“He’s been trying to get fresh with me ever since I came. Picks wild, stormy nights when a man wants to stay indoors and then gets up on the bluff and hollers for help. First couple of nights I heard him, I bit. But I don’t fall for that hokum any more. A man that can holler the way he does and come back strong the next night don’t need any assistance from me. “I hoed your spuds to-day, Pat. Did a perfect imitation of Charlie Ray--except that I wasn’t costumed for the part. Didn’t have no gallus to hitch up and thereby register disgust with my job. But I featured the sweat--a close-up of me would have looked like Gary out in a rain. It was accidental. I was chasing Pat Connolly’s pigs, trying to round them up and get acquainted. They headed for Pat Connolly’s alfalfa and they went through the potato patch. There ought to be a fence around those spuds, Pat; or else the pigs ought to be shut up. You’re a darn shiftless ranch lady to let pigs run loose to root up your spuds. They’re in full blossom--and don’t ask me which I mean, pigs or potatoes. They needed a little strong-arm work, bad. The pigs ducked out of the scene into the alfalfa--and that sure needs cutting, too. There’s a scythe in the shed, and a fork or two and a hay rake. If Waddell’s got horses he couldn’t have used them much. Maybe he couldn’t afford a mowing machine, and cut his hay with a scythe. There’s a wagon here, and a comedy hayrack. But I can’t feature handsome Gary scything hay. “Anyway, every darned spud blossom in the patch peeked up at me through a jungle of weeds. That wouldn’t look good to a buyer (you won’t get a chance to read this letter, old girl, so I don’t mind telling you you’ve played right into my hands with that Power of Attorney, and I’m going to sell out, if Monty Girard ever comes and hauls me back to town). They’re not finished yet, but I can do the rest in the morning if Monty don’t come. “Monty Girard has plumb forgotten me, I guess. He was a friendly cuss, too. He’s seven days overdue, and I’d get out and hunt him up, only he forgot to leave me his address and I can’t get his ’phone number from Information. Can’t get Information. There ain’t no telephone. He said his camp was about twenty miles off. But I’m wise to these desert miles. More likely it’s thirty. I tried to trail him yesterday, but he took our back track for five miles or so, and for all I know he may have beat it back to town. That’s not walking distance, I’ll tell a heartless world.