f mushrooms, and I joy in
gathering them.

Yesterday afternoon I rode past the Harris Ranch. The old place
brought back a confusion of memories. But I was most disturbed by the
signs of building going on there. It seems to mean a new shack on
Alabama Ranch. And a new shack of very considerable dimensions. I've
been wondering what this implies. I don't know whether to be elated or
depressed. And what business is it, after all, of mine?

My Dinkie--I have altogether given up trying to call my Dinkie
anything but Dinkie--came home two evenings ago with a discolored eye
and a distinct air of silence. Gershom, too, seemed equally reticent.
So I set about discreetly third-degreeing Poppsy, who finally
acknowledged, with awe in her voice, that Dinkie had been in a fight.

It was, according to my petticoated Herodotus, a truly terrible fight.
Noses got bloodied, and no one could make the fighters stop. But
Dinkie was unquestionably the conqueror. Yet, oddly enough, I am
informed that he cried all through the combat. He was a crying
fighter. And he had his fight with Climmie O'Lone--trust the Irish to
look for trouble!--who seems to have been accepted as the ring-master
of his younger clan. Their differences arose out of the accusation
that Dinkie, my bashful little Dinkie, had been forcing his unwelcomed
attention on one Doreen O'Lone, Climmie's younger sister. That's
absurd, of course. And Dinkie must have realized it. He didn't want to
fight, acknowledged Poppsy, from the first. He even cried over it. And
Doreen also cried. And Poppsy herself joined in.

I fancy it was a truly Homeric struggle, for it seems to have lasted
for round after round. It lasted, I have been able to gather, until
Climmie was worsted and down on his back crying "Enough!" Which Poppsy
reports Dinkie made him say three times, until Doreen nodded and said
she'd heard. But my young son, apparently, is one of those crying
fighters, who are reckoned, if I remember right, as the worst breed of
belligerents!

I have decided not to tell Dinkie what I know. But I'm rather anxious
to get a glimpse of this young Mistress Doreen, for whom lances are
already being shattered in the lists of youth. The O'Lones regard
themselves as the landed aristocracy of the Elk-trail District. And
Doreen O'Lone impresses me as a very musical appellative. Yet I prefer
to keep my kin free from all entangling alliances, even though they
have to do with a cattle-king's offspring