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He was a little startled to see me come cantering up on Paddy. I don't know whether it was silly or not, but I told him straight out what had brought me. He hugged me like a bear and then sat down on the prairie and laughed. "With that cow?" he cried. And I'm sure no man could ever call the woman he loves a cow.... I believe Dinky-Dunk suspects something.
This puzzled me, for a moment, until I remembered having caught sight of him in much the same attitude, only a few days before. But this time he looked so tired and drawn and spineless that a fish-hook of sudden pity tugged at my throat. For my Dinky-Dunk sat there without moving, with the hope and the joy of life drawn utterly out of his bony big body.
They're for Dinky-Dink, of course. But it will be a week or two before he can manipulate the lantern! Wednesday the Thirteenth Dinky-Dunk has taken Mrs. Dixon home and come back with a brand-new "hand," which, of course, is prairie-land synecdoche for a new hired man. His name is Terry Dillon, and as the name might lead you to imagine, he's about as Irish as Paddy's pig.
For I have banked on you, Dinky-Dunk, banked about all my life and happiness and it's too late to change, even if I wanted to. I'm alone in the world, and in a lonely part of the world, with three small children to look after, and that as much as anything, I suppose, drives me to plain speaking and compels me to clear thinking.
And I call him Dinky-Dunk and The Dour Maun, and Kitten-Cats, though for some reason or other he hates that last name. I think he feels it's an affront to his dignity. And no man likes a trace of mockery in a woman. But Dinky-Dunk's names are born of affection, and I love him for them. Even the ranch horses have all been tagged with names.
Dinky-Dunk took me out and showed me the stables and the hay-stacks and the granaries which he'd just waterproofed so there'd be no more spoilt grain on that farm and the "cool-hole" he used to use before the cellar was built, and the ruins of the sod-hut where the first homesteader that owned that land had lived.
So instead of riding openly and honestly up to Dinky-Dunk and Olga, I kept under cover as much as I could and stalked them, as though I had been a timber wolf. Then I felt thoroughly and unspeakably ashamed of myself, for I caught sight of Olga high on her wagon, like a Valkyr on a cloud, and Dinky-Dunk hard at work a good two miles away.
Yet I wonder if, after all, the one is so much better than the other? I wonder? And here comes my Dinky-Dunk, and in three minutes he'll be kissing me on the tip of the chin and asking me what there's going to be good for supper! And that is better than fame!
And always, always, always, there were the children to be considered. So I wired Ed Sherman, the station-agent at Buckhorn, asking him to send out a message to Duncan, saying I was waiting for him in Pasadena and to come at once.... I wonder what his answer will be? It's surrender, on my part. It's capitulation, and Dinky-Dunk, of course, will recognize that fact. Or he ought to.
But I wasn't thinking entirely about myself, even though poor old Dinky-Dunk evidently assumed so, from the look of sudden questioning that came into his stricken eyes. "Yes, they're yours," he almost listlessly responded. "Then, as I've already said, let's look this thing fairly and squarely in the face. We've taken a gambler's chance on a big thing, and we've lost.
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