he owns. That will mean giving up Annabel, too.

"It hasn't been an hour since I came back to my room. When Red Feather
slipped away, the only thing I asked Mr. Gledware was my mother's
maiden name, and the place where her people lived. I'm going to leave
here in the morning. I'm coming back where there's room enough to turn
around in, and air enough to breathe, where men speak the truth because
they don't care who's who, and shoot quick and straight when they have
to. I'm coming back where money's mighty scarce and love's as free and
boundless as Heaven, where good books are few and true hearts are many.
Yes, I'm coming back to the West, and if the winds don't blow all the
sand away, under the sand I expect to be buried. But I want to live
until I'm buried. People have made the big world as it is,--well they
are welcome to it; but God has made the cove as it is, and it's for Me
and Brick and Bill.

"Good night.

"Lahoma.

"Just the three of us: just Me and Brick and Bill: ONE-TWO-THREE!
There's oceans of room out in the big world for everything and
everybody. But in the cove, there's room just for

"Me

"And Brick

"And Bill."

CHAPTER XIX

LIKE LOVERS

On reaching Chickasha, Wilfred Compton telegraphed to Kansas City
asking his brother if Lahoma was still at Mr. Gledware's house in the
country. In the course of a few hours the reply came that she had
already started home to Greer County, Texas. After reading the
message, Wilfred haunted the station, not willing to let even the most
unpromising freight train escape observation.

Everything that came down the track on this last reach of the railroad
into Southwest Oklahoma, was crowded with people, cattle, household
furniture, stores of hardware, groceries, dry-goods--all that man
requires for his physical well-being. The town itself was swarming
with eager jostling throngs bound for many diverse points, and friends
of a day shouted hearty good-bys, or exchanged good-natured badinage,
as they separated to meet no more.

Men on horseback leading heavily laden pack-horses, covered wagons from
which peeped women and children half-reclining upon bedding, their eyes
filled with grave wonder at a world so unlike their homes in the East
or North--pyramids of undressed lumber fastened somehow upon four
wheels and surmounted in precarious fashion by sprawling men whose
faces and garments suggested Broadway, New York and Leadville,
Colorado--Wi