h the past.
Each hill, each stream had its tender association. Once as we were
crossing the Kinney Hill she said, "We used to pick plums along that
creek." Or again as we were driving toward Mindora, she said, "When
McEldowney built that house we thought it a palace."

She loved to visit her brother William's farm, and to ride past the old
McClintock house in which my father had courted her. Her expression at
such times was sweetly sorrowful. The past appeared so happy, so secure,
her present so precarious, so full of pain. She sensed the mystery, the
tragedy of human life, but was unable to express her conceptions,--and I
was of no value as a comforter. I could only jest with a bitter sense of
helplessness.

On other days, when she was not well enough to drive, I pushed her about
the village in a wheeled chair, which I had bought at the World's Fair.
In this way she was able to make return calls upon such of her neighbors
as were adjacent to side-walks. She was always in my thought,--only when
Franklin took her in charge was it possible for me to concentrate on the
story which I had begun before going abroad, and in which I hoped to
embody some of the experiences of my trip. _Boy Life on the Prairie_ was
also still incomplete, and occasionally I put aside _The Hustler_, as I
called my fiction, in order to recover and record some farm custom, some
pioneer incident which my mother or my brother brought to my mind as we
talked of early days in Iowa.

The story (which Gilder afterward called _Her Mountain Lover_) galloped
along quite in the spirit of humorous extravaganza with which it had
been conceived, and I thoroughly enjoyed doing it for the reason that in
it I was able to relive some of the noblest moments of my explorations
of Colorado's peaks and streams. It was an expression of my indebtedness
to the High Country.

I made the mistake, however, of not using the actual names of
localities. Just why I shuffled the names of trails and towns and
valleys so recklessly, I cannot now explain, for there was abundant
literary precedent for their proper and exact use. Perhaps I resented
the prosaic sound of "Sneffles" and "Montrose Junction." Anyhow,
whatever my motive, I covered my tracks so well that it was impossible
even for a resident to follow me. In _The Eagle's Heart_ I was equally
elusive, but as only part of that book referred to the High Country the
lack of definite nomenclature did not greatly matter.

Pers