and my book rights (which were
of negligible value so far as furnishing a living was concerned), and my
wife perceived very clearly that our margin above necessity was narrow,
but this did not disturb her faith in the future, or if it did, she gave
no sign of it--her face was nearly always smiling. Nevertheless I had no
intention of keeping her in West Salem all summer. I could not afford to
wear out her interest in it.

One day, shortly after Lorado's visit, I received a letter from Major
Stouch, the Indian Agent with whom I had campaigned at Lamedeer in '97.
He wrote: "I have just been detailed to take charge of the Cheyenne
Agency at Darlington, Oklahoma. Mrs. Stouch and I are about to start on
a survey of my new reservation and I should like to have you and your
wife come down and accompany us on our circuit. We shall hold a number
of councils with the Indians, and there will be dances and pow-wows. It
will all be material for your pen."

This invitation appealed to me with especial force for I had long
desired to study the Southern Cheyennes, and a tour with Stouch promised
a rich harvest of fictional themes, for me. Furthermore it offered a
most romantic experience for Zulime--just the kind of enlightenment I
had promised her.

With no time to lose, we packed our trunks and took train for Kansas
City enroute for Indian Territory, the scene of many of the most
exciting romances of my youth, the stronghold of bank robbers, and the
hiding place of military renegades.

On our way to Oklahoma, we visited Professor Taft in Hanover and I find
this note recorded: "All day the wind blew, the persistent, mournful
crying wind of the plain. The saddest, the most appealing sound in my
world. It came with a familiar soft rush, a crowding presence, uttering
a sighing roar--a vague sound out of which voices of lonely children and
forgotten women broke. To the solitary farmer's wife such a wind brings
tears or madness. I am tense with desire to escape. This bare little
town on the ridge is appalling to me. Think of living here with the
litany of this wind forever in one's ears."

By contrast West Salem, with its green, embracing hills, seemed a
garden, a place of sweet content, a summer resort, and yet in this
Kansas town Zulime had spent part of her girlhood. In this sun-smit
cottage she had left her mother to find a place in the outside world
just as I had left my mother in Dakota. From this town she had gone
almost direc