those who sang it. Its pictures were homely. Steve, catching
certain fragments and seeking others, got such phrases as:

"My bed on dry pine-needles, my camp-fire blazin' bright,
The smell of dead leaves burnin' through the big wide-open night,"

and with moving but silent lips joined Terry in the triumphant refrain:

"I'm lonesome-sick for the stars through the pines
An' the bawlin' of herds . . . an' the noise
Of rocks rattlin' down from a mountain trail . . .
An' the hills . . . an' my horse . . . an' the boys.
An' I'd rather hear a kiote howl
Than be the King of Rome!
An' when day comes--if day does come--
By cripes, I'm goin' home!
. . . Back home! Hear me comin', boys?
_Yeee_! I said it: 'Comin' home!'"

He sat up in bed. The fragrance of boiling coffee and frying bacon
assailed his nostrils pleasurably. Terry's voice had grown silent.
Perhaps she was having her breakfast by now? With rather greater haste
than the mere call of his morning meal would seem to warrant, he
dressed, ran his fingers through his hair by way of completing his
toilet, and, going down a hallway, thrust his head in through the
kitchen doorway.

"Good morning," he called pleasantly.

Terry was not yet breakfasting. Down on one knee, poking viciously
into the fire-box of an extremely old and dilapidated stove, she was
seeking, after the time-honored way of her sex, to make the fire burn
better. Her face was rosy, flushed prettily with the glow from the
blazing oak wood. Packard's eyes brightened as he looked at her,
making a comprehensive survey of the trim little form from the top of
her bronze hair to the heels of her spick-and-span boots. About her
throat, knotted loosely, was a flaming-red silken scarf. The thought
struck him that the Temple fortunes, the Temple ranch, the Temple
master, all were falling or had already fallen into varying states of
decay, and that alone in the wreckage Terry Temple made a gay spot of
color, that alone Terry Temple was determined to keep her place in the
sun.

Terry, having poked a goodly part of the fire out, made a face at what
remained and got to her feet.

"I've been thinking about you," she said.

"Fine!" said Packard. "You can tell me while we have our coffee."

But he did not fail to mark that she had given him no ready smile by
way of welcome, that now she regarded him coolly and critically. In
her morning attitude there was li