“I’d never have come out like this—I’d have seen to things myself—if I hadn’t been sort of troubled in my mind,” said Uncle Hank. “But that’s no excuse.” He looked down at her. “Not cold? Why, Uncle Hank’s baby’s just about perished! We’ve got a blue norther—just as I was afraid—and it’ll blow for three days. If you had your coat, I’d turn round and go straight back home. But you can’t travel in that little jacket in a norther. I’ll cut in here to the left; see—” as he turned into a side trail—“it puts our backs to the wind. We’ll stop at the Bar Thirteen; you remember, honey, the Reynolds and MacQueen ranch. Frosty MacQueen, he’s that staving big feller with the tow-colored hair. You seen him at the last roundup on our place—” He checked suddenly. Hilda shook her head. She didn’t remember any one at that roundup which ended so tragically. Hank glanced sideways at her, and went on in a cheerful, commonplace tone: “He’s sort of a joker—Frosty is. Calls hisself ‘Frosty MacQueen Of the Bar Thirteen.’” “Oh!” Hilda’s big eyes danced. “That rimes—doesn’t it?” “Yeah,” Uncle Hank agreed. “And if any one takes notice of it riming that-a-way, Frosty’ll say, ‘I was a poet—and didn’t know it.’ He aims to be funny.” Hilda’s mother had always read poetry to her; she knew a great deal of it by heart, and used to love to go about sort of saying it under her breath, or even with closed lips letting it say itself in her head. Since she’d come to Texas and planned to grow up and be Uncle Hank’s partner and a ranchwoman, she sometimes wondered if she ought to do this. And too, out here the plains, the sky, the movements on these two of the morning and evening which made day and night, also set her to stringing words together. Sometimes these rimed, and then it would give her a thrill that was almost painful. There was nobody to tell about it. Aunt Val, even when she was there, would only have told her to run away and not interrupt when a person was reading, and Burchie was too little. So it had made itself into a secret; and when a thing does that it pretty soon gets to be seeming like something wrong. Now, here was this Frosty MacQueen, a grown man, owner of a ranch, and it seemed he was allowed to make rimes without loss of social standing. She plucked up sudden courage and asked: “Uncle Hank—did you know I could write poetry?” “Wouldn’t surprise me a bit if you could.” The old man was busy with his team, getting over a bit of a gully. She watched close to see whether he was pleased or displeased with her statement, but could make nothing of him. As he seemed not to be going any further with the subject, she was obliged to take it up again herself, an effort that gave a little too much force to her statement: “But I won’t—if you’d rather I wouldn’t.” “Wouldn’t what?” They were going smoothly now without further attention, as she went on: