"Much more than you imagine," retorted Peter. "I've got your record, McKail, and I've had it for three years. I've stood by, until now; but the time has come when I'm going to have a hand in this thing. And you're not going to get your freedom by dragging this woman's name through a divorce-court. If there's any dragging to be done, it's your carca.s.s that's going to be tied to the tail-board!"

Duncan stood studying him with a face cheese-colored with hate.

"Aren't you rather double-crossing yourself?" he mocked.

"I'm not thinking about myself," said Peter.

"Then what's prompting all the heroics?" demanded Duncan.

"For two years and more, McKail," Peter cried out as he stepped closer to the other man, "you've given this woman a pretty good working idea of h.e.l.l. And I've seen enough of it. It's going to end. It's got to end. But it's not going to end the way you've so neatly figured out!"

"Then how do you propose to end it?" Duncan demanded, with a sort of second-wind of composure. But his face was still colorless.

"You'll see when the time comes," retorted Peter.

"You may have rather a long wait," taunted Duncan.

"I have waited a number of years," answered the other man, with a dignity which sent a small thrill up and down my spine. "And I can wait a number of years more if I have to."

"We all knew, of course, that you were waiting," sneered my husband.

Peter turned to fling back an answer to that, but I stepped between them. I was tired of being haggled over, like marked-down goods on a bargain-counter. I was tired of being a pa.s.sive agent before forces that seemed stripping me of my last shred of dignity. I was tired of the shoddiness of the entire shoddy situation.

And I told them so. I told them I'd no intention of being bargained over, and that I'd had rather enough of men for the rest of my natural life, and if Duncan wanted his freedom he was at liberty to take it without the slightest opposition from me. And I said a number of other things, which I have no wish either to remember or record. But it resulted in Duncan staring at me in a resurrection-plant sort of way, and in Peter rather dolorously taking his departure. I wanted to call him back, but I couldn't carpenter together any satisfactory excuse for his coming back, and I couldn't see any use in it.

So instead of journeying happily homeward in the cavernous old prairie-schooner, I felt a bit ridiculous as Tokudo impa.s.sively carried our belongings out to the canvas-covered wagon and Poppsy and I climbed aboard. The good citizens of American Hill stared after us as we rumbled down through the neatly boulevarded streets, and I felt suspiciously like a gypsy-queen who'd been politely requested by the local constabulary to move on.

It wasn't until we reached the open country that my spirits revived.

Then the prairie seemed to reach out its hand to me and give me peace.

We camped, that first night, in the sheltering arm of a little coulee threaded by a tiny stream. We cooked bacon and eggs and coffee while Whinnie out-spanned his team and put up his tent.

I sat on an oat-sack, after supper, with Poppsy between my knees, watching the evening stars come out. They were worlds, I remembered, some of them worlds perhaps with sorrowing men and women on them. And they seemed very lonely and far-away worlds, until I heard the drowsy voice of my Poppsy say up through the dusk: "In two days more, Mummy, we'll be back to d.i.n.kie, won't we?"

And there was much, I remembered, for which a mother should be thankful.

_Sunday the Fourteenth_

_Dark, and true, and tender is the North._ Heaven bless the rhymster who first penned those words. Spring is stealing hack to the prairie, and our world is a world of beauty. The sky to-day is windrowed with flat-bottomed c.u.mulus-clouds, tier beyond tier above a level plane of light, marking off the infinite distance like receding mile-stones on a world turned over on its back. Occasionally the outstretched head of a wild duck, pumping north with a black throb of wings, melts away to a speck in the opaline air. Back among the muskeg reeds the waders are courting and chattering, and early this morning I heard the plaintive winnowing call-note of the Wilson snipe, and later the _punk-e-lunk_ love-cry of a bittern to his mate. There's an eagle planing in lazy circles high in the air, even now, putting a soft-pedal on the noise of the coots and grebes as he circles over their rush-lined cabarets.

And somewhere out on the range a bull is lowing. It is the season of love and the season of happiness. d.i.n.kie and Poppsy and I are going out to gather prairie-crocuses. They are thick now in the prairie-sod, soft blue and lavender and sometimes mauve. We must dance to the vernal saraband while we can: Spring is so short in this norland country of ours. It comes late. But as Peter says, A late spring never deceives....

I thought I had offended Peter for life. But when he appeared late this afternoon and I asked him why he had kept away from me, he said these first few days naturally belonged to d.i.n.kie and he'd been busy studying marsh-birds. He looked rather rumpled and muddy, and impressed me as a man sadly in need of a woman to look after his things.

"Let's ride," said Peter. "I want to talk to you."

I was afraid of that talk, but I was more afraid something might happen to interfere with it. So I changed into my old riding-duds and put on my weather-stained old sombrero and we saddled Buntie and Laughing-Gas and went loping off over the sun-washed prairie with our shadows behind us.

We rode a long way before Peter said anything. I wanted to be happy, but I wasn't quite able to be. I tried to think of neither the past nor the future, but there were too many ghosts of other days loping along the trail beside us.

"What are you going to do?" Peter finally inquired.

"About what?" I temporized as he pulled up beside me.

"About everything," he ungenerously responded.

"I don't know what to do, Peter," I had to acknowledge. "I'm like a barrel without hoops. I want to stick together, but one more thump will surely send me to pieces!"

"Then why not get the hoops around?" suggested Peter.

"But where will I get the hoops?" I asked.

"Here," he said. He was, I noticed, holding out his arms. And I laughed, even though my heart was heavy.

"Men have been a great disappointment to me, Peter," I said with a shake of my sombrero.

"Try me," suggested Peter.

But still again I had to shake my head.

"That wouldn't be fair, Peter," I told him. "I can't spoil your life to see what's left of my own patched up."

"Then you're going to spoil two of 'em!" he promptly a.s.serted.

"But I don't believe in that sort of thing," I did my best to explain to him. "I've had my innings, and _I'm out_. I've a one-way heart, the same as a one-way street. I don't think there's anything in the world more odious than promiscuity. That's a big word, but it stands for an even bigger offense against G.o.d. I've always said I intended to be a single-track woman."

"But your track's blown up," contended Peter.

"Then I'll have to lay me a new one," I said with a fine show of a.s.surance.

"And do you know where it will lead?" he demanded,

"Where?" I asked.

"Straight to me," he said as he studied me with eyes that were so quiet and kind I could feel a flutter of my heart-wings.

But still again I shook my head.

"That would be bringing you nothing but a withered up old has-been," I said with a mock-wail of misery.

And Peter actually laughed at that.

"It'll be a good ten years before you've even grown up," he retorted.

"And another twenty years before you've really settled down!"

"You're saying I'll never have sense," I objected. "And I know you're right."