This little story is the outcome of two trips (neither of which was in
the Bear Tooth Forest) during the years 1909 and 1910. Its main claim on
the reader's interest will lie, no doubt, in the character of Berea
McFarlane; but I find myself re-living with keen pleasure the splendid
drama of wind and cloud and swaying forest which made the expeditions
memorable.
The golden trail is an actuality for me. The camp on the lake was mine.
The rain, the snow I met. The prying camp-robbers, the grouse, the
muskrats, the beaver were my companions. But Berrie was with me only in
imagination. She is a fiction, born of a momentary, powerful hand-clasp
of a Western rancher's daughter. The story of Wayland Norcross is fiction
also. But the McFarlane ranch, the mill, and the lonely ranger-stations
are closely drawn pictures of realities. Although the stage of my comedy
is Colorado, I have not held to any one locality. The scene is
composite.
It was my intention, originally, to write a much longer and more
important book concerning Supervisor McFarlane, but Berrie took the story
into her own strong hands and made of it something so intimate and so
idyllic that I could not bring the more prosaic element into it. It
remained personal and youthful in spite of my plans, a divergence for
which, perhaps, most of my readers will be grateful.
As for its title, I had little to do with its selection. My daughter,
Mary Isabel, aged ten, selected it from among a half-dozen others, and
for luck I let it stand, although it sounds somewhat like that of a
paper-bound German romance. For the sub-title my publishers are
responsible.
Finally, I warn the reader that this is merely the very slender story of
a young Western girl who, being desired of three strong men, bestows her
love on a "tourist" whose weakness is at once her allurement and her
care. The administration problem, the sociologic theme, which was to have
made the novel worth while, got lost in some way on the low trail and
never caught up with the lovers. I'm sorry--but so it was!
Chicago, January, 1914.
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