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The Prairie Child
Saturday the Twenty-Third
Arthur Stringer
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       _ The rains have brought mushrooms, slathers of 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....
       I had a short letter from Dinky-Dunk to-day, asking me to send on a package of papers which he had left in a pigeon-hole of his desk here. It was a depressingly non-committal little note, without a glimmer of warmth between the lines. I'm afraid there's a certain ugly truth which will have to be faced some day. But I intend to stick to the ship as long as the ship can keep afloat. I am so essentially a family woman that I can't conceive of life without its home circle. Home, however, is where the heart is. And it seems to take more than one heart to keep it going. I keep reminding myself that I have my children at the same time that I keep asking myself why my children are not enough, why they can't seem to fill my cup of contentment as they ought. Now that their father is so much away, a great deal of their training is falling on my shoulders. And I must, in some way, be a model to them. So I'll continue to show them what a Penelope I can be. Perhaps, after all, they will prove our salvation. For our offspring ought to be the snow-fences along the wind-harried rails of matrimony. They should prevent drifting along the line, and from terminal to lonely terminal should keep traffic open ... I have to-night induced Poppsy to write a long and affectionate letter to her pater, telling him all the news of Casa Grande. Perhaps it will awaken a little pang in the breast of her absent parent. _
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Friday the Eighth of March
Tuesday the Twenty-Third
Sunday the Twenty-Eighth
Friday the Second
Sunday the Fourth
Wednesday the Seventh
Saturday the Tenth
Thursday the Fifteenth
Sunday the Twenty-Fifth
Thursday the Twenty-Ninth
Tuesday the Fourth
Sunday the Fifth
Sunday the Twelth
Sunday the Second
Wednesday the Fifth
Friday the Seventh
Thursday the Thirteenth
Sunday the Sixteenth
Sunday the Thirtieth
Wednesday the Second
Thursday the Tenth
Tuesday the 5th
Sunday the Tenth
Sunday the Twenty-Fourth
Wednesday the Twenty-Eighth
Sunday the Ninth
Saturday the Twenty-Ninth
Tuesday the Eighth
Thursday the 17th
Sunday the Twentieth
Wednesday the Thirtieth
Friday the Fifteenth
Saturday the Twenty-Third
Monday the Twenty-Fifth
Wednesday the Twenty-Seventh
Wednesday the Third
Friday the Fifth
Thursday the 11th
Friday the Twelfth
Tuesday the Sixteenth
Wednesday the Thirty-First
Monday the Nineteenth
Tuesday the Twenty-Seventh
Sunday the Twenty-Ninth
Wednesday the Eighth
Wednesday the Fifteenth
Friday the Seventeenth
Tuesday, the Twenty-First
Friday the Twenty-Fourth
Saturday the Twenty-Fifth
Monday the Twenty-Seventh
Saturday the Fourth
Monday the Thirtieth
Thursday the Seventeenth
Wednesday the Twenty-Third
Thursday the Thirty-First
Saturday the Second
Tuesday the Fifth
Friday the Ninth
Monday the Eleventh
Saturday the Sixteenth
Monday the Eighteenth
Thursday the Twenty-Eighth
Friday the Twenty-Ninth & Saturday the Thirtieth
Sunday the First
Tuesday the Third
Thursday the Fifth
Friday the Sixth
Saturday the Seventh
Two Hours Later
Sunday the Eighth
Thursday the Eleventh
Sunday the Fourteenth