, better than all the flowers on the prairie. My mamma loves them,
too, because they made her think once papa wasn't dead."

"Thaine, what do you mean to do when you grow up?" Horace Carey
interrupted the child.

"I'm going to be a soldier like my papa was," Thaine declared decisively.

"But there will probably be no wars. You see, your papa and I fought the
battles all through and settled things. Maybe you can't go to war," Dr.
Carey suggested.

"Oh, yes, I can. There'll be another war by that time, and I'm going, too.
And when I come back I'm going away to where the purple notches are and
have a big ranch and do just like my papa," Thaine asserted.

"Where are the purple notches?" the doctor asked.

"See yonder, away, way off?"

Thaine pointed toward the misty southwest horizon where three darker
curves were outlined against a background of pale purple blending through
lilac up to silvery gray.

"I'm going there some day," the boy insisted.

"And leave your papa and mamma?"

"They left their papas and mammas, too," Thaine philosophized.

The men laughed, although each felt a curious deep pain at the boy's
words.

Thaine settled back, satisfied to be silent as he watched the wonderful
prairie landscape about him.

"I am going down to Shirley's," Carey began, as if to change the subject.
"Strange fellow, Jim; I never knew another like him."

"I was just thinking of Shirley," Asher responded. "He is a royal neighbor
and true friend, better to everybody else than he is to himself. His own
crops suffer sometimes while he helps other folks lay theirs by. And yet
his premises always look like he was expecting company. One cannot help
wondering what purpose stays him in his work."

"There is the tragedy of it," Horace Carey declared. "I never knew a more
affectionate man, yet he has lived a bachelor all these years."

"How long have you known him, Carey?" Asher asked.

"Since the night at Kelley's Ferry, back in the Civil War. Our regiment,
the Fifty-fourth Virginia, was taken. We were worn out with fighting and
marching, and we were nearly starved besides. The Third Ohio boys had been
in the same fix once and our boys--"

"Yes, I was a Third Ohio boy. I know what you fellows did. You saved our
lives," Asher broke in.

"Well, you paid us back at Kelley's Ferry. I first knew Jim Shirley that
night, although he remembered me from the time we had your regiment at our
mercy. He brought me bacon and hard tac