ugh that bent aspen."

Barry stared.

"I'd noticed that. Thought it was a house, but couldn't be sure. I
thought I understood Ba'tiste to say you only came out here in the
summer."

"I did that when I was going to school. Now I stay here all the year
'round."

"Isn't it lonely?"

"Out here? With a hundred kinds of birds to keep things going? With
the trout leaping in the streams in the summer time, and a good gun in
the hollow of your arm in the winter? Besides, there's old Lost Wing
and his squaw, you know. I get a lot of enjoyment out of them when
we're snowed in--in the winter. He's told me fully fifty versions of
how the Battle of Wounded Knee was fought, and as for Custer's last
battle--it's wonderful!"

"He knows all about it?"

"I'd hardly say that." Medaine reached under her cap for a hairpin,
looked quickly at Barry as though to ask him whether he could stand
pain, then pressed a recalcitrant thorn into a position where it could
be extracted. "I think the best description of Lost Wing is that he's
an admirable fiction writer. Ba'tiste says he has more lies than a dog
has fleas."

"Then it isn't history?"

"Of course not. Just imagination. But it's well done, with plenty of
gestures. He stands in front of the fire and acts it all out while his
squaw sits on the floor and grunts and nods and wails at the right
time, and it's really entertaining. They're about a million years old,
both of them. My father got them when he first came down here from
Montreal. He wanted Lost Wing as a sort of bodyguard. It was a good
deal wilder in this region then than it is now, and father owned a good
deal of land."

"So Ba'tiste tells me. He says that practically all of the forests
around here are yours."

"They will be, next year," came simply, "when I'm--"

She stopped and laughed.

"Ba'tiste told me. Twenty-one."

"He never could keep anything to himself."

"What's wrong about that? I'm twenty-seven myself."

"Honestly? You don't look it."

"Don't I? I ought to. I've got a beard and everything. See?" He
pulled his hand away for a moment to rub the two-days' growth on his
face. "I tried to shave this morning. Couldn't make it. Ba'tiste
said he'd play barber for me this afternoon. Next time you come over
I'll be all slicked up."

Again she laughed, and once more pursued the remaining thorns.

"How do you know there'll be a next time?"

"If there isn't, I'll drive nails in