eye. 

"I turned this old tub into a steam-engine, racing her until the waterboiled, and she got even with me by blowing up an intake hose. But I'mperfectly satisfied. "

"With what?" I coldly inquired. 

"With being stuck here, " he replied; He had rather a bright gray eyewith greenish lights in it, and he looked rational enough. But therewas something fundamentally wrong with him. 

"What makes you feel that way?" I asked, though for a moment I'd beenprompted to inquire if they hadn't let him out a little too soon. 

"Because I wouldn't have seen you, who should be wearing a crescentmoon on your brow, if my good friend Hyacinthe hadn't mired herself inthis mud-hole, " he had the effrontery to tell me. 

"Is there anything so remarkably consolatory in that vision?" I asked, deciding that I might as well convince him he wasn't confronting anuntutored she-coolie of the prairie. Whereupon he studied me morepointedly and more impersonally than ever. 

"It's more than consolatory, " he said with an accentuating flourish ofthe little briar pipe. "It's quite compensatory. "

It was rather ponderously clever, I suppose; but I was tired of bothverbal quibbling and roadside gallantry. 

"Do you want to get out of that hole?" I demanded. For it's a law ofthe prairie-land, of course, never to side-step a stranger indistress. 

"Not if it means an ending to this interview, " he told me. 

It was my turn to eye him. But there wasn't much warmth in theinspection. 

"What are you trying to do?" I calmly inquired, for prairie lifehadn't exactly left me a shy and timorous gazelle in the haunts ofthat stalker known as Man. 

"I'm trying to figure out, " he just as calmly retorted, apparentlyquite unimpressed by my uppity tone, "how anything as radiant andlovely as you ever got landed up here in this heaven of chilblains andcoyotes. "

The hare-brained idiot was actually trying to make love to me. And Ithen and there decided to put a brake on his wheel of eloquence. 

"And I'm still trying to figure out, " I told him, "how what impressesme as rather a third-class type of man is able to ride around in whatlooks like a first-class car! Unless, " and the thought came to me outof a clear sky, and when they come that way they're inspirations andare usually true, "unless you stole it!"

He turned a solemn eye on the dejected-looking vehicle and studied itfrom end to end. 

"If I'm that far behind Hyacinthe, " he indifferently acknowledged, "Ibegin to fathom the secret of my life failure. So my morning hasn'tbeen altogether wasted. "

"But you did steal the car?" I persisted. 

"That must be a secret between us, " he said, with a distinctly guiltylook about the sky-line, as though to make sure there were no sheriffsand bloodhounds on his track. 

"What are you doing here?" I demanded, determined to thrash the thingout, now that it had been thrust upon me. 

"Talking to the most charming woman I've encountered west of the GreatLakes, " he said with an ironic and yet a singularly engaging smile. But I didn't intend him to draw a herring across the trail. 

"I'd be obliged if you'd be sincere, " I told him, sitting up a littlestraighter on Paddy. 

"I am sincere, " he protested, putting away his pipe. 

"But the things you're saying are the things the right sort of personrefrains from expressing, even when he happens to be the victim oftheir operation. "

"Yes, that's quite true, in drawing-rooms, " he airily amended. "Butthis is God's open and untrammeled prairie. "

"Where crudeness is king, " I added. 

"Where candor is worth more than convention, " he corrected, withrather a wistful look in his eye. "And where we mortals ought to be atleast as urbane as that really wonderful robin-egg sky up there withthe chinook arch across it. "

He wasn't flippant any more, and I had a sense of triumph in forcinghis return to sobriety. I wanted to ask him what his name was, once wewere back to earth again. But as that seemed a little too direct, Imerely inquired where his home happened to be. 

"I've just come from up North!" he said. And that, I promptlyrealized, was an evasive way of answering an honest question, especially as there was a California license-number on the front ofhis car. 

"And what's your business?" I inquired, deciding to try him out withstill one more honest question. 

"I'm a windmill man, " he told me, as he waded in toward hisdejected-looking automobile and lifted up its hood. I took himliterally, for there wasn't anything, at the time, to make me think ofCervantes. But I'd already noticed his hands, and I felt sure theyweren't the hands of a laboring man. They were long and lean andfinicky-fingered hands, the sort that could span an octave much betterthan they could hold a hayfork. And I decided to see him hoisted byhis own petard. 

"Then you're just the man I'm looking for, " I told him. He stopped fora moment to look up from the bit of heavy rubber-hose he was windingwith a stretch of rubber that looked as though it had been cut from aninner tube. 

"Words such as those are honey to my ears, " he said as he went on withhis work. And I saw it was necessary to yank him down to earth again. 

"I've a broken-down windmill over on my ranch, " I told him. "And ifyou're what you say you are, you ought to be able to put it in runningorder for me. "

"Then you've a ranch?" he observed, stopping in his work. 

"A ranch and a husband and three children, " I told him with thewell-paraded air of a tabby-cat who's dragged her last mouse into thedrawing-room. But my announcement didn't produce the effect I'dcounted on. All I could see on the face of the windmill man was a sortof mild perplexity. 

"That only deepens the mystery, " he observed, apparently as much tohimself as to me. 

"What mystery?" I asked. 

"You!" he retorted. 

"What's wrong with me?" I demanded. 

"You're so absurdly alive and audacious and sensitive andyouthful-hearted, dear madam! For the life of me I can't quite fit youinto the narrow little frame you mention. "

"Is it so narrow?" I inquired, wondering why I wasn't much moreindignant at him. But instead of answering that question, he asked meanother. 

"Why hasn't this husband of yours fixed the windmill?" he casuallyasked over his shoulder, as he resumed his tinkering on the car-engine. 

"My husband's work keeps him away from home, " I explained, promptly onthe defensive. 

"I thought so, " he announced, with the expression of a man who's had apet hypothesis unexpectedly confirmed. 

"Then what made you think so?" I demanded, with a feeling that he wasin some way being subtler than I could quite comprehend. 

"Instinct--if you care to call it that, " he said as he stooped lowover his engine. He seemed offensively busy there for a considerablelength of time. I could see that he was not what in the old days I'dhave called a window-dresser. And I rather liked that pretense ofcandor in his make-up, just as I cottoned to that melodious drawl ofhis, not altogether unlike Lady Alicia's, with its untoward suggestionof power and privilege. He was a man with a mind of his own; there wasno denying that. I was even compelled to remind myself that with allhis coolness and suavity he was still a car-thief, or perhapssomething worse. And I had no intention of sitting there and watchinghim pitch shut-out ball. 

"What are you going to do about it?" I asked, after he'd finished hisjob of bailing ditch-water into his car-radiator with a littlecollapsible canvas bucket. 

He climbed into his driving-seat, mud to the knees, before he answeredme. 

"I'm going to get Hyacinthe out of this hole, " was what he said. "Andthen I'm going to fix that windmill!"

"On what terms?" I inquired. 

"What's the matter with a month's board and keep?" he suggested. 

It rather took my breath away, but I tried not to betray the fact. He_was_ a refugee, after all, and only too anxious to go into hiding fora few weeks. 

"Can you milk?" I demanded, deciding to keep him in his place, fromthe start. And he sadly acknowledged that he wasn't able to milk. Windmill men seldom were, he casually asserted. 

"Then you'll have to make yourself handy, in other ways, " I proclaimedas he sat appraising me from his deep-padded car-seat. 

"All right, " he said, as though the whole thing were settled, on thespot. But it wasn't so simple as it seemed. 

"How about this car?" I demanded. His eye met mine; and I made note ofthe fact that he was compelled to look away. 

"I suppose we'll have to hide it somewhere, " he finally acknowledged. 

"And how'll you hide a car of that size on the open prairie?" Iinquired. 

"Couldn't we bury it?" he asked with child-like simplicity. 

"It's pretty well that way now, isn't it? But I saw it three milesoff, " I reminded him. 

"Couldn't we pile a load of prairie-hay over it?" he suggested next, with the natural cunning of the criminal. "Then they'd never suspect. "

"Suspect what?" I asked. 

"Suspect where we got it, " he explained. 

"Kindly do not include me in any of your activities of this nature, " Isaid with all the dignity that Paddy would permit of, for he wasgetting restless by this time. 

"But you've included yourself in the secret, " he tried to argue, witha show of injured feelings. "And surely, after you've wormed that outof me, you're not going to deliver a poor devil over to--"

"You can have perfect confidence in me, " I interrupted, trying to bestately but only succeeding, I'm afraid, in being stiff. And he noddedand laughed in a companionable and _laisser-faire_ sort of way as hestarted his engine and took command of the wheel. 

Then began a battle which I had to watch from a distance because Paddyevinced no love for that purring and whining thing of steel as itrumbled and roared and thrashed and churned up the mud at its flyingheels. It made the muskeg look like a gargantuan cake-batter, in whichit seemed to float as dignified and imperturbable as a schooner in acanal-lock. But the man at the wheel kept his temper, and reversed, and writhed forward, and reversed again. He even waved at me, in agrim sort of gaiety, as he rested his engine and then went back to thestruggle. He kept engaging and releasing his clutch until he was ableto impart a slight rocking movement to the car. And again the bigmotor roared and churned up the mud and again Paddy took to prancingand pirouetting like a two-year-old. But this time the spinning rearwheels appeared to get a trace of traction, flimsy as it was, for thethrobbing gray mass moved forward a little, subsided again, and oncemore nosed a few inches ahead. Then the engine whined in a stillhigher key, and slowly but surely that mud-covered mass emerged fromthe swale that had sought to engulf and possess it, emerged slowly andawkwardly, like a dinosauros emerging from its primeval ooze. 

The man in the car stepped down from his driving-seat, once he wassure of firm ground under his wheels again, and walked slowly andwistfully about his resurrected devil-wagon. 

"The wages of sin is mud, " he said as I trotted up to him. "And howmuch better it would have been, O Singing Pine-Tree, if I'd nevertaken that car!"

The poor chap was undoubtedly a little wrong in the head, but likablewithal, and not ill-favored in appearance, and a man that one shouldtry to make allowances for. 

"It would have been much better, " I agreed, wondering how long itwould be before the Mounted Police would be tracking him down andturning him to making brooms in the prison-factory at Welrina. 

"Now, if you'll kindly trot ahead, " he announced as he relighted hislittle briar pipe, "and show me the trail to the ranch of the blightedwindmill, I'll idle along behind you. "

I resented the placidity with which he was accepting a situation thatshould have called for considerable meekness on his part. And I satthere for a silent moment or two on Paddy, to make that resentmentquite obvious to him. 

"What's your name?" I asked, the same as I'd ask the name of any newhelp that arrived at Alabama Ranch. 

"Peter Ketley, " he said, for once both direct and sober-eyed. 

"All right, Peter, " I said, as condescendingly as I was able. "Justfollow along, and I'll show you where the bunk-house is. "

It was his grin, I suppose, that irritated me. So I started off onPaddy and went like the wind. I don't know whether he called it idlingor not, but once or twice when I glanced back at him that touring-carwas bounding like a reindeer over some of the rougher places in thetrail, and I rather fancy it got some of the mud shaken off itsrunning-gear before it pulled up behind the upper stable at AlabamaRanch. 

"You ride like a _ritt-meister_, " he said, with an approvinglygood-natured wag of the head, as he came up as close as Paddy wouldpermit. 

"_Danke-schön!_" I rather listlessly retorted, "And if you leave thecar here, close beside this hay-stack, it'll probably not be seenuntil after dinner. Then some time this afternoon, if the coast isclear, you can get it covered up. "

I was a little sorry, the next moment, that I'd harped still again onan act which must have become painful for him to remember, since Icould see his face work and his eye betray a tendency to evade mine. But he thanked me, and explained that he was entirely in my hands. 

Such being the case, I was more excited than I'd have been willing toadmit when I led him into the shack. Frontier life had long sincetaught me not to depend too much on appearances, but the right sort ofpeople, the people who out here are called "good leather, " wouldremain the right sort of people in even the roughest wickiup. We mayhave been merely ranchers, but I didn't want Peter, whatever hismorals, to think that we ate our food raw off the bone and made fireby rubbing sticks together. 

Yet he must have come pretty close to believing that, unimpeachable ashis manners remained, for Whinnie had burned the roast of veal to acharry mass, the Twins were crying like mad, and Dinkie had paintedhimself and most of the dining-room table with Worcestershire sauce. Ishowed Peter where he could wash up and where he could find a whisk toremove the dried mud from his person. Then I hurriedly appeased mycomplaining bairns, opened a can of beans to take the place ofWhinnie's boiled potatoes, which most unmistakably tasted of yellowsoap, and supplemented what looked dishearteningly like a Dixon dinnerwith my last carefully treasured jar of raspberry preserve. 

Whinstane Sandy, it is true, remained as glum and silent as a glacierthrough all that meal. But my new man, Peter, talked easily anduninterruptedly. And he talked amazingly well. He talked aboutmountain goats, and the Morgan rose-jars in the Metropolitan, and whyhe disliked George Moore, and the difference between English andAmerican slang, and why English women always wear the wrong sort ofhats, and the poetry in Indian names if we only had the brains tounderstand 'em, and how the wheat I'd manufactured my home-made breadout of was made up of cellulose and germ and endosperm, and how thealcohol and carbonic acid gas of the fermented yeast affected thegluten, and how the woman who could make bread like that ought to havea specially designed decoration pinned on her apron-front. Then heplayed "Paddy-cake, paddy-cake, Baker's man, " with Dinkie, who took tohim at once, and when I came back from getting the extra cot ready inthe bunk-house, my infant prodigy was on the new hired man's back, circling the dinner-table and shouting "Gid-dap, 'ossie, gid-dap!" ashe went, a proceeding which left the seamed old face of WhinstaneSandy about as blithe as a coffin-lid. So I coldly informed thenewcomer that I'd show him where he could put his things, if he hadany, before we went out to look over the windmill. And Peter ratherastonished me by lugging back from the motor-car so discreetly left inthe rear a huge suit-case of pliable pigskin that looked like asteamer-trunk with carrying-handles attached to it, a laprobe linedwith beaver, a llama-wool sweater made like a Norfolk-jacket, achamois-lined ulster, a couple of plaid woolen rugs, and a lunch-kitin a neatly embossed leather case. 

"Quite a bit of loot, isn't it?" he said, a little red in the facefrom the effort of portaging so pretentious a load. 

That word "loot" stuck in my craw. It was a painful reminder ofsomething that I'd been trying very hard to forget. 

"Did it come with the car?" I demanded. 

"Yes, it came with the car, " he was compelled to acknowledge. "But itwould be exhausting, don't you see, to have to tunnel through ahay-stack every time I wanted a hair-brush!"

I icily agreed that it would, scenting tacit reproof in thatmildly-put observation of his. But I didn't propose to be trifledwith. I calmly led Mr. Peter Ketley out to where the overturnedwindmill tower lay like a museum skeleton along its bed of weeds andasked him just what tools he'd need. It was a simple question, predicating a simple answer. Yet he didn't seem able to reply to it. He scratched his close-clipped pate and said he'd have to look thingsover and study it out. Windmills were tricky things, one kinddemanding this sort of treatment and another kind demanding that. 

"You'll have no trouble, of course, in raising the tower?" I asked, looking him square in the eye. More than once I'd seen these windmilltowers of galvanized steel girders put up on the prairie, and I had avery good idea of how the thing was done. They were assembled lying onthe ground, and then a heavy plank was bolted to the bottom side ofthe tower base. This plank was held in place by two big stakes. Then ablock and tackle was attached to the upper part of the tower, with therunning-rope looped over a tripod of poles, to act as a fulcrum, sothat when a team of horses was attached to the tackle the towerpivoted on its base and slowly rose in the air, steadied by a coupleof guy-ropes held out at right angles to it. 

"Oh, no trouble at all, " replied the expert quite airily. But Inoticed that his eye held an especially abstracted and preoccupiedexpression. 

"Just how is it done?" I innocently inquired. 

"Well, that all depends, " he sapiently observed. Then, apparentlynettled by my obviously superior smile, he straightened up and said:"I want you to leave this entirely to me. It's my problem, and you'veno right to be worried over it. It'll take study, of course, and it'lltake time. Rome wasn't built in a day. But before I leave you, madam, your tower will be up. "

"I hope you're not giving yourself a life sentence, " I remarked as Iturned and left him. 

I knew that he was looking after me as I went, but I gave no outer signof that inner knowledge. I was equally conscious of his movements, through the shack window, when he possessed himself of a hay-fork andwith more than one backward look over his shoulder circled out to wherehis car still stood. He tooled it still closer up beside the hay-stack, which he mounted, and then calmly and cold-bloodedly buried under ahuge mound of sun-cured prairie-grass that relic of a past crime whichhe seemed only too willing to obliterate. 

But he was callous, I could see, for once that telltale car was out ofsight, he appeared much more interested in the water-blisters on hishands than the stain on his character. I could even see him inspecthis fingers, from time to time, as he tried to round off the top ofhis very badly made stack, and test the joints by opening and closingthem, as though not quite sure they were still in working order. Andwhen the stack-making was finished and he returned to the windmill, circling about the fallen tower and examining its mechanism andstepping off its dimensions, I noticed that he kept feeling the smallof his back and glancing toward the stack in what seemed an attitudeof resentment. 

When Whinnie came in with one of the teams, after his day a-field, Inoticed that Peter approached him blithely and attempted to draw himinto secret consultation. But Whinnie, as far as I could see, had nopalate for converse with suspicious-looking strangers. He walkedseveral times, in fact, about that mysterious new hay-stack, and movedshackward more dour and silent than ever. So that evening the worthyPeter was a bit silent and self-contained, retiring early, though Istrongly suspected, and still suspect, that he'd locked himself in thebunk-house to remove unobserved all the labels from his underwear. 

In the morning his appearance was not that of a man at peace with hisown soul. He even asked me if he might have a horse and rig to go into the nearest town for some new parts which he'd need for thewindmill. And he further inquired if I'd mind him bringing back a tentto sleep in. 

"Did you find the bunk-house uncomfortable?" I asked, noticing againthe heavy look about his eyes. 

"It's not the bunk-house, " he admitted. "It's that old Caledoniansaw-mill with the rock-ribbed face. "

"What's the matter with Whinnie?" I demanded, with a quick touch ofresentment. And Peter looked up in astonishment. 

"Do you mean you've never heard him--and your shack not sixty pacesaway?"

"Heard him what?" I asked. 

"_Heard him snore_, " explained Peter, with a sigh. 

"Are you sure?" I inquired, remembering the mornings when I'd hadoccasion to waken Whinnie, always to find him sleeping as silent andplacid as one of my own babies. 

"I had eight hours of it in which to dissipate any doubts, " hepointedly explained. 

This mystified me, but to object to the tent, of course, would havebeen picayune. I had just the faintest of suspicions, however, thatthe fair Peter might never return from Buckhorn, though I tried tosolace myself with the thought that the motor-car and the beaver-linedlap-robe would at least remain with me. But my fears were groundless. Before supper-time Peter was back in high spirits, with the needed newparts for the windmill, and an outfit of blue denim apparel forhimself, and a little red sweater for Dinkie, and an armful ofmagazines for myself. 

Whinnie, as he stood watching Peter's return, clearly betrayed thedisappointment which that return involved. He said nothing, but whenhe saw my eye upon him he gazed dourly toward his approaching rivaland tapped a weather-beaten brow with one stubby finger. He meant, ofcourse, that Peter was a little locoed. 

But Peter is not. He is remarkably clear-headed and quick-thoughted, andif there's any madness about him it's a madness with a deep-laid method. The one thing that annoys me is that he keeps me so continuously and yetso obliquely under observation. He pretends to be studying out mywindmill, but he is really trying to study out its owner. Whinnie, Iknow, won't help him much. And I refuse to rise to his gaudiest flies. So he's still puzzling over what he regards as an anomaly, a farmerettewho knows the difference between De Bussey and a side-deliveryhorse-rake, a mother of three children who can ride a pinto and play abanjo, a clodhopper in petticoats who can talk about Ragusa and Toarminaand the summer races at Piping Rock. But it's a relief to converse aboutsomething besides summer-fallowing and breaking and seed-wheat andtractor-oil and cows' teats. And it's a stroke of luck to capture afarm-hand who can freshen you up on foreign opera at the same time thathe campaigns against the domestic weed!

 _Thursday the Eleventh_

We are a peaceful and humdrum family, very different from thewesterners of the romantic movies. If we were the cinema kind ofranchers Pee-Wee would be cutting his teeth on a six-shooter, littleDinkie would be off rustling cattle, Poppsy would be away holding upthe Transcontinental Limited, and Mummsie would be wearing chaps, toting a gun, and pretending to the sheriff that her jail-breakingbrother was _not_ hidden in the cellar!

Whereas, we are a good deal like the easterners who till the soil andtry to make a home for themselves and their children, only we arewithout a great many of their conveniences, even though we do beat themout in the matter of soil. But breaking sod isn't so picturesque asbreaking laws, and a plow-handle isn't so thrilling to the eye as ashooting-iron, so it's mostly the blood-and-thunder type of westerners, from the ranch with the cow-brand name, who goes ki-yi-ing throughpicture and story, advertising us as an aggregation of train-robbersand road-agents and sheriff-rabbits. And it's a type that makes metired. 

The open range, let it be remembered, is gone, and the cowboy is goingafter it. Even the broncho, they tell me, is destined to disappear. Itseems hard to think that the mustang will be no more, the mustang whichDinky-Dunk once told me was the descendant of the three hundred Araband Spanish horses which Cortez first carried across the Atlantic toMexico. For we, the newcomers, mesh the open range with our barb-wire, and bring in what Mrs. Eagle-Moccasin called our "stink-wagon" to turnthe grass upside down and grow wheat-berries where the buffalo oncewallowed. But sometimes, even in this newfangled work-a-day world, Ifind a fresh spirit of romance, quite as glamorous, if one has only theeye to see it, as the romance of the past. In one generation, almost, we are making a home-land out of a wilderness, we are conjuring upcities and threading the continent with steel, we are feeding the worldon the best and cleanest wheat known to hungry man. And on these clearand opaline mornings when I see the prairie-floor waving with itsharvest to be, and hear the clack and stutter of the tractor breakingsod on the outer quarter and leaving behind it the serried furrows ofumber, I feel there is something primal and poetic in the picture, something mysteriously moving and epic. .. . 

The weather has turned quite warm again, with glorious spring days ofwiny and heart-tugging sunlight and cool and starry nights. In myspare time I've been helping Whinnie get in my "truck" garden, andPeter, who has reluctantly forsaken the windmill and learned to runthe tractor, is breaking sod and summer-fallowing for me. For there isalways another season to think of, and I don't want the tin-can offailure tied to my spirit's tail. As I say, the days slip by. Morningcomes, fresh as a new-minted nickel, we mount the treadmill, andsomebody rolls the big red ball off the table and it's night again. But open-air work leaves me healthy, my children grow a-pace, and Ishould be most happy. 

But I'm not. 

I'm so homesick for something which I can't quite define that it givesme a misty sort of ache just under the fifth rib. It's just threeweeks now since Dinky-Dunk has ventured over from Casa Grande. If thisaloofness continues, he'll soon need to be formally introduced to hisown offspring when he sees them. 

Now that I have Peter out working on the land, I can safely give alittle more time to my household. But meals are still more or less ascramble. Peter has ventured the opinion that he might get a Chinamanfor me, if he could have a week off to root out the right sort ofChink. But I prefer that Peter sticks to his tractor, much as I needhelp in the house. 

My new hired man is still a good deal of a mystery to me, just as Iseem to remain a good deal of a mystery to him. I've been asking myselfjust why it is that Peter is so easy to get along with, and why, insome indescribable way, he has added to the color of life since comingto Alabama Ranch. It's mostly, I think, because he's supplied me withthe one thing I had sorely missed, without being quite conscious of it. He has been able to give me mental companionship, at a time when mymind was starving for an idea or two beyond the daily drudgery offarm-work. He has given a fillip to existence, loath as I am toacknowledge it. He's served to knock the moss off my soul by more orless indirectly reminding me that all work and no play could makeChaddie McKail a very dull girl indeed. 

I was rather afraid, at one time, that he was going to spoil it all bymaking love to me, after the manner of young Bud Dyruff, from the CowenRanch, who, because I waded bare-kneed into a warm little slough-endwhen the horses were having their noonday meal, assumed that I could bepersuaded to wade with equal celerity into indiscriminate affection. That rudimentary and ingenuous youth, in fact, became more and moreoffensive in his approaches, until finally I turned on him. "Are youtrying to make love to me?" I demanded. "The surest thing you know, " hesaid with a rather moonish smile. "Then let me tell you something, " Ihissed out at him, with my nose within six inches of his, "I'm ahigh-strung hell-cat, I am. I'm a bob-cat, and I'm not aching to bepawed by you or any other hare-brained he-mutt. So now, right from thisminute, keep your distance! Is that clear? Keep your distance, or I'llbreak your head in with this neck-yoke!"

Poor Bud! That rather blighted the flower of Bud's tender youngromance, and to this day he effects a wide detour when he happens tomeet me on the trail or in the byways of Buckhorn. 

But Peter Ketley is not of the Bud Dyruff type. He is more complex, and, accordingly, more disturbing. For I can see admiration in hiseye, even though he no longer expresses it by word of mouth. And thereis something tonic to any woman in knowing that a man admires her. Inmy case, in fact, it's so tonic that I've ordered some benzoin andcucumber-cream, and think a little more about how I'm doing my hair, and argue with myself that it's a woman's own fault if she runs toseed before she's seen thirty. I may be the mother of three children, but I still have a hankering after personal power--and that comes towomen through personal attractiveness, disquieting as it may be tohave to admit it. We can't be big strong men and conquer throughforce, but our frivolous little bodies can house the triumphantweaknesses which make men forget their strength. 

 _Sunday the Fourteenth_

I've had a talk with Peter. It simply _had_ to come, for we couldn'tcontinue to play-act and evade realities. The time arrived for gettingdown to brass tacks. And even now the brass tacks aren't as clear-cutas I'd like them to be. 

But Peter is not and never was a car-thief. That beetle-headedsuspicion has passed slowly but surely away, like a snow-manconfronted by a too affectionate sun. It slipped away from me littleby little, and began losing its lines, not so much when I found thatPeter carried a bill-fold and a well-thumbed copy of _Marius TheEpicurean_ and walked about in undergarments that were expensiveenough for a _prima donna_, but more because I found myself face toface with a Peter-Panish sort of honorableness that was not to bedissembled. So I cornered Peter and put him through his paces. 

I began by telling him that I didn't seem to know a great deal abouthim. 

"The closed makimono, " he cryptically retorted, "is the symbol ofwisdom. "

I was ashamed to ask just what that meant, so I tried another tack. 

"Folks are thrown pretty intimately together, in this frontier life, like worms in a bait-tin. So they naturally need to know what they'retangled up with. "

Peter, at that, began to look unhappy. 

"Would you mind telling me what brought you to this part of thecountry?" I asked. 

"Would you mind telling me what brought _you_ to this part of thecountry?" countered Peter. 

"My husband, " I curtly retorted. And that chilled him perceptibly. Buthe saw that I was not to be shuttled aside. 

"I was interested, " he explained with a shrug of finality, "in thenesting-ground of the Canada goose!"

"Then you came to the right point, " I promptly retorted. "For _I_ amit!"

But he didn't smile, as I'd expected him to do. He seemed to feel thatsomething approaching seriousness was expected of that talk. 

"I really came because I was more interested in one of your earliestsettlers, " he went on. "This settler, I might add, came to yourprovince some three million years ago and is now being exhumed fromone of the cut-banks of the Red Deer River. He belongs to the Mesozoicorder of archisaurian gentlemen known as _Dinosauria_, and there'sabout a car-load of him. This interest in one of your cretaceousdinosaur skeletons would imply, of course, that I'm wedded to science. And I _am_, though to nothing else. I'm as free as the wind, dearlady, or I wouldn't be holidaying here with a tractor-plow that makesmy legs ache and a prairie Penelope, who, for some reason or other, has the power of making my heart ache. "

"_Verboten!_" I promptly interjected. 

Peter saluted and then sighed. 

"There are things up here even more interesting than your Edmontonformation, " he remarked. "But I was born a Quaker, you see, and Ican't get rid of my self-control!"

"I like you for that, " I rather depressed him by saying. "For I findthat one accepts you, Peter, as one accepts a climate. You're intimatein your very remoteness. "

Peter looked at me out of a rueful yet ruminative eye. But Whinniecame forth and grimly announced that the Twins were going it. So I hadto turn shackward. 

"You really ought to get that car out, " I called over my shoulder tohim, with a head-nod toward the hay-stack. And he nodded absently backat me. 

 _Thursday the--I Can't Remember_

Dinky-Dunk rode over to-day when Peter was bolting some new wire stutson the windmill tower and I was busy dry-picking two polygamous oldroosters which Whinnie had beheaded for me. My husband attempted anoffhand and happy-go-lucky air which, I very soon saw, was merely amask to hide his embarrassment. He even flushed up to the ears whenlittle Dinkie drew back for a moment or two, as any child might whodidn't recognize his own father, though he later solicitously tiptoedto the sleeping-porch where the Twins were having their nap, andremarked that they were growing prodigiously. 

It was all rather absurd. But when one member of this life-partnershipbusiness is stiff with constraint, you can't expect the other memberto fall on his neck and weep. And Dinky-Dunk, for all his nonchalance, looked worried and hollow-eyed. He was in the saddle again, and headedback for Casa Grande, when he caught sight of Peter at work on thewindmill. So he loped over to my hired man and had a talk with him. What they talked about I couldn't tell, of course, but it seemed acasual and friendly enough conversation. Peter, in his blue-jeans, dirt-marked and oil-stained, and with a wrench in his hand, lookedlike an I. W. W. Agitator who'd fallen on evil days. 

I felt tempted to sally forth and reprove Dinky-Dunk for wasting thetime of my hired help. But that, I remembered in time, might betreading on rather thin ice, or, what would be even worse, might seemlike snooping. And speaking of snooping, reminds me that a few nightsago I listened carefully at the open window of the bunk-house whereWhinstane Sandy was deep in repose. Not a sound, not a trace of asnore, arose from Whinnie's cot. 

So my suspicions were confirmed. That old sourdough had deliberatelylain awake and tried to trumpet my second man from the precincts whichWhinnie felt he'd already preempted. He had attempted to snore poorPeter off the map and away from Alabama Ranch!

 _Saturday the Thirtieth_

The sedatest lives, I suppose, have their occasional Big Surprises. Life, at any rate, has just treated me to one. Lady Alicia Newland'sEnglish maid, known as Struthers, arrived at Alabama Ranch yesterdayafternoon and asked if I'd take her in. She'd had some words, shesaid, with her mistress, and didn't propose to be treated like thescum of the earth by anybody. 

So the inevitable has come about. America, the liberalizer, has touchedthe worthy Struthers with her wand of democracy and transformed herfrom a silent machine of service into a Vesuvian female with a mind anda voice of her own. 

I told Struthers, who was still a bit quavery and excited, to sit downand we'd talk the matter over, for rustling maids, in a land wherethey're as scarce as hen's teeth, is a much graver crime than rustlingcattle. Yet if Lady Allie had taken my husband away from me, I didn'tsee why, in the name of poetic justice, I shouldn't appropriate herhand-maid. 

And Struthers, I found, was quite definite as to her intentions. Sheis an expert needle-woman, can do plain cooking, and having been anurse-maid in her younger days, is quite capable of looking afterchildren, even American children. I winced at that, naturally, andwinced still harder when she stipulated that she must have fouro'clock tea every afternoon, and every alternate Sunday morning offfor the purpose of "saging" her hair, which was a new one on me. But Iweighed the pros and cons, very deliberately, and discussed herpredicament very candidly, and the result is that Struthers is nowduly installed at Alabama Ranch. Already, in fact, that efficient handof hers has left its mark on the shack. Her muffins this morning wereabove reproach and to-morrow we're to have Spotted Dog pudding. Butalready, I notice, she is casting sidelong glances in the direction ofpoor Peter, to whom, this evening at supper, she deliberately andunquestionably donated the fairest and fluffiest quarter of the lemonpie. I have no intention of pumping the lady, but I can see that thereare certain matters pertaining to Casa Grande which she is not averseto easing her mind of. I am not quite sure, in fact, that I could findit possible to lend an ear to the gossipings of a servant. Andyet--and yet, there are a few things I'd like to find out. And dignitymay still be slaughtered on the altar of curiosity. 

 _Sunday the Sixth_

Now that I've had a breathing-spell, I've been sitting back andmentally taking stock. The showers of last week have brought theneeded moisture for our wheat, which is looking splendid. Our oats arenot quite so promising, but everything will depend upon the season. The season, in fact, holds our fate and our fortune in its lap. Thoseninety days that include June and July and August are the days whenthe northwest farmer is forever on tiptoe watching the weather. It'shis time of trial, his period of crisis, when our triple foes ofDrought and Hail and Fire may at any moment creep upon him. It keepsone on the _qui vive_, making life a gamble, giving the zest of theuncertain to existence, and leaving no room for boredom. It's the bigdrama which even dwarfs the once momentous emotions of love and hateand jealousy. For when the Big Rush is on, I've noticed, husbands areapt to neglect their wives, and lovers forget their sweethearts, andneighbors their enmities. Let the world go hang, but before and aboveeverything else, _save your crop!_

Yet, as I was saying, I've been taking stock. It's clear that I shouldhave more cattle. And if all goes well, I want a bank-barn, the sameas they have in the East, with cement flooring and modern stalling. And I've got to comb over my herd, and get rid of the boarders andhatracks, and acquire a blooded bull for Alabama Ranch, to improve thestrain. Two of my milkers must go for beef, as well as several scrubspringers which it would be false economy to hold. I've also got to dosomething about my hogs. They are neither "easy feeders" nor goodbacon types. With them, too, I want a good sire, a pure-bred Yorkshireor Berkshire. And I must have cement troughs and some movable fencing, so that my young shoats may have pasture-crop. For there is money inpigs, and no undue labor, provided you have them properly fenced. 

My chickens, which have been pretty well caring for themselves, havedone as well as could be expected. I've tried to get early hatchingsfrom my brooders, for pullets help out with winter eggs when pricesare high, laying double what a yearling does during the cold months. My yellow-beaks and two-year-olds I shall kill off as we're able toeat them, for an old hen is a useless and profitless possession and Ibegin to understand why lordly man has appropriated that phrase as aterm of contempt for certain of my sex. I'm trading in my eggs--andlikewise my butter--at Buckhorn, selling the Number One grade andholding back the Number Twos for home consumption. There is an amazingquantity of Number Twos, because of "stolen nests" and the lack ofproper coops and runs. But we seem to get away with them all. Dinkienow loves them and would eat more than one at a time if I'd let him. 

The gluttony of the normal healthy three-year-old child, by the way, is something incredible. Dinkie reminds me more and more of a robin incherry-time. He stuffs sometimes, until his little tummy is as tightas a drum, and I verily believe he could eat his own weight inchocolate blanc-mange, if I'd let him. Eating, with him, is now aserious business, demanding no interruptions or distractions. Oncehe's decently filled, however, his greediness takes the form ofexterior application. He then rejoices to plaster as much as he can inhis hair and ears and on his face, until he looks like a cross betweena hod-carrier and a Fiji-Islander. And grown men, I've concluded, arevery much the same with their appetite of love. They come to you witha brave showing of hunger, but when you've given until no more remainsto be given, they become finicky and capricious, and lose theirinterest in the homely old porridge-bowl which looked all lovelinessto them before they had made it theirs. .. . 

This afternoon, tired of scheming and conceiting for the future, I hada longing to be frivolous and care-free. So I got out the oldrusty-rimmed banjo, tuned her up, and sat on an overturned milk-bucket, with Dinkie and Bobs and Poppsy and Pee-Wee for an audience. 

I was leaning back with my knees crossed, strumming out _Turkey in theStraw_ when Peter walked up and sat down between Bobs and Dinkie. So Igave him _The Whistling Coon_, while the Twins lay there positivelypop-eyed with delight, and he joined in with me on _Dixie_, singing ina light and somewhat throaty baritone. Then we swung on to _There's aHole in the Bottom of the Sea_, which must always be sung to achurch-tune, and still later to that dolorous ballad, _Oh, Bury Me Noton the Lone Prair-hee!_ Then we tried a whistling duet with banjoaccompaniment, pretty well murdering the Tinker's Song from _RobinHood_ until Whinstane Sandy, who was taking his Sabbath bath in thebunk-house, loudly opened the window and stared out with a dourlyreproving countenance, which said as plain as words: "This is nae theday for whustlin', folks!"

But little Dinkie, obviously excited by the music, shouted "A-more!A-more!" so we went on, disregarding Whinnie and the bunk-house windowand Struthers' acrid stare from the shack-door. I was in the middle ofFay Templeton's lovely old _Rosie, You Are My Posey_, when Lady Aliciarode up, as spick and span as though she'd just pranced off RottenRow. And as I'd no intention of showing the white feather to herladyship, I kept right on to the end. Then I looked up and waved thebanjo at her where she sat stock-still on her mount. There was anenigmatic look on her face, but she laughed and waved back, whereuponPeter got up, and helped her dismount as she threw her reins over thepony's head. 

I noticed that her eye rested very intently on Peter's face as Iintroduced him, and he in turn seemed to size the stately newcomer upin one of those lightning-flash appraisals of his. Then Lady Alliejoined our circle, and confessed that she'd been homesick for a sightof the kiddies, especially Dinkie, whom she took on her knee andregarded with an oddly wistful and abstracted manner. 

My hired man, I noticed, was in no way intimidated by a title in ourmidst, but wagered that Lady Allie's voice would be a contralto andsuggested that we all try _On the Road to Mandalay_ together. But LadyAllie acknowledged that she had neither a voice nor an ear, and wouldprefer listening. We couldn't remember the words, however, and thesong wasn't much of a success. I think the damper came when Struthersstepped out into full view, encased in my big bungalow-apron ofbutcher's linen. Lady Alicia, after the manner of the English, saw herwithout seeing her. There wasn't the flicker of an eyelash, or amoment's loss of poise. But it seemed too much like a Banquo at thefeast to go on with our banjo-strumming, and I attempted to bridge thehiatus by none too gracefully inquiring how things were getting alongover at Casa Grande. Lady Allie's contemplative eye, I noticed, searched my face to see if there were any secondary significances tothat bland inquiry. 

"Everything seems to be going nicely, " she acknowledged. Then sherather took the wind out of my sails by adding: "But I really cameover to see if you wouldn't dine with me to-morrow at seven. Bring thechildren, of course. And if Mr. --er--Ketley can come along, it will beeven more delightful. "

Still again I didn't intend to be stumped by her ladyship, so I saidthat I'd be charmed, without one second of hesitation, and Peter, withan assumption of vast gravity, agreed to come along if he didn't haveto wear a stiff collar and a boiled shirt. And he continued to ragLady Allie in a manner which seemed to leave her a little bewildered. But she didn't altogether dislike it, I could see, for Peter has thepower of getting away with that sort of thing. 

 _Tuesday the Eighth_

Lady Alicia's dinner is over and done with. I can't say that it was ahowling success. And I'm still very much in doubt as to its _raisond'être_, as the youthful society reporters express it. At first Ithought it might possibly be to flaunt my lost grandeur in my face. And then I argued with myself that it might possibly be to exhibitSing Lo, the new Chink man-servant disinterred from one of theBuckhorn laundries. And still later I suspected that it might be asort of demonstration of preparedness, like those carefully timednaval parades on the part of one of the great powers disquieted by theactivities of a restive neighbor. And then came still anothersuspicion that it might possibly be a move to precipitate theimpalpable, as it were, to put certain family relationships to thetouch, and make finally certain as to how things stood. 

But that, audacious as I felt Lady Alicia to be, didn't quite holdwater. It didn't seem any more reasonable than my earlier theories. Andall I'm really certain of is that the dinner was badly cooked and badlyserved, rather reminding me of a chow-house meal on the occasion of aCelestial New Year. We all wore our every-day clothes (with Peter'smost carefully pressed and sponged by the intriguing Struthers) and theTwins were put asleep up-stairs in their old nursery and Dinkie wasgiven a place at the table with two sofa-cushions to prop him up in hisarmchair (and acted like a little barbarian) and Peter nearly broke hisneck to make himself as pleasant as possible, chattering like a magpieand reminding me of a circus-band trying to make the crowd forget thebareback rider who's just been carried out on a stretcher. ButConstraint was there, all the while, first in the form of Dinky-Dunk'sunoccupied chair, which remained that way until dinner was two-thirdsthrough, and then in the form of Dinky-Dunk himself, whose explanationabout some tractor-work keeping him late didn't quite ring true. Hisharried look, I must acknowledge, wore away with the evening, but to meat least it was only too plain that he was there under protest. 

I did my utmost to stick to the hale-fellow-well-met rôle, but itstruck me as uncommonly like dancing on a coffin. And for all hisgarrulity, I know, Peter was really watching us with the eye of ahawk. 

"I'm too old a dog, " I overheard him telling Lady Alicia, "ever to besurprised at the crumbling of an ideal or the disclosure of askeleton. "

I don't know what prompted that statement, but it had the effect ofmaking Lady Allie go off into one of her purl-two knit-two trances. 

"I think you English people, " I heard him telling her a little later, "have a tendency to carry moderation to excess. "

"I don't quite understand that, " she said, lighting what must havebeen about her seventeenth cigarette. 

"I mean you're all so abnormally normal, " retorted Peter--whichimpressed me as being both clever and true. And when Lady Allie, worrying over that epigram, became as self-immured as a Belgianmilk-dog, Peter cocked an eye at me as a robin cocks an eye at afish-worm, and I had the audacity to murmur across the table at him, "Lady Barbarina. " Whereupon he said back, without batting an eye:"Yes, I happen to have read a bit of Henry James. "

But dinner came to an end and we had coffee in what Lady Alicia hadrechristened the Lounge, and then made doleful efforts to be light andairy over a game of bridge, whereat Dinky-Dunk lost fourteen dollarsof his hard-earned salary and twice I had to borrow six bits fromPeter to even up with Lady Allie, who was inhospitable enough toremain the winner of the evening. And I wasn't sorry when thosedevastating Twins of mine made their voices heard and thrust before mean undebatable excuse for trekking homeward. And another theatricalitypresented itself when Dinky-Dunk announced that he'd take us back inthe car. But we had White-Face and Tumble-Weed and our sea-goingspring-wagon, with plenty of rugs, and there was no way, of course, ofputting a team and rig in the tonneau. So I made my adieux and plantedPeter meekly in the back seat with little Dinkie to hold and took thereins myself. 

I started home with a lump in my throat and a weight in my heart, feeling it really wasn't a home that I was driving toward. But it wasone of those crystal-clear prairie nights when the stars were likeelectric-lights shining through cut-glass and the air was like arazor-blade wrapped in panne-velvet. It took you out of yourself. Itreminded you that you were only an infinitely small atom in theimmensity of a crowded big world, and that even your big world wasmerely a microscopic little mote lost amid its uncounted millions ofsister-motes in the infinitudes of time and space. 

"_Nitchevo!_" I said out loud, as I stopped on the trail to readjustand wrap the Twins in their rug-lined laundry-basket. 

"In that case, " Peter unexpectedly remarked, "I'd like to climb intothat front seat with you. "

"Why?" I asked, not greatly interested. 

"Because I want to talk to you, " was Peter's answer. 

"But I think I'd rather not talk, " I told him. 

"Why?" it was his turn to inquire. 

"Isn't it a rum enough situation as it is?" I demanded. For Peter, naturally, had not used his eyes for nothing that night. 

But Peter didn't wait for my permission to climb into the front seat. He plumped himself down beside me and sat there with my first-born inhis arms and one-half of the mangy old buffalo-robe pulled up over hisknees. 

"I think I'm beginning to see light, " he said, after a rather longsilence, as we went spanking along the prairie-trail with the cold airfanning our faces. 

"I wish _I_ did, " I acknowledged. 

"You're not very happy, are you?" he ventured, in a voice with justthe slightest trace of _vibrato_ in it. 

But I didn't see that anything was to be gained by parading mytroubles before others. And life, of late, had been teaching me toconsume my own smoke. So I kept silent. 

"Do you like me, Peter?" I suddenly asked. For I felt absurdly safewith Peter. He has a heart, I know, as clean as an Alpine village, andthe very sense of his remoteness, as I'd already told him, gives birthto a sort of intimacy, like the factory girl who throws a kiss to thebrakeman on the through freight and remains Artemis-on-ice to thedelicatessen-youth from whom she buys her supper "weenies. "

"What do you suppose I've been hanging around for?" demanded Peter, with what impressed me as an absence of finesse. 

"To fix the windmill, of course, " I told him. "Unless you haveimproper designs on Struthers!"

He laughed a little and looked up at the Great Bear. 

"If it's true, as they say, that Fate weaves in the dark, I supposethat's why she weaves so badly, " he observed, after a short silence. 

"She undoubtedly drops a stitch now and then, " I agreed, wondering ifhe was thinking of me or Struthers when he spoke. "But you do like me, don't you?"

"I adore you, " admitted Peter quite simply. 

"In the face of all these?" I said with a contented little laugh, nodding toward my three children. 

"In the face of everything, " asserted Peter. 

"Then I wish you'd do something for me, " I told him. 

"What?"

"Break that woman's heart, " I announced, with a backward nod of myhead toward Casa Grande. 

"I'd much rather break _yours_, " he coolly contended. "Or I'd preferknowing I had the power of doing it. "

I shook my head. "It can't be done, Peter. And it can't even bepretended. Imagine the mother of twins trying to flirt with a man evenas nice as you are! It would be as bad as an elephant trying to bekittenish and about as absurd as one of your dinosauria getting up andtrying to do a two-step. And I'm getting old and prosy, Peter, and ifI pretend to be skittish now and then it's only to mask the fact thatI'm on the shelf, that I've eaten my pie and that before long I'll bedyeing my hair every other Sunday, the same as Struthers, and----"

"Rot!" interrupted Peter. "All rot!"

"Why rot?" I demanded. 

"Because to me you're the embodiment of undying youth, " asserted thetroubadour beside me. It was untrue, and it was improper, but for amoment or two at least my hungry heart closed about that speech thesame as a child's hand closes about a chocolate-drop. Women are madethat way. But I had to keep to the trail. 

"Supposing we get back to earth, " I suggested. 

"What's the matter with the way we were heading?" countered thequiet-eyed Peter. 

"It doesn't seem quite right, " I argued. And he laughed a littlewistfully. 

"What difference does it make, so long as we're happy?" he inquired. And I tried to reprove him with a look, but I don't think it quitecarried in the misty starlight. 

"I can't say, " I told him, "that I approve of your reasoning. "

"That's just the point, " he said with a slightly more reckless note inhis laughter. "It doesn't pretend to be reasoning. It's more like thatabandoning of all reasoning which brings us our few earthly glories. "

"_Cogito, ergo sum_, " I announced, remembering my Descartes. 

"Well, I'm going to keep on just the same, " protested Peter. 

"Keep on at what?" I asked. 

"At thinking you're adorable, " was his reply. 

"Well, the caterpillars have been known to stop the train, but youmust remember that it's rather hard on the caterpillars, " I proclaimedas we swung off the trail and headed in for Alabama Ranch. 

 _Sunday the Thirteenth_

On Friday night there were heavy showers again, and now Whinniereports that our Marquis wheat couldn't look better and ought to runwell over forty bushels to the acre. We are assured of sufficientmoisture, but our two enemies yclept Fire and Hail remain. I shouldlike to have taken out hail insurance, but I haven't the money onhand. 

I can at least make sure of my fire-guards. Turning those essentialfurrows will be good training for Peter. That individual, by the way, has been quieter and more ruminative of late, and, if I'm notmistaken, a little gentler in his attitude toward me. Yet there's nota trace of pose about him, and I feel sure he wouldn't harm the moralsof a lady-bug. He's kind and considerate, and doing his best to be agood pal. Whinnie, by the way, regards me with a mildly reproving eye, and having apparently concluded that I am a renegade, is concentratinghis affection on Dinkie, for whom he is whittling out a new Noah's Arkin his spare time. He is also teaching Dinkie to ride horseback, lifting him up to the back of either Nip or Tuck when they come forwater and letting him ride as far as the stable. He looks very smallup on that big animal. 

At night, now that the evenings are so long, Whinnie takes my laddieon his knee and tells him stories, stories which he can't possiblyunderstand, I'm sure, but Dinkie likes the drone of Whinnie's voiceand the feel of those rough old arms about his little body. We allhunger for affection. The idiot who said that love was the bitters inthe cocktail of life wasn't either a good liver or a good philosopher. For love is really the whole cocktail. Take that away, and nothing isleft. .. . 

I seem to be getting moodier, as summer advances. Alternating waves ofsourness and tenderness sweep through me, and if I wasn't a busy womanI'd possibly make a fine patient for one of those fashionablenerve-specialists who don't flourish on the prairie. 

But I can't quite succeed in making myself as miserable as I feel Iought to be. There seems to be a great deal happening all about us, and yet nothing ever happens. My children are hale and hearty, myranch is fat with its promise of harvest, and I am surrounded bypeople who love and respect me. But it doesn't seem enough. Coiled inmy heart is one small disturbing viper which I can neither scotch norkill. Yet I decline to be the victim of anything as ugly as jealousy. For jealousy is both poisonous and pathetic. But I'd like to chokethat woman!

Yesterday Lady Alicia, who is now driving her own car, picked up Peterfrom his fire-guard work and carried him off on an experimental rideto see what was wrong with her carbureter--the same old carbureter!She let him out at the shack, on her way home, and Struthers witnessedthe tail end of that _enlèvement_. It spoilt her day for her. Shefumed and fretted and made things fly--for Struthers always workshardest, I've noticed, when in a temper--and surrendering to thecorroding tides which were turning her gentle nature into gall andwormwood, obliquely and tremulously warned the somewhat startled Peteragainst ungodly and frivolous females who 'ave no right to becorrupting simple-minded colonials and who 'ave no scruples againstplaying with men the same as a cat would play with a mouse. 

"So be warned in time, " I sternly exclaimed to Peter, when Iaccidentally overheard the latter end of Struthers' exhortation. 

"And there are others as ought to be warned in time!" was Struthers'Parthian arrow as she flounced off to turn the omelette which she'dleft to scorch on the cook-stove. 

Peter's eye met mine, but neither of us said anything. It reminded meof cowboy honor, which prompts a rider never to "touch leather, " nomatter how his bronco may be bucking. And _omelette_, I was laterreminded, comes from the French _alumelle_, which means ship'splating, a bit of etymology well authenticated by Struthers' skillet. 

 _Wednesday the Twenty-third_

Summer is here, here in earnest, and already we've had a few scorchingdays. Haying will soon be upon us, and there is no slackening in thewheels of industry about Alabama Ranch. My Little Alarm-Clocks have meup bright and early, and the morning prairie is a joy that never growsold to the eye. Life is good, and I intend to be happy, for

 I'm going alone, Though Hell forefend, By a way of my own To the bitter end!

And our miseries, after all, are mostly in our own minds. Yesterday Icame across little Dinkie lamenting audibly over a scratch on his handat least seven days old. He insisted that I should kiss it, and, afterwitnessing that healing touch, was perfectly satisfied. And there's noreason why grown-ups should be more childish than children themselves. 

One thing that I've been missing this year, more than ever before, isfresh fruit. During the last few days I've nursed a craving for a tartNorthern-Spy apple, or a Golden Pippin with a water-core, or a juicyand buttery Bartlett pear fresh from the tree. Those longings comeover me occasionally, like my periodic hunger for the Great Lakes andthe Atlantic, a vague ache for just one vision of tumbling berylwater, for the plunge of cool green waves and the race of foam. AndPeter overheard me lamenting our lack of fruit and proclaiming I couldeat my way right across the Niagara Peninsula in peach time. So whenhe came back from Buckhorn this afternoon with the farm supplies, hebrought on his own hook two small boxes of California plums and awhole crate of oranges. 

It was very kind of him, and also very foolish, for the oranges willnever keep in this hot weather, and the only way that I can see tosave them is to make them up into marmalade. It was pathetic to seelittle Dinkie with his first orange. It was hard to persuade him thatit wasn't a new kind of ball. But once the flavor of its interiorjuices was made known to him, he took to it like a cat to cream. 

It brought home to me how many things there are my kiddies have had todo without, how much that is a commonplace to the city child mustremain beyond the reach of the prairie tot. But I'm not complaining. Iam resolved to be happy, and in my prophetic bones is a feeling thatthings are about to take a turn for the better, something better thanthe humble stewed prune for Dinkie's little tummy and something betterthan the companionship of the hired help for his mother. Not that bothPeter and Whinnie haven't a warm place in my heart! They couldn't bebetter to me. But I'm one of those neck-or-nothing women, I suppose, who are silly enough to bank all on a single throw, who have to putall their eggs of affection in one basket. I can't be indiscriminate, like Dinkie, for instance, whom I found the other day kissing everypicture of a man in the Mail-Order Catalogue and murmuring "Da-da!"and doing the same to every woman-picture and saying "Mummy. " To belavish with love is, I suppose, the prerogative of youth. Age teachesus to treasure it and sustain it, to guard it as we'd guard a lonelyflame against the winds of the world. But the flame goes out, and wegrope on through the darkness wondering why there can never beanother. .. . 

I wonder if Lady Alicia is as cold as she seems? For she has theappearance of keeping her emotions in an ice-box of indifferency, thesame as city florists keep their flowers chilled for commercialpurposes. Lady Allie, I'm sure, is fond of my little Dinkie. Yetthere's a note of condescension in her affection, for even in whatseems like an impulse of adoration her exclamation nearly always is"Oh, you lovable little rabbit!" or, if not that, it's likely to be"You adorable little donkey you!" She says it very prettily, ofcourse, setting it to music almost with that melodious English drawlof hers. She is, she must be, a very fascinating woman. But at thefirst tee, friendship ends, as the golf-nuts say. 

. .. I asked Peter the other day what he regarded as my besetting sinand the brute replied: "Topping the box. " I told him I didn't quiteget the idea. "A passion to produce a good impression, " he explained, "by putting all your biggest mental strawberries on the top!"

"That sounds suspiciously like trying to be a Smart Aleck, " Iretorted. 

"It may sound that way, but it isn't. You're so mentally alive, Imean, that you've simply got to be slightly acrobatic. And it's asnatural, of course, as a child's dancing. "

But Peter is wrong. I've been out of the world so long that I've adread of impressing people as stupid, as being a clodhopper. And iftrying hard not to be thought that is "topping the box, " I suppose I'mguilty. 

"You are also not without vanity, " Peter judicially continued. "Butevery naturally beautiful woman has a right to that. " And I provedPeter's contention by turning shell-pink even under my sunburn andfeeling a warm little runway of pleasure creep up through my carcass, for the homeliest old prairie-hen that ever made a pinto shy, Isuppose, loves to be told that she's beautiful. 

Peter, of course, is a conscienceless liar, but I can't help likinghim, and he'll always nest warm in the ashes of my heart. .. . 

There's one thing I must do, as soon as I have the chance, and that isget in to a dentist and have my teeth attended to. And now that I'm somuch thinner I want a new and respectable pair of corsets. I've beenstudying my face in the glass, and I can see, now, what an awfulAnanias Peter really is. Struthers, by the way, observed me in themidst of that inspection, and, if I'm not greatly mistaken, indulgedin a sniff. To her, I suppose, I'm one of those vain creatures whofall in love with themselves as a child and perpetuate, thereby, alife romance!

 _Saturday the Twenty-sixth_

Coming events do _not_ cast their shadows before them. I was busy inthe kitchen this morning, making marmalade out of what was left ofPeter's oranges and contentedly humming _Oh, Dry Those Tears_ when theearthquake that shook the world from under my feet occurred. 

The Twins had been bathed and powdered and fed and put out in theirsleeping-box, and Dinkie was having his morning nap, and Struthers wasbusy at the sewing-machine, finishing up the little summer shirts forPoppsy and Pee-Wee which I'd begun to make out of their daddy'sdiscarded B. V. D. 's. It was a glorious morning with a high-archingpale blue sky and little baby-lamb cloudlets along the sky-line andthe milk of life running warm and rich in the bosom of the sleepingearth. And I was bustling about in my apron of butcher's linen, afterslicing oranges on my little maple-wood carving-slab until the housewas aromatic with them, when the sound of a racing car-engine smote onmy ear. I went to the door with fire in my eye and the long-handledpreserving spoon in my hand, ready to call down destruction on thepinhead who'd dare to wake my kiddies. 

My visitor, I saw, was Lady Alicia; and I beheld my broken wash-tubunder the front axle of her motor-car. 

I went out to her, with indignation still in my eye, but she paid noattention to either that or the tub itself. She was quite pale, infact, as she stepped down from her driving-seat, glanced at herbuckskin gauntlets, and then looked up at me. 

"There's something we may as well face, and face at once, " she said, with less of a drawl than usual. 

I waited, without speaking, wondering if she was referring to the tub. But I could feel my heart contract, like a leg-muscle with a cramp init. And we stood there, face to face, under the flat prairie sunlight, ridiculously like two cockerels silently estimating each other'sintentions. 

"I'm in love with your husband, " Lady Alicia suddenly announced, witha bell-like note of challenge in her voice. "And I'd rather like toknow what you're going to do about it. "

I was able to laugh a little, though the sound of it seemed foolish inmy own startled ears. 

"That's rather a coincidence, isn't it?" I blithely admitted. "For soam I. "

I could see the Scotch-granite look that came into the thick-lashedtourmaline eyes. And they'd be lovely eyes, I had to admit, if theywere only a little softer. 

"That's unfortunate, " was her ladyship's curt retort. 

"It's more than unfortunate, " I agreed, "it's extremely awkward. "

"Why?" she snapped, plainly annoyed at my lightness of tone. 

"Because he can't possibly have both of us, you know--unless he'swilling to migrate over to that Mormon colony at Red-Deer. And eventhere, I understand, they're not doing it now. "

"I'm afraid this is something much too serious to joke about, " LadyAlicia informed me. 

"But it strikes me as essentially humorous, " I told her. 

"I'm afraid, " she countered, "that it's apt to prove essentiallytragic. "

"But he happens to be _my_ husband, " I observed. 

"Only in form, I fancy, if he cares for some one else, " was herladyship's deliberate reply. 

"Then he has acknowledged that--that you've captured him?" I inquired, slowly but surely awakening to the sheer audacity of the lady in thebuckskin gauntlets. 

"Isn't that rather--er--primitive?" inquired Lady Allie, paler thanever. 

"If you mean coming and squabbling over another woman's husband, I'dcall it distinctly prehistoric, " I said with a dangerous little redlight dancing before my eyes. "It's so original that it's aboriginal. But I'm still at a loss to know just what your motive is, or what youwant. "

"I want an end to this intolerable situation, " my visitor averred. 

"Intolerable to whom?" I inquired. 

"To me, to Duncan, and to _you_, if you are the right sort of woman, "was Lady Alicia's retort. And still again I was impressed by thecolossal egoism of the woman confronting me, the woman ready to riderough-shod over the world, for all her sparkling veneer of civilization, as long, as she might reach her own selfish ends. 

"Since you mention Duncan, I'd like to ask if you're speaking now ashis cousin, or as his mistress?"

Lady Alicia's stare locked with mine. She was making a sacrificialeffort, I could see, to remain calm. 

"I'm speaking as some one who is slightly interested in his happiness, and his future, " was her coldly intoned reply. 

"And has my husband acknowledged that his happiness and his futureremain in your hands?" I asked. 

"I should hate to see him waste his life in a hole like this, " saidLady Alicia, not quite answering my question. 

"Have you brought any great improvement to it?" I parried. Yet even asI spoke I stood impressed by the thought that it was, after all, morethan primitive. It was paleolithic, two prehistoric she-things incombat for their cave-man. 

"That is not what I came here to discuss, " she replied, with a tug atone of her gauntlets. 

"I suppose it would be nearer the mark to say, since you began bybeing so plain-spoken, that you came here to ask me to give you myhusband, " I retorted as quietly as I could, not because I preferredthe soft pedal, but because I nursed a strong suspicion thatStruthers' attentive ear was just below the nearest window-sill. 

Lady Alicia smiled forbearingly, almost pityingly. 

"Any such donation, I'm afraid, is no longer your prerogative, " shelanguidly remarked, once more mistress of herself. "What I'm moreinterested in is your giving your husband his liberty. "

I felt like saying that this was precisely what I had been giving him. But it left too wide an opening. So I ventured, instead: "I've neverheard my husband express a desire for his liberty. "

"He's too honorable for that, " remarked my enemy. 

"Then it's an odd kind of honor, " I icily remarked, "that allows youto come here and bicker over a situation that is so distinctlypersonal. "

"Pardon me, but I'm not bickering. And I'm not rising to any heightsof courage which would be impossible to your husband. It's consoling, however, to know how matters stand. And Duncan will probably actaccording to his own inclinations. "

That declaration would have been more inflammatory, I think, if onesmall truth hadn't gradually come home to me. In some way, and forsome reason, Lady Alicia Elizabeth Newland was not so sure of herselfas she was pretending to be. She was not so sure of her position, Ibegan to see, or she would never have thrown restraint to the windsand come to me on any such mission. 

"Then that counts me out!" I remarked, with a forlorn attempt at beingfacetious. "If he's going to do as he likes, I don't see that you or Ihave much to say in the matter. But before he does finally place hishappiness in your hands, I rather think I'd like to have a talk withhim. "

"That remains with Duncan, of course, " she admitted, in a strictlyqualified tone of triumph, as though she were secretly worrying over aconquest too incredibly facile. 

"He knows, of course, that you came to talk this over with me?" Isuggested, as though it were an after-thought. 

"He had nothing to do with my coming, " asserted Lady Alicia. 

"Then it was your own idea?" I asked. 

"Entirely, " she admitted. 

"Then what did you hope to gain?" I demanded. 

"I wasn't considering my own feelings, " imperially acknowledged herladyship. 

"That was very noble of you, " I admitted, "especially when you bear inmind that you weren't considering mine, either! And what's more, LadyNewland, I may as well tell you right here, and right now, that youcan't get anything out of it. I gave up my home to you, the home I'dhelped make by the work of my own hands. And I gave up the hope ofbringing up my children as they ought to be brought up. I even gave upmy dignity and my happiness, in the hope that things could be made tocome out straight. But I'm not going to give up my husband. Rememberthat, I'm not going to give him up. I don't care what he says orfeels, at this particular moment; I'm not going to give him up to makea mess of what's left of the rest of his life. He may not know what'sahead of him, _but I do_! And now that you're shown me just what youare, and just what you're ready to do, I intend to take a hand inthis. I intend to fight you to the last ditch, and to the last drop ofthe hat! And if that sounds primitive, as you've already suggested, it'll pay you to remember that you're out here in a primitive countrywhere we're apt to do our fighting in a mighty primitive way!"

It was a very grand speech, but it would have been more impressive, Ithink, if I hadn't been suddenly startled by a glimpse of WhinstaneSandy's rock-ribbed face peering from the bunk-house window at almostthe same moment that I distinctly saw the tip of Struthers' sage-greencoiffure above the nearest sill of the shack. And it would have been agrander speech if I'd stood quite sure as to precisely what it meantand what I intended to do. Yet it seemed sufficiently climactic for myvisitor, who, after a queenly and combative stare into what must havelooked like an ecstatically excited Fourth-of-July face, turnedimperially about and swung open the door of her motor-car. Then shestepped up to the car-seat, as slowly and deliberately as a sovereignstepping up to her throne. 

"It may not be so simple as it seems, " she announced with greatdignity, as she proceeded to start her car. And the same dignity mighthave attended her entire departure, but in the excitement sheapparently flooded her carbureter, and the starter refused to work, and she pushed and spun and re-throttled and pushed until she wasquite red in the face. And when the car finally did get under way, therunning-gear became slightly involved with my broken wash-tub and itwas not until the latter was completely and ruthlessly demolished thatthe automobile found its right-of-way undisputed and anything likedignity returned to the situation. 

I stood there, with the long-handled preserving spoon still in myhand, staring after Lady Alicia and the dust that arose from hercar-wheels. I stood there in a sort of trance, with all the valor goneout of my bones and that foolish declamation of mine still ringing inmy ears. 

I began to think of all the clever things I might have said to LadyAlicia Elizabeth Newland. But the more I thought it over the moredesolated I became in spirit, so that by the time I meandered back tothe shack I had a face as long as a fiddle. And there I was confrontedby a bristling and voluble Struthers, who acknowledged that she'dheard what she'd heard, and could no longer keep her lips sealed, whether it was her place to speak or not, and that her ladyship wasnot all that she ought to be, not by any manner of means, or she wouldnever have left England and hidden herself away in this wilderness ofa colony. 

I had been rather preoccupied with my own thoughts, and paying scantattention to the clattering-tongued Struthers, up to this point. Butthe intimation that Lady Allie was not in the West for the sake of herhealth brought me up short. And Struthers, when I challenged thatstatement, promptly announced that the lady in question was no more insearch of health than a tom-cat's in search of water and no moreinterested in ranching than an ox is interested in astronomy, seeingas she'd 'a' been co-respondent in the Allerby and Crewe-Bullerdivorce case if she'd stayed where the law could have laid a hand onher, and standing more shamed than ever when Baron Crewe-Buller shuthimself up in his shooting-lodge and blew his brains out three weeksbefore her ladyship had sailed for America, and the papers that fullof the scandal it made it unpleasant for a self-respecting lady's maidto meet her friends of a morning in Finsbury Park. And as for thesenewer goings-on, Struthers had seen what was happening right under hernose, she had, long before she had the chance to say so openly by wordof mouth, but now that the fat was in the fire she wasn't the kind tosit by and see those she should be loyal to led about by the nose. Andso forth. And so forth! For just what else the irate Struthers had tounload from her turbulent breast I never did know, since at thatopportune moment Dinkie awakened and proceeded to page his parent withall the strength of his impatient young lungs. 

By the time I'd attended to Dinkie and finished my sadly neglectedmarmalade--for humans must eat, whatever happens--I'd made an effort toget some sort of order back into my shattered world. Yet it was aboutDuncan more than any one else that my thoughts kept clustering andcentering. He seemed, at the moment, oddly beyond either pity or blame. I thought of him as a victim of his own weakness, as the prey of apredaceous and unscrupulous woman who had intrigued and would continueto intrigue against his happiness, a woman away from her own world, aself-complacent and sensual privateer who for a passing whim, for amomentary appeasement of her exile, stood ready to sacrifice the lastof his self-respect. She was self-complacent, but she was also a womanwith an unmistakable physical appeal. She was undeniably attractive, asfar as appearances went, and added to that attractiveness was adangerous immediacy of attack, a touch of outlawry, which only toooften wins before resistance can be organized. And Dinky-Dunk, I keptreminding myself, was at that dangerous mid-channel period of a man'slife where youth and age commingle, where the monotonous middle-yearsslip their shackles over his shoulders and remind him that his days ofdalliance are ebbing away. He awakens to the fact that romance is beingleft behind, that the amorous adventure which once meant so much to himmust soon belong to the past, that he must settle down to his jog-trotof family life. It's the age, I suppose, when any spirited man istempted to kick up with a good-by convulsion or two of romanticadventure, as blind as it is brief and passionate, sadly like thecontortions of a rooster with its head cut off. 

I tried, as I sat down and struggled to think things out, to withholdall blame and bitterness. Then I tried to think of life withoutDinky-Dunk. I attempted to picture my daily existence with somebodyelse in the place that my Diddums had once filled. But I couldn't doit. I couldn't forget the old days. I couldn't forget the wide path oflife that we'd traveled together, and that he was the father of mychildren--my children who will always need him!--and that he and healone had been my torch-bearer into the tangled wilderness of passion. 

Then I tried to think of life alone, of going solitary through therest of my days--and I knew that my Maker had left me too warm-bloodedand too dependent on the companionship of a mate ever to turn back tosingle harness. I couldn't live without a man. He might be a sorrymix-up of good and bad, but I, the Eternal Female, would crave him asa mate. Most women, I knew, were averse to acknowledging such things;but life has compelled me to be candid with myself. The tragic part ofit all seems that there should and could be only one man. I had beenright when I had only too carelessly called myself a neck-or-nothingwoman. 

It wasn't until later that any definite thought of injustice to me atDinky-Dunk's hands entered my head, since my attitude towardDinky-Dunk seemed to remain oddly maternal, the attitude of the motherintent on extenuating her own. I even wrung a ghostly sort ofconsolation out of remembering that it was not a young and dewy girlwho had imposed herself on his romantic imagination, for youth andinnocence and chivalric obligation would have brought a much moredangerous fire to fight. But Lady Alicia, with all her carefullyachieved charm, could scarcely lay claim to either youth or the otherthing. Early in the morning, I knew, those level dissecting eyes ofhers would look hard, and before her hair was up she'd look a littlefaded, and there'd be moments of stress and strain when her naivelyinsolent drawl would jar on the nerves, like the talk of a spoiledchild too intent on holding the attention of a visitor averse toprecocity. And her disdain of the practical would degenerate intountidiness, and her clinging-ivyness, if it clung too much, wouldprobably remind a man in his reactionary moments of _ennui_ that thereare subtler pursuits than being a wall, even though it's a sustainingwall. 

And somewhere in her make-up was a strain of cruelty or she wouldnever have come to me the way she did, and struck at me with an openclaw. That cruelty, quite naturally, could never have been paradedbefore my poor old Dinky-Dunk's eyes. It would be, later on, afterdisillusionment and boredom. Then, and then only, it would dare toshow its ugly head. So instead of feeling sorry for myself, I began tofeel sorry for my Diddums, even though he was trying to switch me offlike an electric-light. And all of a sudden I came to a decision. 

I decided to write to Dinky-Dunk. That, I felt, would be safer thantrying to see him. For in a letter I could say what I wanted towithout being stopped or side-tracked. There would be no danger ofaccusations and recriminations, of anger leading to extremes, ofinjured pride standing in the path of honesty. It would be better thantalking. And what was more, it could be done at once, for themysterious impression that time was precious, that something ominouswas in the air, had taken hold of me. 

So I wrote to Dinky-Dunk. I did it on two crazy-looking pages torn outof the back of his old ranch ledger. I did it without giving muchthought to precisely what I said or exactly how I phrased it, depending on my heart more than my brain to guide me in the way Ishould go. For I knew, in the marrow of my bones, that it was my lastshot, my forlornest ultimatum, since in it went packed the last shredof my pride. 

"Dear Dinky-Dunk, " I wrote, "I hardly know how to begin, but I surelydon't need to begin by saying we haven't been hitting it off very wellof late. We seem to have made rather a mess of things, and I supposeit's partly my fault, and the fault of that stupid pride which keeps ustongue-tied when we should be honest and open with each other. But I'vebeen feeling lately that we're both skirting a cut-bank with our eyesblindfolded, and I've faced an incident, trivial in itself butmomentous in its possibilities, which persuades me that things can't goon as they are. There's too much at stake to let either ruffled nervesor false modesty--or whatever you want to call it--come between you andthe very unhappy woman who still is your wife. It's time, I think, whenwe both ought to look everything squarely in the face, for, after all, we've only one life to live, and if you're happy, at this moment, ifyou're completely and tranquilly happy as I write this, then I'vebanked wrong, tragically wrong, on what I thought you were. For I_have_ banked on you, Dinky-Dunk, banked about all my life andhappiness--and it's too late to change, even if I wanted to. I'm alonein the world, and in a lonely part of the world, with three smallchildren to look after, and that as much as anything, I suppose, drivesme to plain speaking and compels me to clear thinking. But even as Iwrite these words to you, I realize that it isn't really a matter ofthought or speech. It's a matter of feeling. And the one thing I feelis that I need you and want you; that no one, that nothing, can evertake your place. .. . I thought I could write a great deal more. But Ifind I can't. I seem to have said everything. It _is_ everything, really. For I love you, Dinky-Dunk, more than everything in life. Perhaps I haven't shown it very much, of late, but it's there, tryingto hide its silly old ostrich-head behind a pebble of hurt pride. Solet's turn the page and start over. Let's start with a clean slate, before we lose the chance. Come back to me. I'm very unhappy. I find ithard to write. It's only that big ache in my heart that allows me towrite at all. And I've left a lot of things unsaid, that I ought tohave said, and intended to say, but this will have to be enough. Ifthere's nothing that speaks up to you, from between these lines, thenthere's nothing that can hold together, I'm afraid, what's left of yourlife and mine. Think this over, Dinky-Dunk, and answer the way yourheart dictates. But please don't keep me waiting too long, for until Iget that answer I'll be like a hen on a hot griddle or Mary Queen ofScots on the morning before she lost her head, if that's moredignified. "

The hardest part of all that letter, I found, was the ending of it. Ittook me a long time to decide just what to sign myself, just how topilot my pen between the rocks of candor and dignity. So I ended up bysigning it "Chaddie" and nothing more, for already the fires ofemotion had cooled and a perplexed little reaction of indifferency hadset in. It was only a surface-stir, but it was those surface-stirs, Iremembered, which played such a lamentably important part in life. 

When Whinstane Sandy came in at noon for his dinner, a full quarter ofan hour ahead of Peter, I had his meal all ready for him by the timehe had watered and fed his team. I cut that meal short, in fact, byhanding him my carefully sealed letter and telling him I wanted him totake it straight over to Casa Grande. 

I knew by his face as I helped him hitch Water-Light to thebuckboard--for Whinnie's foot makes it hard for him to ridehorseback--that he nursed a pretty respectable inkling of thesituation. He offered no comments, and he even seemed averse to havinghis eye meet mine, but he obviously knew what he knew. 

He was off with a rattle of wheels and a drift of trail-dust evenbefore Peter and his cool amending eyes arrived at the shack to "stokeup" as he expresses it. I tried to make Peter believe that nothing waswrong, and cavorted about with Bobs, and was able to laugh when Dinkiegot some of the new marmalade in his hair, and explained how we'd haveto take our mower-knives over to Teetzel's to have them ground, and didmy best to direct silent reproofs at the tight-lipped and tragic-eyedStruthers, who moved about like a head-mourner not unconscious of herfamily obligations. But Peter, I suspect, sniffed something untoward inthe air, for after a long study of my face--which made me color alittle, in spite of myself--he became about as abstracted andsolemn-eyed as Struthers herself. 

To my dying day I shall never forget that wait for Whinnie to come back. It threatened to become an endless one. I felt like Bluebeard's wife upin the watch tower--no, it was her Sister Anne, wasn't it, who anxiouslymounted the tower to search for the first sign of deliverance? At anyrate I felt like Luck--now before the Relief, or a prisoner waiting forthe jury to file in, or a gambler standing over an invisibleroulette-table and his last throw, wondering into what groove the littleivory ball was to run. And when Whinnie finally appeared his seamed oldface wore such a look of dour satisfaction that for a weak flutter ortwo of the heart I thought he'd brought Dinky-Dunk straight back withhim. 

But that hope didn't live long. 

"Your maun's awa', " said Whinnie, with quite unnecessary curtness, ashe held my own letter out to me. 

"He's away?" I echoed in a voice that was just a wee bit trembly, as Itook the note from Whinnie, "what do you mean by away?"

"He left three hours ago for Chicago, " Whinstane Sandy retorted, stillwith that grim look of triumph in his gloomy old eyes. 

"But what could be taking him to Chicago?" I rather weakly inquired. 

"'Twas to see about buyin' some blooded stock for the ranch. At least, so her ladyship informed me. But that's nae more than one of her lies, I'm thinkin'. "

"What did she say, Whinnie?" I demanded, doing my best to keep cool. 

"Naethin', " was Whinnie's grim retort. "'Twas me did the sayin'!"

"What did you say?" I asked, disturbed by the none too gentle look onhis face. 

"What was needed to be said, " that old sour-dough with the lack-lustereyes quietly informed me. 

"What did you say?" I repeated, with a quavery feeling just under myfloating ribs, alarmed at the after-light of audacity that stillrested on his face, like wine-glow on a rocky mountain-tip. 

"I said, " Whinstane Sandy informed me with his old shoulders thrustback and his stubby forefinger pointed to within a few inches of mynose, "I said that I kenned her and her kind well, havin' watched thelikes o' her ridden out o' Dawson City on a rail more times than once. I said that she was naethin' but a wanton"--only this was _not_ theword Whinnie used--"a wanton o' Babylon and a temptress o' men and acorrupter o' homes out o' her time and place, bein' naught but a softshinin' thing that was a mockery to the guid God who made her and ablight to the face o' the open prairie that she was foulin' with herpresence. I said that she'd brought shame and sorrow to a home thathad been filled with happiness until she crept into it like theserpent o' hell she was, and seein' she'd come into a lonely landwhere the people have the trick o' tryin' their own cases after theirown way and takin' when need be justice into their own hands, she'dhave one week, one week o' seven days and no more, to gather up whatbelonged to her and take herself back to the cities o' shame whereshe'd find more o' her kind. And if she was not disposed to hearken afriendly and timely word such as I was givin' her, I said, she'd seeherself taken out o' her home, and her hoorish body stripped to theskin, and then tarred and feathered, and ridden on the cap-rail of acorral-gate out of a settlement that had small taste for her company!"

"Whinnie!" I gasped, sitting down out of sheer weakness, "you didn'tsay that?"

"I said it, " was Whinnie's laconic retort. 

"But what right had you to--"

He cut me short with a grunt that was almost disrespectful. 

"I not only said it, " he triumphantly affirmed, "but what's more to mylikin', I made her believe it, leavin' her with the mockin' laugh deadin her eyes and her face as white as yon table-cover, white to thelips!"

 _Sunday the Twenty-seventh_

I've been just a little mystified, to-day, by Whinstane Sandy'smovements. As soon as breakfast was over and his chores were done hewas off on the trail. I kept my eye on him as he went, to satisfymyself that he was not heading for Casa Grande, where no good couldpossibly come of his visitations. 

For I've been most emphatic to Whinstane Sandy in the matter of hisdelightful little lynch-law program. There shall be no tarring andfeathering of women by any man in my employ. That may have beenpossible in the Klondike in the days of the gold-rush, but it's notpossible in this country and this day of grace--except in the movies. And life is not so simple that you can ride its problems away on thecap-rail from a corral. It's unfortunate that that absurd oldsour-dough, for all his good intentions, ever got in touch with LadyAlicia. I have, in fact, strictly forbidden him to repeat his visit toCasa Grande, under any circumstances. 

But a number of things combine to persuade me that he's not being aspassive as he pretends. He's even sufficiently forgotten his earlierhostility toward Peter to engage in long and guarded conversation withthat gentleman, as the two of them made a pretense of bolting the newanchor-timbers to the heel of the windmill tower. So at supperto-night I summoned up sufficient courage to ask Peter what he knewabout the situation. 

He replied that he knew more than he wanted to, and more than herelished. That reply proving eminently unsatisfactory, I furtherinquired what he thought of Lady Alicia. He somewhat startled andshocked me by retorting that according to his own personal way ofthinking she ought to be spanked until she glowed. 

I was disappointed in Peter about this. I had always thought of him ason a higher plane than poor old Whinnie. But he was equally atavistic, once prejudice had taken possession of him, for what he suggested mustbe regarded as not one whit more refined than tar and feathers. As formyself, I'd like to choke her, only I haven't the moral courage toadmit it to anybody. 

 _Thursday the First_

Lady Alicia has announced, I learn through a Struthers quite pop-eyedwith indignation, that it's Peter and I who possibly ought to betarred and feathered, if our puritanical community is deciding to goin for that sort of thing! It is to laugh. 

Her ladyship, I also learn, has purchased about all the small-armsammunition in Buckhorn and toted the same back to Casa Grande in hercar. There, in unobstructed view of the passers-by, she has set up atarget, on which, by the hour together, she coolly and patientlypractises sharpshooting with both rifle and revolver. 

I admire that woman's spunk. And whatever you may do, you can'tsucceed in bullying the English. They have too much of the bull-dogbreed in their bones. They're always at their best, Peter declares, when they're fighting. "But from an Englishwoman trying to bekittenish, " he fervently added, "good Lord, deliver us all!"

And that started us talking about the English. Peter, of course, is tootolerant to despise his cousins across the Pond, but he pregnantlyreminded me that Lady Allie had asked him what sort of town Saskatchewanwas and he had retorted by inquiring if she was fond of Yonkers, whereupon she'd looked puzzled and acknowledged that she'd never eatenone. For Peter and Lady Allie, it seems, had had a set-to about Americanmap-names, which her ladyship had described as both silly and unsayable, especially the Indian ones, while Peter had grimly proclaimed that anypeople who called Seven-Oaks _Snooks_ and Belvoir _Beever_ and Ruthven_Rivven_ and Wrottesley _Roxly_ and Marylebone _Marrabun_ andWrensfordsley _Wrensley_ had no right to kick about Americanpronunciations. 

But Peter is stimulating, even though he does stimulate you intoopposition. So I found myself defending the English, and especiallythe Englishman, for too many of them had made me happy in their lovelyold homes and too many of their sons, æons and æons ago, had triedto hold my hand. 

"Your Englishman, " I proclaimed to Peter, "always acts as though hequite disapproves of you and yet he'll go to any amount of trouble todo things to make you happy or comfortable. Then he conceals hisgraciousness by being curt about it. Then, when he's at his crankiest, he's apt to startle you by saying the divinest things point-blank inyour face, and as likely as not, after treating you as he would arather backward child of whom he rigidly disapproves, he'll make loveto you and do it with a fine old Anglo-Saxon directness. He hatesswank, of course, for he's a truffle-hound who prefers digging out hisown delicacies. And it's ten to one, if a woman simply sits tight andlistens close and says nothing, that he'll say something about herunrivaled powers of conversation!"

 _Sunday the Fourth_

Peter, as we sat out beside the corral on an empty packing-caseto-night after supper, said that civilization was a curse. "Look whatit's doing to your noble Red Man right here in your midst! There was atime, when a brave died, they handsomely killed that dead brave'sfavorite horse, feeling he would course the plains of Heaven in peace. Now, I find, they have their doubts, and they pick out a dying oldbone-yard whose day is over, or an outlaw that nobody can break andride. And form without faith is a mockery. It's the same with uswhites. Here we are, us two, with--"

But I stopped Peter. I had no wish to slide on rubber-ice just for thesake of seeing it bend. 

"Can you imagine anything lovelier, " I remarked as a derailer, "thanthe prairie at this time of the year, and this time of day?"

Peter followed my eye out over the undulating and uncounted acres ofsage-green grain with an eternity of opal light behind them. 

"Think of LaVérendrye, who was their Columbus, " he meditated aloud. "Going on and on, day by day, week by week, wondering what was beyondthat world of plain and slough and coulée and everlasting green! Andthey tell me there's four hundred million arable acres of it. I wonderif old Vérendrye ever had an inkling of what Whittier felt later on:

 'I hear the tread of pioneers, Of cities yet to be-- The first low wash of waves where soon Shall roll a human sea. '"

Then Peter went on to say that Bryant had given him an entirely falseidea of the prairie, since from the Bryant poem he'd expected to seegrass up to his armpits. And he'd been disappointed, too, by thescarcity of birds and flowers. 

But I couldn't let that complaint go by unchallenged. I told him ofour range-lilies and foxglove and buffalo-beans and yellow crowfootand wild sunflowers and prairie-roses and crocuses and even violets insome sections. "And the prairie-grasses, Peter--don't forget theprairie-grasses, " I concluded, perplexed for a moment by the rathergrim smile that crept up into his rather solemn old Peter-Panish face. 

"I'm not likely to, " he remarked. 

For to-morrow, I remembered, Peter is going off to cut hay. He hasbeen speaking of it as going into the wilderness for meditation. Butwhat he's really doing is taking a team and his tent and supplies andstaying with that hay until it's cut, cut and "_collected_, " to usethe word which the naive Lady Allie introduced into these parts. 

I have a suspicion that it is the wagging of tongues that's sendingPeter out into his wilderness. But I've been busy getting his grub-boxready and I can at least see that he fares well. For whatever happens, we must have hay. And before long, since we're to go in more and morefor live stock, we must have a silo at Alabama Ranch. Now that theopen range is a thing of the past, in this part of the country atleast, the silo is the natural solution of the cattle-feed problem. Itmeans we can double our stock, which is rather like getting anotherfarm for nothing, especially as the peas and oats we can grow forensilage purposes give such enormous yields on this soil of ours. 

 _Tuesday the Sixth_

For the second time the unexpected has happened. Lady Alicia has gone. She's off, bag and baggage, and has left the redoubtable Sing Lo incharge of Casa Grande. 

Her ladyship waited until one full day after the time-limit imposedupon her by Whinstane Sandy in that barbarous armistice of his, andthen, having saved her face, joined the Broadhursts of Montreal on atrip to Banff, where she'll be more in touch with her kind and hercountrymen. From there, I understand, she intends visiting the Marquisof Anglesey ranch at Wallachie. 

I don't know what she intends doing about her property, but it seemsto me it doesn't show any great interest in either her crop or hercousin, to decamp at this particular time. Struthers protests thatshe's a born gambler, and can't live without bridge and Americanpoker. Banff, accordingly, ought to give her what she's pining for. .. . 

But I'm too busy to worry about Lady Allie. The Big Drama of the yearis opening on this sun-steeped plain of plenty, for harvest-time willsoon be here and we've got to be ready for it. We're on the go fromsix in the morning until sun-down. We're bringing in Peter's crop ofhay with the tractor, hauling three wagon-loads at a time. I make thedouble trip, getting back just in time to feed my babies and thenhiking out again. That means we're all hitting on every cylinder. I'veno time for either worries or wishes, though Peter once remarked thatlife is only as deep as its desires, and that the measure of ourexistence lies in the extent of its wants. That may be true, in a way, but I haven't time to philosophize over it. Hard work can be more thana narcotic. It's almost an anesthetic. And soil, I've been thinking, should be the symbol of life here, as it is with the peasants ofPoland. I feel that I'm getting thinner, but I've an appetite that I'mashamed of, in secret. 

Dinky-Dunk, by the way, is not back yet, and there's been no word fromhim. Struthers is resolute in her belief that he's in hiding somewhereabout the mountain-slopes of Banff. But I am just as resolute in myscorn for all such suspicions. And yet, and yet, --if I wasn't so busyI'd be tempted to hold solemn days of feasting and supplication thatLady Alicia Elizabeth Newland might wade out beyond her depth in thepellucid waters of Lake Louise. 

 _Friday the Sixteenth_

Peter surprised me yesterday by going in to Buckhorn and bringing outa machinist to work on the windmill tower. By mid-afternoon they hadit ready for hoisting and rebolting to its new anchor-posts. So justbefore supper the team and the block-and-tackle were hitched on tothat attenuated steel skeleton, Whinnie took one guide rope and I tookthe other, and our little Eiffel Tower slowly lifted itself up intothe sky. 

Peter, when it was all over, and the last nut tightened up, walkedabout with the triumphant smile of a Master-Builder who beholds hiswork completed. So I said "Hello, _Halvard Solness_!" as I steppedover to where he stood. 

And he was bright enough to catch it on the wing, for he quoted backto me, still staring up at the tower-head: "From this day forward Iwill be a free builder. "

Whereupon I carelessly retorted, "Oh, there's some parts of Ibsen thatI despise. "

But something in Peter's tone and his preoccupation during supper bothworried and perplexed me. So as soon as I could get away from theshack I went out to the windmill tower again. And the small platformat the end of the sloping little iron ladder looked so tempting andhigh above the world that I started up the galvanized rungs. 

When I was half-way up I stopped and looked down. It made me dizzy, for prairie life gives you few chances of getting above the flat floorof your flat old world. But I was determined to conquer that feeling, and by keeping my eyes turned up toward the windmill head I was ableto reach the little platform at the top and sit there with my feethanging over and my right arm linked through one of the steelstandards. 

I suppose, as windmills go, it wasn't so miraculously high, but it wasamazing how even that moderate altitude where I found myself couldalter one's view-point. I felt like a sailor in a crow's-nest, like asentinel on a watch-tower, like an eagle poised giddily above theworld. And such a wonderful and wide-flung world it was, spreading outbeneath me in mottled patches of grape-leaf green and yellow and gold, with a burgundian riot of color along the western sky-line where thelast orange rind of the sun had just slipped down out of sight. 

As I stared down at the roof of our shack it looked small and pitiful, tragically meager to house the tangled human destinies it was housing. And the fields where we'd labored and sweated took on a foreign andghostly coloring, as though they were oblongs on the face of an alienworld, a world with mystery and beauty and unfathomable pathos aboutit. 

I was sitting there, with my heels swinging out in space and an oddlyconsoling sense of calmness in my heart, when Peter came out of theshack and started to cross toward the corral. I couldn't resist thetemptation to toss my old straw hat down at him. 

He stopped short as it fell within twenty paces of him, like a meteorout of the sky. Then he turned and stared up at me. The next minute Isaw him knock out his little briar pipe, put it away in his pocket, and cross over to the tower. 

I could feel the small vibrations of the steel structure on which Isat poised, as he mounted the ladder toward me. And it felt for allthe world like sitting on the brink of Heaven, like a blessed damozelthe second, watching a sister-soul coming up to join you in yourbeatitude. 

"I say, isn't this taking a chance?" asked Peter, a little worried anda little out of breath, as he clambered up beside me. 

"It's glorious!" I retorted, with a nod toward the slowly palingsky-line. 

That far and lonely horizon looked as though a fire of molten goldburned behind the thinnest of mauve and saffron and purple curtains, afire that was too subdued to be actual flame, but more an unearthlyand ethereal radiance, luring the vision on and on until it brought anodd little sense of desolation to the heart and made me glad toremember that Peter was swinging his lanky legs there at my side outover empty space. 

"I find, " he observed, "that this tower was sold to a tenderfoot, bythe foot. That's why it went over. It was too highfalutin! It wasthirty feet taller than it had any need to be. "

Then he dropped back into silence. 

I finally became conscious of the fact that Peter, instead of staringat the sunset, was staring at me. And I remembered that my hair washalf down, trailing across my nose, and that three distinctly newfreckles had shown themselves that week on the bridge of that samenose. 

"O God, but you're lovely!" he said in a half-smothered and shamefacedsort of whisper. 

"_Verboten!_" I reminded him. "And not so much the cussing, Peter, asthe useless compliments. "

He said nothing to that, but once more sat staring out over thetwilight prairie for quite a long time. When he spoke again it was ina quieter and much more serious tone. 

"I suppose I may as well tell you, " he said without looking at me, "that I've come into a pretty clear understanding of the situationhere at Alabama Ranch. "

"It's kind of a mix-up, isn't it?" I suggested, with an attempt atlightness. 

Peter nodded his head. 

"I've been wondering how long you're going to wait, " he observed, apparently as much to himself as to me. 

"Wait for what?" I inquired. 

"For what you call your mix-up to untangle, " was his answer. 

"There's nothing for me to do but to wait, " I reminded him. 

He shook his head in dissent. 

"You can't waste your life, you know, doing that, " he quietlyprotested. 

"What else can I do?" I asked, disturbed a little by the absence ofcolor from his face, apparent even in that uncertain light. 

"Nothing's suggested itself, I suppose?" he ventured, after a silence. 

"Nothing that prompts me into any immediate action, " I told him. "Yousee, Peter, I'm rather anchored by three little hostages down in thatlittle shack there!"

That left him silent for another long and brooding minute or two. 

"I suppose you've wondered, " he finally said, "why I've stuck aroundhere as long as I have?"

I nodded, not caring to trust myself to words, and then, realizing Iwas doing the wrong thing, I shook my head. 

"It's because, from the morning you found me in that mud-hole, I'vejust wanted to be near you, to hear your voice when you spoke, to seethe curve of your lips and the light come and go in your eyes when youlaugh, " were the words that came ever so slowly from Peter. "I'vewanted that so much that I've let about everything else in life gohang. Yet in a way, and in my own world, I'm a man of some littleimportance. I've been cursed with enough money, of course, to moveabout as I wish, and loaf as I like. But that sort of life isn'treally living. I'm not in the habit, though, of wanting the things Ican't have. So what strikes me as the tragic part of it all is that Icouldn't have met and known you when you were as free as I am now. Ina way, you _are_ free, or you ought to be. You're a woman, I think, with arrears of life to make up. You've struck me, from the veryfirst, as too alive, too sensitive, too responsive to things, to getthe fullest measure out of life by remaining here on the prairie, inwhat are, after all, really pioneer conditions. You've known the otherkind of life, as well as I have, and it will always be calling to you. And if that call means anything to you, and the--the change we'vespoken of is on its way, or for some unexpected reason has to come, I'm--well, I'm going to take the bit in my teeth right here and tellyou that I love you more than you imagine and a good deal more, Isuppose, than the law allows!"

He pushed my hand aside when I held it up to stop him. 

"I may as well say it, for this is as good a time and place as we'llever have, and I can't go around with my teeth shut on the truth anylonger. I know you've got your three little tots down there, and Ilove 'em about as much as you do. And it would seem like giving alittle meaning and purpose to life to know that I had the chance ofdoing what I could to make you and to make them happy. I've--"

But I couldn't let him go on. 

"It's no use, Peter, " I cried with a little choke in my voice which Icouldn't control. "It's no earthly use. I've known you liked me, andit's given me a warm little feeling down in one corner of my heart. But I could never allow it to be more than a corner. I like you, Peter, and I like you a lot. You're wonderful. In some ways you're themost adorable man I've ever known in all my life. That's a dangerousthing to say, but it's the truth and I may as well say it. It evenhurts a little to remember that I've traded on your chivalry, thoughthat's the one thing in life you _can_ trade on without reproof ordemand for repayment. But as I told you before, I'm one of thoseneck-or-nothing women, one of those single-track women, who can't havetheir tides of traffic going two ways at once. And if I'm in a mix-up, or a maelstrom, or whatever you want to call it, I'm in it. That'swhere I belong. It would never, never do to drag an innocent outsiderinto that mixed-up mess of life, simply because I imagined it couldmake me a little more comfortable to have him there. "

Peter sat thinking over what I'd said. There were no heroics, nochest-pounding, no suggestion of romantically blighted lives andbroken hearts. 

"That means, of course, that I'll have to climb out, " Peter finallyand very prosaically remarked. 

"Why?" I asked. 

"Because it's so apt to leave one of us sailing under false colors, "was his somewhat oblique way of explaining the situation. "I mighthave hung on until something happened, I suppose, if I hadn't shown myhand. And I hadn't quite the right to show my hand, when you takeeverything into consideration. But you can't always do what you intendto. And life's a little bigger than deportment, anyway, so what's theuse of fussing over it? There's just one thing, though, I want to say, before we pull down the shutters again. I want you to feel that ifanything does happen, if by any mischance things should take a turnfor the worse, or you're worried in any way about the outcome of allthis"--he indulged in a quiet but comprehensive hand-wave whichembraced the entire ranch that lay in the gray light at our feet--"Iwant you to feel that I'd be mighty happy to think you'd turn to mefor--for help. "

It was getting just a little too serious again, I felt, and I decidedin a bit of a panic to pilot things back to shallower water. 

"But you _have_ helped, Peter, " I protested. "Look at all that hay youcut, and the windmill here, and the orange marmalade that'll make methink of you every morning!"

He leaned a little closer and regarded me with a quiet and wistfuleye. But I refused to look at him. 

"That's nothing to what I'd like to do, if you gave me the chance, " heobserved, settling back against the tower-standard again. 

"I know, Peter, " I told him, "And it's nice of you to say it. But thenicest thing of all is your prodigious unselfishness, the unselfishnessthat's leaving this talk of ours kind of--well, kind of hallowed, andsomething we'll not be unhappy in remembering, when it could have soeasily turned into something selfishly mean and ugly and sordid. That'swhere you're _big_. And that's what I'll always love you for!"

"Let's go down, " said Peter, all of a sudden. "It's getting cold. "

I sat staring down at the world to which we had to return. It seemed along way off. And the ladder that led down to it seemed a cobwebby anduncertain path for a lady whose heart was still slipping a beat nowand then. Peter apparently read the perplexity on my face. 

"Don't worry, " he said. "I'll go down one rung ahead of you. Even ifyou did slip, then, I'll be there to hold you up. Come on. "

We started down, with honest old Peter's long arms clinging to theladder on either side of me and my feet following his, step by step, as we went like a newfangled sort of quadruped down the narrow steelrungs. 

We were within thirty feet of the ground when I made ever so slight amisstep and brought Peter up short. The next moment he'd caught me upbodily in his right arm, and to steady myself I let my arms slip abouthis neck. I held on there, tight, even after I knew what I was doing, and let my cheek rest against the bristly side of his head as we wentslowly down to the bottom of the tower. 

It wasn't necessary, my holding my arms about Peter's neck. It wasn'tany more necessary than it was for him to pick me up and carry me therest of the way down. It wasn't true-to-the-line fair play, even, whenyou come to think of it in cold blood, and it wasn't by any manner ofmeans just what sedately married ladies should do. 

But, if the terrible truth must be told, _it was nice_. I think bothour hearts were a little hungry for the love which didn't happen to becoming our way, which the law of man and his Maker alike prohibited. So we saved our dignity and our self-respect, oddly enough, byresorting to the shallowest of subterfuges. And I don't care much ifit wasn't true-to-the-line ethics. I liked the feel of Peter's armaround me, holding me that way, and I hope he liked that long andsemi-respectable hug I gave him, and that now and then, later on, inthe emptier days of his life, he'll remember it pleasantly, andwithout a bit of bitterness in his heart. 

For Alabama Ranch, of course, is going to lose Peter as soon as he canget away. 

 _Tuesday the Twenty-fourth_

Peter is no longer with us. He went yesterday, much to the open griefof an adoring and heart-broken Struthers. I stood in the doorway as hedrove off, pretending to mop my eyes with my hankie and then making ashow of wringing the brine out of it. He laughed at this bit ofplay-acting, but it was rather a melancholy laugh. Struthers, however, was quite snappy for the rest of the morning, having apparentlyconstrued my innocent pantomime as a burlesque of her tendency tosniffle a little. 

I never quite knew how much we'd miss Peter until he was gone, andgone for good. Even Dinkie was strangely moody and downcast, andshowed his depression by a waywardness of spirit which reached itscrowning misdemeanor by poking a bean into his ear. 

This seemed a trivial enough incident, at first. But the heat andmoisture of that little pocket of flesh caused the bean to swell, andsoon had Dinkie crying with pain. So I renewed my efforts to get thatbean out of the child's ear, for by this time he was really suffering. But I didn't succeed. There was no way of getting behind it, orgetting a hold on it. And poor Dinkie bawled bitterly, ignorant of whythis pain should be inflicted on him and outraged that his own mothershould add to it by probing about the already swollen side of hishead. 

I was, in fact, getting a bit panicky, and speculating on how long itwould take to get Dinkie in to Buckhorn and a doctor, when Struthersremembered about a pair of toilet tweezers she'd once possessedherself of, for pulling out an over-punctual gray-hair or two. Eventhen I had to resort to heroic measures, tying the screaming child'shands tight to his side with a bath-towel and having the tremulousStruthers hold his poor little head flat against the kitchen table. 

It was about as painful, I suppose, as extracting a tooth, but Ifinally got a grip on that swollen legume and pulled it from itsinflamed pocket of flesh. I felt as relieved and triumphant as anobstetrician after a hard case, and meekly handed over to Dinkieanything his Royal Highness desired, even to his fifth cookie and theentire contents of my sewing-basket, which under ordinary circumstancesis strictly taboo. But once the ear-passage was clear the pain wentaway, and Dinkie, at the end of a couple of hours, was himself again. 

But Peter has left a hole in our lives. I keep feeling that he'smerely out on the land and will be coming in with that quiet andremote smile of his and talking like mad through a meal that I alwayshad an incentive for making a little more tempting than the ordinarygrub-rustling of a clodhopper. 

The only person about Alabama Ranch who seems undisturbed by Peter'sdeparture is Whinstane Sandy. He reminds me of a decrepit butrobustious old rooster repossessing himself of a chicken-run after thedecapitation of an arrogant and envied rival. He has with a dour sortof blitheness connected up the windmill pump, in his spare time, andrun a pipe in through the kitchen wall and rigged up a sink, out of agalvanized pig-trough. It may not be lovely to the eye, but it willsave many a step about this shack of ours. And the steps count, nowthat the season's work is breaking over us like a Jersey surf!

 _Thursday the Twenty-sixth_

I've got Struthers in jumpers, and she's learning how to handle ateam. Whinnie laughed at her legs, and said they made him thinka-muckle o' a heron. But men are scarce in this section, and it looksas though Alabama Ranch was going to have a real wheat crop. Whinnieboasts that we're three weeks ahead of Casa Grande, which, they tellme, is taking on a neglected look. 

I've had no message from my Dinky-Dunk, and no news of him. All daylong, at the back of my brain, a nervous little mouse of anxiety keepsnibbling and nibbling away. Last night, when she was helping me getthe Twins ready for bed, Struthers confided to me that she felt sureLady Alicia and my husband had been playmates together in England atone time, for she's heard them talking, and laughing about things thathad happened long ago. But it's not the things that happened long agothat are worrying me. It's the things that may be happening now. 

I wonder what the fair Lady Alicia intends doing about getting hercrop off. Sing Lo will scarcely be the man to master that problem. .. . The Lord knows I'm busy enough, but I seem to be eternally waiting forsomething. I wonder if every woman's life has a larval period likethis? I've my children and Bobs. Over my heart, all day long, shouldflow a deep and steady current of love. But it's not the kind I've acraving for. There's something missing. I've been wondering ifDinky-Dunk, even though he were here at my side, would still find any"kick" in my kisses. I can't understand why he never revealed to methe fact that he and Lady Allie were playmates as children. In thatcase, she must be considerably older than she looks. But old or young, I wish she'd stayed in England with her croquet and pat-tennis andbroom-stick-cricket, instead of coming out here and majesticallyannouncing that nothing was to be expected of a country which had norailway porters!

 _Wednesday the First_

The departed Peter has sent back to us a Victrola and a neatly packedbox of records. Surely that was kind of him. I suppose he felt that Ineeded something more than a banjo to keep my melodious soul alive. Hemay be right, for sometimes during these long and hot and tiring daysI feel as though my spirit had been vitrified and macadamized. But Ihaven't yet had time to unpack the music-box and get it inworking-order, though I've had a look through the records. There arequite a number of my old favorites. I notice among them a song from_The Bohemian Girl_. It bears the title of _Then You'll Remember Me_. Poor old Peter! For when I play it, I know I'll always be thinking ofanother man. 

 _Sunday the Fifth_

Life is a club from which Cupid can never be blackballed. I noticethat Struthers, who seems intent on the capture of a soul-mate, hastaken to darning Whinstane Sandy's socks for him. And Whinnie, who isa bit of a cobbler as well as being a bit of renegade to the ranks ofthe misogynists, has put new heels and soles on the number sevenswhich Struthers wears at the extremities of her heron-like limbs. Thusromance, beginning at the metatarsus, slowly but surely ascends to thediastolic region!

 _Wednesday the Eighth_

I've just had a nice little note from Peter, written from the AldineClub in Philadelphia, saying he'd neglected to mention something whichhad been on his mind for some time. He has a slightly rundown place inthe suburbs of Pasadena, he went on to explain, and as his lazy summerwould mean he'd have to remain in the East and be an ink-coolie allwinter, the place was at my disposal if it so turned out that a winterin California seemed desirable for me and my kiddies. It would, infact, be a God-send--so he protested--to have somebody dependablelodged in that empty house, to keep the cobwebs out of the corners andthe mildew off his books and save the whole disintegrating shebangfrom the general rack and ruin which usually overtakes empty mansionsof that type. He gave me the name and address of the caretaker, onEuclid Avenue, and concluded by saying it wasn't very much of a place, but might be endured for a winter for the sake of the climate, if Ihappened to be looking for a sunnier corner of the world than AlabamaRanch. He further announced that he'd give an arm to see littleDinkie's face when that young outlaw stole his first ripe orange fromthe big Valencia tree in the _patio_. And Peter, in a post-script, averred that he could vouch for the flavor of the aforementionedValencias. 

 _Tuesday the Fourteenth_

Whinstane Sandy about the middle of last week brought home thestartling information that Sing Lo had sold Lady Allie's heavywork-team to Bud O'Malley for the paltry sum of sixty dollars. Hefurther reported that Sing Lo had decamped, taking with him as rich ahaul as he could carry. 

I was in doubt on what to do, for a while. But I eventually decided togo in to Buckhorn and send a telegram to the owner of Casa Grande. Ifelt sure, if Lady Allie was in Banff, that she'd be at the C. P. R. Hotel there, and that even if she had gone on to the Anglesey Ranch mytelegram would be forwarded to Wallachie. So I wired her: "Chinamanleft in charge has been selling ranch property. Advise me what actionyou wish taken. "

A two-day wait brought no reply to this, so I then telegraphed to thehotel-manager asking for information as to her ladyship. I was anxiousfor that information, I'll confess, for more personal reasons thanthose arising out of the activities of Sing Lo. 

When I went in for my house supplies on Friday there was a messagethere from the Banff hotel-manager stating that Lady Newland had left, ten days before, for the Empress Hotel in Victoria. So I promptlywired that hotel, only to learn that my titled wanderer might be foundin San Francisco, at the Hotel St. Francis. So I repeated my message;and yesterday morning Hy Teetzel, homeward bound from Buckhorn in histin Lizzie, brought the long-expected reply out to me. It read:

"Would advise consulting my ranch manager on the matter mentioned inyour wire, " and was signed "Alicia Newland. "

There was a sense of satisfaction in having located the lady, butthere was a distinctly nettling note in the tenor of that littlemessage. I decided, accordingly, to give her the retort courteous bywiring back to her: "Kindly advise me of ranch manager's presentwhereabouts, " and at the bottom of that message inscribed, "Mrs. Duncan Argyll McKail. "

And I've been smiling a little at the telegram which has just beensent on to me, for now that I come to review our electric intercoursein a cooler frame of mind it looks suspiciously like back-biting overa thousand miles of telegraph-wire. This second message from SanFrancisco said: "Have no knowledge whatever of the gentleman'smovements or whereabouts. "

It was, I found, both a pleasant and a puzzling bit of information, and my earlier regrets at wasting time that I could ill spare betrayeda tendency to evaporate. It was satisfying, and yet it was notsatisfying, for morose little doubts as to the veracity of the lady inquestion kept creeping back into my mind. It also left everythingpretty much up in the air, so I've decided to take things in my ownhand and go to Casa Grande and look things over. 

 _Thursday the Sixteenth_

I didn't go over to Casa Grande, after all. For this morning the newscame to me that Duncan had been back since day before yesterday. Andhe is undoubtedly doing anything that needs to be done. 

But the lady lied, after all. That fact now is only too apparent. Andher equerry has been hurried back to look after her harried estate. The live stock, I hear, went without water for three whole days, andthe poultry would all have been in kingdom-come if Sing Lo, inchoosing a few choice birds for his private consumption, hadn'thappened to leave the run-door unlatched. .. . 

I was foolish enough to expect, of course, that Duncan might nursesome slight curiosity as to his family and its welfare. This will behis third day back, and he has neither put in an appearance nor sent aword. He's busy, of course, with that tangle to unravel--but wherethere's a will there's usually a way. And hope dies hard. Yet day byday I find less bitterness in my heart. Those earlier hot tides ofresentment have been succeeded, not by tranquillity or evenindifference, but by a colder and more judicial attitude toward thingsin general. I've got a home and a family to fight for--not to mentiona baby with prickly-heat--and they must not be forgotten. I have theconsolation, too, of knowing that the fight doesn't promise to be alosing one. I've banked on wheat, and old Mother Earth is not going tobetray me. My grain has ripened miraculously during these last fewweeks of hot dry weather. It's _too_ hot, in fact, for my harvestthreatens to come on with a rush. But we'll scramble through it, insome way. 

 _Sunday the Nineteenth_

It's only three days since I wrote those last lines. But it seems along time back to last Thursday. So many, many things have happenedsince then. 

Friday morning broke very hot, and without a breath of wind. By noonit was stifling. By mid-afternoon I felt strangely tired, and evenmore strangely depressed. I even attempted to shake myself together, arguing that my condition was purely mental, for I had remembered thatit was unmistakably Friday, a day of ill-omen to the superstitious. 

I was surprised, between four and five, to see Whinstane Sandy come infrom his work and busy himself about the stables. When I asked him thereason for this premature withdrawal he pointed toward a low andmeek-looking bank of clouds just above the southwest sky-line andannounced that we were going to have a "blow, " as he called it. 

I was inclined to doubt this, for the sun was still shining, there wasno trace of a breeze, and the sky straight over my head was a pellucidpale azure. But, when I came to notice it, there was an unusual, smallstir among my chickens, the cattle were restless, and one wouldoccasionally hold its nose high in the air and then indulge in alowing sound. Even Bobs moved peevishly from place to place, plainlydisturbed by more than the flies and the heat. I had a feeling, myself, of not being able to get enough air into my lungs, a depressedand disturbed feeling which was nothing more than the barometer of mybody trying to tell me that the glass was falling, and fallingforebodingly. 

By this time I could see Whinnie's cloud-bank rising higher above thehorizon and becoming more ragged as it mushroomed into anvil-shapedturrets. Then a sigh or two of hot air, hotter even than the air aboutus, disturbed the quietness and made the level floor of my yellowingwheat undulate a little, like a breast that has taken a quiet breathor two. Then faint and far-off came a sound like the leisurely firingof big guns, becoming quicker and louder as the ragged arch of thestorm crept over the sun and marched down on us with strange twistingsand writhings and up-boilings of its tawny mane. 

"Ye'd best be makin' things ready!" Whinnie called out to me. But evenbefore I had my windows down little eddies of dust were circling aboutthe shack. Then came a long and sucking sigh of wind, followed by ahot calm too horrible to be endured, a hot calm from the stiflingcenter of which your spirit cried out for whatever was destined tohappen to happen at once. The next moment brought its answer to thatfoolish prayer, a whining and whistling of wind that shook our littleshell of a house on its foundations, a lurid flash or two, and thenthe tumult of the storm itself. 

The room where I stood with my children grew suddenly and uncannilydark. I could hear Struthers calling thinly from the kitchen door toWhinnie, who apparently was making a belated effort to get mychicken-run gate open and my fowls under cover. I could hear ascattering drive of big rain-drops on the roof, solemn and soft, likethe fall of plump frogs. But by the time Whinnie was in through thekitchen door this had changed. It had changed into a passionate andpulsing beat of rain, whipped and lashed by the wind that shook thetimbers about us. The air, however, was cooler by this time, and itwas easier to breathe. So I found it hard to understand why Whinnie, as he stood in the half-light by one of the windows, should wear sucha look of protest on his morose old face which was the color of apigskin saddle just under the stirrup-flap. 

Even when I heard one solitary thump on the roof over my head, asdistinct as the thump of a hammer, I failed to understand what wasworrying my hired man. Then, after a momentary pause in the rain, thethumps were repeated. They were repeated in a rattle which became aclatter and soon grew into one continuous stream of sound, like athousand machine-guns all going off at once. 

I realized then what it meant, what it was. It was hail. And it meantthat we were being "hailed out. "

We were being cannonaded with shrapnel from the skies. We were beingdeluged with blocks of ice almost the size of duck-eggs. So thunderouswas the noise that I had no remembrance when the window-panes on thewest side of the house were broken. It wasn't, in fact, until I beheldthe wind and water blowing in through the broken sashes that Iawakened to what had happened. But I did nothing to stop the flood. Imerely sat there with my two babes in my arms and my Dinkie pressed inclose between my knees, in a foolishly crouching and uncomfortableposition, as though I wanted to shield their tender little bodies withmy own. I remember seeing Struthers run gabbing and screaming aboutthe room and then try to bury herself under her mattress, like thesilly old she-ostrich she was, with her number sevens sticking outfrom under the bedding. I remember seeing Whinnie picking up one ofthe white things that had rolled in through the broken window. It wasoblong, and about as big as a pullet's egg, but more irregular inshape. It was clear on the outside but milky at the center, making methink of a half-cooked globe of tapioca. But it was a stone of solidice. And thousands and thousands of stones like that, millions ofthem, were descending on my wheat, were thrashing down my half-ripenedoats, were flailing the world and beating the life and beauty out ofmy crops. 

The storm ended almost as abruptly as it had begun. The hammers ofThor that were trying to pound my lonely little prairie-house topieces were withdrawn, the tumult stopped, and the light grewstronger. Whinstane Sandy even roused himself and moved toward thedoor, which he opened with the hand of a sleep-walker, and stoodstaring out. I could see reflected in that seamed old face thedesolation which for a minute or two I didn't have the heart to lookupon. I knew, even before I got slowly up and followed him toward thedoor, that our crop was gone, that we had lost everything. 

I stood in the doorway, staring out at what, only that morning, hadbeen a world golden with promise, rich and bountiful and beautiful tothe eye and blessed in the sight of God. And now, at one stroke, itwas all wiped out. As far as the eye could see I beheld only flattenedand shredded ruin. Every acre of my crop was gone. My year's work hadbeen for nothing, my blind planning, my petty scheming and contriving, my foolish little hopes and dreams, all, all were there, beaten downinto the mud. 

Yet, oddly enough, it did not stir in me any quick and angry passionof protest. It merely left me mute and stunned, staring at it with theeyes of the ox, with a dull wonder in my heart and a duller sense ofdeprivation away off at the back of my brain. I scarcely noticed whenlittle Dinkie toddled out and possessed himself of a number of thelarger hailstones, which he promptly proceeded to suck. When a smallerone melted in the warmth of his hand, he stared down at the emptinessbetween his little brown fingers, wondering where his pretty pebblehad vanished to, just as I wondered where my crop had gone. 

But it's gone. There's no doubt of that. The hail went from southwestto northeast, in a streak about three miles wide, like a conqueringarmy, licking up everything as it went. Whinnie says that it's thewill of God. Struthers, resurrected from her mattress, proclaims thatit's Fate punishing us for our sins. My head tells me that it'sbarometric laws, operating along their own ineluctable lines. But thatdoesn't salve the sore. 

For the rest of the afternoon we stood about like Italian peasantsafter an earthquake, possessed of a sort of collective mutism, doingnothing, saying nothing, thinking nothing. Even my seven dead pullets, which had been battered to death by the hail, were left to lie wherethey had fallen. I noticed a canvas carrier for a binder which Whinniehad been mending. It was riddled like a sieve. If this worried me, itworried me only vaguely. It wasn't until I remembered that there wouldbe no wheat for that binder to cut and no sheaves for that carrier tobear, that the extent of what had befallen Alabama Ranch once morecame fully home to me. It takes time to digest such things, just as ittakes time to reorganize your world. The McKails, for the second time, have been cleaned to the bones. We ought to be getting used to it, forit's the second time we've gone bust in a year!

It wasn't until yesterday morning that any kind of perspective cameback to us. I went to bed the night before wondering about Dinky-Dunkand hoping against hope that he'd come galloping over to make sure hisfamily were still in the land of the living. But he didn't come. Andbefore noon I learned that Casa Grande had not been touched by thehail. That at least was a relief, for it meant that Duncan was safeand sound. 

In a way, yesterday, there was nothing to do, and yet there was agreat deal to do. It reminded me of the righting up after a funeral. But I refused to think of anything beyond the immediate tasks in hand. I just did what had to be done, and went to bed again dog-tired. But Ihad nightmare, and woke up in the middle of the night crying for all Iwas worth. I seemed alone in an empty world, a world without meaningor mercy, and there in the blackness of the night when the tides oflife run lowest, I lay with my hand pressed against my heart, with thefeeling that there was nothing whatever left in existence to make itworth while. Then Pee-Wee stirred and whimpered, and when I lifted himinto my bed and held him against my breast, the nearness of his bodybrought warmth and consolation to mine, and I remembered that I wasstill a mother. .. . 

It was this morning (Sunday) that Dinky-Dunk appeared at AlabamaRanch. I had looked for him and longed for him, in secret, and myheart should have leapt up with gladness at the sight of him. But itdidn't. It couldn't. It was like asking a millstone to pirouette. 

In the first place, everything seemed wrong. I had a cold in the headfrom the sudden drop in the temperature, and I was arrayed in thatdrab old gingham wrapper which Dinkie had cut holes in with Struthers'scissors, for I hadn't cared much that morning when I dressed whetherI looked like a totem-pole or a Stoney squaw. And the dregs of whatI'd been through during the last two days were still sour in thebottom of my heart. I was a Job in petticoats, a mutineer against manand God, a nihilist and an I. W. W. All in one. And Dinky-Dunkappeared in Lady Alicia's car, in _her_ car, carefully togged out inhis Sunday best, with that strangely alien aspect which citifiedclothes can give to the rural toiler when he emerges from the costumeof his kind. 

But it wasn't merely that he came arrayed in this outer shell ofaffluence and prosperity. It was more that there was a sense oftriumph in his heart which he couldn't possibly conceal. And I wasn'tslow to realize what it meant. I was a down-and-outer now, and at hismercy. He could have his way with me, without any promise of protest. And whatever he might have done, or might yet do, it was ordained thatI in my meekness should bow to the yoke. All that I must remember wasthat he stood my lord and master. I had made my foolish littlestruggle to be mistress of my own destiny, and now that I had failed, and failed utterly, I must bend to whatever might be given to me. 

"It's hard luck, Chaddie, " he said, with a pretense at beingsympathetic. But there was no real sorrow in his eye as he stood theresurveying my devastated ranch. 

"Nix on that King Cophetua stuff!" I curtly and vulgarly proclaimed. 

"Just what do you mean?" he asked, studying my face. 

"Kindly can the condescension stuff!" I repeated, taking a waywardsatisfaction out of shocking him with the paraded vulgarity of myphrasing. 

"That doesn't sound like you, " he said, naturally surprised, Isuppose, that I didn't melt into his arms. 

"Why not?" I inquired, noticing that he no longer cared to meet myeye. 

"It sounds hard, " he said. 

"Well, some man has said that a hard soil makes a hard race, " Iretorted, with a glance about at my ruined wheatlands. "Did you have apleasant time in Chicago?"

He looked up quickly. 

"I wasn't in Chicago, " he promptly protested. 

"Then that woman lied, after all, " I remarked, with a lump of Scotchgranite where my heart ought to have been. For I could see by his facethat he knew, without hesitation, the woman I meant. 

"Isn't that an unnecessarily harsh word?" he asked, trying, of course, to shield her to the last. And if he had not exactly winced, he haddone the next thing to it. 

"What would _you_ call it?" I countered. It wouldn't have taken amicrophone, I suppose, to discover the hostility in my tone. "Andwould it be going too far to inquire just where you were?" I continuedas I saw he had no intention of answering my first question. 

"I was at the Coast, " he said, compelling himself to meet my glance. 

"I'm sorry that I cut your holiday short, " I told him. 

"It was scarcely a holiday, " he remonstrated. 

"What would you call it then?" I asked. 

"It was purely a business trip, " he retorted. 

There had, I remembered, been a great deal of that business during thepast few months. And an ice-cold hand squeezed the last hope of hopeout of my heart. _She_ had been at the Coast. 

"And this belated visit to your wife and children, I presume, is alsofor business purposes?" I inquired. But he was able to smile at that, for all my iciness. 

"_Is_ it belated?" he asked. 

"Wouldn't you call it that?" I quietly inquired. 

"But I had to clear up that case of the stolen horses, " he protested, "that Sing Lo thievery. "

"Which naturally comes before one's family, " I ironically remindedhim. 

"But courts are courts, Chaddie, " he maintained, with a pretense ofpatience. 

"And consideration is consideration, " I rather wearily amended. 

"We can't always do what we want to, " he next remarked, apparentlyintent on being genially axiomatic. 

"Then to what must the humble family attribute this visit?" Iinquired, despising that tone of mockery into which I had fallen yetseeming unable to drag myself out of its muck-bottom depths. 

"To announce that I intend to return to them, " he asserted, though itdidn't seem an easy statement to make. 

It rather took my breath away, for a moment. But Reason remained onher throne. It was too much like sticking spurs into a dead horse. There was too much that could not be forgotten. And I calmly remindedDinky-Dunk that the lightest of heads can sometimes have the longestof memories. 

"Then you don't want me back?" he demanded, apparently embarrassed bymy lack of hospitality. 

"It all depends on what you mean by that word, " I answered, speakingas judicially as I was able. "If by coming back you mean coming backto this house, I suppose you have a legal right to do so. But if itmeans anything more, I'm afraid it can't be done. You see, Dinky-Dunk, I've got rather used to single harness again, and I've learned tothink and act for myself, and there's a time when continued unfairnesscan kill the last little spark of friendliness in any woman's heart. It's not merely that I'm tired of it all. But I'm _tired of beingtired_, if you know what that means. I don't even know what I'm goingto do. Just at present, in fact, I don't want to think about it. ButI'd much prefer being alone until I am able to straighten things outto my own satisfaction. "

"I'm sorry, " said Dinky-Dunk, looking so crestfallen that for a momentI in turn felt almost sorry for him. 

"Isn't it rather late for that?" I reminded him. 

"Yes, I suppose it is, " he admitted, with a disturbing new note ofhumility. Then he looked up at me, almost defiantly. "But you need myhelp. "

It was masterful man, once more asserting himself. It was a trivialmisstep, but a fatal one. It betrayed, at a flash, his entiremisjudgment of me, of my feelings, of what I was and what I intendedto be. 

"I'm afraid I've rather outlived that period of Bashi-Bazookism, " Icoolly and quietly explained to my lord and master. "You may have thegood luck to be confronting me when I seem to be floored. I've beenhailed out, it's true. But that has happened to other people, and theyseem to have survived. And there are worse calamities, I find, thanthe loss of a crop. "

"Are you referring to anything that I have done?" asked Dinky-Dunk, with a slightly belligerent look in his eye. 

"If the shoe fits, put it on, " I observed. 

"But there are certain things I want to explain, " he tried to argue, with the look of a man confronted by an overdraft on his patience. 

"Somebody has said that a friend, " I reminded him, "is a person towhom one need never explain. And any necessity for explanation, yousee, removes us even from the realm of friendship. "

"But, hang it all, I'm your husband, " protested my obtuse and somewhatindignant interlocutor. 

"We all have our misfortunes, " I found the heart, or rather theabsence of heart, to remark. 

"I'm afraid this isn't a very good beginning, " said Dinky-Dunk, hisdignity more ruffled than ever. 

"It's not a beginning at all, " I reminded him. "It's more like anending. "

That kept him silent for quite a long while. 

"I suppose you despise me, " he finally remarked. 

"It's scarcely so active an emotion, " I tried to punish him byretorting. 

"But I at least insist on explaining what took me to the Coast, " hecontended. 

"That is scarcely necessary, " I told him. 

"Then you know?" he asked. 

"I imagine the whole country-side does, " I observed. 

He made a movement of mixed anger and protest. 

"I went to Vancouver because the government had agreed to take over myVancouver Island water-front for their new shipbuilding yards. Ifyou've forgotten just what that means, I'd like to remind you thatthere's----"

"I don't happen to have forgotten, " I interrupted, wondering why newswhich at one time would have set me on fire could now leave me quitecold. "But what caused the government to change its mind?"

"Allie!" he said, after a moment's hesitation, fixing a slightlycombative eye on mine. 

"She seems to have almost unlimited powers, " I observed as coolly as Icould, making an effort to get my scattered thoughts into line again. 

"On the contrary, " Dinky-Dunk explained with quite painful politeness, "it was merely the accident that she happened to know the navalofficer on the Imperial Board. She was at Banff the week the board wasthere, and she was able to put in a good word for the Vancouver Islandsite. And the Imperial verdict swung our own government officialsover. "

"You were lucky to have such an attractive wirepuller, " I frigidlyannounced. 

"The luck wasn't altogether on my side, " Dinky-Dunk almost as frigidlyretorted, "when you remember that it was giving her a chance to getrid of a ranch she was tired of!"

I did my best to hide my surprise, but it wasn't altogether a success. The dimensions of the movement, apparently, were much greater than mypoor little brain had been able to grasp. 

"Do you mean it's going to let you take Casa Grande off her ladyship'shands?" I diffidently inquired. 

"That's already arranged for, " Dinky-Dunk quite casually informed me. We were a couple of play-actors, I felt, each deep in a rôle of hisown, each stirred much deeper than he was ready to admit, and each alittle afraid of the other. 

"You are to be congratulated, " I told Dinky-Dunk, chilled in spite ofmyself, never for a moment quite able to forget the sinister shadow ofLady Alicia which lay across our trodden little path of everyday life. 

"It was you and the kiddies I was thinking of, " said my husband, in aslightly remote voice. And the mockery of that statement, knowing whatI knew, was too much for me. 

"I'm sorry you didn't think of us a little sooner, " I observed. And Ihad the bitter-sweet reward of seeing a stricken light creep up intoDinky-Dunk's eyes. 

"Why do you say that?" he asked. 

But I didn't answer that question of his. Instead, I asked himanother. 

"Did you know that Lady Alicia came here and announced that she was inlove with you?" I demanded, resolved to let the light in to thattangled mess which was fermenting in the silo of my soul. 

"Yes, I know, " he quietly affirmed, as he hung his head. "She told meabout it. And it was _awful_. It should never have happened. It mademe ashamed even--even to face you!"

"That was natural, " I agreed, with my heart still steeled against him. 

"It makes a fool of a man, " he protested, "a situation like that. "

"Then the right sort of man wouldn't encourage it, " I reminded him, "wouldn't even permit it. " And still again I caught that quickmovement of impatience from him. 

"What's that sort of thing to a man of my age?" he demanded. "When youget to where I am you don't find love looming so large on the horizon. What--"

"No, it clearly doesn't loom so large, " I interrupted. 

"What you want then, " went on Dinky-Dunk, ignoring me, "is power, success, the consolation of knowing you're not a failure in life. _That's_ the big issue, and that's the stake men play big for, andplay hard for. "

It was, I remembered in my bitterness of soul, what I myself had beenplaying hard for--but I had lost. And it had left my heart dry. It hadleft my heart so dry that my own Dinky-Dunk, standing there before mein the open sunlight, seemed millions of miles removed from me, mysteriously depersonalized, as remote in spirit as a stranger fromMars come to converse about an inter-stellar telephone-system. 

"Then you've really achieved your ambition, " I reminded my husband, ashe stood studying a face which I tried to keep tranquil under hisinspection. 

"Oh, no, " he corrected, "only a small part of it. "

"What's the rest?" I indifferently inquired, wondering why most oflife's victories, after all, were mere Pyrrhic victories. 

"You, " declared Dinky-Dunk, with a reckless light in his eyes, "You, and the children, now that I'm in a position to give them what theywant. "

"But _are_ you?" I queried. 

"Well, that's what I'm coming back to demonstrate, " he found thecourage to assert. 

"To them?" I asked. 

"To all of you!" he said with a valiant air of finality. 

I told him it was useless, but he retorted that he didn't propose tohave that stop him. I explained to him that it would be embarrassing, but he parried that claim by protesting that sacrifice was good forthe soul. I asserted that it would be a good deal of a theatricality, under the circumstances, but he attempted to brush this aside bystating that what he had endured for years might be repeated bypatience. 

So Dinky-Dunk is coming back to Alabama Ranch! It sounds momentous, and yet, I know in my heart, that it doesn't mean so very much. Hewill sleep under the same roof with me as remote as though he werereposing a thousand miles away. He will breakfast and go forth to hiswork, and my thoughts will not be able to go with him. He will returnwith the day's weariness in his bones, but a weariness which I canneither fathom nor explain in my own will keep my blood from warmingat the sound of his voice through the door. Being still his wife, Ishall have to sew and mend and cook for him. _That_ is the penalty ofprairie life; there is no escape from propinquity. 

But that life can go on in this way, indefinitely, is unthinkable. What will happen, I don't know. But there will have to be a change, somewhere. There will have to be a change, but I am too tired to worryover what it will be. I'm too tired even to think of it. That'ssomething which lies in the lap of Time. 

 _Saturday the Twenty-fifth_

Dinky-Dunk is back. At least he sleeps and breakfasts at home, but therest of the time he is over at Casa Grande getting his crop cut. He'stoo busy, I fancy, to pay much attention to our mutual lack ofattention. But the compact was made, and he seems willing to complywith it. The only ones who fail to regard it are the children. Ihadn't counted on them. There are times, accordingly, when theysomewhat complicate the situation. It didn't take them long to getre-acquainted with their daddy. I could see, from the first, that heintended to be very considerate and kind with them, for I'm beginningto realize that he gets a lot of fun out of the kiddies. Pee-Wee willgo to him, now, from anybody. He goes with an unmistakable expressionof "Us-men-have-got-to-stick-together" satisfaction on his littleface. 

But Dinky-Dunk's intimacies, I'm glad to say, do not extend beyond thechildren. Three days ago, though, he asked me about turning his hogsin on my land. It doesn't sound disturbingly emotional. But if what'sleft of my crop, of course, is any use to Duncan, he's welcome toit. .. . 

I looked for that letter which I wrote to Dinky-Dunk several weeksago, looked for it for an hour and more this morning, but haven'tsucceeded in finding it. I was sure that I'd put it between the pagesof the old ranch journal. But it's not there. 

Last night before I turned in I read all of Meredith's _Modern Love_. It was nice to remember that once, at Box Hill, I'd felt the livingclasp of the hand which had written that wonderful series of poems. But never before did I quite understand that elaborated essay inlove-moods. It came like a friendly voice, like an understandingcomrade who knows the world better than I do, and brought me comfort, even though the sweetness of it was slightly acidulated, like alemon-drop. And as for myself, I suppose I'll continue to

 ". .. .. .. .. .. . Sit contentedly And eat my pot of honey on the grave. "

 _Sunday the Second_

I have written to Uncle Carlton again, asking him about my ChileanNitrate shares. If the company's reorganized and the mines openedagain, surely my stock ought to be worth something. 

The days are getting shorter, and the hot weather is over for good, Ihope. I usually like autumn on the prairie, but the thought of fall, this year, doesn't fill me with any inordinate joy. I'm unsettled andatonic, and it's just as well, I fancy, that I'm weaning the Twins. 

It's not the simple operation I'd expected, but the worst is alreadyover. Pee-Wee is betraying unmistakable serpentine powers, and it's nolonger safe to leave him on a bed. Poppsy is a fastidious little lady, and apparently a bit of a philosopher. She is her father's favorite. Whinstane Sandy is loyal to little Dinkie, and, now that the eveningsare longer, regales him on stories, stories which the little tot canonly half understand. But they must always be about animals, andWhinnie seems to run to wolves. He's told the story of the skater andthe wolves, with personal embellishments, and Little Red Riding-Hoodin a version all his own, and last night, I noticed, he recounted thetale of the woman in the sleigh with her children when the pack ofwolves pursued her. And first, to save herself and her family, shethrew her little baby out to the brutes. And when they had gained onher once more, she threw out her little girl, and then her little boy, and then her biggest boy of ten. And when she reached a settlement andtold of her deliverance, the Oldest Settler took a wood-ax and cloveher head clear down to the shoulder-blades--the same, of course, beinga punishment for saving herself at the expense of her little ones. 

My Dinkie sat wriggling his toes with delight, the tale being of thatgruesome nature which appeals to him. It must have been tried oncountless other children, for, despite Whinnie's autobiographicalinterjections, the yarn is an old and venerable one, a primitiveRussian folk-tale which even Browning worked over in his _IvanIvanovitch_. 

Dinky-Dunk, wandering in on the tail end of it, remarked: "That's afine story, that is, with all those coyotes singing out there!"

"The chief objection to it, " I added, "is that the lady didn't dropher husband over first. "

Dinky-Dunk looked down at me as he filled his pipe. 

"But the husband, as I remember the story, had been left behind to dowhat a mere husband could to save their home, " my spouse quietlyreminded me. 

 _Monday the Tenth_

There was a heavy frost last night. It makes me feel that summer isover. Dinky-Dunk asked me yesterday why I disliked Casa Grande andnever ventured over into that neighborhood. I evaded any answer byannouncing that there were very few things I liked nowadays. .. . 

Only once, lately, have we spoken of Lady Allie. It was Dinky-Dunk, infact, who first brought up her name in speaking of the signing of thetransfer-papers. 

"Is it true, " I found the courage to ask, "that you knew your cousinquite intimately as a girl?"

Dinky-Dunk laughed as he tamped down his pipe. 

"Yes, it _must_ have been quite intimately, " he acknowledged. "Forwhen she was seven and I was nine we went all the way down TeignmouthHill together in an empty apple-barrel--than which nothing that I knowof could possibly be more intimate!"

I couldn't join him in his mirth over that incident, for I happened toremember the look on Lady Alicia's face when she once watchedDinky-Dunk mount his mustang and ride away. "Aren't men lawds ofcreation?" she had dreamily inquired. "Not after you've lived withthem for a couple of years, " I had been heartless enough to retort, just to let her know that I didn't happen to have a skin like aDouglas pine. 

 _Sunday the Sixteenth_

I've just had a letter from Uncle Carlton. It's a very long andbusinesslike letter, in which he goes into details as to how ourcompany has been incorporated in _La Association de Productores deSalitre de Chile_, with headquarters at Valparaiso. It's a new andrather unexpected arrangement, but he prophesies that with nitrate atten shillings per Spanish quintal the returns on the investment, underthe newer conditions, should be quite satisfactory. He goes on toexplain how nitrate is shipped in bags of one hundred kilos, and theprice includes the bags, but the weight is taken on the nitrate only, involving a deduction from the gross weight of seven-tenths per cent. Then he ambles off into a long discussion of how the fixation methodfrom the air may eventually threaten the stability of our entireamalgamated mines, but probably not during his life-time or even myown. And I had to read the letter over for the third time before Iwinnowed from it the obscure but essential kernel that my shares fromthis year forward should bring me in an annual dividend of at leasttwo thousand, but more probably three, and possibly even four, oncethe transportation situation is normalized, but depending largely, ofcourse, on the labor conditions obtaining in Latin America--and muchmore along the same lines. 

That news of my long-forgotten and long-neglected nest-egg should havemade me happy. But it didn't. I couldn't quite react to it. As usual, I thought of the children first, and from their standpoint it didbring a sort of relief. It was consoling, of course, to know that, whatever happened, they could have woolens on their little tummies andshoe-leather on their little piggies. But the news didn't come withsufficient force to shock the dull gray emptiness out of existence. I've even been wondering if there's any news that could. For the onething that seems always to face me is the absence of intensity fromlife. Can it be, I found myself asking to-day, that it's youth, goldenyouth, that is slipping away from me?

It startled me a little, to have to face that question. But I shake myfist in the teeth of Time. I refuse to surrender. I shall not allowmyself to become antiquated. I'm on the wrong track, in some way, butbefore I dry up into a winter apple I'm going to find out where thetrouble is, and correct it. I never was much of a sleep-walker. I wantlife, Life--and oodles of it. .. . 

Among other things, by the way, which I've been missing are books. They at least are to be had for the buying, and I've decided there'sno excuse for letting the channels of my mind get moss-grown. I've hada "serious but not fatal wound, " as the newspapers say, to my personalvanity, but there's no use in letting go of things, at my time oflife. Pee-Wee, I'm sure, will never be satisfied with an empty-headedold frump for a mother, and Dinkie is already asking questions thatare slightly disturbing. Yesterday, in his bath, he held his hand overhis heart. He held it there for quite a long time, and then he lookedat me with widening eyes. "Mummy, " he called out, "I've got a m'sheeninside me!" And Whinnie's explorations are surely worth emulating. Itoo have a machine inside me which some day I'll be compelled torediscover. It is a machine which, at present, is merely a pump, though the ancients, I believe, regarded it as the seat of theemotions. 

 _Saturday the Twenty-ninth_

Dinky-Dunk is quite subtle. He is ignoring me, as a modern army ofassault ignores a fortress by simply circling about its forbiddingwalls and leaving it in the rear. But I can see that he is deliberatelyand patiently making love to my children. He is entrenching himself intheir affection. 

He is, of course, their father, and it is not for me to interfere. Last night, in fact, when Pee-Wee cried for his dad, poor oldDinky-Dunk's face looked almost radiumized. He has announced that onTuesday, when he will have to go in to Buckhorn, he intends to carryalong the three kiddies and have their photograph taken. It remindedme that I had no picture whatever of the Twins. And that reminded me, in turn, of what a difference there is between your first child andthe tots who come later. Little Dinkie, being a novelty, was followedby a phosphorescent wake of diaries and snap-shots and weigh-scalesand growth-records, with his birthdays duly reckoned, not by the year, but by the month. 

It's not that I love the Twins less. It's only that the novelty haspassed. And in one way it's a good thing, for over your second andthird baby you worry less. You know what is needed, and how to do it. You blaze your trail, as a mother, with your first-born. You buildyour road, and after that you are no longer a pioneer. You know theway you have to go, henceforth, and you follow it. It is less a GreatAdventure, perhaps, but, on the other hand, the double-pointed toothof Anxiety does not rowel quite so often at the core of your heart. .. . I've been wondering if, with the coming of the children, there is notsomething which slips away from the relationship between husband andwife. That there is a difference is not to be denied. There was a timewhen I resented this and tried to fight against it. But I wasn't bigenough, I suppose, to block the course of Nature. And it _was_ Nature, you have to admit when you come to look it honestly in the face, Nature in her inexorable economy working out her inexorable ends. If Ihadn't loved Dinky-Dunk, fondly, foolishly, abandonedly, there wouldhave been no little Dinkie and Poppsy and Pee-Wee. They would havebeen left to wander like disconsolate little ghosts through thatlonely and twilit No-Man's Land of barren love and unwanted babes. Andthe only thing that keeps me human, nowadays, that keeps me from beinga woman with a dead soul, a she-being of untenanted hide and bones anddehydrated ham-strings, is my kiddies. The thought of them, at anytime of the day, can put a cedilla under my heart to soften it. .. . 

Struthers, who is to go in to Buckhorn with the children when theyhave their picture taken, is already deep in elaborating preparationsfor that expedition. She is improvising an English nurse's uniform andhas asked if there might be one picture of her and the children. 

 _Tuesday the Fifteenth_

The children have been away for a whole day, the first time in familyhistory. And oh, what a difference it makes in this lonely littleprairie home of ours! The quietness, the emptiness, the desolation ofit all was something quite beyond my imagination. I know now that Icould never live apart from them. Whatever happens, I shall not beseparated from my kiddies. .. . 

I spent my idle time in getting Peter's music-box in working order. Dinky-Dunk, who despises it, thoughtlessly sat on the package ofrecords and broke three of them. I've been trying over the others. They sound tinny and flat, and I'm beginning to suspect I haven't mysound-box adjusted right. I've a hunger to hear good music. Andwithout quite knowing it, I've been craving for city life again, forat least a taste of it, for even a chocolate cream-soda at a Huylercounter. Dinky-Dunk yesterday said that I was a cloudy creature, andaccused me of having a mutinous mouth. Men seem to think that loveshould be like an eight-day clock, with a moment or two of industriouswinding-up rewarded by a long week of undeviating devotion. 

 _Sunday the Twenty-seventh_

The thrashing outfits are over at Casa Grande, and my being a merespectator of the big and busy final act of the season's drama remindsme of three years ago, just before Dinkie arrived. Struthers, however, is at Casa Grande and in her glory, the one and only woman in a circleof nine active-bodied men. 

I begin to see that it's true what Dinky-Dunk said about businesslooming bigger in men's lives than women are apt to remember. He'sworking hard, and his neck's so thin that his Adam's apple sticks outlike a push-button, but he gets his reward in finding his crop runningmuch higher than he had figured. He's as keen as ever he was for powerand prosperity. He wants success, and night and day he's scheming forit. Sometimes I wonder if he didn't deliberately _use_ his cousinAllie in this juggling back of Casa Grande into his own hands. YetDinky-Dunk, with all his faults, is not, and could not be, circuitous. I feel sure of that. 

He became philosophical, the other day when I complained about thehowling of the coyotes, and protested it was these horizon-singersthat kept the prairie clean. He even argued that the flies which seemsuch a pest to the cattle in summer-time are a blessing in disguise, since the unmolested animals over-eat when feed is plentiful and getblack-rot. So out of suffering comes wisdom and out of endurance comesfortitude!

 _Thursday the Sixth_

On Tuesday morning we had our first snow of the season, or, rather, before the season. It wasn't much of a snow-storm, but Dinkie wasgreatly worked up at the sight of it and I finally put on his littlereefer and his waders and let him go out in it. But the weather hadmoderated, the snow turned to slush, and when I rescued Dinkie fromrolling in what looked to him like a world of ice-cream he was a verywet boy. 

On Tuesday night Dinkie, usually so sturdy and strong, woke up with atight little chest-cough that rather frightened me. I went over to hiscrib and covered him up. But when he wakened me again, a couple ofhours later, the cough had grown tighter. It turned into a sort ofsharp bark. And this time I found Dinkie hot and feverish. So I gotbusy, rubbing his chest with sweet oil and turpentine until the skinwas pink and giving him a sip or two of cherry pectoral which I stillhad on the upper shelf of the cupboard. 

When morning came he was no better. He seemed in a stupor, rousing onlyto bark into his pillow. I called Dinky-Dunk in, before he left in thepouring rain for Casa Grande, and he said, almost indifferently, "Yes, the boy's got a cold all right. " But that was all. 

When breakfast was over I tried Dinkie with hot gruel, but he declinedit. He refused to eat, in fact, and remembering what Peter had oncesaid about my first-born being pantophagous, I began to suspect that Ihad a very sick boy on my hands. 

At noon, when he seemed no better, I made a mild mustard-plaster andput it on the upper part of his little chest. I let it burn thereuntil he began to cry with the discomfort of it. Then I tucked adouble fold of soft flannel above his thorax. 

As night came on he was more flushed and feverish than ever, and Iwished to heaven that I'd a clinic thermometer in the house. For bythis time I was more than worried: I was panicky. Yet Duncan, when hecame in, and got out of his oil-skins, didn't seem very sympathetic. He flatly refused to share my fears. The child, he acknowledged, had acroupy little chest-cold, but all he wanted was keeping warm and asmuch water as he could drink. Nature, he largely protested, wouldattend to a case like that. 

I was ready to turn on him like a she-tiger, but I held myself in, though it took an effort. I saw Duncan go off to bed, dog-tired, ofcourse, but I felt that to go to sleep, under the circumstances, wouldbe criminal. Dinkie, in the meantime, was waking every now and thenand barking like a baby-coyote. I could have stood it, I suppose, ifthat old Bobs of ours hadn't started howling outside, in long-drawnand dreary howls of unutterable woe. I remembered about a dog alwayshowling that way when somebody was going to die in the house. And Iconcluded, with an icy heart, that it was the death-howl. I tried tocount Dinkie's pulse, but it was so rapid and I was so nervous that Ilost track of the beats. So I decided to call Dinky-Dunk. 

He came in to us kind of sleepy-eyed and with his hair rumpled up, andasked, without thinking, what I wanted. 

And I told him, with a somewhat shaky voice, what I wanted. I said Iwanted antiphlogistine, and a pneumonia-jacket, and a doctor, and atrained nurse, and just a few of the comforts of civilization. 

Dinky-Dunk, staring at me as though I were a madwoman, went over toDinkie's crib, and felt his forehead and the back of his neck, and heldan ear against the boy's chest, and then against his shoulder-blades. He said it was all right, and that I myself ought to be in bed. Asthough in answer to that Dinkie barked out his croupy protest, tightand hard, barked as I'd never heard a child bark before. And I began tofuss, for it tore my heart to think of that little body burning up withfever and being denied its breath. 

"You might just as well get back to bed, " repeated Dinky-Dunk, ratherimpatiently. And that was the spark which set off the mine, whichpushed me clear over the edge of reason. I'd held myself in for solong, during weeks and weeks of placid-eyed self-repression, that whenthe explosion did come I went off like a Big Bertha. I turned on myhusband with a red light dancing before my face and told him he was abeast and a heartless brute. He tried to stop me, but it was no use. Ieven said that this was a hell of a country, where a white woman hadto live like a Cree squaw and a child had to die like a sick hound ina coulée. And I said a number of other things, which must have cut tothe raw, for even in the uncertain lamplight I could see thatDinky-Dunk's face had become a kind of lemon-color, which is thenearest to white a sunburned man seems able to turn. 

"I'll get a doctor, if you want one, " he said, with anover-tried-patience look in his eyes. 

"_I_ don't want a doctor, " I told him, a little shrill-voiced withindignation. "It's the child who wants one. "

"I'll get your doctor, " he repeated as he began dressing, none tooquickly. And it took him an interminable time to get off, for it wasraining cats and dogs, a cold, sleety rain from the northeast, and theshafts had to be taken off the buckboard and a pole put in, for itwould require a team to haul anything on wheels to Buckhorn, on such anight. 

It occurred to me, as I stood at the window and saw Dinky-Dunk'slantern wavering about in the rain while he was getting the team andhooking them on to the buckboard, that it would be only the decentthing to send him off with a cup of hot coffee, now that I had thekettle boiling. But he'd martyrize himself, I knew, by refusing it, even though I made it. And he was already sufficiently warmed by thefires of martyrdom. 

Yet it was an awful night, I realized when I stood in the open doorand stared after him as he swung out into the muddy trail with thestable lantern lashed to one end of his dashboard. And I felt sorry, and a little guilty, about the neglected cup of coffee. 

I went back to little Dinkie, and found him asleep. So I sat downbeside him. I sat there wrapped up in one of Dinky-Dunk's four-pointHudson-Bays, deciding that if the child's cough grew tighter I'd rigup a croup-tent, as I'd once seen Chinkie's doctor do with littleGimlets. But Dinkie failed to waken. And I fell asleep myself, anddidn't open an eye until I half-tumbled out of the chair, well ontoward morning. 

By the time Dinky-Dunk got back with the doctor, who most unmistakablysmelt of Scotch whisky, I had breakfast over and the house in orderand the Twins fed and bathed and off for their morning nap. I had afresh nightie on little Dinkie, who rather upset me by announcing thathe wanted to get up and play with his Noah's Ark, for his fever seemedto have slipped away from him and the tightness had gone from hiscough. But I said nothing as that red-faced and sweet-scented doctorlooked the child over. His stethoscope, apparently, tickled Dinkie'sribs, for after trying to wriggle away a couple of times he laughedout loud. The doctor also laughed. But Dinky-Dunk's eye happened tomeet mine. 

It would be hard to describe his expression. All I know is that itbrought a disagreeable little sense of shame to my hypocritical oldheart, though I wouldn't have acknowledged it, for worlds. 

"Why, those lungs are clear, " I heard the man of medicine saying to myhusband. "It's been a nasty little cold, of course, but nothing toworry over. "

His optimism struck me as being rather unprofessional, for if youtravel half a night to a case, it seems to me, it ought not to bebrushed aside with a laugh. And I was rather sorry that I had such agood breakfast waiting for them. Duncan, it's true, did not eat agreat deal, but the way that red-faced doctor lapped up my coffee withclotted cream and devoured bacon and eggs and hot muffins should havedisturbed any man with an elementary knowledge of dietetics. And bynoon Dinkie was pretty much his old self again. I half expected thatDuncan would rub it in a little. But he has remained discreetlysilent. 

Next time, of course, I'll have a better idea of what to do. But I'vebeen thinking that this exquisite and beautiful animalism known as thematernal instinct can sometimes emerge from its exquisiteness. Children are a joy and a glory, but you pay for that joy and glorywhen you see them stretched out on a bed of pain, with the shadow ofDeath hovering over them. 

When I tried to express something like this to Dunkie last night, somewhat apologetically, he looked at me with an odd light in hissomber old Scotch Canadian eye. 

"Wait until you see him really ill, " he remarked, man-like, stubbornlyintent on justifying himself. But I was too busy saying a littleprayer, demanding of Heaven that such a day might never come, tobother about delivering myself of the many laboriously concoctedtruths which I'd assembled for my bone-headed lord and master. I wasgrateful enough for things as they were, and I could afford to begenerous. 

 _Sunday the Ninth_

For the first time since I came out on the prairie, I dread the thoughtof winter. Yet it's really something more than the winter I dread, since snow and cold have no terrors for me. I need only to look backabout ten short months and think of those crystal-clear winter days ofours, with the sleigh piled up with its warm bear-robes, the low sun onthe endless sea of white, the air like champagne, the spanking teamfrosted with their own breath, the caroling sleigh-bells, and the manwho still meant so much to me at my side. Then the homeward drive atnight, under violet clear skies, over drifts of diamond-dust, to thewarmth and peace and coziness of one's own hearth! It was oftenrazor-edge weather, away below zero, but we had furs enough to defy anythreat of frost-nip. 

We still have the furs, it's true, but there's the promise of adifferent kind of frost in the air now, a black frost that creeps intothe heart which no furs can keep warm. .. . 

We still have the furs, as I've already said, and I've been lookingthem over. They're so plentiful in this country that I've rather lostmy respect for them. Back in the old days I used to invade thosemirrored and carpeted _salons_ where a trained and deferentialsaleswoman would slip sleazy and satin-lined moleskin coats over myarms and adjust baby-bear and otter and ermine and Hudson-seal next tomy skin. It always gave me a very luxurious and Empressy sort offeeling to see myself arrayed, if only experimentally, in silver-foxand plucked beaver and fisher, to feel the soft pelts and observe howwell one's skin looked above seal-brown or shaggy bear. 

But I never knew what it cost. I never even considered where they camefrom, or what they grew on, and it was to me merely a vague andunconfirmed legend that they were all torn from the carcasses offar-away animals. Prairie life has brought me a little closer to thatlegend, and now that I know what I do, it makes a difference. 

For with the coming of the cold weather, last winter, Francois andWhinstane Sandy took to trapping, to fill in the farm-work hiatus. They made it a campaign, and prepared for it carefully, concoctingstretching-rings and cutting-boards and fashioning rabbit-snares andoverhauling wicked-looking iron traps, which were quite ugly enougheven before they became stained and clotted and rusted with blood. 

They had a very successful season, but even at the first it struck me asodd to see two men, not outwardly debased, so soberly intent on theirgame of killing. And in the end I got sick of the big blood-rusted trapsand the stretching-rings and the blood-smeared cutting-boards and thesmell of pelts being cured. For every pelt, I began to see, meant painand death. In one trap Francois found only the foot of a young red fox:it had gnawed its leg off to gain freedom from those vicious iron jawsthat had bitten so suddenly into its flesh and bone and sinew. He alsotold me of finding a young bear which had broken the anchor-chain of atwelve-pound trap and dragged it over one hundred miles. All the fight, naturally, was gone out of the little creature. It was whimpering like awoman when Francois came up with it--poor little tortured broken-heartedthing! And some empty-headed heiress goes mincing into the Metropolitan, on a Caruso night, very proud and peacocky over her new ermine coat, without ever dreaming it's a patchwork of animal sufferings that iskeeping her fat body warm, and that she's trying to make herselfbeautiful in a hundred tragedies of the wild. 

If women only thought of these things! But we women have a veryconvenient hand-made imagination all our own, and what upsets us asperfect ladies we graciously avoid. Yet if the petticoated Vandal inthat ermine coat were compelled to behold from her box-chair in theMetropolitan, not a musty old love-affair set to music, but thespectacle of how each little animal whose skin she has appropriatedhad been made to suffer, the hours and sometimes days of torture ithad endured, and how, if still alive when the trapper made the roundsof his sets, it had been carefully strangled to death by that frugalharvester, to the end that the pelt might not be bloodied and reckonedonly as a "second"--if the weasel-decked lady, I repeat, had towitness all this with her own beaded eyes, our wilderness would not begrowing into quite such a lonely wilderness. 

Or some day, let's put it, as one of these beaver-clad ladies trippedthrough the Ramble in Central Park, supposing a steel-toothed trapsuddenly and quite unexpectedly snapped shut on her silk-stockingedankle and she writhed and moaned there in public, over the week-end. Then possibly her cries of suffering might make her sisters see alittle more light. But the beaver, they tell me, is trapped under theice, always in running water. A mud-ball is placed a little above thewaiting trap, to leave the water opaque, and when the angry iron jawshave snapped shut on their victim, that victim drowns, a prisoner. Francois used to contend shruggingly that it was an easy death. It maybe easy compared with some of the other deaths imposed on his furrycaptives. But it's not my idea of bliss, drowning under a foot or twoof ice with a steel trap mangling your ankle for full measure!

"We live forward, but we understand backward. " I don't know who firstsaid it. But the older I grow the more I realize how true it is. 

 _Sunday the Umptieth_

I've written to Peter, reminding him of his promise, and asking aboutthe Pasadena bungalow. 

It seems the one way out. I'm tired of living like an Alpine ibex, allday long above the snow-line. I'm tired of this blind alley ofinaction. I'm tired of decisions deferred and threats evaded. I want toget away to think things over, to step back and regain a perspective onthe over-smudged canvas of life. 

To remain at Alabama Ranch during the winter can mean only a winter ofdiscontent and drifting--and drifting closer and closer to unchartedrocky ledges. There's no ease for the mouth where one tooth aches, asthe Chinese say. 

Dinky-Dunk, I think, has an inkling of how I feel. He is verythoughtful and kind in small things, and sometimes looks at me withthe eyes of a boy's dog which has been forbidden to follow the villagegang a-field. And it's not that I dislike him, or that he grates onme, or that I'm not thankful enough for the thousand and one littlekind things he does. But it's rubbing on the wrong side of the glass. It can't bring back the past. My husband of to-day is not theDinky-Dunk I once knew and loved and laughed with. To go back to dogs, it reminds me of Chinkie's St. Bernard, "Father Tom, " whom Chinkiepetted and trained and loved almost to adoration. And when poor oldFather Tom was killed Chinkie in his madness insisted that ataxidermist should stuff and mount that dead dog, which stood, thereafter, not a quick and living companion but a rather gruesomemonument of a vanished friendship. It was, of course, the shape andcolor of the thing he had once loved; but you can't feed a hungryheart by staring at a pair of glass eyes and a wired tail without anywag in it. 

 _Saturday the Ninth_

Struthers and I have been busy making clothes, during the absence ofDinky-Dunk, who has been off duck-shooting for the last three days. Hecomplained of being a bit tuckered out and having stood the gaff toolong and needing a change. The outing will do him good. The childrenmiss him, of course, but he's promised to bring Dinkie home an Indianbow-and-arrow. I can see death and destruction hanging over theglassware of this household. .. . The weather has been stormy, andyesterday Whinnie and Struthers put up the stove in the bunk-house. They were a long time about it, but I was reluctant to stop theflutterings of Cupid's wings. 

 _Tuesday the Twelfth_

I had a brief message from Peter stating the Pasadena house isentirely at my disposal. .. . Dinky-Dunk came back with a realpot-hunter's harvest of wild ducks, which we'll pick and dress andfreeze for winter use. I'm taking the breast-feathers for my pillowsand Whinstane Sandy is taking what's left for a sleeping-bag--fromwhich I am led to infer that he's still reconciled to a winter ofsolitude. Struthers, I know, could tell him of a warmer bag than that, lined with downier feathers from the pinions of Eros. But, as I'vesaid before, Fate, being blind, weaves badly. 

 _Friday the Fifteenth_

I've just told Dinky-Dunk of my decision to take the kiddies toCalifornia for the winter months. He rather surprised me by agreeingwith everything I suggested. He feels, I think, as I do, that there'sdanger in going aimlessly on and on as we have been doing. And it'sreally a commonplace for the prairie rancher--when he can affordit--to slip down to California for the winter. They go by thethousand, by the train-load. 

 _Friday the Sixth_

It's three long weeks since I've had time for either ink or retrospect. But at last I'm settled, though I feel as though I'd died and ascendedinto Heaven, or at least changed my world, as the Chinks say, sodifferent is Pasadena to the prairie and Alabama Ranch. For as I sithere on the _loggia_ of Peter's house I'm bathed in a soft breeze thatis heavy with a fragrance of flowers, the air is the air of ourbalmiest midsummer, and in a pepper-tree not thirty feet away amocking-bird is singing for all it's worth. It seems a poignantlybeautiful world. And everything suggests peace. But it was not an easypeace to attain. 

In the first place, the trip down was rather a nightmare. It broughthome to me the fact that I had three young barbarians to break andsubjugate, three untrained young outlaws who went wild with theirfirst plunge into train-travel and united in defiance of Struthers andher foolishly impressive English uniform which always makes me thinkof Regent Park. I have a suspicion that Dinky-Dunk all the while knewof the time I'd have, but sagely held his peace. 

I had intended, when I left home, to take the boat at Victoria and godown to San Pedro, for I was hungry for salt water and the feel of arolling deck under my feet again. But the antics of my three littleoutlaws persuaded me, before we pulled into Calgary, that it would beas well to make the trip south as short a one as possible. Dinkiedisgraced me in the dining-car by insisting on "drinking" his mashedpotatoes, and made daily and not always ineffectual efforts toappropriate all the fruit on the table, and on the last day, when I'dsagaciously handed him over to the tender mercies of Struthers, Ioverheard this dialogue:

"I want shooder in my soup!"

"But little boys don't eat sugar in their soup. "

"I want shooder in my soup!"

"But, darling, mommie doesn't eat sugar in her soup!"

"Shooder! Dinkie wants shooder, shooder in his soup!"

"Daddy never eats shooder in his soup, Sweetness. "

"I want shooder!"

"But really nice little boys don't ask for sugar in their soup, "argued the patient-eyed Struthers. 

"_Shooder!_" insisted the implacable tyrant. And he got it. 

There was an exceptional number of babies and small children on boardand my unfraternal little prairie-waifs did not see why every rattleand doll and automatic toy of their little fellow travelers and sistertourists shouldn't promptly become their own private property. Andtraveling with twins not yet a year old is scarcely conducive to rest. 

And yet, for all the worry and tumult, I found a new peace creepinginto my soul. It was the first sight of the Rockies, I think, whichbrought the change. I'd grown tired of living on a billiard-table, without quite knowing it, tired of the trimly circumscribed monotonyof material life, of the isolating flat contention against hunger andwant. But the mountains took me out of myself. They were Peter'swindmill, raised to the Nth power. They loomed above me, seeming tosay: "We are timeless. You, puny one, can live but a day. " They stoodthere as they had stood from the moment God first whispered: "Letthere be light"--and there was light. But no, I'm wrong there, asPeter would very promptly have told me, for it was only in theCambrian Period that the cornerstone of the Rockies was laid. Thegeologic clock ticked out its centuries until the swamps of the CoalPeriod were full of Peter's Oldest Inhabitants in the form ofDinosaurs and then came the Cretaceous Period and the Great Architectlooked down and bade the Rockies arise, and tooled them into beautywith His blue-green glaciers and His singing rivers, and touched thelordliest peaks with wine-glow and filled the azure valleys with musicand peace. And we threaded along those valley-sides on our littleribbons of steel, skirted the shouting rivers and plunged into tinytwisted tubes of darkness, emerging again into the light and once morehearing the timeless giants, with their snow-white heads against thesunset, repeat their whisper: "We live and are eternal. Ye, who fretabout our feet, dream for a day, and are forgotten!"

But we seemed to be stepping out into a new world, by the time we gotto Pasadena. It was a summery and flowery and holiday world, and itimpressed me as being solely and scrupulously organized for pleasure. Yet all minor surprises were submerged in the biggest surprise ofPeter's bungalow, which is really more like a _château_, and strikesme as being singularly like Peter himself, not amazingly impressive tolook at, perhaps, but hiding from the world a startingly rich andluxurious interior. The house itself, half hidden in shrubbery, is ofweather-stained stucco, and looks at first sight a little gloomy, withthe _patina_ of time upon it. But it is a restful change from thespick-and-spanness of the near-by millionaire colony, so eloquent ofthe paint-brush and the lawn-valet's shears, so smug and new andstrident in its paraded opulence. Peter's gardens, in fact, are arather careless riot of color and line, a sort of achieved genteelroughness, like certain phases of his house, as though the wave ofrefinement driven too high had broken and tumbled over on itself. 

The house, which is the shape of an "E" without the middle stroke, hasa green-sodded _patio_ between the two wings, with a small fountainand a stained marble basin at the center. There are shade-trees anddate-palms and shrubs and Romanesque-looking stone seats about narrowwalks, for this is the only really formalized portion of the entireproperty. This leads off into a grove and garden, a confusion offlowers and trees where I've already been able to spot out a number oforange trees, some of them well fruited, several lemon and fig trees, a row of banana trees, or plants, whichever they should be called, besides pepper and palm and acacia and a long-legged double-file ofeucalyptus at the rear. And in between is a pergola and a mixture ofmimosa and wistaria and tamarisk and poppies and trellised roses andone woody old geranium with a stalk like a crab-apple trunk and growthenough to cover half a dozen prairie hay-stacks. 

But, as I've already implied, it was the inside of the house thatastonished me. It is much bigger than it looks and is crowded with themost gorgeous old things in copper and brass and leather and mahoganythat I ever saw under one roof. It has three open fireplaces, a hugeone of stone in the huge living-room, and rough-beamed ceilings ofredwood, and Spanish tiled floors, and chairs upholstered with cowhidewith the ranch-brand still showing in the tanned leather, and tablesof Mexican mahogany set in redwood frames, and several convenientlittle electric heaters which can be carried from room to room as theyare needed. 

Pinshaw, Peter's gardener and care-taker, had before our arrivalpicked several clumps of violets, with perfume like the Englishviolets, and the house was aired and everything waiting and ready whenwe came, even to two bottles of certified milk in the icebox for thebabies and half a dozen Casaba melons for their elders. My onedisturbing thought is that it will be a hard house to live up to. ButStruthers, who is not untouched with her _folie de grandeur_, has theslightly flurried satisfaction of an exile who has at last come intoher own. One of the first things I must do, however, is to teach mykiddies to respect Peter's belongings. In one cabinet of books, whichis locked, I have noticed several which are by "Peter Ketley" himself. Yet that name meant nothing to me, when I met it out on the prairieand humiliated its owner by converting him into one of my hired hands. _Ce monde est plein de fous. _

 _Monday the Sixteenth_

This is a great climate for meditation. And I have been meditating. Back at Alabama Ranch, I suppose, there's twenty degrees of frost anda northwest wind like a search-warrant. Here there's a pellucid bluesky, just enough breeze to rustle the bamboo-fronds behind me, and atall girl in white lawn, holding a pale green parasol over her headand meandering slowly along the sun-steeped boulevard, which smells ofhot tar. 

I've been sitting here staring down that boulevard, with the stronglight making me squint a little. I've been watching the two rows ofdate-palms along the curb, with their willow-plume head-dress stirringlazily in the morning breeze. Well back from the smooth and shiningasphalt, as polished as ebony with its oil-drip and tire-wear, is arow of houses, some shingled and awninged, some Colonial-Spanish, andstuccoed and bone-white in the sun, some dark-wooded and vine-drapedand rose-grown, but all immaculate and finished and opulent. Thestreet is very quiet, but half-way down the block I can see a Japgardener in brown denim sedately watering a well-barbered terrace. Still farther away, somebody, in one of the deep-shadowed porches, istinkling a ukelele, and somebody that I can't see is somewhere beatinga rug. I can see a little rivulet of water that flows sparkling downthe asphalted runnel of the curb. Then the clump of bamboos back byPeter's bedroom window rustles crisply again and is quiet and thesilence is broken by a nurse-maid calling to a child sitting in a toymotor-wagon. Then a touring-car purrs past, with the sun flashing onits polished metal equipment, and the toy motor child being ledreluctantly homeward by the maid cries shrilly, and in the silencethat ensues I can hear the faint hiss of a spray-nozzle that builds atransient small rainbow just beyond the trellis of Cherokee roses fromwhich a languid white petal falls, from time to time. 

It's a _dolce-far-niente_ day, as all the days seem to be here, andthe best that I can do is sit and brood like a Plymouth Rock with afull crop. But I've been thinking things over. And I've come toseveral conclusions. 

One is that I'm not so contented as I thought I was going to be. I amoppressed by a shadowy feeling of in some way sailing under falsecolors. I am also hounded by an equally shadowy impression that I'm aconvalescent. Yet I find myself vulgarly healthy, my kiddies have allacquired a fine coat of tan, and only Struthers is slightly off herfeed, having acquired a not unmerited attack of cholera morbus fromover-indulgence in Casaba melon. But I keep wondering if Dinky-Dunk isgetting the right sort of things to eat, if he's lonely, and what hedoes in his spare time. 

And another conclusion I've come to is that men, much as I hate toadmit it, are built of a stronger fiber than women. They seem able tostand shock better than the weaker sex. They are not so apt to go downunder defeat, to take the full count, as I have done. For I still haveto face the fact that I was a failure. Then I turned tail and fledfrom the scene of my collapse. That flight, it is true, has brought mea certain brand of peace, but it is not an enduring peace, for youcan't run away from what's in your own heart. And already I'm restlessand ill-at-ease. It's not so much that I'm dissatisfied; it's morethat I'm unsatisfied. There still seems to be something momentous leftout of the plan of things. I have the teasing feeling of confrontingsomething which is still impending, which is being withheld, which Ican not reach out for, no matter how I try, until the time is ripe. .. . Those rustling bamboos so close to the room where I sleep have begunto bother me so much that I'm migrating to a new bedroom to-night. "There's never anything without something!"

 _Tuesday the Twenty-fourth_

Little Dinky-Dunk has adventured into illicit knowledge of his firstorange from the bough. It was one of Peter's low-hanging Valencias, and seems to have left no ill-effects, though I prefer that all insidematter be carefully edited before consumption by that small Red. SoStruthers hereafter must stand the angel with the flaming sword andguard the gates that open upon that tree of forbidden fruit. Her owncolic, by the way, is a thing of the past, and at present she'sextremely interested in Pinshaw, who, she tells me, was once acabinet-maker in England, and came out to California for his health. Struthers, as usual, is attempting to reach the heart of her newvictim by way of the stomach, and Pinshaw, apparently, is notunappreciative, since he appears a little more punctually at hiswatering and raking and gardening and has his ears up like a rabbitfor the first inkling of his lady-love's matutinal hand-out. And poorold Whinstane Sandy, back at Alabama Ranch, is still making sheep'seyes at the patches which Struthers once sewed on his breeks, like asnot, and staring with a moonish smile at the atrabilious photographwhich the one camera-artist of Buckhorn made of Struthers and my threepop-eyed kiddies. .. . 

These are, without exception, the friendliest people I have ever known. The old millionaire lumberman from Bay City, who lives next door to me, pushes through the hedge with platefuls of green figs and tid-bits fromhis gardens, and delightful girls whose names I don't even know come inbig cars and ask to take little Dinkie off for one of their lawn_fêtes_. It even happened that a movie-actor--who, I later discovered, was a drug-addict--insisted on accompanying me home and informed me onthe way that I had a dream of a face for camera-work. It quite set meup, for all its impertinence, until I learned to my sorrow that it hadflowered out of nothing more than an extra shot in the arm. 

They are a friendly and companionable folk, and they'd keep me on thego all the time if I'd let 'em. But I've only had energy enough to runover to Los Angeles twice, though there are a dozen or two people Imust look up in that more frolicsome suburb. But I can't get away fromthe feeling, the truly rural feeling, that I'm among strangers. Ican't rid myself of the extremely parochial impression that thesepeople are not my people. And there's a valetudinarian aspect to theplace which I find slightly depressing. For this seems to be the oneparticular point where the worn-out old money-maker comes to die, andthe antique ladies with asthma struggle for an extra year or two ofthe veranda rocking-chair, and rickety old _beaux_ sit about inPanamas and white flannels and listen to the hardening of theirarteries. And I haven't quite finished with life yet--not if I knowit--not by a long shot!

But one has to be educated for idleness, I find, almost as much as forindustry. I knew the trick once, but I've lost the hang of it. The onething that impresses me, on coming straight from prairie life to acity like this, is how much women-folk can have done for them withoutquite knowing it. The machinery of life here is so intricate and yetso adequate that it denudes them of all the normal and primitiveactivities of their grandmothers, so they have to invent troubles andcontrive quite unnecessary activities to keep from being bored toextinction. Everything seems to come to them ready-made and dulyprepared, their bread, their light and fuel and water, their meat andmilk. All that, and the daily drudgery it implies, is made ready andperformed beyond their vision, and they have no balky pumps to primeand no fires to build, and they'd probably be quite disturbed to thinkthat their roasts came from a slaughter-house with bloody floors andthat their breakfast rolls, instead of coming ready-made into theworld, are mixed and molded in bake-rooms where men work sweating bynight, stripped to the waist, like stokers. 

 _Wednesday the Second_

Dinky-Dunk's letter, which reached me Monday, was very short andalmost curt. It depressed me for a day. I tried to fight against thatfeeling, when it threatened to return yesterday, and was at Peter'spiano shouting to the kiddies:

 "Coon, Coon, Coon, I wish my color'd fade! Coon, Coon, Coon, I'd like a different shade!"

when Struthers carried in to me, with a sort of triumphant andtight-lipped I-told-you-so air, a copy of the morning's _Los AngelesExaminer_. She had it folded so that I found myself confronting apicture of Lady Alicia Newland, Lady Alicia in the "Teddy-Bear" suitof an aviator, with a fur-lined leather jacket and helmet and heavygauntlets and leggings and the same old audacious look out of thequietly smiling eyes, which were squinting a little because of thesunlight. 

Lady Allie, I found on perusing the letter-press, had been flying withsome of the North Island officers down in San Diego Bay. And now sheand the Right Honorable Lieutenant-Colonel Brereton Ainsley-Brook, ofthe British Imperial Commission to Canada, were to attempt a flight toKelly Field Number Two, at San Antonio, in Texas, in a De Havilandmachine. She had told the _Examiner_ reporter who had caught her asshe stood beside a naval sea-plane, that she "loved" flying and lovedtaking a chance and that her worst trouble was with nose-bleed, whichshe'd get over in time, she felt sure. And if the Texas flight was asuccess she would try to arrange for a flight down to the Canal at thesame time that the Pacific fleet comes through from Colon. 

"Isn't that 'er, all over?" demanded Struthers, forgetting her placeand her position and even her aspirate in the excitement of themoment. But I handed back the paper without comment. For a day, however, Lady Allie has loomed large in my thoughts. 

 _Sunday the Thirteenth_

It will be two weeks to-morrow since I've had a line from Dinky-Dunk. The world about me is a world of beauty, but I'm worried and restlessand Edna Millay's lines keep running through my head:

 ". .. East and West will pinch the heart That can not keep them pushed apart; And he whose soul is flat--the sky Will cave in on him by and by!"

 _Wednesday the Sixteenth_

Peter has written to me saying that unless he hears from me to thecontrary he thinks he can arrange to "run through" to the Coast intime for the Rose Tournament here on New Year's Day. He takes thetrouble to explain that he'll stay at the Alexandria in Los Angeles, so there'll be no possible disturbance to me and my family routine. 

That's so like Peter!

But there's been no word from Dinky-Dunk. The conviction is growing inmy mind that he's not at Alabama Ranch. 

 _Monday the Twenty-first_

A letter has just come to me this morning from Whinstane Sandy, written in lead-pencil. It said, with an orthography all its own, thatDuncan had been in bed for two weeks with what they thought waspneumonia, but was up again and able to eat something, and not toworry. It seemed a confident and cheerful message at first, but theoftener I read it the more worried I became. So one load was taken offmy heart only to make room for another. My first decision was to startnorth at once, to get back to Alabama Ranch and my Dinky-Dunk as fastas steam could take me. I was still the sharer of his joys andsorrows, and ought to be with him when things were at their worst. Buton second thought it didn't seem quite fair to the kiddies, to dumpthem from midsummer into shack-life and a sub-zero climate. Andalways, always, always, there were the children to be considered. So Iwired Ed Sherman, the station-agent at Buckhorn, asking him to sendout a message to Duncan, saying I was waiting for him in Pasadena andto come at once. .. . 

I wonder what his answer will be? It's surrender, on my part. It'scapitulation, and Dinky-Dunk, of course, will recognize that fact. Orhe ought to. But it's not this I'm worrying over. It's Duncan himself, and his health. It gives me a guilty feeling. .. . I once thought that Iwas made to heal hearts. But about all I can do, I find, is to bruisethem. 

 _Thursday the Twenty-fourth_

A telegram of just one word has come from Duncan, dated at Calgary. Itsaid: "Coming. " I could feel a little tremble in my knees as I readit. He must be better, or he'd never be able to travel. To-morrow willbe Christmas Day, but we've decided to postpone all celebration untilthe kiddies' daddy is on the scene. It will never seem much likeChristmas to us Eskimos, at eighty-five in the shade. And we'retemporarily subduing that red-ink day to the eyes of the children bycarefully secreting in one of Peter's clothes-closets each and everypresent that has come for them. 

 _Sunday the Twenty-seventh_

Dinky-Dunk is here. He arrived this morning, and we were all at thestation in our best bib-and-tucker and making a fine show of beingoffhanded and light-hearted. But when I saw the porter helping down myDiddums, so white-faced and weak and tired-looking, something swelledup and burst just under my floating ribs and for a moment I thought myheart had had a blow-out like a tire and stopped working for ever andever. Heaven knows I held my hands tight, and tried to be cheerful, but in spite of everything I could do, on the way home, I couldn'tstop the tears from running slowly down my cheeks. They kept runningand running, as though I had nothing to do with it, exactly as a woundbleeds. The poor man, of course, was done out by the long trip. He wasjust _blooey_, and saved himself from being pitiful by shrinking backinto a shell of chalky-faced self-sufficiency. He has said verylittle, and has eaten nothing, but had a sleep this afternoon for acouple of hours, out in the _patio_ on a _chaise-longue_. It hurt him, I think, to find his own children look at him with such cold andspeculative eyes. But he has changed shockingly since they last sawhim. And they have so much to fill up their little lives. They haven'tyet reached the age when life teaches them they'd better stick towhat's given them, even though there's a bitter tang to its sweetness!

 _Wednesday the Thirtieth_

It is incredible, what three days of rest and forced feeding at myimplacable hands, have done for Dinky-Dunk. He is still a little shakyon his pins, if he walks far, and the noonday sun makes him dizzy, buthis eyes don't look so much like saucers and I haven't heard the traceof a cough from him all to-day. Illness, of course, is not romantic, butit plays its altogether too important part in life, and has to be faced. And there is something so disturbingly immuring and depersonalizingabout it! Dinky-Dunk appears rather in a world by himself. Only once, sofar, has he seemed to step back to our every-day old world. That waswhen he wandered into the Blue Room in the East Wing where little Dinkiehas been sleeping. I was seated beside his little lordship's bedsinging:

 "The little pigs sleep with their tails curled up, "

and when that had been exhausted, rambling on to

 "The sailor being both tall and slim, The lady fell in love with him, "

when _pater familias_ wandered in and inquired, "Whyfore the cabaret?"

I explained that Dinkie, since coming south, had seemed to demand aneven-song or two before slipping off. 

"I see that I'll have to take our son in hand, " announcedDinky-Dunk--but there was just the shadow of a smile about his lips ashe went slowly out and closed the door after him. 

To-night, when I told Dinky-Dunk that Peter would in all likelihood behere to-morrow, he listened without batting an eyelash. But he askedif I'd mind handing him a cigarette, and he studied my face long andintently. I don't know what he saw there, or what he concluded, for Idid my best to keep it as noncommittal as possible. If there is anymove, it must be from him. That sour-inked Irishman called Shaw hassaid that women are the wooers in this world. A lot he knows aboutit!. .. Yet something has happened, in the last half-hour, which bothdisturbs and puzzles me. When I was unpacking Dinky-Dunk's secondtrunk, which had stood neglected for almost four long days, I cameacross the letter which I thought I'd put away in the back of theranch ledger and had failed to find. .. . And he had it, all the time!

The redoubtable Struthers, it must be recorded, to-day handed meanother paper, and almost as triumphantly as the first one. She'dpicked it up on her way home from the druggist's, where she went foraspirin for Dinky-Dunk. On what was labeled its "Woman's Page" was yetanother photographic reproduction of the fair Lady Allie in aviationtogs and a head-line which read: "Insists On Tea Above The Clouds. "But I plainly disappointed the expectant Struthers by promptly handingthe paper back to her and by declining to make any comment. 

 _Thursday the Thirty-first_

Peter walked in on us to-day, a little less spick and span, I'mcompelled to admit, than I had expected of one in his position, but aseasy and unconcerned as though he had dropped in from across the wayfor a cigarette and a cup of tea. And I played up to that pose byhaving Struthers wheel the tea-wagon out into the _patio_, where wegathered about it in a semicircle, as decorously as though we weresitting in a curate's garden to talk over the program for the nextmeeting of the Ladies' Auxiliary. 

There we sat, Dinky-Dunk, my husband who was in love with another woman;Peter, my friend, who was in love with me, and myself, who was too busybringing up a family to be in love with anybody. There we sat in thatbeautiful garden, in that balmy and beautiful afternoon sunlight, withthe bamboos whispering and a mocking-bird singing from its place on thepepper-tree, stirring our small cups and saying "Lemon, please, " or"Just one lump, thank you. " It may not be often, but life _does_occasionally surprise us by being theatrical. For I could not banishfrom my bones an impression of tremendous reservations, of guardedwaiting and watching from every point of that sedate and quiet-manneredlittle triangle. Yet for only one moment had I seen it come to thefront. That was during the moment when Dinky-Dunk and Peter first shookhands. On both faces, for that moment, I caught the look with which twoknights measure each other. Peter, as he lounged back in his wickerchair and produced his familiar little briar pipe, began to remind merather acutely of that pensive old _picador_ in Zuloaga's _The Victim ofThe Fête_, the placid and plaintive and only vaguely hopeful knight onhis bony old Rosinante, not quite ignorant of the fact that he mustforage on to other fields and look for better luck in newer ventures, yet not quite forgetful that life, after all, is rather a blitheadventure and that the man who refuses to surrender his courage, nomatter what whimsical turns the adventure may take, is still to bereckoned the conqueror. But later on he was jolly enough and directenough, when he got to showing Dinky-Dunk his books and curios. Isuppose, at heart, he was about as interested in those things as anaquarium angel-fish is in a Sunday afternoon visitor. But if it waspretense, and nothing more, there was very actual kindliness in it. Andthere was nothing left for me but to sit tight, and refill the littlelacquered gold cups when necessary, and smile non-committally whenDinky-Dunk explained that my idea of Heaven was a place where husbandswere served _en brochette_, and emulate the Priest and the Levite bypassing by on the other side when Peter asked me if I'd ever heard thatthe West was good for mules and men but hard on horses and women. And itsuddenly struck me as odd, the timidities and reticences which natureimposes on our souls. It seemed so ridiculous that the three of uscouldn't sit there and unbosom our hearts of what was hidden away inthem, that we couldn't be open and honest and aboveboard and say justwhat we felt and thought, that we couldn't quietly talk things out to anend and find where each and all of us stood. But men and women are notmade that way. Otherwise, I suppose, life would be too Edenic, and we'dpart company with a very old and venerable interest in Paradise!

[Illustration: "She's not dead?" I asked in a breath]

 _Saturday the Second_

Peter had arranged to come for us with a motor-car and carry us alloff to the Rose Tournament yesterday morning, "for I do want to besitting right next to that little tike of yours, " he explained, meaning Dinkie, "when he bumps into his first brass band!"

But little Dinkie didn't hear his brass band, and we didn't go to theRose Tournament, although it was almost at our doors and some eightythousand crowded automobiles foregathered here from the rest of thestate to get a glimpse of it. For Peter, who is staying at the Greenehere instead of at the Alexandria over in Los Angeles, presentedhimself before I'd even sat down to breakfast and before lazy oldDinky-Dunk was even out of bed. 

Peter, I noticed, had a somewhat hollow look about the eye, but Iaccepted it as nothing more than the after-effects of his long trip, and blithely commanded him to sit down and partake of my coffee. 

Peter, however, wasn't thinking about coffee. 

"I'm afraid, " he began, "that I'm bringing you rather--rather badnews. "

We stood for a moment with our gazes locked. He seemed appraising me, speculating on just what effect this message of his might have on me. 

"What is it?" I asked, with that forlorn tug at inner reserves whichlife teaches us to send over the wire as we grow older. 

"I've come, " explained Peter, "simply because this thing would havereached you a little later in your morning paper--and I hated thethought of having it spring out at you that way. So you won't mind, will you? You'll understand the motive behind the message?"

"But what is it?" I repeated, a little astonished by this obliquity ina man customarily so direct. 

"It's about Lady Newland, " he finally said. And the solemnity of hisface rather frightened me. 

"She's not dead?" I asked in a breath. 

Peter shook his head from side to side. 

"She's been rather badly hurt, " he said, after several moments ofsilence. "Her plane was winged yesterday afternoon by a navy flierover San Diego Bay. She didn't fall, but it was a forced landing andher machine had taken fire before they could get her out of her seat. "

"You mean she was burnt?" I cried, chilled by the horror of it. 

And, inapposite as it seemed, my thoughts flashed back to that litheand buoyant figure, and then to the picture of it charred and scorchedand suffering. 

"Only her face, " was Peter's quiet and very deliberate reply. 

"Only her face, " I repeated, not quite understanding him. 

"The men from the North Bay field had her out a minute or two aftershe landed. But practically the whole plane was afire. Her heavyflying coat and gauntlets saved her body and hands. But her face wasunprotected. She--"

"Do you mean she'll be _disfigured_?" I asked, remembering theloveliness of that face with its red and wilful lips and itsever-changing tourmaline eyes. 

"I'm afraid so, " was Peter's answer. "But I've been wiring, and you'llbe quite safe in telling your husband that she's in no actual danger. The Marine Hospital officials have acknowledged that no flame wasinhaled, that it's merely temporary shock, and, of course, theface-burn. "

"But what can they do?" I asked, in little more than a whisper. 

"They're trying the new ambersine treatment, and later on, I suppose, they can rely on skin-grafting and facial surgery, " Peter explained tome. 

"Is it that bad?" I asked, sitting down in one of the empty chairs, for the mere effort to vision any such disfigurement had brought aChannel-crossing and Calais-packet feeling to me. 

"It's very sad, " said Peter, more ill-at-ease than I'd ever seen himbefore, "But there's positively no danger, remember. It won't be so badas your morning paper will try to make it out. They've sensationalizedit, of course. That's why I wanted to be here first, and give you thefacts. They are distressing enough, God knows, without those yellowreporters working them over for wire consumption. "

I was glad that Peter didn't offer to stay, didn't even seem to wishto stay. I wanted quietness and time to think the thing over. Dinky-Dunk, I realized, would have to be told, and told at once. Itwould, of course, be a shock to him. And it would be something more. It would be a sudden crowding to some final issue of all thosepossibilities which lay like spring-traps beneath the under-brush ofour indifference. I had no way of knowing what it was that hadattracted him to Lady Alicia. Beauty of face, of course, must havebeen a factor in it. And that beauty was now gone. But love, accordingto the Prophets and the Poets, overcometh all things. And in her veryhelplessness, it was only too plain to me, his Cousin Allie mightappeal to him in a more personal and more perilous way. My Diddumshimself, of late, had appealed more to me in his weakness and hisunhappiness than in his earlier strength and triumph. There was atime, in fact, when I had almost grown to hate his successes. And yethe was my husband. He was _mine_. And it was a human enough instinctto fight for what was one's own. But that wild-bird part of man knownas his will could never be caged and chained. If somewhere far off itbeheld beauty and nobility it must be free to wing its way where itwished. The only bond that held it was the bond of free-giving andgoodness. And if it abjured such things as that, the sooner the flighttook place and the colors were shown, the better. If on the home-boughbeside him nested neither beauty nor nobility, it was only naturalthat he should wander a-field for what I had failed to give him. Andnow, in this final test, I must not altogether fail him. For once inmy life, I concluded, I had to be generous. 

So I waited until Dinky-Dunk emerged. I waited, deep in thought, whilehe splashed like a sea-lion in his bath, and called out to Struthersalmost gaily for his glass of orange-juice, and shaved, and opened andclosed drawers, and finished dressing and came out in his cool-lookingsuit of cricketer's flannel, so immaculate and freshly-pressed thatone would never dream it had been bought in England and packed inmothballs for four long years. 

I heard him asking for the kiddies while I was still out in the_patio_ putting the finishing touches to his breakfast-table, and hisgrunt that was half a sigh when he learned that they'd been sent offbefore he'd had a glimpse of them. And I could see him inhale alungful of the balmy morning air as he stood in the open doorway andstared, not without approval, at me and the new-minted day. 

"Why the clouded brow, Lady-Bird?" he demanded as he joined me at thelittle wicker table. 

"I've had some rather disturbing news, " I told him, wondering just howto begin. 

"The kiddies?" he asked, stopping short. 

I stared at him closely as I shook my head in answer to that question. He looked leaner and frailer and less robustious than of old. But inmy heart of hearts I liked him that way. It left him the helpless andunprotesting victim of that run-over maternal instinct of mine whichtook wayward joy in mothering what it couldn't master. It had broughthim a little closer to me. But that contact, I remembered, was perhapsto be only something of the moment. 

"Dinky-Dunk, " I told him as quietly as I could, "I want you to go downto San Diego and see Lady Allie. "

It was a less surprised look than a barricaded one that came into hiseyes. 

"Why?" he asked as he slowly seated himself across the table from me. 

"Because I think she needs you, " I found the courage to tell him. 

"Why?" he asked still again. 

"There has been an accident, " I told him. 

"What sort of accident?" he quickly inquired, with one hand arrestedas he went to shake out his table-napkin. 

"It was an air-ship accident. And Lady Allie's been hurt. "

"Badly?" he asked, as our glances met. 

"Not badly, in one way, " I explained to him. "She's not in any danger, I mean. But her plane caught fire, and she's been burned about theface. "

His lips parted slightly, as he sat staring at me. And slowly up intohis colorless face crept a blighted look, a look which brought a vagueyet vast unhappiness to me as I sat contemplating it. 

"Do you mean she's disfigured, " he asked, "that it's something she'llalways--"

"I'm afraid so, " I said, when he did not finish his sentence. 

He sat looking down at his empty plate for a long time. 

"And you want me to go?" he finally said. 

"Yes, " I told him. 

He was silent for still another ponderable space of time. 

"But do you understand--" he began. And for the second time he didn'tfinish his sentence. 

"I understand, " I told him, doing my best to sit steady under hisinquisitorial eye. Then he looked down at the empty plate again. 

"All right, " he said at last. He spoke in a quite flat and colorlesstone. But it masked a decision which we both must have recognized asbeing momentous. And I knew, without saying anything further, that hewould go. 

 _Sunday the Third_

Dinky-Dunk left Friday night and got back early this morning before Iwas up. This naturally surprised me. But what surprised me more wasthe way he looked. He was white and shaken and drawn about the eyes. He seemed so wretched that I couldn't help feeling sorry for him. 

"_She wouldn't see me!_" was all he said as I stopped him on the wayto his room. 

But he rather startled me, fifteen minutes later, by calling up theGreene and asking for Peter. And before half an hour had dragged pastPeter appeared in person. He ignored the children, and apparentlyavoided me, and went straight out to the pergola, where he andDinky-Dunk fell to pacing slowly up and down, with the shadowsdappling their white-clad shoulders like leopards as they walked upand down, up and down, as serious and solemn as two ministers of statein a national crisis. And something, I scarcely knew what, kept mefrom going out and joining them. 

It was Peter himself who finally came in to me. He surprised me, inthe first place, by shaking hands. He did it with that wistfulwandering-picador smile of his on his rather Zuloagaish face. 

"I've got to say good-by, " I found him saying to me. 

"Peter!" I called out in startled protest, trying to draw back so Icould see him better. But he kept my hand. 

"I'm going east to-night, " he quite casually announced. "But above allthings I want you and your Dinky-Dunk to hang on here as long as youcan. _He_ needs it. I'm stepping out. No, I don't mean that, exactly, for I'd never stepped in. But it's a fine thing, in this world, formen and women to be real friends. And I know, until we shuffle off, that we're going to be that!"

"Peter!" I cried again, trying not to choke up with the sudden senseof deprivation that was battering my heart to pieces. And the light infaithful old Peter's eyes didn't make it any easier. 

But he dropped my hand, of a sudden, and went stumbling ratherawkwardly over the Spanish tiling as he passed out to the waiting car. I watched him as he climbed into it, stiffly yet with a show ofcareless bravado, for all the world like the lean-jowled knight of thevanished fête mounting his bony old Rosinante. 

It was nearly half an hour later that Dinky-Dunk came into thecool-shadowed living-room where I was making a pretense of being busyat cutting down some of Dinkie's rompers for Pee-Wee, who mostassuredly must soon bid farewell to skirts. 

"Will you sit down, please?" he said with an abstracted sort offormality. For he'd caught me on the wing, half-way back from the openwindow, where I'd been glancing out to make sure Struthers was onguard with the children. 

My face was a question, I suppose, even when I didn't speak. 

"There's something I want you to be very quiet and courageous about, "was my husband's none too tranquillizing beginning. And I could feelmy pulse quicken. 

"What is it?" I asked, wondering just what women should do to makethemselves quiet and courageous. 

"It's about Allie, " answered my husband, speaking so slowly anddeliberately that it sounded unnatural. "She shot herself last night. She--she killed herself, with an army revolver she'd borrowed from ayoung officer down there. "

I couldn't quite understand, at first. The words seemed likehalf-drowned things my mind had to work over and resuscitate and coax, back into life. 

"This is terrible!" I said at last, feebly, foolishly, as the meaningof it all filtered through my none too active brain. 

"It's terrible for me, " acknowledged Dinky-Dunk, with a self-pitywhich I wasn't slow to resent. 

"But why aren't you there?" I demanded. "Why aren't you there to keepa little decency about the thing? Why aren't you looking after what'sleft of her?"

Dinky-Dunk's eye evaded mine, but only for a moment. 

"Colonel Ainsley-Brook is coming back from Washington to takepossession of the remains, " he explained with a sort of dry-lippedpatience, "and take them home. "

"But why should an outsider like--"

Dinky-Dunk stopped me with a gesture. 

"He and Allie were married, a little over three weeks ago, " my husbandquietly informed me. And for the second time I had to work life intowhat seemed limp and sodden words. 

"Did you know about that?" I asked. 

"Yes, Allie wrote to me about it, at the time, " he replied with a sortof coerced candor. "She said it seemed about the only thing left todo. "

"Why should she say that?"

Dinky-Dunk stared at me with something strangely like a pleading lookin his haggard eye. 

"Wouldn't it be better to keep away from all that, at a time likethis?" he finally asked. 

"No, " I told him, "this is the time we _can't_ keep away from it. Shewrote you that because she was in love with you. Isn't that thetruth?"

Dinky-Dunk raised his hand, as though he were attempting a movement ofprotest, and then dropped it again. His eyes, I noticed, were luminouswith a sort of inward-burning misery. But I had no intention of beingmerciful. I had no chance of being merciful. It was like an operationwithout ether, but it had to be gone through with. It had to be cutout, in some way, that whole cancerous growth of hate and distrust. 

"Isn't that the truth?" I repeated. 

"Oh, Tabby, don't turn the knife in the wound!" cried Dinky-Dunk, withhis face more than ever pinched with misery. 

"Then it _is_ a wound!" I proclaimed in dolorous enough triumph. "Butthere's still another question, Dinky-Dunk, you must answer, " I wenton, speaking as slowly and precisely as I could, as though deliberationin speech might in some way make clearer a matter recognized as onlytoo dark in spirit. "And it must be answered honestly, without anyquibble as to the meaning of words. Were you in love with Lady Allie?"

His gesture of repugnance, of seeming self-hate, was both a prompt anda puzzling one. 

"That's the hideous, the simply hideous part of it all, " he cried outin a sort of listless desperation. 

"Why hideous?" I demanded, quite clear-headed, and quite determinedthat now or never the overscored slate of suspicion should be wipedclean. I still forlornly and foolishly felt, I suppose, that he mightyet usher before me some miraculously simple explanation that wouldwipe his scutcheon clean, that would put everything back to the olderand happier order. But as I heard his deep-wrung cry of "Oh, what'sthe good of all this?" I knew that life wasn't so romantic as we'realways trying to make it. 

"I've got to know, " I said, as steel-cold as a surgeon. 

"But can't you see that it's--that it's worse than revolting to me?"he contended, with the look of a man harried beyond endurance. 

"Why should it be?" I exacted. 

He sank down in the low chair with the ranch-brand on its leatherback. It was an oddly child-like movement of collapse. But I daren'tlet myself feel sorry for him. 

"Because it's all so rottenly ignoble, " he said, without looking atme. 

"For whom?" I asked, trying to speak calmly. 

"For me--for you, " he cried out, with his head in his hands. "For youto have been faced with, I mean. It's awful, to think that you've hadto stand it!" He reached out for me, but I was too far away for him totouch. "Oh, Tabby, I've been such an awful rotter. And this thingthat's happened has just brought it home to me. "

"Then you cared, that much?" I demanded, feeling the bottom of myheart fall out, for all the world like the floor of a dump-cart. 

"No, no; that's the unforgivable part of it, " he cried in quickprotest. "It's not only that I did you a great wrong, Tabby, but I did_her_ a worse one. I coolly exploited something that I should have atleast respected. I manipulated and used a woman I should have beenmore generous with. There wasn't even bigness in it, from my side ofthe game. I traded on that dead woman's weakness. And my hands wouldbe cleaner if I could come to you with the claim that I'd really caredfor her, that I'd been swept off my feet, that passion had blinded meto the things I should have remembered. " He let his hands fall betweenhis knees. Knowing him as the man of reticence that he was, it seemedan indescribably tragic gesture. And it struck me as odd, the nextmoment, that he should be actually sobbing. "Oh, my dear, my dear, theone thing I was blind to was your bigness, was your goodness. The onething I forgot was how true blue you could be. "

I sat there staring at his still heaving shoulders, turning over whathe had said, turning it over and over, like a park-squirrel with anut. I found a great deal to think about, but little to say. 

"I don't blame you for despising me, " Dinky-Dunk said, out of thesilence, once more in control of himself. 

"I was thinking of _her_, " I explained. And then I found the courageto look into my husband's face. "No, Dinky-Dunk, I don't despise you, "I told him, remembering that he was still a weak and shaken man. "ButI pity you. I do indeed pity you. For it's selfishness, it seems tome, which costs us so much, in the end. "

He seemed to agree with me, by a slow movement of the head. 

"That's the only glimmer of hope I have, " he surprised me by saying. 

"But why hope from _that_?" I asked. 

"Because you're so utterly without selfishness, " that deluded mancried out to me. "You were always that way, but I didn't have thebrains to see it. I never quite saw it until you sent me down to--to_her_. " He came to a stop, and sat staring at the terra-cotta Spanishfloor-tiles. "_I_ knew it was useless, tragically useless. You didn't. But you were brave enough to let my weakness do its worst, if it hadto. And that makes me feel that I'm not fit to touch you, that I'm noteven fit to walk on the same ground with you!"

I tried my best to remain judicial. 

"But this, Dinky-Dunk, isn't being quite fair to either of us, " Iprotested, turning away to push in a hair-pin so that he wouldn't seethe tremble that I could feel in my lower lip. For an unreasonable andillogical and absurdly big wave of compassion for my poor oldDinky-Dunk was welling up through my tired body, threatening to leaveme and all my make-believe dignity as wobbly as a street-processionQueen of Sheba on her circus-float. I was hearing, I knew, the wordsthat I'd waited for, this many a month. I was at last facing the sceneI'd again and again dramatized on the narrow stage of my woman'simagination. But instead of bringing me release, it brought meheart-ache; instead of spelling victory, it came involved with thethin humiliations of compromise. For things could never be the sameagain. The blot was there on the scutcheon, and could never be arguedaway. The man I loved had let the grit get into the bearings of hissoul, had let that grit grind away life's delicate surfaces withouteven knowing the wine of abandoned speed. He had been nothing betterthan the passive agent, the fretful and neutral factor, the cheatedone without even the glory of conquest or the tang of triumph. But hehad been saved for me. He was there within arm's reach of me, battered, but with the wine-glow of utter contrition on his face. 

"Take me back, _Babushka_, " I could hear his shaken voice imploring. "I don't deserve it--but I can't go on without you. I can't! I've hadenough of hell. And I need you more than anything else in this world!"

That, I had intended telling him, wasn't playing quite fair. But whenhe reached out his hands toward me, exactly as I've seen his own Dinkydo at nightfall when a darkening room left his little spirit hungryfor companionship, something melted like an overlooked chocolate_mousse_ in my crazy old maternal heart, and before I was altogetheraware of it I'd let my hands slip over his shoulders as he knelt withhis bowed head in my lap. The sight of his colorless and unhappy facewith that indescribable homeless-dog look in his eyes was too much forme. I gave up. I hugged his head to my breast-bone as though it weremy only life-buoy in an empty and endless Atlantic and only stoppedwhen I had to rub the end of my nose, which I couldn't keep acollection of several big tears from tickling. 

"I'm a fool, Dinky-Dunk, a most awful fool, " I tried to tell him, whenhe gave me a chance to breathe again. "And I've got a temper like abob-cat!"

"No, no, Beloved, " he protested, "it's not foolishness--it'snobility!"

I couldn't answer him, for his arms had closed about me again. "And Ilove you, Tabbie, I love you with every inch of my body!"

Women are weak. And there is no such thing, so far as I know, as analtogether and utterly perfect man. So we must winnow strength out ofour weakness, make the best of a bad bargain, and over-scroll thewalls of our life-cell with the illusions which may come to mean asmuch as the stone and iron that imprison us. All we can do, we who areolder and wiser, is wistfully to overlook the wobble where the meshedperfection of youth has been bruised and abused and loosened, tightenup the bearings, and keep as blithely as we can to the worn old road. For life, after all, is a turn-pike of concession deep-bedded withcompromise. And our To-morrows are only our To-days over again. .. . SoDinky-Dunk, who keeps saying in unexpected and intriguing ways that hecan't live without me, is trying to make love to me as he did in theold days before he got salt-and-peppery above the ears. And I'mblockhead enough to believe him. I'm like an old shoe, I suppose, comfortable but not showy. Yet it's the children we really have tothink of. Our crazy old patch-work of the Past may be our own, but theFuture belongs to them. There's a heap of good, though, in myhumble-eyed old Dinky-Dunk, too much good ever to lose him, whatevermay have happened in the days that are over. 

 _Sunday the Twenty-fourth_

Dinky-Dunk, whom I actually heard singing as he took his bath thismorning, is exercising his paternal prerogative of training littleDinkie to go to bed without a light. He has peremptorily taken thematter out of my hands, and is, of course, prodigiously solemn aboutit all. 

"I'll show that young Turk who's boss around this house!" hemagisterially proclaims almost every night when the youthful wails ofprotest start to come from the Blue Room in the East Wing. 

And off he goes, with his Holbein's Astronomer mouth set firm and thefiercest of frowns on his face. 

It had a tendency to terrify me, at first. But now I know what acolossal old fraud and humbug this same soft-hearted and granite-crustedspecimen of humanity can be. For last night, after the usualdemonstration, I slipped out to the Blue Room and found big Dunkiekneeling down beside little Dinkie's bed, with Dinkie's small handsoftly enclosed in his dad's big paw, and Dinkie's yellow head nestledclose against his dad's salt-and-peppery pate. 

It made me gulp a little, for some reason or other. So I tiptoed away, without letting my lord and master know I'd discovered the secret ofthat stern mastery of his. And later on Dinky-Dunk himself tiptoedinto Peter's study, farther down the same wing, so that he could, witha shadow of truth, explain that he'd been looking over some of theSpanish manuscripts there, when I happened to ask him, on his return, just what had kept him away so long!

 THE END

Transcribers Note:

page 49: changed typo calmy into calmly

page 89: changed Kaikabad to Kaikobad

page 153: changed typo is into it

page 348: changed typo awkardly into awkwardly