bert Miller was a young native westerner whose family had been
ranchers out there for a good many years. He was a well-built, clean-cut
young man who had been attracted to Ida Mary from the beginning, and
whatever her own feelings for him, she liked claim life a lot better
after she met him. All during that bitter winter Imbert came over every
Sunday, dressed in neat blue serge and white collar. Some of the
settlers said that was how they could tell when Sunday came, seeing
Imbert ride by dressed up like that. He dropped in, sometimes, through
the week in clean blue shirt and corduroys for an evening of cards or
reading or talking.

In fact, the evenings were no longer lonely as they had been at first,
nor were we always exhausted. We were young and demanded some fun, and
feminine enough to find life more interesting when the young men who
were homesteading began to gather at the shack in little groups. In
spite of the difficulties of getting any place in the winter, and the
distances which had to be traveled, the young people began to see a lot
of each other; the romances which naturally developed made the winter
less desolate.

Sometimes we would gather at Wilomene's for supper--honey served with
flaky hot biscuits baked in one of the very few real cookstoves to be
found on a homestead. Wilomene had a big shack, with blue paper on the
wall and a real range instead of a monkey stove with a drum set up in
the stovepipe for an oven--not many settlers could boast even a drum.
And always the supper was seasoned with Wilomene's laughter.

In fair weather I printed both back and front pages of the paper, and in
storms, when ink and machinery froze up--another complication in dealing
with the press--I printed the front page only, with headlines that
rivaled the big dailies. There was no news to warrant them, but they
were space-fillers. A dance at McClure would do for a scarehead. I put
in the legal notices, whatever news items I had handy or had time to set
up, and stuck in boilerplate as a filler. I could not count the times I
used the same plate over--but the settlers didn't mind reading it again;
they had little else to do in midwinter.

One day there came an indistinct message over the telephone line, which
consisted mainly of barb-wire fences, saying that the railroads were
blocked by storm and the stages were delayed. I threw down my mallet and
went home. There would be nothing on which to print the paper.

On the