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Updated: May 23, 2025
"She may cause complications." "What kind of complications?" "I can't tell until I've seen her," was Dinky-Dunk's none too definite reply. "Then we needn't cross that bridge until we come to it," I announced as I sat watching Dinky-Dunk pack the bowl of his pipe and strike a match. It seemed a trivial enough movement. Yet it was monumental in its homeliness.
But Constraint was there, all the while, first in the form of Dinky-Dunk's unoccupied chair, which remained that way until dinner was two-thirds through, and then in the form of Dinky-Dunk himself, whose explanation about some tractor-work keeping him late didn't quite ring true.
There was a sullen look on his face, and his eyes refused to meet mine. So I knew his search had not succeeded. Then young O'Malley came in and asked for matches, and I knew even before he spoke, that he too had failed. They had all failed. I could hear Dinky-Dunk's voice outside, a little hoarse and throaty. I felt very tired, as I put Pee-Wee back in his cradle.
Dinky-Dunk's wheat looks sadly draggled out and beaten down, but he says there wasn't enough hail to hurt anything; that the straw will straighten up again, and that this downpour was just what he wanted. Early in the afternoon, on looking out the shack door, I saw a tangle of clouds on the sky-line. They seemed twisted up like a skein of wool a kitten had been playing with.
I tried to speak calmly, determined not to break down and make a scene there before Lady Alicia, who'd reined up, stock-still, and sat staring in front of her, without a spoken word. I could see Dinky-Dunk's mouth harden. "Have you any clue any hint?" he asked, and I could catch the quaver in his voice as he spoke. "Not a thing," I told him, remembering that we were losing time.
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.
"That's why I think it might be better for you to step outside for a moment or two," was my soldier boy's casual answer. I walked over and got Dinky-Dunk's repeater. Then I crossed to the far side of the shack, with the rifle in my hands. "I'm going to stay," I announced.
I even said that this was a hell of a country, where a white woman had to live like a Cree squaw and a child had to die like a sick hound in a coulée. And I said a number of other things, which must have cut to the raw, for even in the uncertain lamplight I could see that Dinky-Dunk's face had become a kind of lemon-color, which is the nearest to white a sunburned man seems able to turn.
And we sat there, staring at each other, for all the world like a couple of penguins on a sub-Arctic shingle. Allie, I remembered, was Dinky-Dunk's English cousin, Lady Alicia Elizabeth Newland, who'd made the Channel flight in a navy plane and the year before had figured in a Devonshire motor-car accident.
But I hung on to Dinky-Dunk's arm, all the rest of the way, until we pulled up beside the shack, and poor old Olie, with a frying-pan in his hand, stood silhouetted against the light of the open door. Monday the Sixth The last few days I've been nothing but a two-footed retriever, scurrying off and carrying things back home with me. There have been rains, but the weather is still glorious.
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