"Say, Rube," she said, looking up after heading her note-paper, "how d'

you think it'll fix her when she hears?"

Rube gazed at the twinkling eyes raised to his; he gave a chuckling grunt, and his words came with elephantine meaning.

"She'll be all of a muss-up at it."

Ma's smile broadened.

"What's makin' you laff, Ma?" the old man asked.

"Jest nuthin'. I was figgerin' if the gal could--if we could git her reply before spring opens."

"Seems likely--if the boat don't sink."

Ma put the end of her pen in her mouth and eyed her man. Rube scratched his head and smoked hard. Neither spoke. At last the woman jerked out an impatient inquiry.

"Well?" she exclaimed.

Rube removed his pipe from his lips with great deliberation and eased himself in his chair.

"You've located the name of the farm on top, an' the State, an' the date?"

he inquired, by way of gaining time.

"Guess I ain't daft, Rube."

"No." The man spoke as though his answer were the result of deliberate thought. Then he cleared his throat, took a long final pull at his pipe, removed it from his mouth, held it poised in the manner of one who has something of importance to say, and sat bolt upright. "Then I guess we ken git right on." And having thus clearly marked their course he sat back and complacently surveyed his wife.

But the brilliancy of his suggestion was lost on Ma, and she urged him further.

"Well?"

"Wal--I'd jest say, 'Honored Lady,'" he suggested doubtfully.

"Mussy on the man, we're writin' to Rosebud!" exclaimed the old woman.

"Sure." Rube nodded patronizingly, but he seemed a little uncomfortable under his wife's stare of amazement. "But," he added, in a tone meant to clinch the argument, "she ain't 'Rosebud' no longer."

"Rubbish an' stuff! She's 'Rosebud'--jest 'Rosebud.' An' 'dearest Rosebud'

at that, an' so I've got it," Ma said, hurriedly writing the words as she spoke. "Now," she went on, looking up, "you can git on wi' the notions to foller."

Again Rube cleared his throat. Ma watched him, chewing the end of her penholder the while. The man knocked his pipe out and slowly began to refill it. He looked out the window into the blackness of the winter night. His vast face was heavy with thought, and his s.h.a.ggy gray brows were closely knit. As she watched, the old woman's bright eyes smiled.

Her thoughts had gone back to their courting days. She thought of the two or three letters Rube had contrived to send her, which were still up-stairs in an old trunk containing her few treasures. She remembered that these letters had, in each case, begun with "Honored Lady." She wondered where he had obtained the notion which still remained with him after all these years.

Feeling the silence becoming irksome Rube moved uneasily.

"Y' see it's kind o' del'cate. Don't need handlin' rough," he said. "Seems you'd best go on like this. Mebbe you ken jest pop it down rough-like an'

fix it after. 'Which it's my painful dooty an' pleasure----'"

"La, but you always was neat at fixin' words, Rube," Ma murmured, while she proceeded to write. "How's this?" she went on presently, reading what she had just written. "I'm sorry to have to tell you as Seth's got hurt pretty bad. He's mighty sick, an' liable to be abed come spring. Pore feller, he's patient as he always is, but he's all mussed-up an' broken shocking; shot in the side an' got bones smashed up. Howsum, he's goin' on all right, an' we hope for the best."

"I 'lows that's neat," Rube said, lighting his pipe. "'Tain't jest what I'd fancy. Sounds kind o' familiar. An' I guess it's li'ble to scare her some."

"Well?"

"Wal, I tho't we'd put it easy-like."

Ma looked a little scornful. Rube was certainly lacking in duplicity.

"Say, Rube, you ain't a bit smarter than when you courted me. I jest want that gal to think it's mighty bad."

"Eh?" Rube stared.

Ma was getting impatient.

"I guess you never could see a mile from your own nose, Rube; you're that dull an' slow wher' gals is concerned. I'll write this letter in my own way. You'd best go an' yarn with Seth. An' you needn't say nuthin' o' this to him. We'll git a quick answer from Rosebud, or I'm ter'ble slow 'bout some things, like you."

The cloud of responsibility suddenly lifted from the farmer's heavy features. He smiled his relief at his partner in conspiracy. He knew that in such a matter as the letter he was as much out of place as one of his own steers would be. Ma, he was convinced, was one of the cleverest of her s.e.x, and if Seth and Rosebud were ever to be brought together again she would do it. So he rose, and, moving round to the back of his wife's chair, laid his great hand tenderly on her soft, gray hair.

"You git right to it, Ma," he said. "We ain't got no chick of our own.

Ther's jest Seth to foller us, an' if you ken help him out in this thing, same as you once helped me out, you're doin' a real fine thing. The boy ain't happy wi'out Rosebud, an' ain't never like to be. You fix it, an'

I'll buy you a noo buggy. Guess I'll go to Seth."

Ma looked up at the gigantic man, and the tender look she gave him belied the practical brusqueness of her words.

"Don't you git talkin' foolish. Ther' was a time when I'd 'a' liked you to talk foolish, but you couldn't do it then, you were that slow. Git right along. I'll fix this letter, an' read it to you when it's done."

Rube pa.s.sed out of the room, gurgling a deep-throated chuckle, while his wife went steadily on with the all-important matter in hand.

CHAPTER XXII

ROSEBUD'S ANSWER

It was a dazzling morning nearly five weeks after the dispatching of Ma Sampson's letter to Rosebud. The heralds of spring, the warm, southern breezes, which brought trailing flights of geese and wild duck winging northward, and turned the pallor of the snow to a dirty drab hue, like a soiled white dress, had already swept across the plains. The sunlight was fiercely blinding. Even the plainsman is wary at this time of the year, for the perils of snow-blindness are as real to him as to the "tenderfoot."

There had been no reply from Rosebud. Two more letters from her reached the farm, but they had been written before the letter, which Rube helped to compose, had been received. Since then no word had come from the girl.

Ma was satisfied, and accepted her silence with equanimity, but for appearances' sake a.s.sumed an att.i.tude of complaint. Rube said nothing; he had no subtlety in these matters. Seth was quite in the dark. He never complained, but he was distressed at this sudden and unaccountable desertion.

Seth's wound and broken shoulder had healed. He had been up a week, but this was his first day out of the house. Now he stood staring out with shaded eyes in the direction of the Reservations. During the past week he had received visits from many of the neighboring settlers. Parker, particularly, had been his frequent companion. He had learned all that it was possible for him to learn by hearsay of the things which most interested him; but, even so, he felt that he had much time to make up, much to learn that could come only from his own observation.

Now, on this his first day out in the open, he found himself feeling very weak, a thin, pale shadow of his former self. Curiously enough he had little inclination for anything. He simply stood gazing upon the scene before him, drinking in deep draughts of the pure, bracing, spring air.

Though his thoughts should have been with those matters which concerned the welfare of the homestead, they were thousands of miles away, somewhere in a London of his own imagination, among people he had never seen, looking on at a life and pleasures of which he had no knowledge of, and through it all he was struggling to understand how it was Rosebud had come to forget them all so utterly, and so suddenly.

He tried to make allowances, to point out to himself the obligations of the girl's new life. He excused her at every point; yet, when it was all done, when he had proved to himself the utter impossibility of her keeping up a weekly correspondence, he was dissatisfied, disappointed. There was something behind it all, some reason which he could not fathom.