"Why don't you grub over to the eatin'-house oncet in a while?" I ast him. "They got all _kinds_ of tony things--tomatoes and cucumbers and as-paragrass, and them little toadstool things." "And out here in the desert!" says Boston. "I s'pose they bring 'em from other places." "Not on you' life!" I answers. "They grow 'em right here--in flower pots." Out come a pencil. "How pictureskew!" Boston says,--and put it down. End of that first week, when I stopped in at the Arnaz place fer supper, I says to him, "Wal," I says, "book about done?" He was layin' back lazy in a chair,--_as_ usual--watchin' Carlota trot the crock'ry in. He batted his eyes. "Done!" he repeats. "_No_. Why, I ain't got only a few notes." "Notes?" I says; "notes?" I was _turrible_ disappointed. (I reckon I was worryin' over the book worse'n _he_ was.) "Why, say, couldn't you make nothin' outen that bad man who was a-paintin' the town the other night?" "Just a bad man don't make a book," says Boston; "leastways, only a yalla-back. But take a bad man, and a _gal,_ and you git a story of _ad_-venture." A gal. Yas, you need a gal fer a book. And you need _the_ gal if you want t' be right happy. I knowed that. Pretty soon, I ast, "Have you picked on a gal?" "Here's Carlota," he says. "_She'd_ make a figger fer a book." Carlota!--the little skeezicks! Y' see, she's _aw-ful_ pretty. Hair blacker'n a stack of black cats. Black eyes, too,--big and friendly lookin'. (That's where you git fooled--Carlota's a blend of tiger-cat and bronc; she can purr 'r pitch--take you' choice.) Her face is just snow white, with a little bit of pink--now y' see it, now y' don't see it--on her cheeks, and a little spot of blazin' red fer a mouth. "But what I'm after most now," he goes on, "is a plot." A plot, y' savvy, is a story, and I got him the best I could find. This was Buckshot's: "Boston, this is a _blamed_ enterprisin' country,--almost _any_ ole thing can happen out here. Did you ever hear tell how Nick Erickson got his stone fence? No? You could put _that_ in a book. Wal, you know, Erickson lives east of here. Nice hunderd and sixty acres he's got--level, no stones. Wanted t' fence it. Couldn't buy lumber 'r wire. Figgered on haulin' stone, only stone was so blamed far t' haul. Then,--Nature was accommodatin'. Come a' earthquake that shook and shook the ranch. Shook all the stones to the top. Erickson picked 'em up--and built the fence." But Boston was hard t' satisfy. So I tried to tell him about Rose and Billy. "No," he says; "if they's _one_ thing them printin' fellers won't stand fer it's a hero_ine_ that's hitched." So, then, I branched off on to pore Bud Hickok. "No," says Boston, again; "_that_ won't do. It's got to end up happy."