of bed and
watched day break. I saw the first faint orange rim along the limitless
sky-line, and then the pearly pink above it, and all the sweet dimness
and softness and mystery of God's hand pulling the curtains of morning
apart. And then the rioting orchestras of color struck up, and I leaned
out of the window bathed in glory as the golden disk of the sun showed
over the dewy prairie-edge. Oh, the grandeur of it! And oh, the
God-given freshness of that pellucid air! I love my land! I love it!

_Tuesday the First_

I have married a _man_! My Dinky-Dunk is not a softy. I had that proved
to me yesterday, when I put Paddy in the buckboard and drove out to
where the men were working in the hay. I was taking their dinner out to
them, neatly packed in the chuck-box. One of the new men, who'd been
hired for the rush, had been overworking his team. The brute had been
prodding them with a pitchfork, instead of using a whip. Dinky-Dunk saw
the marks, and noticed one of the horses bleeding. But he didn't
interfere until he caught the man in the act of jabbing the tines into
Maid Marian's flank. Then he jumped for him, just as I drove up. He
cursed that man, cursed and damned him most dreadfully and pulled him
down off the hay-rack. Then they fought.

They fought like two wildcats. Dinky-Dunk's nose bled and his lip was
cut. But he knocked the other man flat, and when he tried to get up he
knocked him again. It seemed cruel; it was revolting. But something in
me rejoiced and exulted as I saw that hulk of an animal thresh and
stagger about the hay-stubble. I tried to wipe the blood away from
Dinky-Dunk's nose. But he pushed me back and said this was no place for
a woman. I had no place in his universe, at that particular time. But
Dinky-Dunk can fight, if he has to. He's sa magerful a mon! He's afraid
of nothing.

But that was nearly a costly victory. Both the new men of course threw
up their jobs, then and there. Dinky-Dunk paid them off, on the spot,
and they started off across the open prairie, without even waiting for
their meal. Dinky-Dunk, as we sat down on the dry grass and ate
together, said it was a good riddance, and he was just saying I could
only have the left-hand side of his mouth to kiss for the next week when
he suddenly dropped his piece of custard-pie, stood up and stared toward
the east. I did the same, wondering what had happened.

I could see a long thin slanting column of smoke driving across the