er
rattlesnakes and diphtheria and pneumonia, and begging Brit to sell out
and live in town. She had married him because he was a cowboy, and
because he was a nimble dancer and rode gallantly with silver-shanked
spurs ajingle on his heels and a snake-skin band around his hat, and
because a ranch away out on Quirt Creek had sounded exactly like a
story in a book.

Adventures, picturesqueness, even romance, are recognised and
appreciated only at a distance. Mrs Hunter lost the perspective of
romance and adventure, and shed tears because there was sufficient
mineral in the water to yellow her week's washing, and for various
other causes which she had never foreseen and to which she refused to
resign herself.

Came a time when she delivered a shrill-voiced, tear-blurred ultimatum
to Brit. Either he must sell out and move to town, or she would take
the children and leave him. Of towns Brit knew nothing except the
post-office, saloon, cheap restaurant side,--and a barber shop where a
fellow could get a shave and hair-cut before he went to see his girl.
Brit could not imagine himself actually _living_, day after day, in a
town. Three or four days had always been his limit. It was in a
restaurant that he had first met his wife. He had stayed three days
when he had meant to finish his business in one, because there was an
awfully nice girl waiting on table in the Palace, and because there was
going to be a dance on Saturday night, and he wanted his acquaintance
with her to develop to the point where he might ask her to go with him,
and be reasonably certain of a favourable answer.

Brit would not sell his ranch. In this Frank Johnson, old-time friend
and neighbour, who had taken all the land the government would allow
one man to hold, and whose lines joined Brit's, profanely upheld him.
They had planned to run cattle together, had their brand already
recorded, and had scraped together enough money to buy a dozen young
cows. Luckily, Brit had "proven up" on his homestead, so that when the
irate Mrs Hunter deserted him she did not jeopardise his right to the
land.

Brit was philosophical, thinking that a year or so of town life would
be a cure. If he missed the children, he was free from tears and
nagging complaints, so that his content balanced his loneliness. Frank
proved up and came down to live with him, and the partnership began to
wear into permanency. Share and share alike, they lived and worked and
wrangl