e his boyhood days were spent. My Virginia can never be
as it was in my childhood, but Asher can have some of the pleasures of his
eastern home." She pushed back the sunbonnet from her face, and let the
west breeze sweep across it.

"I used to wear a veil and was somewhat acquainted with cold cream, and my
hands were really white and soft. They are hard and brown now. When I get
home I'll put it straight to Asher about going back to civilization, even
if there are only a few dollars waiting to take us there, and nothing
waiting for us to do."

With a sigh, half of anticipation and half of regret, she rode away toward
the little town of Wykerton in the Big Wolf Creek settlement.

There were few differences between the new county seat and Carey's
Crossing, except that there were a few more houses, and over by the creek
bank the brewery, by which Hans Wyker proposed to save the West. There
was, however, one difference between the vanished Carey's Crossing and
this place, the difference between the community whose business leaders
have ideals of citizenship, and the community wherein commerce is advanced
by the degradation of its citizens. Wykerton had no Dr. Carey nor John
Jacobs to control it. The loafers stared boldly at Virginia Aydelot as
she rode up before the livery stable and slipped from her saddle. Not
because a woman in a calico dress and sunbonnet, a tanned, brown-handed
woman, was a novelty there, but because the license of the place was one
of impudence and disrespect.

The saloon was on one side of the livery stable and the postoffice was on
the other side. Darley Champers' office stood next to the postoffice, a
dingy little shack with much show of maps and real estate information.
Behind the office was a large barren yard where one little lilac bush
languished above the hard earth. The Wyker hotel and store were across the
street.

Virginia had been intrusted with small sums for sundry purchases for the
settlement, especially for the staple medicines and household
needs--camphor and turpentine, quinine and certain cough syrups for the
winter; castor oil, some old and tried ointment, and brand of painkiller;
thread and needles and pins--especially pins--and buttons for everybody's
clothes. One settler had ridden back at midnight to ask for the purchase
of a pair of shoes for his wife. It was a precious commission that
Virginia Aydelot bore that day, although to the shopper in a Kansas city
today, the sum