s tone was that of a lover, one who had
loved long and deeply, and this I believe was true. In spite of
unavoidable occasional moments of friction, he and Isabel McClintock had
lived in harmony. They had been spiritually married, and now, in looking
back over the long road he and she had traveled together, he recalled
only its pleasant places. His memories were all of the sunlit meadows
and starry nights along the way. Prairie pinks and wild roses hid the
thorns and the thistles of the wayside.

His joy in the songs she had sung came back, intensified now by tender
association with her face and voice. The knowledge that she who had
voiced them so often, could voice them no more, gave to some of the
words an almost overpowering pathos, and when he asked me to sing them,
I could not immediately comply. To him they brought grateful tears and a
consoling sadness, to me they came with tragic significance.

"But that mother she is gone
Calm she sleeps beneath the stone"

was not a song but a reality.

More and more he dwelt upon the time when she was young, and as the
weeks went by his sorrow took on a wistful, vague longing for the past.
Through the gate of memory he reentered the world of his youth and
walked once more with William and David and Luke. The mists which filled
his eyes had nothing hot or withering in their touch--they comforted
him. Whether he hoped to meet his love in some other world or not I do
not know--but I think he did.

In the midst of these deep emotional personal experiences, I began to
write (almost as if in self-defense), a novel which I called _The Gray
Horse Troop_, a story which had been slowly forming in my mind ever
since my visit to Lame Deer in 1897. This was my first actual start upon
its composition and I was soon in full drive again, and just in
proportion as I took on these fictional troubles did my own lose their
power. To Zulime, with a feeling of confidence in myself, I now said,
"You need not remain here any longer. Go down to Chicago and wait for
me. I'll come as soon as father feels like letting me go. I am all right
now. I am at work."

She smiled but replied with firm decision, "I shall stay right here
until you can go with me. Father needs me more than he needs you."

This was true. She would have been deserting two men instead of one--and
so she stayed while I worked away at my story, finding comfort in the
realization of her presence.

At last my father said,