ing he wouldn't do for me. But I'm a
novelty to him. His pale blue eyes look frightened and he blushes when I
speak to him. And he studies me secretly, as though I were a dromedary,
or an archangel, or a mechanical toy whose inner mechanism perplexed
him. But yesterday I found out through Dinky-Dunk what the probable
secret of Olie's mystification was. It was my hat. "It ban so dam'
foolish!" he fervently confessed.

That wagon-ride from Buckhorn out to the ranch seemed endless. I thought
we were trekking clear up to the North Pole. At first there was what you
might call a road, straight and worn deep, between parallel lines of
barb-wire fencing. But this road soon melted into nothing more than a
trail, a never-ending gently curving trail that ribboned out across the
prairie-floor as far as the eye could see. It was a glorious afternoon,
one of those opaline, blue-arched autumn days when it should have been a
joy merely to be alive. But I was in an antagonistic mood, and the
little cabin-like farmhouses that every now and then stood up against
the sky-line made me feel lonesome, and the jolting of the heavy wagon
made me tired, and by six o'clock I was so hungry that my ribs ached. We
had been on the trail then almost five hours, and Olie calmly informed
me it was only a few hours more. It got quite cool as the sun went down,
and I had to undo my steamer-rug and get wrapped up in it. And still we
went on. It seemed like being at sea, with a light now and then, miles
and miles away. Something howled dismally in the distance, and gave me
the creeps. Olie told me it was only a coyote. But we kept on, and my
ribs ached worse than ever.

Then I gave a shout that nearly frightened Olie off the seat, for I
remembered the box of chocolates we'd had on the train. We stopped and
found my hand-bag, and lighted matches and looked through it. Then I
gave a second and more dismal shout, for I remembered Dinky-Dunk had
crammed it into his suit-case at the last moment. Then we went on again,
with me a squaw-woman all wrapped in her blanket. I must have fallen
asleep, for I woke with a start. Olie had stopped at a slough to water
his team, and said we'd make home in another hour or two. How he found
his way across that prairie Heaven only knows. I no longer worried. I
was too tired to think. The open air and the swaying and jolting had
chloroformed me into insensibility. Olie could have driven over the edge
of a canyon and I should nev