Then, outen the door nigh where the sunflowers’re growin’, mebbe she’ll come—­a slim, little figger in white.  And, if it’s plenty warm, and not too late, why, she’ll be totin’ the smartest, cutest——­ * * * That’s my little wife—­that’s Macie, now—­a-singin’ to the kid!

ELEANOR GATES,
in Cupid:  the Cow-Punch.

OCTOBER 25.

Let this be known, that a west-land ranch is no more than a farm, and a farm at the outermost edge of man’s dominions is forever a school and a field of strife and a means of grace to those who live thereon.

* * * The ways of the earth, the ways of the seasons, the ways of the elements, these had something to impart, eternally.  And man, no longer in the bond with the wild things all about him, wages ceaseless war against them, to protect his crops and the fowls and the animals that have come beneath his guardian-ship and know no laws of the air-folk, the brush-folk, or the forest-folk with whom they were once in brotherhood.

PHILIP VERRILL MIGHELS,
in Chatwit, the Man-Talk Bird.

OCTOBER 26.

And after supper, when the sun was down, and they was just a kinda half-light on the mesquite, and the old man was on the east porch, smokin’, and the boys was all lined up along the front of the bunk-house, clean outen sight of the far side of the yard, why I just sorta wandered over to the calf-corral, then ’round by the barn and the Chink’s shack, and landed up out to the west, where they’s a row of cottonwoods by the new irrigatin’ ditch.  Beyond, acrost a hunderd mile of brown plain, here was the moon a-risin’, bigger’n a dishpan, and a cold white.  I stood agin a tree and watched it crawl through the clouds.  The frogs was a-watchin’, too, I reckon, fer they begun to holler like the dickens, some bass and some squeaky.  And then, frum the other side of the ranch-house, struck up a mouth-organ.

ELEANOR GATES,
in Cupid:  the Cow-Punch.

OCTOBER 27.

EL VAQUERO.

  Tinged with the blood of Aztec lands,
  Sphinx-like, the tawny herdsman stands,
  A coiled riata in his hands. 
  Devoid of hope, devoid of fear,
  Half brigand, and half cavalier—­
  This helot, with imperial grace,
  Wears ever on his tawny face
  A sad, defiant look of pain. 
  Left by the fierce iconoclast,
  A living fragment of the past—­
  Greek of the Greeks he must remain.

LUCIUS HARWOOD FOOTE.

  His broad brimmed hat push’d back with careless air,
  The proud vaquero sits his steed as free
  As winds that toss his black, abundant hair.

JOAQUIN MILLER.

OCTOBER 28.