I’m slave to the call of the open road;
      In your cities I’d stifle and die. 
    I’m off to the hills in fancy I see—­
      On the breast of old earth I’ll lie.

    Wilfred Lennox, the Hobo Poet,
    On a Coast-to-Coast Walking Tour. 
    These Cards for sale.

I briefly pondered the lyric.  It told its own simple story and could at once have been dismissed but for its divined and puzzling relationship to the popular society favourite of Nome, Alaska.  What could there be in this?

Mrs. Lysander John Pettengill bustled in upon my speculation, but as usual I was compelled to wait for the talk I wanted.  For some moments she would be only the tired owner of the Arrowhead Ranch—­in the tea gown of a debutante and with too much powder on one side of her nose—­and she must have at least one cup of tea so corrosive that the Scotch whiskey she adds to it is but a merciful dilution.  She now drank eagerly of the fearful brew, dulled the bite of it with smoke from a hurriedly built cigarette, and relaxed gratefully into one of those chairs which are all that most of us remember William Morris for.  Even then she must first murmur of the day’s annoyances, provided this time by officials of the United States Forest Reserve.  In the beginning I must always allow her a little to have her own way.

“The annual spring rumpus with them rangers,” she wearily boomed.  “Every year they tell me just where to turn my cattle out on the Reserve, and every year I go ahead and turn ’em out where I want ’em turned out, which ain’t the same place at all, and then I have to listen patiently to their kicks and politely answer all letters from the higher-ups and wait for the official permit, which always comes—­and it’s wearing on a body.  Darn it!  They’d ought to know by this time I always get my own way.  If they wasn’t such a decent bunch I’d have words with ’em, giving me the same trouble year after year, probably because I’m a weak, defenceless woman.  However!”

The lady rested largely, inert save for the hand that raised the cigarette automatically to her lips.  My moment had come.

“What did Wilfred Lennox, the hobo poet, have to do with Mr. Ben Sutton, of Nome, Alaska?” I gently inquired.

“More than he wanted,” replied the lady.  Her glance warmed with memories; she hovered musingly on the verge of recital.  But the cigarette was half done and at its best.  I allowed her another moment, a moment in which she laughed confidentially to herself, a little dry, throaty laugh.  I knew that laugh.  She would be marshalling certain events in their just and diverting order.  But they seemed to be many and of confusing values.