and I was on my knees “madly thrusting,” as “Alice in Wonderland” puts it, “a right-hand foot into a left-hand shoe” when Joe came up to me and said: “Mrs. Douglas (they all decided to call me Mrs. Douglas, as more informal than Mrs. Robinson), it ain’t worth while for you to tire yourself like that when the best packer in all Dakota is standin’ in the doorway.” I looked up and sure enough a huge man, who might have just walked out of one of Bret Harte’s novels, _was_ “standin’ in the doorway.” “There he is,” continued Joe; “that’s Hell-Roarin’ Bill, the sheriff of the county; you heard tell of how he caught that lunatic; well, Bill’s the best ladies’ packer that ever was, and you had better leave all your bags to him to arrange.” Fearing that “Bill” might be offended if I did not use him in the capacity of a French maid, and having frequently been told of the rapid results of hurt feelings on the part of “Bill,” I suavely called him to my side, and telling him of the wonderful reputation which I had heard he enjoyed, I immediately put my wardrobe in his care, and to my infinite surprise the huge backwoodsman measured up to his reputation. Very soon the cavalcade was ready, the rain had ceased to fall in such torrents, the half-misty quality in the air lent a softer beauty to the arid landscape, and a sense of adventure was the finishing touch to our expectations as we started for Elkhorn Ranch. My disappointed friends, Merrifield and Sylvane, said that “they did not believe that Mrs. Douglas would like drivin’ with a ‘shotgun team’ much better than ridin’ a buckin’ bronco, but, of course, if she _thought_ she wanted to go that way, she could.” An hour later “Mrs. Douglas” somewhat regretted her choice of progression; true enough, it _was_ a shotgun team attached to that springless wagon in which we sat! The horses had never been hitched up together before, and their methods of motion were entirely at odds. The cowboy driver, however, managed eventually to get them started, and from that moment our progress, though irrelevant, was rapid beyond words. We forded the “Little Missouri” River twenty-three times on the way to the ranch-house, and as the banks of the river were extremely steep, it was always a question as to whether we could go fast enough down one bank to get sufficient impetus to enable us to go through the river and up the very steep bank on the other side; so that either coming or going we were in imminent danger of a complete somersault. However, we did accomplish that long, exhausting, springless drive, and gradually the buttes rose higher and higher around us, the strange formation of the Bad Lands, curious in color, became more and more marked, the cottonwood-trees more plentiful as the river broadened out, and suddenly we saw buried amidst the trees on the farther side of one of our fordings the substantially built, cosey-looking house called by my brother the Elkhorn Ranch.