We teamed into Buckhorn for our supplies, two leisurely,
lovely, lazy days on the trail, which we turned into a sort of
gipsy-holiday. We took blankets and grub and feed for the horses and a
frying-pan, and camped out on the prairie. The night was pretty cool,
but we made a good fire, and had hot coffee. Dinky-Dunk smoked and I
sang. Then we rolled up in our blankets and as I lay there watching the
stars I got thinking of the lights of the Great White Way. Then I nudged
my husband and asked him if he knew what my greatest ambition in life
used to be. And of course he didn't. "Well, Dinky-Dunk," I told him, "it
was to be the boy who opens the door at _Malliard's_! For two whole
years I ate my heart out with envy of that boy, who always lived in the
odor of such heavenly hot chocolate and wore two rows of shining
buttons down his braided coat and was never without white gloves and
morning, noon and night paraded about in the duckiest little skull-cap
cocked very much to one side like a Grenadier's!" And Dinky-Dunk told me
to go to sleep or he'd smother me with a horse-blanket. So I squirmed
back into my blanket and got "nested" and watched the fire die away
while far, far off somewhere a coyote howled. That made me lonesome, so
I got Dinky-Dunk's hand, and fell asleep holding it in mine.
I woke up early. Dinky-Dunk had forgotten about my hand, and it was
cold. In the East there was a low bar of ethereally pale silver, which
turned to amber, and then to ashes of roses, and then to gold.
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