The Quirt | Page 2

a two-room log cabin, built when logs were easier to
get than lumber. That the cabin contained two rooms was the result of
circumstances rather than design. Brit had hauled from the
mountain-side logs long and logs short, and it had seemed a shame to
cut the long ones any shorter. Later, when the outside world had crept a
little closer to their wilderness--as, go where you will, the outside
world has a way of doing--he had built a lean-to shed against the cabin
from what lumber there was left after building a cowshed against the
log barn.
In the early days, Brit had had a wife and two children, but the wife
could not endure the loneliness of the ranch nor the inconvenience of
living in a two-room log cabin. She was continually worrying over
rattlesnakes and diphtheria and pneumonia, and begging Brit to sell out
and live in town. She had married him because he was a cowboy, and
because he was a nimble dancer and rode gallantly with silver-shanked
spurs ajingle on his heels and a snakeskin band around his hat, and
because a ranch away out on Quirt Creek had sounded exactly like a
story in a book.
Adventure, picturesqueness, even romance, are recognized and
appreciated only at a distance. Mrs. Hunter lost the perspective of
romance and adventure, and shed tears because there was sufficient
mineral in the water to yellow her week's washing, and for various

other causes which she had never foreseen and to which she refused to
resign herself.
Came a time when she delivered a shrill-voiced, tear-blurred ultimatum
to Brit. Either he must sell out and move to town, or she would take the
children and leave him. Of towns Brit knew nothing except the
post-office, saloon, cheap restaurant side,--and a barber shop where a
fellow could get a shave and hair-cut before he went to see his girl. Brit
could not imagine himself actually living, day after day, in a town.
Three or four days had always been his limit. It was in a restaurant that
he had first met his wife. He had stayed three days when he had meant
to finish his business in one, because there was an awfully nice girl
waiting on table in the Palace, and because there was going to be a
dance on Saturday night, and he wanted his acquaintance with her to
develop to the point where he might ask her to go with him, and be
reasonably certain of a favorable answer.
Brit would not sell his ranch. In this Frank Johnson, old-time friend and
neighbor, who had taken all the land the government would allow one
man to hold, and whose lines joined Brit's, profanely upheld him. They
had planned to run cattle together, had their brand already recorded,
and had scraped together enough money to buy a dozen young cows.
Luckily, Brit had "proven up" on his homestead, so that when the irate
Mrs. Hunter deserted him she did not jeopardize his right to the land.
Brit was philosophical, thinking that a year or so of town life would be
a cure. If he missed the children, he was free from tears and nagging
complaints, so that his content balanced his loneliness. Frank proved up
and came down to live with him, and the partnership began to wear into
permanency. Share and share alike, they lived and worked and
wrangled together like brothers.
For months Brit's wife was too angry and spiteful to write. Then she
wrote acrimoniously, reminding Brit of his duty to his children. Royal
was old enough for school and needed clothes. She was slaving for
them as she had never thought to slave when Brit promised to honor
and protect her, but the fact remained that he was their father even if he
did not act like one. She needed at least ten dollars.

Brit showed the letter to Frank, and the two talked it over solemnly
while they sat on inverted feed buckets beside the stable, facing the
unearthly beauty of a cloud-piled Idaho sunset. They did not feel that
they could afford to sell a cow, and two-year-old steers were out of the
question. They decided to sell an unbroken colt that a cow-puncher
fancied. In a week Brit wrote a brief, matter-of-fact letter to Minnie and
enclosed a much-worn ten-dollar banknote. With the two dollars and a
half which remained of his share of the sale, Brit sent to a mail-order
house for a mackinaw coat, and felt cheated afterwards because the
coat was not "wind and water proof" as advertised in the catalogue.
More months passed, and Brit received, by registered mail, a notice that
he was being sued for divorce on the ground of non-support. He felt
hurt, because, as he pointed