BURNT FORK, WYOMING, October 26

MY DEAR FRIENDS, —

I have neglected you for so long that I do not expect either of you to recognize me again. Still, when I sent you the note, I promised to tell you of my adventures in bond-selling. I thought I had done pretty well, and was planning to send in my final report a whole week before the drive was over. I was filling in the blanks when a heavy tread and a well-known voice announced Mrs. Louderer.

To you I can confess that my feelings were a little mixed, because I have not been quite certain how she felt about the war. Somehow, our old careless ways have slipped from us, and every day is so full of pressing work that we no longer have those good house-tohouse visits that once were such joys.

But my dear Mrs. Louderer came in with her great knitting-bag, from which she took some candy for the little boys. You have not been to see me, so I have came,' she calmly announced as she seated herself and began to 'toe off' a khaki sock!

I never supposed a sock could produce thrills of relief, but that one did.

But I was ashamed to tell the truth, or may be I feared to hurt her. Anyway, I plunged into telling about my efforts to sell bonds.

Mrs. Louderer is never very talkative, and so I rattled on, immensely pleased with myself, until she remarked, ‘If all made so poor do as you, then Wyoming will not go over the top. For why does the government ask for money? Because it is needed. For who is it needed? For those who leave their homes, give their time, their money, their very life; and yet you think you do well when you have hardly begun. Have you seen Lund? Have you spoken to Herman? No! that would mean some work; that would take your time from monkeying with your own little jobs. Yah!' She finished so scornfully that I was perfectly dumfounded. Before I could say a word, she began to tell me how to make rye-bread, 'so as you can eat.' Indignation flared up, but her words had struck my self-conceit such a blow, that I could think of nothing to say.

Then Clyde came in, and they began a discussion about cattle, and I was glad to slip away to prepare supper and try to collect my scattered thoughts and

a little self-respect. But what she said was true, and it was a humbled woman who presently called them to supper. "The gude mon' and Mrs. Louderer did indeed 'talk of many things,' but beef and the Kaiser had a greater place in their discussion than 'cabbages and kings.'

Mrs. Louderer left me to do up the kitchen work, while she and Clyde went out to look at some mule colts that are a new addition to our ranch. I was glad she did so, for never before was the giftie gie me to see myself as others see me. I did n't like the picture at all, and I am afraid that conversation would have been a little difficult.

While I was busy putting the little Highlanders to bed, she came in and told them a story. When the boys were asleep, she said,

"To-morrow we will go after Lund and some more, and make them dig up the price required to teach some of their brothers and odder kin the folly of being anything but Americans.'

'I can't go so far from home,' I told her. 'I've set sponge to try out your rye-bread recipe, and the children are so troublesome on a long trip as that will be.'

'Now you see?' she interrupted me; 'you can't let go your own affairs. But you are going. Already have I said so to Clyde, and to-morrow we will hitch Chub and Kronprinz to the little wagon. We will be gone some days, may be, so you can get ready for that.'

That night Clyde told me that he would take care of my work, and that he really thought I should go. 'And,' he added, 'have the very pleasantest time. you can, for I know what she said to you.'

So it was with a perfectly clear conscience that I seated myself beside Mrs. Louderer next morning, and left undone many waiting tasks. Many times I wished for you. The blue-and

gold charm of October Wyoming would have charmed you. It did me the first time I saw it, and I have remained under its spell ever since. I wish I had words to paint it for you, but you will have to picture the lonely buttes, with the shifting lights of blue, gold, and rose; the suggestive reach of the desert; and perhaps the next turn of the road would present the crags and clifts of the hog-back. Back of that, the forest reserve, and back of that again, the shining snow-peaks.

The air seemed golden, and everywhere the quaking aspens had been touched by Midas.

I could not talk while such beauty lay spread before me. Mrs. Louderer thought I was sulking. 'You should not pout because I said to you as I did. You do not know, as I do, what will happen if we should lose.'

'I am just enjoying the beauty,' I told her.

"That is well,' she replied. 'Folks in Belgium will not see much beauty in the ruins that are left. If heaven itself had been in Belgium, it would have been bombed and gassed. St. Peter was not German, and he would have been gassed or worst. I have no time to look at yellow trees and blue mountains. I have in me only a wish to see green bills.'

She gave Kronprinz such a spiteful cut with her switch, that he sprang forward and almost spilled us both.

'Why do you call you horse the name you do?' I asked.

'Because he should be killed almost, he is so hateful; only I would be glad if only I had by me the Kronprinz, so as I could beat his back as it should.'

So she urged the horses on, our wagon jolting and creaking protestingly. She seemed unable to win me away from my pleasant contemplations, and I was just as unable to keep her from her unpleasant ones.

We were miles from home when we

saw a figure some distance ahead of us in the road. It was Herman. He was trudging along on his way to a sheepcamp where he was to work. After a pleasant exchange of greetings, he produced his pipe.

'Herman,' began Mrs. Louderer, you have no one dependent upon you and you have wasted all your life -'

Herman interrupted her with something in German.

'I will not so speak. I will say my words only in United States, if you please,' she informed him with severe dignity.

I could n't keep up with them for the next few minutes. They both talked at once, and talked in German and United States, though each denied the German.

Mrs. Louderer won out, for when Herman stopped for breath, she kept on. 'We have come that you should buy bonds. We were going to Lund's to see you there, and here you meet us on the road and insult us, so,' she finished indignantly.

Herman calmly knocked the ashes out of his pipe, lighted it, took a few puffs, then very deliberately said, 'I will buy no bonds. I have no money.'

Then war did prevail.

'Loafer, Schweinehund, for why do you live? What haf you done with the seven hundert dollar which I paid you six year ago? Why shall young men go fight, die, to protect you and your old pipe, while you wander the road by insulting me?'

Herman contemplated the distant skyline. Presently he took his pipe from his mouth, and gravely remarked, 'Louderer, you make too much noise wit' your mouth. The money what you paid me I put with four hundert more. With it I bought the Symes sheep when he enlisted. It's few they is, yet a living they will be for Callie Archer while her two boys, Joe and Eddie, herds them. Besides the money what you ask so

much about, I had yet twenty-three hundert dollars; with that I bought bonds by all the drives. I have yet by me the receipts. See?' He took a small book from his pocket and showed us the receipts.

Mrs. Louderer again belabored Kronprinz, and we drove on. I looked back. Herman was trudging on. I wanted to giggle, but did n't dare. Soon we came in sight of Lund's. The small valley in which they live seemed a blaze of gold. The road here is a dug-way and hugs the red crags of the hog-back. Along the top gray-green cedars cling, distorted by years of buffeting wind. Far below us was the low cabin of logs, the sheep-pens and outbuildings of the ranch.

The dug-way was a perilous road, and we crept down slowly; but at last we drew up at the cabin. Mrs. Lund was washing, but she came out and welcomed us cordially, her bright blue eyes beaming and her tanned, weatherbeaten face all smiles.

'For twenty years I have lived by this ranch, Frau Louderer, and now is it the first time you have come by me. Lund is gone with sheep to market. If only he was here! Before this war always Carl went off with the sheep; but he has gone. In training he is, at Camp Lewis, so Lund goes by the sheep.'

All the while she was busy spreading the table, and her little daughters were hanging up the clothes on the line outside. For dinner we had mutton and 'war-bread,' which Mrs. Lund declared was enough to make anyone want to fight if they ate it. We had delicious cheese, and pickles made of young squash. Mrs. Lund told us about her boy in training. 'I am calling him Charlie now, Carl is too German,' she told us. 'Why do you suppose Germans in the Fatherland is so bad? Why so butchers do you think, Louderer?'

'It is because they have been lied to and deceived.'

'Then they are fools. Why do they not come to Wyoming once and see how is?'

So the talk went on. Mrs. Louderer told of the Red Cross needs, the Y.M.C.A., and the Liberty loans.

'We have come to let you buy some bonds once. For the kinder it will be good. By them they can prove they are not Germans. Five children you have. We will sell you a bond for each.'

'Oh, oh! how can I?' wailed Mrs. Lund. 'Lund always does the business; he it is that pays all the bills; I never did it. He is gone by the sheep to Omaha. Yesterday he started, and if he was here I could not ask him for so much, because I made him promise to put two whole sheep on my head, four are to go on my back, and some on each of the children.'

'But,' Mrs. Louderer interrupted, 'these are war-times. Why choose now to spend sheep-money?'

'Twenty-five years it is since Lund and I get married. I had a new hat then; since then I have had none. All these years I have worked and saved. We both thought it foolish to spend money, but now Ca-Charlie is a man and Bertha a woman, and I want that they shall not be ashamed of me, so I told Lund to buy me a fine hat and some other things to go with it.'

'I suppose you will wear it to the funeral of the boys who are sent home in their wooden overcoats,' remarked Mrs. Louderer.

I remembered my own recent lashing and escaped with Bertha. She is to be married when Gideon Prescott comes home. She showed me her 'trousseau.' It consists of six big puffy pillows, a lot of wool-filled quilts, some bright, homemade rugs, and a box of dishes.

In a lull in our conversation, we heard Mrs. Louderer ask, 'Who signs Lund's checks? He cannot write, I know.'

VOL. 123-NO. 5

'Me, I do,' Mrs. Lund replied, promptly and proudly.

Presently I went back to the kitchen. Mrs. Lund was writing a check. "This a wedding present will be for Bertha. She is to marry an American soon yet.'

"That is as is right. An American girl should marry an American,' Mrs. Louderer agreed. She was very pleasant and exerted herself to show it. She held four checks in her hand.

'Now,' she smiled at Mrs. Lund, 'you see how it is to be an American wife. You can help your country when you want to. You are free to write a check when the time is.'

"That is not new,' Mrs. Lund protested; 'already we are naturalized, long since, and I always wrote Lund's checks.'

'As he said, yes,' Mrs. Louderer said, as she gathered her belongings; 'but to-day you have wrote them as is best for all, and Lund will put the sheep on your head yet. I am glad. I hope your hat has the finest plume and the largest roses that can be had in Omaha.'

After the most pleasant of farewells, we again set forth. This time we did n't try the dug-way: we kept down the valley. We had many gates to open, but Mrs. Louderer said that was my job. I did n't mind. No one could mind opening gates when each gate led from one enchanted spot into another.

'Now you see what an injustice would be done the Lunds if so we had not gone there. Fife hundert dollars it is, and for the first time in her life she is free. Never before did she spend a dollar without Lund says so.'

'Mr. Lund may have bought bonds in town,' I reminded her.

'Well, and if he has! What then? She has bought bonds on the ranch, and they have money enough yet, even with sheeps on the head and back and on the children. There is few, very few Germans on any poor farm. Germans