I had my murderer there, trapped, but the question was to keep him

there. Your little Chaddie didn't give up many precious moments to

reverie. I tiptoed into the bedroom and lifted the mattress, bedding and

all, off the bedstead. I tugged it out and put it silently down over the

trap-door. Then, without making a sound, I turned the table over on it.

But he could still lift that table, I knew, even with me sitting on top

of it. So I started to pile things on the overturned table, until it

looked like a moving-van ready for a May-Day migration. Then I sat on

top of that pile of household goods, reached for Dinky-Dunk's repeater,

and deliberately fired a shot up through the open door.

I sat there, studying my pile, feeling sure a revolver bullet couldn't

possibly come up through all that stuff. But before I had much time to

think about this my corporal of the R. N. W. M. P. (which means,

Matilda Anne, the Royal North-West Mounted Police) came through the door

on the run. He looked relieved when he saw me triumphantly astride that

overturned table loaded up with about all my household junk.

"I've got him for you," I calmly announced.

"You've got what?" he said, apparently thinking I'd gone mad.

"I've got your man for you," I repeated. "He's down there in my cellar."

And in one minute I'd explained just what had happened. There was no

parley, no deliberation, no hesitation.

"Hadn't you better go outside," he suggested as he started piling the

things off the trap-door.

"You're not going down there?" I demanded.

"Why not?" he asked.

"But he's got a revolver," I cried out, "and he's sure to shoot!"

"That's why I think it might be better for you to step outside for a

moment or two," was my soldier boy's casual answer.

I walked over and got Dinky-Dunk's repeater. Then I crossed to the far

side of the shack, with the rifle in my hands.

"I'm going to stay," I announced.

"All right," was the officer's unconcerned answer as he tossed the

mattress to one side and with one quick pull threw up the trap-door.

A shot rang out, from below, as the door swung back against the wall.

But it was not repeated, for the man in the red coat jumped bodily,

heels first, into that black hole. He didn't seem to count on the risk,

or on what might be ahead of him. He just jumped, spurs down, on that

other man with the revolver in his hand. I could hear little grunts, and

wheezes, and a thud or two against the cellar steps. Then there was

silence, except for one double "click-click" which I couldn't

understand.

Oh, Matilda Anne, how I watched that cellar opening! And I saw a back

with a red coat on it slowly rise out of the hole. He, the man who owned

the back of course, was dragging the other man bodily up the narrow

little stairs. There was a pair of handcuffs already on his wrists and

he seemed dazed and helpless, for that slim-looking soldier boy had

pummeled him unmercifully, knocking out his two front teeth, one of

which I found on the doorstep when I was sweeping up.

"I'm sorry, but I'll have to take one of your horses for a day or two,"

was all my R. N. W. M. P. hero condescended to say to me as he poked an

arm through his prisoner's and helped him out through the door.

"What--what will they do with him?" I called out after the corporal.

"Hang him, of course," was the curt answer.

Then I sat down to think things over, and, like an old maid with the

vapors, decided I wouldn't be any the worse for a cup of good strong

tea. And by the time I'd had my tea, and straightened things up, and

incidentally discovered that no less than five of my cans of mushrooms

had been broken to bits below-stairs, I heard the rumble of the wagon

and knew that Olie and Dinky-Dunk were back. And I drew a long breath of

relief, for with all their drawbacks, men are not a bad thing to have

about, now and then!

_Thursday the Twenty-second_

It was early Tuesday morning that Dinky-Dunk firmly announced that he

and I were going off on a three-day shooting-trip. I hadn't slept well,

the night before, for my nerves were still rather upset, and Dinky-Dunk

said I needed a picnic. So we got guns and cartridges and blankets and

slickers and cooking things, and stowed them away in the wagon-box. Then

we made a list of the provisions we'd need, and while Dinky-Dunk bagged

up some oats for the team I was busy packing the grub-box. And I packed

it cram full, and took along the old tin bread-box, as well, with

pancake flour and dried fruit and an extra piece of bacon--and _bacon_

it is now called in this shack, for I have positively forbidden

Dinky-Dunk ever to speak of it as "sowbelly" or even as a "slice of

grunt" again.

Then off we started across the prairie, after duly instructing Olie as

to feeding the chickens and taking care of the cream and finishing up

the pit for the winter vegetables. Still once again Olie thought we were

both a little mad, I believe, for we had no more idea where we were

going than the man in the moon.

But there was something glorious in the thought of gipsying across the

autumn prairie like that, without a thought or worry as to where we must

stop or what trail we must take. It made every day's movement a great

adventure. And the weather was divine.

We slept at night under the wagon-box, with a tarpaulin along one side

to keep out the wind, and a fire flickering in our faces on the other

side, and the horses tethered out, and the stars wheeling overhead, and

the peace of God in our hearts. How good every meal tasted! And how that

keen sharp air made snuggling down under a couple of Hudson Bay

five-point blankets a luxury to be spoken of only in the most reverent

of whispers! And there was a time, as you already know, when I used to

take bromide and sometimes even sulphonal to make me sleep! But here it

is so different! To get leg-weary in the open air, tramping about the

sedgy slough-sides after mallard and canvas-back, to smell coffee and

bacon and frying grouse in the cool of the evening, across a thin veil

of camp-fire smoke, to see the tired world turn over on its shoulder and

go to sleep--it's all a sort of monumental lullaby.

The prairie wind seems to seek you out, and make a bet with the Great

Dipper that he'll have you off in forty winks, and the orchestra of the

spheres whispers through its million strings and sings your soul to

rest. For I tell you here and now, Matilda Anne, I, poor, puny,

good-for-nothing, insignificant I, have heard that music of the spheres

as clearly as you ever heard _Funiculi-Funicula_ on that little Naples

steamer that used to take you to Capri. And when I'd crawl out from

under that old wagon-box, like a gopher out of his hole, in the first

delicate rosiness of dawn, I'd feel unutterably grateful to be alive, to

hear the cantatas of health singing deep in my soul, to know that

whatever life may do to me, I'd snatched my share of happiness from the

pantry of the gods! And the endless change of color, from the tawny

fox-glove on the lighter land, the pale yellow of a lion's skin in the

slanting autumn sun, to the quavering, shimmering glories of the

Northern Lights that dance in the north, that fling out their banners of

ruby and gold and green, and tremble and merge and pulse until I feel

that I can hear the clash of invisible cymbals. I wonder if you can

understand my feeling when I pulled the hat-pin out of my old gray

Stetson yesterday, uncovered my head, and looked straight up into the

blue firmament above me. Then I said, "Thank you, God, for such a

beautiful day!"

Dinky-Dunk promptly said that I was blasphemous--he's so strict and

solemn! But as I stared up into the depths of that intense opaline

light, so clear, so pure, I realized how air, just air and nothing else,

could leave a scatter-brained lady like me half-seas over. Only it's a

champagne that never leaves you with a headache the next day!

_Saturday the Twenty-fourth_

Dinky-Dunk, who seems intent on keeping my mind occupied, brought me

home a bundle of old magazines last night. They were so frayed and

thumbed-over that some of the pages reminded me of well-worn bank-notes.

I've been reading some of the stories, and they all seem silly.

Everybody appears to be in love with somebody else's wife. Then the

people are all divided so strictly into two classes, the good and the

bad! As for the other man's wife, prairie-life would soon knock that

nonsense out of people. There isn't much room for the Triangle in a

two-by-four shack. Life's so normal and natural and big out here that a

Pierre Loti would be kicked into a sheep-dip before he could use up his

first box of face-rouge! You want your own wife, and want her so bad

you're satisfied. Not that Dinky-Dunk and I are so goody-goody! We're

just healthy and human, that's all, and we'd never do for fiction.

After meals we push away the dishes and sit side by side, with our arms

across each other's shoulders, full of the joy of life, satisfied,

happy, healthy-minded, now and then a little Rabelaisian in our talk,

meandering innocent-eyed through those earthier intimacies which most

married people seem to face without shame, so long as the facing is done

in secret. We don't seem ashamed of that terribly human streak in us.

And neither of us is bad, at heart. But I know we're not like those

magazine characters, who all seem to have Florida-water instead of red

blood in their veins, and are so far, far away from life.

Yet even that dip into politely erotic fiction seemed to canalize my

poor little grass-grown mind into activity, and Diddums and I sat up

until the wee sma' hours discoursing on life and letters. He started me

off by somewhat pensively remarking that all women seem to want to be

intellectual and have a _salon_.

"No, Dinky-Dunk, I don't want a _salon_," I promptly announced. "I never

did want one, for I don't believe they were as exciting as we imagine.

And I hate literary people almost as much as I hate actors. I always

felt they were like stage-scenery, not made for close inspection. For

after five winters in New York and a couple in London you can't help

bumping into the Bohemian type, not to mention an occasional collision

with 'em up and down the Continent. When they're female they always seem

to wear the wrong kind of corsets. And when they're male they watch

themselves in the mirrors, or talk so much about themselves that you

haven't a chance to talk about _yourself_--which is really the

completest definition of a bore, isn't it? I'd much rather know them

through their books than through those awful Sunday evening _soirees_

where poor old leonine M---- used to perspire reading those Socialist

poems of his to the adoring ladies, and Sanguinary John used to wear the

same flannel shirt that shielded him from the Polar blasts up in

Alaska--open at the throat, and all that sort of thing, just like a

movie-actor cowboy, only John had grown a little stout and he kept

spoiling the Strong-Man picture by so everlastingly posing at one end

of the grand-piano! You know the way they do it, one pensive elbow on

the piano-end and the delicately drooping palm holding up the weary

brains, the same as you prop up a King-orange bough when it gets too

heavy with fruit! And then he had a lovely bang and a voice like a

maiden-lady from Maine. And take it from me, O lord and master, that man

devoured all his raw beef and blood on his typewriter-ribbon. I dubbed

him the King of the Eye-Socket school, and instead of getting angry he

actually thanked me for it. That was the sort of advertising he was

after."

Dinky-Dunk grinned a little as I rattled on. Then he grew serious again.

"Why is it," he asked, "a writer in Westminster Abbey is always a

genius, but a writer in the next room is rather a joke?"

I tried to explain it for him. "Because writers are like Indians. The

only good ones are the dead ones. And it's the same with those siren

affinities of history. Annie Laurie lived to be eighty, though the

ballad doesn't say so. And Lady Hamilton died poor and ugly and went

around with red herrings in her pocket. And Cleopatra was really a

redheaded old political schemer, and Paris got tired of Helen of Troy.

Which means that history, like literature, is only _Le mensonge

convenu_!"

This made Dinky-Dunk sit up and stare at me. "Look here, Gee-Gee, I

don't mind a bit of book-learning, but I hate to see you tear the whole

tree of knowledge up by the roots and knock me down with it! And it was

_salons_ we were talking about, and not the wicked ladies of the past!"

"Well, the only _salon_ I ever saw in America had the commercial air of

a millinery opening where tea happened to be served," I promptly

declared. "And the only American woman I ever knew who wanted to have a

_salon_ was a girl we used to call Asafetida Anne. And if I explained

why you'd make a much worse face than that, my Diddums. But she had a

weakness for black furs and never used to wash her neck. So the Plimpton

Mark was always there!"

"Don't get bitter, Gee-Gee," announced Dinky-Dunk as he proceeded to

light his pipe. And I could afford to laugh at his solemnity.

"I'm not bitter, Honey Chile; I'm only glad I got away from all that

Bohemian rubbish. You may call me a rattle-box, and accuse me of being

temperamental now and then--which I'm not--but the one thing in life

which I love is _sanity_. And that, Dinky-Dunk, is why I love you, even

though you are only a big sunburnt farmer fighting and planning and

grinding away for a home for an empty-headed wife who's going to fail at

everything but making you love her!"

Then followed a few moments when I wasn't able to talk,

... The sequel's scarce essential--

Nay, more than this, I hold it still

Profoundly confidential!

Then as we sat there side by side I got thinking of the past and of the

Bohemians before whom I had once burned incense. And remembering a

certain visit to Box Hill with Lady Agatha's mother, years and years

ago, I had to revise my verdict on authors, for one of the warmest

memories in all my life is that of dear old Meredith in his wheelchair,

with his bearded face still flooded with its kindly inner light and his

spirit still mellow with its unquenchable love of life. And once as a

child, I went on to tell Dinky-Dunk, I had met Stevenson. It was at

Mentone, and I can still remember him leaning over and taking my hand.

His own hand was cold and lean, like a claw, and with the quick instinct

of childhood I realized, too, that he was _condescending_ as he spoke to

me, for all the laugh that showed the white teeth under his drooping

black mustache. Wrong as it seemed, I didn't like him any more than I

afterward liked the Sargent portrait of him, which was really an echo of

my own first impression, though often and often I've tried to blot out

that first unfair estimate of a real man of genius. There's so much in

the _Child's Garden of Verse_ that I love; there's so much in the man's

life that demands admiration, that it seems wrong not to capitulate to

his charm. But when one's own family are one's biographers it's hard to

be kept human. "Yet there's one thing, Dinky-Dunk, that I do respect him

for," I went on. "He had seen the loveliest parts of this world, and,

when he had to, he could light-heartedly give it all up and rough it in

this American West of ours, even as you and I!" Whereupon Dinky-Dunk

argued that we ought to forgive an invalid his stridulous preaching

about bravery and manliness and his over-emphasis of fortitude, since it

was plainly based on an effort to react against a constitutional

weakness for which he himself couldn't be blamed.

And I confessed that I could forgive him more easily than I could

Sanguinary John with his literary Diabolism and that ostentatious

stone-age blugginess with which he loved to give the ladies goose-flesh,

pretending he was a bull in a china-shop when he's really only a white

mouse in an ink-pot! And after Dinky-Dunk had knocked out his pipe and

wound up his watch he looked over at me with his slow Scotch-Canadian

smile. "For a couple of hay-seeds who have been harpooning the _salon_

idea," he solemnly announced, "I call this quite a literary evening!"

But what's the use of having an idea or two in your head if you can't

air 'em now and then?

_Tuesday the Twenty-seventh_

To-day I stumbled on the surprise of my life! It was A Man! I took Paddy

and cantered over to the old Titchborne Ranch and was prowling around

the corral, hoping I might find a few belated mushrooms. But nary a one

was there. So I whistled on my four fingers for Paddy (I've been

teaching him to come at that call) and happened to glance in the

direction of the abandoned shack. Then I saw the door open, and _out

walked a man_.

He was a young man, in puttees and knickers and Norfolk jacket, and he

was smoking a cigarette. He stared at me as though I were the Missing

Link. Then he said "Hello!" rather inadequately, it seemed to me.

I answered back "Hello," and wondered whether to take to my heels or

not. But my courage got its second wind, and I stayed. Then we shook

hands, very formally, and explained who we were. And I discovered that

his name was Percival Benson Woodhouse (and the Lord forgive me if they

ever call him Percy for short!) and that his aunt is the Countess of

D---- and that he knows a number of people you and Lady Agatha have

often spoken of. He's got a Japanese servant called Kino, or perhaps

it's spelt Keeno, I don't know which, who's housekeeper, laundress,

_valet_, gardener, groom and _chef_, all in one,--so, at least Percival

Benson confessed to me. He also confessed that he'd bought the

Titchborne Ranch, from photographs, from "one of those land chaps" in

London. He wanted to rough it a bit, and they told him there would be

jolly good game shooting. So he even brought along an elephant-gun, which

his cousin had used in India. The photographs which the "land chap" had

showed him turned out to be pictures of the Selkirks. And, taking it all

in all, he fancied that he'd been jolly well bunked. But Percival seemed

to accept it with the stoicism of the well-born Britisher. He'd have a

try at the place, although there was no game.

"But there _is_ game," I told him, "slathers of it, oodles of it!"

He mildly inquired where and what? I told him: Wild duck,

prairie-chicken, wild geese, jack-rabbits, now and then a fox, and loads

of coyotes. He explained, then, that he meant big game--and how grandly

those two words, "big game," do roll off the English tongue! He has a

sister in the Bahamas, who may join him next summer if he should decide

to stick it out. He considered that it would be a bit rough for a girl,

during the winter season up here.

Yet before I go any further I must describe Percival Benson Woodhouse to

you, for he's not only "our sort," but a type as well.

In the first place, he's a Magdalen College man, the sort we've seen

going up and down the High many and many a time. He's rather gaunt and

rather tall, and he stoops a little. "At home" they call it the "Oxford

stoop," if I'm not greatly mistaken. His hands are thin and long and

bony. His eyes are nice, and he looks very good form. I mean he's the

sort of man you'd never take for the "outsider" or "rotter." He's the

sort who seem to have the royal privilege of doing even doubtfully

polite things and yet doing them in such a way as to make them seem

quite proper. I don't know whether I make that clear or not, but one

thing is clear, and this is that our Percival Benson is an aristocrat.

You see it in his over-sensitive, over-refined, almost womanishly

delicate face, with those idealizing and quite unpractical eyes of his.

You see it in the thin, high-arched, bony nose (almost as fine a beak as

the one belonging to His Grace, the Duke of M----!) and you see it in

the sad and somewhat elongated face, as though he had pored over big

books too much, a sort of air of pathos and aloofness from things. His

mouth strikes you as being rather meager, until he smiles, which is

quite often, for, glory be, he has a good sense of humor. But besides

that he has a neatness, a coolness, an impersonal sort of ease, which

would make you think that he might have stepped out of one of Henry

James's earlier novels of about the time of the _Portrait of a Lady_.

And I like him. I knew that at once. He's _effete_ and old-worldish and

probably useless, out here, but he stands for something I've been

missing, and I'll be greatly mistaken if Percival Benson and Chaddie

McKail are not pretty good friends before the winter's over! He's asked

if he might be permitted to call, and he's coming for dinner to-morrow

night, and I do hope Dinky-Dunk is nice to him--if we're to be

neighbors. But Dinky-Dunk says Westerners don't ask to be permitted to

call. They just stick their cayuse into the corral and walk in, the same

as an Indian does. And Dinky-Dunk says that if he comes in evening dress

he'll shoot him, sure pop!

_Thursday the Twenty-ninth_

Percy (how I hate that name!) was here for dinner last night, and all

things considered, we didn't fare so badly. We had tomato bisque and

scalloped potatoes and prairie-chicken (they need to be well basted) and

hot biscuits and stewed dried peaches with cream. Then we had coffee and

the men smoked their pipes. We talked until a quarter to one in the

morning, and my poor Dinky-Dunk, who has been working so hard and seeing

nobody, really enjoyed that visit and really likes Percival Benson.

Percy got talking about Oxford, and you could see that he loved the old

town and that he felt more at home on the Isis than on the prairie. He

said he once heard Freeman tell a story about Goldwin Smith, who used to

be Regius Professor of History at the University. G. S. seemed

astonished that F. couldn't tell him, at some _viva voce_ exam,

whatever that may mean, the cause of King John's death. Then G. S.

explained that poor John died of too much peaches and fresh ale, "which

would give a man considerable belly-ache," the Regius Professor of

History solemnly announced to Freeman.

Percy said his lungs rather troubled him in England, and he has spent

over a year in Florence and Rome and can talk pictures like a Grant

Allen guide-book. And he's sat through many an opera at La Scala, but

considered the Canadian coyote a much better vocalist than most of the

minor Italian tenors. And he knows Capri and Taormina and says he'd like

to grow old and die in Sicily. He got pneumonia at Messina, and nearly

died young there and after five months in Switzerland a specialist told

him to try Canada.

I've noticed that one of the delusions of Americans is that an

Englishman is silent. Now, my personal conviction is that Englishmen are

the greatest talkers in the world, and I have Percy to back me up in it.

In fact, we sat about talking so long that Percy asked if he couldn't

stay all night, as he was a poor rider and wasn't sure of the trails as

yet. So we made a shake-down for him in the living-room. And when

Dinky-Dunk came to bed he confided to me that Percy was calmly reading

and smoking himself to sleep, out of my sadly scorned copy of _The Ring

and the Book_, with the lamp on the floor, on one side of him, and a

saucer on the other, for an ash-tray. But he was up and out this

morning, before either of us was stirring, coming back to Casa Grande,

however, when he saw the smoke at the chimney-top. His thin cheeks were

quite pink and he apologetically explained that he'd been trying for an

hour and a half to catch his cayuse. Olie had come to his rescue. But

our thin-shouldered Oxford exile said that he had never seen such a

glorious sunrise, and that the ozone had made him a bit tipsy. Speaking

of thin-shouldered specimens, Matilda Anne, I was once a thirty-six;

_now I am a perfect forty-two_.

_Friday the Fifth_

The weather has been bad all this week, but I've had a great deal of

sewing to do, and for two days Dinky-Dunk stayed in and helped me fix up

the shack. I made more book-shelves out of more old biscuit-boxes and my

lord made a gun-rack for our fire-arms. Percival Benson rode over once,

through the storm, and it took us half an hour to thaw him out. But he

brought some books, and says he has four cases, altogether, and that

we're welcome to all we wish. He stayed until noon the next day, this

time sleeping in the annex, which Dinky-Dunk and I have papered, so that

it looks quite presentable. But as yet there is no way of heating it.

Our new neighbor, I imagine, is very lonesome.

_Sunday the Seventh_

The weather has cleared: there's a chinook arch in the sky, and a sort

of St. Martin's-Summer haze on all the prairie. But there's news to-day.

Kino, our new neighbor's Jap, has decamped with a good deal of money and

about all of Percival Benson's valuables. The poor boy is almost

helpless, but he's not a quitter. He said he chopped his first kindling

to-day, though he had to stand in a wash-tub, while he did it, to keep

from cutting his feet. Dinky-Dunk's birthday is only three weeks off,

and I'm making plans for a celebration.

_Tuesday the Ninth_

The days slip by, and scarcely leave me time to write. Dinky-Dunk is a

sort of pendulum, swinging out to work, back to eat, and then out, and

then back again. Olie is teaming in lumber and galvanized iron for a new

building of some sort. My lord, in the evenings, sits with paper and

pencil, figuring out measurements and making plans. I sit on the other

side of the table, as a rule, sewing. Sometimes I go around to his side

of the table, and make him put his plans away for a few minutes. We are

very happy. But where the days fly to I scarcely know. We are always

looking toward the future, talking about the future, "conceiting" for

the future, as the Irish say. Next summer is to be our banner year.

Dinky-Dunk is going to risk everything on wheat. He's like a general

plotting out a future plan of campaign--for when the work comes, he

says, it will come in a rush. Help will be hard to get, so he'll sell

his British Columbia timber rights and buy a forty-horse-power gasoline

tractor. He will at least if gasoline gets cheaper, for with "gas" still

at twenty-six cents a gallon horse-power is cheapest. But during the

breaking season in April and May, one of these engines can haul eight

gang-plows behind it. In twenty-four hours it will be able to turn over

thirty-five acres of prairie soil--and the ordinary man and team counts

two acres of plowing a decent day's work.

To-night I asked Dinky-Dunk why he risked everything on wheat and warned

him that we might have to revise the old Kansas trekker's slogan to--

"In wheat we trusted,

In wheat we busted!"

Dinky-Dunk explained that to keep on raising only wheat would be bad for

the land, and even now meant taking a chance, but situated as he was it

brought in the quickest money. And he wanted money in a hurry, for he

had a nest to feather for a lady wild-bird that he'd captured--which

meant me. Later on he intends to go in for flax--for fiber and not for

seed--and as our land should produce two tons of the finest flax-straw

to the acre and as the Belgian and Irish product is now worth over four

hundred dollars a ton, he told me to sit down and figure out what four

hundred acres would produce, with even a two-third crop.

The Canadian farmer of the West, he went on to explain, mostly grew flax

for the seed alone, burning up over a million tons of straw every year,

just to get it out of the way, the same as he does with his wheat-straw.

But all that will soon be changed. Only last week Dinky-Dunk wrote to

the Department of Agriculture for information about _courtai_

fiber--that's the kind used for point-lace and is worth a dollar a

pound--for my lord feels convinced his soil and climatic conditions are

especially suited for certain of the finer varieties. He even admitted

that flax would be better on his land at the present time, as it would

release certain of the natural fertilizers which sometimes leave the

virgin soil too rich for wheat. But what most impressed me about

Dinky-Dunk's talk was his absolute and unshaken faith in this West of

ours, once it wakes up to its opportunities. It's a stored-up granary of

wealth, he declares, and all we've done so far is to nibble along the

leaks in the floor-cracks!

_Saturday the Twenty-first_

To-day is Dinky-Dunk's birthday. He's always thought, of course, that

I'm a pauper, and never dreamed of my poor little residuary nest-egg.

I'd ordered a box of Okanagan Valley apples, and a gramophone and a

dozen opera records, and a brier-wood pipe and two pounds of English

"Honey-Dew," and a smoking-jacket, and some new ties and socks and

shirts, and a brand new Stetson, for Dinky-Dunk's old hat is almost a

rag-bag. And I ordered half a dozen of the newer novels and a set of

Herbert Spencer which I heard him say he wanted, and a sepia print of

the _Mona Lisa_ (which my lord says I look like when I'm planning

trouble) and a felt mattress and a set of bed-springs (so good-by, old

sway-backed friend whose humps have bruised me in body and spirit this

many a night!) and a dozen big oranges and three dozen little candles

for the birthday cake. And then I was cleaned out--every blessed cent

gone! But Percy (we have, you see, been unable to escape that name)

ordered a box of cigars and a pair of quilted house-slippers, so it was

a pretty formidable array.

I, accordingly, had Olie secretly team this array all the way from

Buckhorn to Percy's house, where it was duly ambushed and entrenched, to

await the fatal day. As luck would have it, or seemed to have it,

Dinky-Dunk had to hit the trail for overnight, to see about the

registration of his transfers for his new half-section, at the town of

H----. So as soon as Dinky-Dunk was out of sight I hurried through my

work and had Tumble-Weed and Bronk headed for the old Titchborne Ranch.

There I arrived about mid-afternoon, and what a time we had, getting

those things unpacked, and looking them over, and planning and talking!

But the whole thing was spoilt.

We forgot to tie the horses. So while we were having tea Bronk and

Tumble-Weed hit the trail, on their own hook. They made for home,

harness and all, but of course I never knew this at the time. We looked

and looked, came back for supper, and then started out again. We

searched until it got dark. My feet were like lead, and I couldn't have

walked another mile. I was so stiff and tired I simply had to give up.

Percy worried, of course, for we had no way of sending word to

Dinky-Dunk. Then we sat down and talked over possibilities, like a

couple of castaways on a Robinson Crusoe island. Percy offered to bunk

in the stable, and let me have the shack. But I wouldn't hear of that.

In the first place, I felt pretty sure Percy was what they call a

"lunger" out here, and I didn't relish the idea of sleeping in a

tuberculous bed. I asked for a blanket and told him that I was going to

sleep out under the wagon, as I'd often done with Dinky-Dunk. Percy

finally consented, but this worried him too. He even brought out his

"big-game" gun, so I'd have protection, and felt the grass to see if it

was damp, and declared he couldn't sleep on a mattress when he knew I

was out on the hard ground. I told him that I loved it, and to go to

bed, for I wanted to get out of some of my armor-plate. He went,

reluctantly.

It was a beautiful night, and not so cold, with scarcely a breath of

wind stirring. I lay looking out through the wheel-spokes at the Milky

Way, and was just dropping off when Percy came out still again. He was

in a quilted dressing-gown and had a blanket over his shoulders. It made

him look for all the world like Father Time. He wanted to know if I was

all right, and had brought me out a pillow--which I didn't use. Then he

sat down on the prairie-floor, near the wagon, and smoked and talked. He

pointed out some of the constellations to me, and said the only time

he'd ever seen the stars bigger was one still night on the Indian Ocean,

when he was on his way back from Singapore. He would never forget that

night, he said, the stars were so wonderful, so big, so close, so soft

and luminous. But the northern stars were different. They were without

the orange tone that belongs to the South. They seemed remoter and more

awe-inspiring, and there was always a green tone to their whiteness.

Then we got talking about "furrin parts" and Percy asked me if I'd ever

seen Naples at night from San Martino, and I asked him if he'd ever seen

Broadway at night from the top of the Times Building. Then he asked me

if I'd ever watched Paris from Montmartre, or seen the Temple of Neptune

at Pæstum bathed in Lucanian moonlight--which I very promptly told him I

had, for it was on the ride home from Pæstum that a certain person had

proposed to me. We talked about temples and Greek Gods and the age of

the world and Indian legends until I got downright sleepy. Then Percy

threw away his last cigarette and got up. He said "Good night;" I said

"Good night;" and he went into the shack. He said he'd leave the door

open, in case I called. There were just the two of us, between earth and

sky, that night, and not another soul within a radius of seven miles of

any side of us. He was very glad to have some one to talk to. He's

probably a year or two older than I am, but I am quite motherly with

him. And he is shockingly incompetent, as a homesteader, from the look

of his shack. But he's a gentleman, almost too "Gentle," I sometimes

feel, a Laodicean, mentally over-refined until it leaves him unable to

cope with real life. He's one of those men made for being a "spectator,"

and not an actor, in life. And there's something so absurd about his

being where he is that I feel sorry for him.

I slept like a log. Once I fell asleep, I forgot about the hard ground,

and the smell of the horse-blankets, and the fact that I'd lost my poor

Dinky-Dunk's team. When I woke up it was the first gray of dawn. Two men

were standing side by side, looking at me under the wagon. One was

Percy, and the other was Dinky-Dunk himself.

He'd got home by three o'clock in the morning, by hurrying, for he was

nervous about me being alone. But he found the house empty, the team

standing beside the corral, and me missing. Naturally, it wasn't a very

happy situation. Poor Dinky-Dunk hit the trail at once, and had been

riding all night looking for his lost wife. Then he made for Percy's,

woke him up, and discovered her placidly snoring under a wagon-box. He

didn't even smile at this. He was very tired and very silent. I thought,

for a moment, that I saw distrust on Dinky-Dunk's face, for the first

time. But he has said nothing. I hated to see him go out to work, when

we got home, but he refused to take a nap at noon, as I wanted him to.

So to-night, when he came in for his supper, I had the birthday cake

duly decked and the presents all out.

But his enthusiasm was forced, and all during the meal he showed a

tendency to be absent-minded. I had no explanations to make, so I made

none. But I noticed that he put on his old slippers. I thought he had

done it deliberately.

"You don't seem to mellow with age," I announced, with my eyebrows up.

He flushed at that, quite plainly. Then he reached over and took hold of

my hand. But he did it only with an effort, and after some tremendous

inward struggle which was not altogether flattering to me.

"Please take your hand away so I can reach the dish-towel," I told him.

And the hand went away like a shot. After I'd finished my work I got out

my George Meredith and read _Modern Love_. Dinky-Dunk did not come to

bed until late. I was awake when he came, but I didn't let him know it.

_Sunday the Twenty-ninth_

I haven't felt much like writing this last week. I scarcely know why. I

think it's because Dinky-Dunk is on his dignity. He's getting thin, by

the way. His cheek-bones show and his Adam's apple sticks out. He's

worried about his land payments, and I tell him he'd be happier with a

half-section. But Dinky-Dunk wants wealth. And I can't help him much.

I'm afraid I'm an encumbrance. And the stars make me lonely, and the

prairie wind sometimes gives me the willies! And winter is coming.

I'm afraid I'm out of my setting, as badly out of it as Percival Benson

is. It wouldn't be so bad, I suppose, if I'd never seen such lovely

corners of the world, before coming out here to be a dot on the

wilderness. If I'd never had that heavenly summer at Fiesole, and those

months with you at Corfu, and that winter in Rome with poor dear dead

Katrinka! Sometimes I think of the nights we used to look out over

Paris, from the roof above 'Tite Daneau's studio. And sometimes I think

of the Pincio, with the band playing, and the carriages flashing, and

the officers in uniform, and the milky white statues among the trees,

and the golden mists of the late afternoon over the Immortal City. And I

tell myself that it was all a dream. And then I feel that _I_ am all a

dream, and the prairie is a dream, and Paddy and Olie and Dinky-Dunk and

all this new life is nothing more than a dream. Oh, Matilda Anne, I've

been homesick this week, so unhappy and homesick for something--for

something, and I don't even know what it is!

_Monday the Seventh_

Glory be! Winter's here with a double-edged saber wind out of the north

and snow on the ground. It gives a zip to things. It makes our snug

little shack seem as cozy as a ship's cabin. And I've got a

jumper-sleigh, and with my coon-skin coat and gauntlets and wedge-cap I

can be as warm as toast in any wind. And there's so much to do. And I'm

not going to be a piker. This is the land where folks make good or go

loco. You've only got yourself to depend on, and yourself to blame, if

things go wrong. And I'm going to make them go right. There's no use

wailing out here in the West. A line or two of Laurence Hope's has been

running all day through my head:

"These are my people, and this my land;

I hear the pulse of her secret soul.

This is the life that I understand,

Savage and simple, and sane and whole."

_Friday the Eleventh_

Dinky-dunk came home with an Indian girl to-day, a young half-breed about

sixteen years old. She's to be both companion and parlor-maid, for

Dinky-Dunk has to hurry off to British Columbia, to try to sell his

timber-rights there to meet his land payments. He's off to-morrow. It

makes me feel wretched, but I'm consuming my own smoke, for I don't want

him to think me an encumbrance. My Indian girl speaks a little English.

She also eats sugar by the handful, whenever she can steal it. I asked

her what her name was and she told me "Queenie MacKenzie." That name

almost took my breath away. How that untutored Northwest aborigine ever

took unto herself this Broadway chorus-girl name, Heaven only knows! But

I have my suspicions of Queenie. She has certain exploratory movements

which convince me she is verminous. She sleeps in the annex, I'm happy

to say.

At dinner to-night when I was teaching Dinky-Dunk how to make a rabbit

out of his table-napkin and a sea-sick passenger out of the last of his

oranges, he explained that he might not get back in time for Christmas,

and asked if I'd mind. I knew his trip was important, so I kept a stiff

upper lip and said of course I wouldn't mind. But the thought of a

Christmas alone chilled my heart. I tried to be jolly, and gave my

repertory on the mouth-organ, which promptly stopped all activities on

the part of the round-eyed Queenie MacKenzie. But all that foolery was

as forced as the frivolity of the French Revolution Conciergerie where

the merry diners couldn't quite forget they were going to lose their

heads in the morning!

_Sunday the Thirteenth_

Not only is Duncan gone, but Queenie has also quite unceremoniously

taken her departure. It arose from the fact that I requested her to take

a bath. The only disappointed member of the family is poor old Olie, who

was actually making sheep's eyes at that verminous little baggage.

Imagination falters at what he might have done with a dollar's worth of

brown sugar. When Queenie went, I find, my mouth-organ went with her.

I'd like to ling chih that Indian girl!

_Wednesday the Sixteenth_

It was a sparkling clear day to-day, with no wind, so I rode over to the

old Titchborne Ranch with my little jumper-sleigh. There I found

Percival Benson in a most pitiable condition. He had been laid up with

the grip. His place was untidy, his dishes were unwashed, and his fuel

was running short. His appearance, in fact, rather frightened me. So I

bundled him up and got him in the jumper and brought him straight home

with me. He had a chill on the way, so as soon as we got to Casa Grande

I sent him to bed, gave him hot whisky, and put my hot water bottle at

his feet. He tried to accept the whole thing as a joke, and vowed I was

jolly well cooking him. But to-night he has a high fever and I'm afraid

he's in for a serious siege of illness. I intend to send Olie over to

get some of his things and have his live stock brought over with ours.

_Sunday the Twentieth_

Percy has had three very bad nights, but seems a little better to-day.

His lung is congested, and it may be pneumonia, but I think my

mustard-plaster saved the day. He tries so hard to be cheerful, and is

so grateful for every little thing. But I wish Dinky-Dunk was here to

tell me what to do.

I could never have survived this last week without Olie. He is as

watchful and ready as a farm-collie. But I want my Dinky-Dunk! I may

have spoiled my Dinky-Dunk a little, but it's only once every century or

two that God makes a man like him. I want to be a good wife. I want to

do my share, and keep a shoulder to the wheel, if the going's got to be

heavy for the next year or two. I won't be the Dixon type. I won't--I

won't! My Duncan will need me during this next year, and it will be a

joy to help him. For I love that man, Matilda Anne,--I love him so much

that it hurts!

_Sunday the Twenty-seventh_

Christmas has come and gone. It was very lonely at Casa Grande. I prefer

not writing about it. Percy is improving, but is still rather weak. I

think he had a narrow squeak.

_Wednesday the Thirtieth_

My patient is up and about, looking like a different man. He shows the

effects of my forced feeding, though he declares I'm trying to make him

into a Strasburg goose, for the sake of the _pâté de foies gras_ when I

cut him up. But he's decided to go to Santa Barbara for the winter: and

I think he's wise. So this afternoon I togged out in my furs, took the

jumper, and went kiting over to the Titchborne Ranch. Oh, what a shack!

What disorder, what untidiness, what spirit-numbing desolation! I don't

blame poor Percival Benson for clearing out for California. I got what

things he needed, however, and went kiting home again.

_Thursday the Thirty-first_

I hardly know how to begin. But it must be written or I'll suddenly go

mad and start to bite the shack walls. Last night, after Percy had

helped me turn the bread-mixer (for, whatever happens, we've at least

got to eat) I helped him pack. Among other things, he found a copy of

Housman's _Shropshire Lad_ and after running through it announced that

he'd like to read me two or three little things out of it. So I squatted

down in front of the fire, idly poking at the red coals, and he sat

beside the stove with his book, in slippers and dressing gown. And there

he was solemnly reading out loud when the door opened and in walked

Dinky-Dunk.

I say he walked in, but that isn't quite right. He stood in the open

door, staring at us, with an expression that would have done credit to

the Tragic Muse. I imagine Enoch Arden wore much the same look when he

piped the home circle after that prolonged absence of his. Then

Dinky-Dunk did a most unpardonable thing. Instead of saying "Howdy!"

like a scholar and a gentleman, he backed out of the shack and slammed

the door. When I'd caught my breath I went out through that door after

him. It was a bitterly cold night, but I did not stop to put anything

on. I was too amazed, too indignant, too swept off my feet by the

absurdity of it all. I could see Dinky-Dunk in the clear starlight,

taking the blankets off his team. He'd hurried to the shack, without

even unharnessing the horses. I could hear the wheel-tires whine on the

crisp snow, for the poor beasts were tired and restless. I went straight

to the buckboard into which Dinky-Dunk was climbing. He looked like a

cinnamon-bear in his big shaggy coat. And I couldn't see his face. But I

remembered how it had looked in the doorway. It was the color of a tan

shoe. It was too weather-beaten and burnt with the wind and sun-glare

ever to turn white, or, I suppose, it would have been the color of

paper.

"Haven't you," I demanded, "haven't you any explanation for acting like

this?" He sat in the buckboard seat, with the reins in his hands.

"I guess I've got the first right to that question," he finally said in

a stifled voice.

"Then why don't you ask it?" was my answer to him. Again he waited a

moment before speaking, as though he felt the need of weighing his

words.

"I don't need to--now!" he said, as he tightened the reins.

"Wait," I called out to him. "There are certain things I want you to

know!"

I was not going to make explanations. I would not dignify his brute-man

stupidity by such things. I scarcely know what I intended to do. As I

looked up at him there in his rough fur coat, for a moment, he seemed

millions and millions of miles away from me. I stared at him, trying to

comprehend his utter lack of comprehension. I seemed to view him across

the same gulf which separates a meditative zoo visitor from some

abysmally hirsute animal that eons and eons ago must have been its

cave-fellow and hearth-mate. But now we seemed to have nothing in

common, not even a language with which to link up those lost ages. Yet

from all that mixture of feelings only one survived: I didn't want my

husband to go.

It was the team, as far as I can remember, that really decided the

thing. They had been restive, backing and jerking and pawing and

nickering for their feed-box. And suddenly they jumped forward. But this

time they kept going. Whether Dinky-Dunk tried to hold them back or not

I can't say. But I came back to the shack, shivering. Percy, thank

Heaven, was in his room.

"I think I'll turn in!" he called out, quite casually, through the

partition.

I said "All right," and sat down in front of the fire, trying to

straighten things out. My Dinky-Dunk was gone! He had glared at me, with

hate in his eyes, as he sat in that buckboard. It's all over. He has no

faith in me, his own wife!

I went to bed and tried to sleep. But sleep was out of the question. The

whole thing seemed so absurd, so unreasonable, so unjust. I could feel

waves of anger sweep through my body at the mere thought of it. Then a

wave of something else, of something between anxiety and terror, would

take the place of anger. My husband was gone, and he'd never come back.

I'd put all my eggs in one basket, and the basket had gone over, and

made a saffron-tinted omelet of all my life.

And that's the way I watched the New Year in, I couldn't even afford the

luxury of a little bawl, for I was afraid Percy would hear me. It must

have been almost morning when I fell asleep.

When I woke up Percival Benson was gone, bag and baggage. At first I

resented the thought of his going off that way, without a word, but on

thinking it over I decided he'd done the right thing. There's nothing

like the hard cold light of a winter morning to bring you back to hard

cold facts. Olie had driven Percy in to the station. So I was alone in

the shack all day. I did a heap of thinking during those long hours of

solitude. And out of all that straw of self-examination I threshed just

one little grain of truth. _I could never live on the prairie alone._

And whatever I did, or wherever I went, I could never be happy without

my Dinky-Dunk....

I had just finished supper to-night, as blue as indigo and as spiritless

as a wet hen, when I heard the sound of voices. It took me only ten

seconds to make sure whose they were. Dinky-Dunk had come back with

Olie! I made a high dive for a book from the nearest shelf, swung the

armchair about with a jerk, and sank luxuriously into it, with my feet

up on the warm damper and my eyes leisurely and contentedly perusing

George Moore's _Confessions of a Young Man_ (although I _hate_ the

libidinous stuff like poison!) Then Dinky-Dunk came in. I could see him

stare at me a little awkwardly and contritely (what woman can't read a

book and study a man at the same time?) and I, could see that he was

waiting for an opening. But I gave him none. Naturally, Olie had

explained everything to him. But I had been humiliated, my pride had

been walked over, from end to end. My spirit had been stamped on--and I

had decided on my plan of action. I simply ignored Duncan.

I read for a while, then I took a lamp, went to my room, and

deliberately locked the door. My one regret was that I couldn't see

Dinky-Dunk's face when that key turned. And now I must stop writing, and

go to bed, for I am dog-tired. I know I'll sleep better to-night. It's

nice to remember there's a man near, if he happens to be the man you

care a trifle about, even though you _have_ calmly turned the door-key

on him.

_Sunday the Third_

Dinky-Dunk has at least the sensibilities to respect my privacy of life.

He knows where the deadline is, and doesn't disregard it. But it's

terribly hard to be tragic in a two-by-four shack. You miss the

dignifying touches. And you haven't much leeway for the bulky swings of

grandeur.

For one whole day I didn't speak to Dinky-Dunk, didn't even so much as

recognize his existence. I ate by myself, and did my work--when the

monster was around--with all the preoccupation of a sleep-walker. But

something happened, and I forgot myself. Before I knew it I was asking

him a question. He answered it, quite soberly, quite casually. If he had

grinned, or shown one jot of triumph, I would have walked out of the

shack and never spoken to him again. I think he knew he was on terribly

perilous ground. He picked his way with care. He asked me a question

back, quite offhandedly, and for the time being let the matter rest

there. But the breach was in my walls, Matilda Anne, and I was quite

defenseless. We were both very impersonal and very polite, when he came

in at supper time, though I think I turned a visible pink when I sat

down at the table, for our eyes met there, just a moment and no more. I

knew he was watching me, covertly, all the time. And I knew I was making

him pretty miserable. But I wasn't the least bit ashamed of it.

After supper he indifferently announced that he had nothing to do and

might as well help me wash up. I went to hand him a dish-towel. Instead

of taking the towel he took my hand, with the very profane ejaculation,

as he did so, of "Oh, hell, Gee-Gee, what's the use?"

Then before I knew it, he had me in his arms (our butter-dish was broken

in the collision) and I was weak enough to feel sorry for him and his

poor tragic pleading eyes. Then I gave up. If I was silly enough to have

a little cry on his shoulder, I had the satisfaction of feeling him

give a gulp or two himself.

"You're the most wonderful woman in the world!" he solemnly told me, and

then in a much less solemn way he began kissing me again. But the

barriers were down. And how we talked that night! And how different

everything seemed! And how nice it was to feel his arm over my shoulder

and his quiet breathing on the nape of my neck as I fell asleep. It

seemed as though Love were fanning me with its softest wings. I'm happy

again. But I've been wondering if it's environment that makes character,

or character that makes environment. Sometimes I think it's one way, and

sometimes I feel it's the other. But I can't be sure of my answer--yet!

It's hard for a spoiled woman to remember that her life has to be merged

into somebody else's life. I've been wondering if marriage isn't like a

two-panel screen, which won't stand up if both its panels are too much

in line. Heaven knows, I want harmony! But a woman likes to feel that

instead of being out of step with her whole regiment of life it's the

regiment that's out of step with her. To-night I unlaced Dinky-Dunk's

shoes, and put on his slippers, and sat on the floor between his knees

with my head against the steady _tick-tock_ of his watch-pocket.

"Dinky-Dunk," I solemnly announced, "that gink called Pope was a poor

guesser. The proper study of man should have been _woman_!"

_Thursday the Seventh_

Everything at Casa Grande has settled back into the usual groove. There

is a great deal to do about the shack. The grimmest bug-bear of domestic

work is dish-washing. A pile of greasy plates is the one thing that gets

on my nerves. And it is a little Waterloo that must be faced three times

every day, of every week, of every month, of every year. And I was never

properly "broke" for domesticity and the dish-pan! Why can't some genius

invent a self-washing fry-pan? My hair is growing so long that I can now

do it up in a sort of half-hearted French roll. It has been quite cold,

with a wonderful fall of snow. The sleighing could not be better.

_Saturday the Ninth_

Dinky-Dunk's Christmas present came to-day, over two weeks late. He had

never mentioned it, and I had not only held my peace, but had given up

all thought of getting a really-truly gift from my lord and master.

They brought it out from Buckhorn, in the bobsleigh, all wrapped up in

old buffalo-robes and blankets and tarpaulins. _It's a baby-grand

piano_, and a beauty, and it came all the way from Winnipeg. But either

the shipping or the knocking about or the extreme cold has put it

terribly out of tune, and it can't be used until the piano-tuner travels

a couple of hundred miles out here to put it in shape. And it's far too

big for the shack, even when pushed right up into the corner. But

Dinky-Dunk says that before next winter there'll be a different sort of

house on this spot where Casa Grande now stands.

"And that's to keep your soul alive, in the meantime," he announced. I

scolded him for being so extravagant, when he needed every dollar he

could lay his hands on. But he wouldn't listen to me. In fact, it only

started an outburst.

"My God, Gee-Gee," he cried, "haven't you given up enough for me?

Haven't you sacrificed enough in coming out here to the end of nowhere

and leaving behind everything that made life decent?"

"Why, Honey Chile, didn't I get _you_?" I demanded. But even that didn't

stop him.

"Don't you suppose I ever think what it's meant to you, to a woman like

you? There are certain things we can't have, but there are some things

we're going to have. This next ten or twelve months will be hard, but

after that there's going to be a change--if the Lord's with me, and I

have a white man's luck!"

"And supposing we have bad luck?" I asked him. He was silent for a

moment or two.

"We can always give up, and go back to the city," he finally said.

"Give up!" I said with a whoop. "Give up? Not on your life, Mister Dour

Man! We're not going to be Dixonites! We're going to win out!" And we

were together in a death-clinch, hugging the breath out of each other,

when Olie came in to ask if he hadn't better get the stock stabled, as

there was bad weather coming.

_Monday the Eleventh_

We are having the first real blizzard of the winter. It began yesterday,

as Olie intimated, and for all the tail-end of the day my Dinky-Dunk was

on the go, in the bitter cold, looking after fuel and feed and getting

things ship-shape, for all the world like a skipper who's read his

barometer and seen a hurricane coming. There had been no wind for a

couple of days, only dull and heavy skies with a disturbing sense of

quietness. Even when I heard Olie and Dinky-Dunk shouting outside, and

shoring up the shack-walls with poles, I could not quite make out what

it meant.

Then the blizzard came. It came down out of the northwest, like a

cloudburst. It hummed and sang, and then it whined, and then it

screamed, screamed in a high falsetto that made you think poor old

Mother Earth was in her last throes! The snow was fine and hard, really

minute particles of ice, and not snow at all, as we know it in the

East, little sharp-angled diamond-points that stung the skin like fire.

It came in almost horizontal lines, driving flat across the unbroken

prairie and defying anything made of God or man to stop it. Nothing did

stop it. Our shack and the bunk-house and stables and hay-stacks tore a

few pin-feathers off its breast, though; and those few feathers are

drifts higher than my head, heaped up against each and all of the

buildings.

I scratched the frost off a window-pane, where feathery little drifts

were seeping in through the sill-cracks, when it first began. But the

wind blew harder and harder and the shack rocked and shook with the

tension. Oh, such a wind! It made a whining and wailing noise, with each

note higher, and when you felt that it couldn't possibly increase, that

it simply _must_ ease off, or the whole world would go smash, why, that

whining note merely grew tenser and the wind grew stronger. How it

lashed things! How it shook and flailed and trampled this poor old earth

of ours! Just before supper Olie announced that he'd look after my

chicks for me. I told him, quite casually, that I'd attend to them

myself. I usually strew a mixture of wheat and oats on the litter in the

hen-house overnight. This had two advantages, one was that it didn't

take me out quite so early in the morning, and the other was that the

chicks themselves started scratching around first thing in the morning

and so got exercise and kept themselves warmer-bodied and in better

health.

It was not essential that I should go to the hen-house myself, but I was

possessed with a sudden desire to face that singing white tornado. So I

put on my things, while Dinky-Dunk was at work in the stables. I put on

furs and leggings and gauntlets and all, as though I were starting for a

ninety-mile drive, and slipped out. Dinky-Dunk had tunneled through the

drift in front of the door, but that tunnel was already beginning to

fill again. I plowed through it, and tried to look about me. Everything

was a sort of streaked misty gray, an all-enveloping muffing leaden

maelstrom that hurt your skin when you lifted your head and tried to

look it in the face. Once, in a lull of the wind when the snow was not

so thick, I caught sight of the hay-stacks. That gave me a line on the

hen-house. So I made for it, on the run, holding my head low as I went.

It was glorious, at first, it made my lungs pump and my blood race and

my legs tingle. Then the storm-devils howled in my eyes and the

ice-lashes snapped in my face. Then the wind went off on a rampage

again, and I couldn't see. I couldn't move forward. I couldn't even

breathe. Then I got frightened.

I leaned there against the wind calling for Dinky-Dunk and Olie,

whenever I could gasp breath enough to make a sound. But I might as well

have been a baby crying in mid-ocean to a Kensington Gardens nurse.

Then I knew I was lost. No one could ever hear me in that roar. And

there was nothing to be seen, just a driving, blinding, stinging gray

pall of flying fury that nettled the naked skin like electric-massage

and took the breath out of your buffeted body. There was no land-mark,

no glimpse of any building, nothing whatever to go by. And I felt so

helpless in the face of that wind! It seemed to take the power of

locomotion from my legs. I was not altogether amazed at the thought that

I might die there, within a hundred yards of my own home, so near those

narrow walls within which were warmth, and shelter, and quietness. I

imagined how they'd find my body, deep under the snow, some morning; how

Dinky-Dunk would search, perhaps for days. I felt so sorry for him I

decided not to give up, that I wouldn't be lost, that I wouldn't die

there like a fly on a sheet of tanglefoot!

I had fallen down on my knees, with my back to the wind, and already the

snow had drifted around me. I also found my eye-lashes frozen together,

and I lost several winkers in getting rid of those solidified tears. But

I got to my feet and battled on, calling when I could. I kept on, going

round and round in a circle, I suppose, as people always do when

they're lost in a storm. Then the wind grew worse again. I couldn't make

any headway against it. I had to give up. I simply _had_ to! I wasn't

afraid. I wasn't terrified at the thought of what was happening to me. I

was only sorry, with a misty sort of sorrow I can't explain. And I don't

remember that I felt particularly uncomfortable, except for the fact I

found it rather hard to breathe.

It was Olie who found me. He came staggering through the snow with extra

fuel for the bunk-house, and nearly walked over me. As we found out

afterward, I wasn't more than thirty steps away from that bunk-house

door. Olie pulled me up out of the snow the same as you'd pull a skein

of darning-silk out of a work-basket. He half carried me to the

bunk-house, got his bearings, and then steered me for the shack. It was

a fight, but we made it. And Dinky-Dunk was still out looking after his

stock and doesn't know how nearly he lost his Lady Bird. I've made Olie

promise not to say a word about it. But the top of my nose is red and

swollen. I think it must have got a trifle frost-nipped, in the

encounter. The weather has cleared now, and the wind has gone down. But

it is very cold, and Dinky-Dunk has just reported that it's already

forty-eight below zero.

_Tuesday the Nineteenth_

The days slip away and I scarcely know where they go. The weather is

wonderful. Clear and cold, with such heaps of sunshine you'd never dream

it was zero weather. But you have to be careful, and always wear furs

when you're driving, or out for any length of time. Three hours in this

open air is as good as a pint of Chinkie's best champagne. It makes me

tingle. We are living high, with several barrels of frozen game--geese,

duck and prairie-chicken--and also an old tin trunk stuffed full of

beef-roasts, cut the right size. I bring them in and thaw them out

overnight, as I need them. The freezing makes them very tender. But they

must be completely thawed before they go into the oven, or the outside

will be overdone and the inside still raw. I learned that by experience.

My appetite is disgraceful, and I'm still gaining. Chinkie could never

again say I reminded him of one of the lean kine in Pharaoh's dream.

I have been asking Dinky-Dunk if it isn't downright cruelty to leave

horses and cattle out on the range in weather like this. My husband says

not, so long as they have a wind-break in time of storms. The animals

paw through the snow for grass to eat, and when they get thirsty they

can eat the snow itself, which, Dinky-Dunk solemnly assures me, almost

never gives them sore throat! But the open prairie, just at this season,

is a most inhospitable looking pasturage, and the unbroken glare of

white makes my eyes ache.... There's one big indoor task I finally have

accomplished, and that is tuning my piano. It made my heart heavy,

standing there useless, a gloomy monument of ironic grandeur.

As a girl I used to watch Katrinka's long-haired Alsatian putting her

concert grand to rights, and I knew that my ear was dependable enough.

So the second day after my baby grand's arrival I went at it with a

monkey-wrench. But that was a failure. Then I made a drawing of a

tuning-hammer and had Olie secretly convey it to the Buckhorn

blacksmith, who in turn concocted a great steel hollow-headed

monstrosity which actually fits over the pins to which the piano wires

are strung, even though the aforesaid monstrosity is heavy enough to

stun an ox with. But it did the work, although it took about two

half-days, and now every note is true. So now I have music! And

Dinky-Dunk does enjoy my playing, these long winter evenings. Some

nights we let Olie come in and listen to the concert. He sits rapt,

especially when I play ragtime, which seems the one thing that touches

his holy of holies. Poor Olie! I surely have a good friend in that

silent, faithful, uncouth Swede!

Dinky-Dunk himself is so thin that it worries me. But he eats well and

doesn't anathematize my cooking. He's getting a few gray hairs, at the

temples. I think they make him look rather _distingue_. But they worry

my poor Dinky-Dunk. "Hully Gee," he said yesterday, studying himself

for the third time in his shaving-glass, "I'm getting old!" He laughed

when I started to whistle "Believe me if all those endearing young

charms, which I gaze on so fondly to-day," but at heart he was really

disturbed by the discovery of those few white hairs. I've been telling

him that the ladies won't love him any more, and that his cut-up days

are over. He says I'll have to make up for the others. So I started for

him with my Australian crawl-stroke. It took me an hour to get the taste

of shaving soap out of my mouth. Dinky-Dunk says I'm so full of life

that I _sparkle_. All I know is that I'm happy, supremely and

ridiculously happy!

_Sunday the Thirty-first_

The inevitable has happened. I don't know how to write about it! I

_can't_ write about it! My heart goes down like a freight elevator,

slowly, sickeningly, even when I think about it. Dinky-Dunk came in and

saw me studying a little row of dates written on the wall-paper beside

the bedroom window. I pretended to be draping the curtain. "What's the

matter, Lady Bird?" he demanded when he saw my face. I calmly told him

that nothing was the matter. But he wouldn't let me go. I wanted to be

alone, to think things out. But he kept holding me there, with my face

to the light. I suppose I must have been all eyes, and probably shaking

a little. And I didn't want him to suspect.

"Excuse me if I find you unspeakably annoying!" I said in a voice that

was so desperately cold that it even surprised my own ears. He dropped

me as though I had been a hot potato. I could see that I'd hurt him, and

hurt him a lot. My first impulse was to run to him with a shower of

repentant kisses, as one usually does, the same as one sprinkles salt on

claret stains. But in him I beheld the original and entire cause--and I

just couldn't do it. He called me a high-spirited devil with a

hair-trigger temper. But he left me alone to think things out.

_Tuesday the Ninth_

I've started to say my prayers again. It rather frightened Dinky-Dunk,

who sat up in bed and asked me if I wasn't feeling well. I promptly

assured him that I was in the best of health. He not only agreed with

me, but said I was as plump as a partridge. When I am alone, though, I

get frightened and fidgety. So I kneel down every night and morning now

and ask God for help and guidance. I want to be a good woman and a

better wife. But I shall never let Duncan know--never!

_Wednesday the Seventeenth_

Do you remember Aunt Harriet who always wept when she read _The Isles of

Greece_? She didn't even know where they were, and had never been east

of Salem. But all the Woodberrys were like that. Dinky-Dunk came in and

found me crying to-day, for the second time in one week. He made such

valiantly ponderous efforts to cheer me up, poor boy, and shook his head

and said I'd soon be an improvement on the Snider System, which is a

system of irrigation by spraying overnight from pipes! My nerves don't

seem so good as they were. The winter's so long. I'm already counting

the days to spring.

_Thursday the Twenty-fifth_

Dinky-Dunk has concluded that I'm too much alone; he's been worrying

over it. I can tell that. I try not to be moody, but sometimes I simply

can't help it. Yesterday afternoon he drove up to Casa Grande, proud as

Punch, with a little black and white kitten in the crook of his arm.

He'd covered twenty-eight miles of trail for that kitten! It's to be my

companion. But the kitten's as lonesome as I am, and has been crying,

and nearly driving me crazy.

_Tuesday the Second_

The weather has been bad, but winter is slipping away. Dinky-Dunk has

been staying in from his work, these mornings, helping me about the

house. He is clumsy and slow, and has broken two or three of the dishes.

But I hate to say anything; his eyes get so tragic. He declares that as

soon as the trails are passable he's going to have a woman to help me,

that this sort of thing can't go on any longer. He imagines it's merely

the monotony of housework that is making my nerves so bad.

Yesterday morning I was drying the dishes and Dinky-Dunk was washing. I

found the second spoon with egg on it. I don't know why it was, but that

trivial streak of yellow along the edge of a spoon suddenly seemed to

enrage me. It became monumental, an emblem of vague incapabilities which

I would have to face until the end of my days. I flung that spoon back

in the dish-pan. Then I turned on my husband and called out to him, in a

voice that didn't quite seem like my own, "O God, can't you wash 'em

_clean_? Can't you wash 'em clean?" I even think I ran up and down the

room and pretty well made what Percival Benson would call "a bally ass"

of myself. Dinky-Dunk didn't even answer me. But he dried his hands and

got his things and went outdoors, to the stables, I suppose. His face

was as colorless as it could possibly get. I felt sorry; but it was too

late. And my sniffling didn't do any good. And it startled me, as I sat

thinking things over, to realize that I'd lost my sense of humor.

_Thursday the Fourth_

Dinky-Dunk thinks I'm mad. I'm quite sure he does. He came in at noon

to-day and found me on the floor with the kitten. I'd tied a piece of fur

to the end of a string. Oh, how that kitten scrambled after that fur,

round and round in a circle until he'd tumble over on his own ears! I

was squeaking and weak with laughing when Dinky-Dunk stood in the door.

Poor boy, he takes things so solemnly! But I know he thinks I'm quite

mad. Perhaps I am. I cried myself to sleep last night. And for several

days now I've had a longing for _caviare_.

_Wednesday the Seventeenth_

Spring is surely coming. It promises to be an early one. I feel better

at the thought of it, and of getting out again. But the roads are quite

impassable. Such mud! Such oceans of glue-pot dirt! They have a saying

out here that soil is as rich as it is sticky. If this is true

Dinky-Dunk has a second Garden of Eden. This mud sticks to everything,

to feet, to clothes, to wagon-wheels. But there's getting to be real

warmth in the sun that shines through my window.

_Saturday the Twenty-seventh_

A warm Chinook has licked up the last of the snow. Even Dinky-Dunk

admits that spring is coming. For three solid hours an awakened

blue-bottle has been buzzing against the pane of my bedroom window. I

wonder if most of us aren't like that fly, mystified by the illusion of

light that fails to lead to liberty? This morning I caught sight of

Dinky-Dunk in his fur coat, climbing into the buckboard. I shall always

hate to see him in that rig. It makes me think of a certain night. And

we hate to have memory put a finger on our mental scars. When I was a

girl Aunt Charlotte's second fiend of a husband locked me up in that

lonely Derby house of theirs because I threw pebbles at the swans. Then

off they drove to dinner somewhere and left me a prisoner there, where I

sat listening to the bells of All Saints as the house gradually grew

dark. And ever since then bells at evening have made me feel lonely and

left me unhappy.

But the renaissance of the buckboard means that spring is here again.

And for my Dinky-Dunk that means harder work. He's what they call a

"rustler" out here. He believes in speed. He doesn't even wait until the

frost is out of the ground before he starts to seed--just puts a drill

over a two-inch batter of thawed-out mud, he's so mad about getting

early on the land. He says he wants early wheat or no wheat. But he has

to have help, and men are almost impossible to get. He had hoped for a

gasoline tractor, but it can't be financed this spring, he has confessed

to me. And I know, in my secret heart of hearts, that the tractor would

have been here if it hadn't been for my piano!

There are still hundreds and hundreds of acres of prairie sod to "break"

for spring wheat. Dinky-Dunk declares that he's going to risk everything

on wheat this year. He says that by working two outfits of horses he

himself can sow forty acres a day, but that means keeping the horses on

the trot part of the time. He is thinking so much about his crop that I

accused him of neglecting me.

"Is the varnish starting to wear off?" I inquired with a secret gulp of

womanish self-pity. He saved the day by declaring I was just as crazy

and just as adorable as I ever was. Then he asked me, rather sadly, if I

was bored. "Bored?" I said, "how could I be bored with all these

discomforts? No one is ever bored until they are comfortable!" But the

moment after I'd said it I was sorry.

_Tuesday the Sixth_

Spring is here, with a warm Chinook creeping in from the Rockies and a

sky of robin-egg blue. The gophers have come out of their winter

quarters and are chattering and racing about. We saw a phalanx of wild

geese going northward, and Dinky-Dunk says he's seen any number of

ducks. They go in drifting V's, and I love to watch them melt in the

sky-line. The prairie floor is turning to the loveliest of greens, and

it is a joy just to be alive. I have been out all afternoon. The gophers

aren't going to get ahead of me!

_Monday the Twelfth_

What would you say if you saw Brunhild drive up to your back door? What

would you do if you discovered a Norse goddess placidly surveying you

from a green wagon-seat? How would you act if you beheld a big blonde

Valkyr suddenly introducing herself into your little earthly affairs?

Well, can you wonder that I stared, all eyes, when Dinky-Dunk brought

home a figure like this, in the shape of a Finn girl named Olga

Sarristo? Olga is to work in the fields, and to help me when she has

time. But I'll never get used to having a Norse Legend standing at my

elbow, for Olga is the most wonderful creature I have ever clapped eyes

on. I say that without doubt, and without exaggeration. And what made

the picture complete, she came driving a yoke of oxen--for Dinky-Dunk

will have need of every horse and hauling animal he can lay his hands

on. I simply held my breath as I stared up at her, high on her

wagon-seat, blocked out in silhouette against the pale sky-line, a

Brunhild with cowhide boots on. She wore a pale blue petticoat and a

Swedish looking black shawl with bright-colored flowers worked along the

hem. She had no hat. But she had two great ropes of pale gold hair,

almost as thick as my arm, and hanging almost as low as her knees. She

looked colossal up on the wagon-seat, but when she got down on the

ground she was not so immense. She is, however, a strapping big woman,

and I don't think I ever saw such shoulders! She is Olympian, Titanic!

She makes me think of the Venus de Milo; there's such a largeness and

calmness and smoothness of surface about her. I suppose a Saint-Gaudens

might say that her mouth was too big and a Gibson might add that her

nose hadn't the narrow rectitude of a Greek statue's, but she's a

beautiful, a beautiful--"woman" was the word I was going to write, but

the word "animal" just bunts and shoves itself in, like a stabled cow

insisting on its own stall. But if you regard her as only animal, you

must at least accept her as a perfect one. Her mouth is large, but I

never saw such red lips, full and red and dewy. Her forehead is low and

square, but milky smooth, and I know she could crack a chicken-bone

between those white teeth of hers. Even her tongue, I noticed, is a

watermelon red. She must be healthy. Dinky-Dunk says she's a find, that

she can drive a double-seeder as well as any man in the West, and that

by taking her for the season he gets the use of the ox-team as well. He

warned me not to ask her about her family, as only a few weeks ago her

father and younger brother were burned to death in their shack, a

hundred miles or so north of us.

_Tuesday the Twentieth_

Olga has been with us a week, and she still fascinates me. She is

installed in the annex, and seems calmly satisfied with her

surroundings. She brought everything she owns tied up in an oat-sack. I

have given her a few of my things, for which she seems dumbly grateful.

She seldom talks, and never laughs. But I am teaching her to say "yes"

instead of "yaw." She studies me with her limpid blue eyes, and if she

is silent she is never sullen. She hasn't the heavy forehead and jaw of

the Galician women and she hasn't the Asiatic cast of face that belongs

to the Russian peasant. And she has the finest mouthful of teeth I ever

saw in a human head--and she never used a toothbrush in her life! She is

only nineteen, but such a bosom, such limbs, such strength!

This is a great deal of talk about Olga, I'm afraid, but you must

remember that Olga is an event. I expected Olie would be keeled over by

her arrival, but they seem to regard each other with silent contempt. I

suppose that is because racially and physically they are of the same

type. I'm anxious to see what Percival Benson thinks of Olga when he

gets back--they would be such opposites. Olga is working with her

ox-team on the land. Two days ago I rode out on Paddy and watched her.

There was something Homeric about it, something Sorolla would have

jumped at. She seemed so like her oxen. She moved like them, and her

eyes were like theirs. She has the same strength and solemnity when she

walks. She's so primitive and natural and instinctive in her actions.

Yesterday, after dinner, she curled up on a pile of hay at one end of

the corral and fell asleep for a few minutes, flat in the strong noonday

light. I saw Dinky-Dunk stop on his way to the stable and stand and look

down at her. I slipped out beside him. "God, what a woman!" he said

under his breath. A vague stab of jealousy went through me as I heard

him say that. Then I looked at her hand, large, relaxed, roughened with

all kinds of weather and calloused with heavy work. And this time it was

an equally vague stab of pity that went through me.

_Monday the Twenty-sixth_

The rush is on, and Dinky-Dunk is always out before six. If it's true,

as some one once said, that the pleasures of life depended on its

anxieties, then we ought to be a hilarious household. Every one is busy,

and I do what I can to help. I don't know why it is, but I find an odd

comfort in the thought of having another woman near me, even Olga. She

also helps me a great deal with the housework. Those huge hands of hers

have a dexterity you'd never dream of. She thinks the piano a sort of

miracle, and me a second miracle for being able to play it. In the

evening she sits back in a corner, the darkest corner she can find, and

listens. She never speaks, never moves, never expresses one iota of

emotion. But in the gloom I can often catch the animal-like glow of her

eyes. They seem almost phosphorescent. Dinky-Dunk had a long letter from

Percival Benson to-day. It was interesting and offhandedly jolly and

just the right sort. And Percy says he'll be back on the Titchborne

place in a few weeks.

_Wednesday the Twenty-eighth_

Olga went through the boards of her wagon-box and got a bad scrape on

her leg. She showed me the extent of her injuries, without the slightest

hesitation, and I gave her first-aid treatment with my carbolated

vaseline. And still again I had to think of the Venus de Milo, for it

was a knee like a statue's, milky white and round and smooth, with a

skin like a baby's, and so different to her sunburnt forearms. It was

Olympian more than Fifth-Avenuey. It was a leg that made me think, not

of Rubens, but of Titian, and my thoughts at once went out to the

right-hand lady of the "Sacred and Profane Love," in the Borghese, there

was such softness and roundness combined with its strength. And

Dinky-Dunk walked in and stood staring at it, himself, with never so

much as a word of apology. Olga looked up at him without a flicker of

her ox-like eyes. It wasn't until I made an angry motion for her to

drop her skirt that she realized any necessity for covering the Titian

knee. But again I felt that odd pang of jealousy needle through me as I

saw his face. At least I suppose it was jealousy, the jealousy of an

artful little Mona-Lisa minx who didn't even class in with the

demigods. When Olga was gone, however, I said to Dinky-Dunk: "Isn't

that a limb for your life?"

He merely said: "We don't grow limbs up here, Tabby. They're legs, just

plain legs!"

"Anything but _plain_!" I corrected him. Then he acknowledged that he'd

seen those knees before. He'd stumbled on Olga and her brother knee-deep

in mud and cow manure, treading a mixture to plaster their shack with,

the same as the Doukhobors do. It left me less envious of those

Junoesque knees.

_Monday the Second_

Keeping chickens is a much more complicated thing than the outsider

imagines. For example, several of my best hens, quite untouched by the

modern spirit of feminine unrest, have been developing "broodiness" and

I have been trying to "break them up," as the poulterers put it. But

they are determined to set. This mothering instinct is a fine enough

thing in its way, but it's been spoiling too many good eggs. So I've

been trying to emancipate these ruffled females. I lift them off the

nest by the tail feathers, ten times a day. I fling cold water in their

solemn maternal faces. I put little rings of barb-wire under their

sentimental old bosoms. But still they set. And one, having pecked me on

the wrist until the blood came, got her ears promptly boxed--in face of

the fact that all poultry keepers acknowledge that kindness to a hen

improves her laying qualities.

_Thursday the Fifth_

Casa Grande is a beehive of industry. Every one has a part to play. I am

no longer expected to sit by the fire and purr. At nights I sew.

Dinky-Dunk is so hard on his clothes! When it's not putting on patches

it's sewing on buttons. Then we go to bed at half-past nine. At

half-past nine, think of it! Little me, who more than once went humming

up Fifth Avenue when morning was showing gray over the East River, and

often left Sherry's (oh, those dear old dancing days!) when the milk

wagons were rumbling through Forty-fourth Street, and once triumphantly

announced, on coming out of Dorlon's and studying the old Oyster-Letter

clock, that I'd stuck it out to Y minutes past O! But it's no hardship

to get up at five, these glorious mornings. The days get longer, and the

weather is perfect. And the prairie looks as though a vacuum cleaner

had been at work on it overnight. Positively, there's a charwoman who

does this old world over, while we sleep! By morning it's as bright as a

new pin. And out here every one is thinking of the day ahead;

Dinky-Dunk, of his crop; Olga, of the pair of sky-blue corsets I've

written to the Winnipeg mail-order house for; Olie, of the final

waterproofing of the granaries so the wheat won't get spoilt any more;

Gee-Gee, herself, of--of something which she's almost afraid to think

about.

Dinky-Dunk, in his deviling moods, says I'm an old married woman now,

that I'm settled, that I've eaten my pie! Perhaps I have. I'm not

imaginative, so I must depend on others for my joy of living. I know now

that I can never create, never really express myself in any way worth

while, either on paper or canvas or keyboard. And people without

imagination, I suppose, simply have to drop back to racial

simplicities--which means I'll have to have a family, and feed hungry

mouths, and keep a home going. And I'll have to get all my art at

second-hand, from magazines and gramophone records and plaster-of-Paris

casts. Just a housewife! And I so wanted to be something more, once! Yet

I wonder if, after all, the one is so much better than the other? I

wonder? And here comes my Dinky-Dunk, and in three minutes he'll be

kissing me on the tip of the chin and asking me what there's going to be

good for supper! And that is better than fame! For all afternoon those

twelve little lines of Dobson's have been running through my head:

Fame is a food that dead men eat--

I have no stomach for such meat.

In little light and narrow rooms,

They eat it in the silent tombs,

With no kind voice of comrade near

To bid the banquet be of cheer.

But Friendship is a noble thing--

Of Friendship it is good to sing,

For truly when a man shall end,

He lives in memory of his friend

Who doth his better part recall

And of his faults make funeral!

But when you put the word "love" there instead of "friendship" you make

it even better.... Olga, by the way, is not so stupid as you might

imagine. She's discovered something which I didn't intend her to find

out.... And Olie, also by the way, has solved the problem of "breaking

up" my setting hens. He has made a swinging coop with a wire netting

bottom, for all the world like the hanging gardens of Babylon, and into

this all the ruffled mothers-to-be have been thrust and the coop hung up

on the hen-house wall. Open wire is a very uncomfortable thing to set

on, and these hens have at last discovered that fact. I have been out

looking at them. I never saw such a parliament of solemn indignation.

But their pride has been broken, and they are beginning to show a

healthier interest in their meals.

_Tuesday the Tenth_

I've been wondering if Dinky-Dunk is going to fall in love with Olga.

Yesterday I saw him staring at her neck. She's the type of woman that

would really make the right sort of wilderness wife. She seems an

integral part of the prairie, broad-bosomed, fecund, opulent. And she's

so placid and large and soft-spoken and easy to live with. She has none

of my moods and tantrums.