lled _On Special
Duty_, and _The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop_. Having been accepted
by Lorimer, this story was about to be printed under this latter title
as a serial in the _Post_.

Each afternoon I saddled my Klondike horse who was in need of exercise,
and galloped about over the hills for an hour or two. We were familiar
figures by this time, and the farmers when they saw me leaping a pasture
fence or climbing a hill, would smile (I assume that they smiled), and
say, there goes that literary cuss, or words to that general effect. I
took a boyish delight in showing that Ladrone would walk a log or leap a
ditch at the mere touch of my heel.

Occasionally I went to LaCrosse with Zulime to visit our good friends
the Eastons, and it was on one of these visits that I had my first long
ride in an automobile. Incredible as it may seem now, there were very
few motor cars in the county in 1901, and Easton's machine would excite
laughter to-day. It was dumpy of form and noisy and uncertain of temper,
but it made the trip to Winona and _almost_ home again. It broke down
helplessly in the last mile, a treachery which caused its owner the
deepest chagrin, although it gave me the final touch for a humorous
story of our outing, a sketch which I sold to _Harper's Weekly_. The
editor had a fine illustration made for it, one which gave further force
to my description of the terrific speed with which we whirled through
the landscape. As I recall it we rose to nearly seventeen miles an hour!

As _The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop_, actually began to appear in
_The Post_, I became sharply concerned with the question of preparing it
for book publication. I decided to go to New York and look the ground
over very carefully before making selection of another publisher.

My life in the Homestead was comfortable, almost too comfortable. It
lacked stimulus. Riding my horse, gathering hickory nuts, and playing
tennis or "rummy," were all very well in their way, but they left me
dissatisfied, and after the cold winds began to blow and my afternoons
were confined to the house, I stagnated. Like Prudden, Grinnell and
other of my trailer friends, I was disposed to pitch my winter camp
somewhere on Manhattan Island. The Rocky Mountains for four months in
summer and the rest of the year in New York City appeared an ideal
division of my life for a western novelist.

I had some reason to think this arrangement was also satisfactory to my
wife.