big share of your
time and energy. But one finally manages, in some way or another.
Dinky-Dunk threatens to expel me from the Mothers' Union when I work
over time, and Poppsy and Pee-Wee unite in letting me know when I've
been foolish enough to pass my fatigue-point. Yet I've been sloughing
off some of my old-time finicky ideas about child-raising and reverting
to the peasant-type of conduct which I once so abhorred in my Finnish
Olga. And I can't say that either I or my family seem to have suffered
much in the process. I feel almost uncannily well and strong now, and
am a wolf for work. If nothing else happened when our apple-cart went
over, it at least broke the monotony of life. I'm able to wring, in
fact, just a touch of relish out of all this migrational movement and
stir, and Casa Grande itself is already beginning to remind me of a
liner's stateroom about the time the pilot comes aboard and the
donkey-engines start to clatter up with the trunk-nets.

For three whole days I simply ached to get at the Harris Ranch shack,
just to show what I could do with it. And I realized when Dinky-Dunk
and I drove over to it in the buckboard, on a rather nippy morning
when it was a joy to go spanking along the prairie trail with the cold
air etching rosettes on your cheek-bones, that it was a foeman well
worthy of my steel. At a first inspection, indeed, it didn't look any
too promising. It didn't exactly stand up on the prairie-floor and
shout "Welcome" into your ears. There was an overturned windmill and a
broken-down stable that needed a new roof, and a well that had a pump
which wouldn't work without priming. There was an untidy-looking
corral, and a reel for stringing up slaughtered beeves, and an
overturned Red River cart bleached as white as a buffalo skeleton. As
for the wickiup itself, it was well-enough built, but lacking in
windows and quite unfinished as to the interior.

I told Dinky-Dunk I wanted two new window-frames, beaverboard for
inside lining, and two gallons of paint. I have also demanded a
lean-to, to serve as an extra bedroom and nursery, and a brand-new
bunk-house for the hired "hands" when they happen to come along. I
have also insisted on a covered veranda and sleeping porch on the
south side of the shack, and fly-screens, and repairs to the chimney
to stop the range from smoking. And since the cellar, which is merely
timbered, will have to be both my coal-hole and my storage-room, it
most assuredly w