Mrs. Alton accepted the criticism deftly. "So it is," she admitted, "but then, you see, we _like_ Indians, just as we like people of all strange colors, which is something you Americans"--she used the word in its continental sense--"have not learned to do. No, Gerald, these are not Red Indians, with feathers and paint and bows and arrows, but white people like Mumsy and you, only very much wiser. They are friends from Fourteen and Twenty-two--it _is_ Fourteen and Twenty-two, isn't it?--you see how I am picking up your way of knowing places by number rather than by name--and they have come for a little visit with Gerald and Mumsy and Sandy. Now say 'How do you do, Miss Lane.'" But Gerald was not in exhibition mood. "Dem Injuns," he insisted, and with that we had to be satisfied. At length, with assurances that we would repeat our visit soon, and a promise from Mrs. Alton that she would return it when the men had her house under way, we clambered into our wagon and started the oxen on their slow, lumbering gait homeward. Sandy saw us properly off the place, and even stood at attention until we faded out of sight in the twilight. There is likely to be a nip to the night air on the prairies even in midsummer, and Jean, I noticed, snuggled comfortably beside me on the board across the wagon box which served as a seat. . . . Or perhaps it was that for the first time in months the latent motherhood in her nature had been stirred into consciousness. It was Sunday before we heard or saw anything more of Spoof. A hot summer wind was chasing little scurries of dust and billowing our oat field like a lake of turquoise green when suddenly his tall form loomed up on the rough trail which already wriggled across the prairie from Fourteen to Two. He had discarded coat and waist-coat; in a khaki-colored shirt and corduroy breeches and leggings and an Indian helmet which he had dug up from somewhere he was a picturesque and striking figure as he strode into the grateful shade of the shanty. Under his arm he carried a banjo case. "I'm tired after a busy week," he explained, "so I didn't bring the bullocks. Moreover, their behavior last Sunday was not exemplary. But I say," he continued, "there must be something in that remedy of yours, after all. They haven't balked since." "They have learned that you are a man of desperate measures," said Jack. "They have that. And besides, I fell in with a cow puncher on my way to town; his horse had gone lame and he took a lift with me. He was a veritable mine of expletives."