t
have a pinto, a riding-horse, as soon as he can lay hands on the right
animal. Later on he says I must have help, but out here in the West
women are hard to get, and harder to keep. They are snatched up by
lonely bachelors like Dinky-Dunk. They can't even keep the
school-teachers (mostly girls from Ontario) from marrying off. But I
don't want a woman about, not for a few months yet. I want Dinky-Dunk
all to myself. And the freedom of isolation like this is such a luxury!
To be just one's self, in civilization, is a luxury, is the greatest
luxury in the world,--and also the most expensive, I've found to my
sorrow.

Out here, there's no object in being anything but one's self. Life is so
simple and honest, so back to first principles! There's joy in the
thought of getting rid of all the sublimated junk of city life. I'm just
a woman; and Dinky-Dunk is just a man. We've got a roof and a bed and a
fire. That's all. And what is there, really, after that? We have to eat,
of course, but we really live well. There's all the game we want,
especially wild duck and prairie chicken, to say nothing of jack-rabbit.
Dinky-Dunk sallies out and pots them as we need them. We get our veal
and beef by the quarter, but it will not keep well until the weather
gets cooler, so I put what we don't need in brine and use it for
boiling-meat. We have no fresh fruit, but even evaporated peaches can be
stewed so that they're appetizing. And as I had the good sense to bring
out with me no less than three cook-books, from Brentano's, I am able to
attempt more and more elaborate dishes.

Olie has a wire-fenced square where he grew beets and carrots and onions
and turnips, and the biggest potatoes I ever saw. These will be pitted
before the heavy frosts come. We get our butter and lard by the pail,
and our flour by the sack, but getting things in quantities sometimes
has its drawbacks. When I examined the oatmeal box I found it had
weavels in it, and promptly threw all that meal away. Dinky-Dunk, coming
in from the corral, viewed the pile with round-eyed amazement. "It's got
_worms_ in it!" I cried out to him. He took up a handful of it, and
stared at it with tragic sorrow. "Why, I ate weavels all last winter,"
he reprovingly remarked. Dinky-Dunk, with his Scotch strain, loves his
porridge. So we'll have to get a hundred-weight, guaranteed strictly
uninhabited, when we team into Buckhorn.

Men are funny! A woman never quite knows a man until she ha