t, by
following their suggestions become a happy and moderately successful
writer, and this prosperity, you may be sure, was reflected to some
degree in the dining room of the old Homestead.

My father, though glad of the shelter of the Wisconsin hills in winter,
was too vigorous,--far too vigorous--to be confined to the limits of a
four-acre garden patch, and when I urged him to join me in buying one of
the fine level farms in our valley he agreed, but added "I must sell my
Dakota land first."

With this I was forced to be content. Though sixty years old he still
steered the six-horse header in harvest time, tireless and unsubdued.
Times were improving slowly, very slowly in Dakota but opportunities for
selling his land were still remote. He was not willing to make the
necessary sacrifices. "I will not give it away," he grimly declared.

My return to the Homestead during the winter holidays brought many
unforgettable experiences. Memories of those winter mornings come back
to me--sunrises with steel-blue shadows lying along the drifts, whilst
every weed, every shrub, feathered with frost, is lit with subtlest fire
and the hills rise out of the mist, domes of brilliant-blue and burning
silver. Splashes of red-gold fill all the fields, and small birds,
flying amid the rimy foliage, shake sparkles of fire from their careless
wings.

It was the antithesis of Indian summer, and yet it had something of the
same dream-like quality. Its beauty was more poignant. The rounded tops
of the red-oaks seemed to float in the sparkling air in which millions
of sun-lit frost flakes glittered. All forms and lines were softened by
this falling veil, and the world so adorned, so transfigured, filled
the heart with a keen regret, a sense of pity that such a world should
pass.

At such times I was glad of my new home, and my mother found in me only
the confident and hopeful son. My doubts of the future, my
discouragements of the present I carefully concealed.

CHAPTER FOUR

Red Men and Buffalo

Although my _Ulysses Grant, His Life and Character_ absorbed most of my
time and the larger part of my energy during two years, I continued to
dream (in my hours of leisure), of the "High Country" whose splendors of
cloud and peak, combined with the broad-cast doings of the cattleman and
miner, had aroused my enthusiasm. The heroic types, both white and red,
which the trail has fashioned to its needs continued to allure me, and
when