the ‘do’ wouldn’t be undone by his spurs; still the effort had not been wasted, for this was the fifth time he had danced with her.

No doting mother could have taken more pride in the debut of an only child, than this work-worn sister whose eyes sparkled as they followed “Birdie’s” whirling figure held firmly by the encircling arm of the cow-puncher, and she murmured softly with a half sigh, “Ain’t it grand?” To me it was “grand” indeed, that even an embryo romance could bring a new light to those tired eyes.

It was six o’clock Sunday morning when one most thoughtful person suggested that “they’d orter be goin’”; and by seven the last guest had departed. Then Owen and I, weary and heavy-eyed, donned our wraps, climbed into the wagon, and started on a sixteen-mile drive to the railroad to meet his brother, who was coming from California to see “how we were making it.”

I was almost too tired to speak, but one thought was struggling for expression, and as we started up the first long hill, I had to say:

“Anyone who ever spoke of the ‘peace and quiet of ranch life’ lived in New York and dreamed about it. In twenty-four hours I have discovered that we have an ex-convict for a trusted cook, and have received as guests a man with his wife and resident affinity. We have had a surprise party and I have danced with all the blemished characters the country boasts of, until six o’clock in the morning of the Sabbath day, with never a qualm of conscience. What do you suppose has become of my moral standards?”

Owen was amused. He asked me, quizzically, what I thought they would be by the end of a year.

“Mercy!” I replied, “at the rate they are being overthrown, there won’t be enough left to consider, unless”—I thought a moment—“unless I can reconstruct a more enduring set from parts of the old.”

III—THE ROOT CELLAR

“East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” The phrase kept haunting me all through these first days when everything was so new and strange. I almost felt as though I had passed into a new phase of existence.

Except for Owen, there was no point of contact between the world of cities and people I had just left and this land of cattle and cow-punchers, bounded by the sky-rimmed hills. In Owen, however, the East and the West did meet. He understood and belonged to both and adapted himself as easily to the one as to the other. Wearing his derby, he belonged to the life of the East; in his broad-brimmed Stetson, he was a living part of the West.

The compelling reality of this new life affected me deeply. Non-essentials counted for nothing. There were no artificial problems or values.

No one in the country cared who you might have been or who you were. The Mayflower and Plymouth Rock meant nothing here. It would be thought you were speaking of some garden flowers or some breed of chickens.

The one thing of vital importance was what you were—how you adjusted yourself to meet conditions as you found them, and how nearly you reached, or how far you fell below their measure of man or woman.

I felt as though up to this time I had been in life’s kindergarten, but that I had now entered into its school, and I realized that only as I passed the given tests should I succeed.

I learned much from the rough, untutored men with whom I was in daily association. They were men whose rules of conduct were governed by individual choice, unhampered by conventions. They were so direct and honest, so unfailingly kind and gentle toward any weaker thing, and so simple and responsive, that I liked and trusted them from the first. All but old Bohm, the man from whom we were buying. He was such a totally different type that he seemed a man apart. The son of a German father and an Irish mother, he had inherited a nature too complex and contradictory to be easily fathomed.

Mrs. Bohm, with her white, calm face and gentle voice, attracted me,