"Out here? With a hundred kinds of birds to keep things going? With the trout leaping in the streams in the summer time, and a good gun in the hollow of your arm in the winter? Besides, there's old Lost Wing and his squaw, you know. I get a lot of enjoyment out of them when we're snowed in--in the winter. He's told me fully fifty versions of how the Battle of Wounded Knee was fought, and as for Custer's last battle--it's wonderful!" "He knows all about it?" "I'd hardly say that." Medaine reached under her cap for a hairpin, looked quickly at Barry as though to ask him whether he could stand pain, then pressed a recalcitrant thorn into a position where it could be extracted. "I think the best description of Lost Wing is that he's an admirable fiction writer. Ba'tiste says he has more lies than a dog has fleas." "Then it isn't history?" "Of course not. Just imagination. But it's well done, with plenty of gestures. He stands in front of the fire and acts it all out while his squaw sits on the floor and grunts and nods and wails at the right time, and it's really entertaining. They're about a million years old, both of them. My father got them when he first came down here from Montreal. He wanted Lost Wing as a sort of bodyguard. It was a good deal wilder in this region then than it is now, and father owned a good deal of land." "So Ba'tiste tells me. He says that practically all of the forests around here are yours." "They will be, next year," came simply, "when I'm--" She stopped and laughed. "Ba'tiste told me. Twenty-one." "He never could keep anything to himself." "What's wrong about that? I'm twenty-seven myself." "Honestly? You don't look it." "Don't I? I ought to. I've got a beard and everything. See?" He pulled his hand away for a moment to rub the two-days' growth on his face. "I tried to shave this morning. Couldn't make it. Ba'tiste said he'd play barber for me this afternoon. Next time you come over I'll be all slicked up." Again she laughed, and once more pursued the remaining thorns. "How do you know there'll be a next time?" "If there isn't, I'll drive nails in myself, so you'll have to pull 'em out." Then seriously. "You do come over here often, don't you?" "Of course--" then, the last thorn disposed of, she rose--"to see Ba'tiste. I look on him as a sort of a guardian. He knew my father. But let's talk about yourself. You seem remarkably clear in your mind to be afflicted with amnesia. Are you sure you don't remember anything--?" "No--not now. But," and Barry hedged painfully, "I think I will. It acts to me like a momentary thing. Every once in a while I get a flash as though it were all coming back; it was just the fall, I'm sure of that. My head's all right." "You mean your brain?" "Yes. I don't act crazy, or anything like that, do I?"