But Lamborn.  I had made an enemy of him.  Rather, he had turned himself into my enemy.  He was running with a gang of rough fellows called the McCall boys.  They drank and fought, using clubs or stones or knives.  They were suspected of trying to rob the stage when it was driven by the poor wretch who had died of the cholera two summers before.  That driver was noted for his courage, his ready use of the rifle; and he had frightened the marauders off, and had wounded one of them, who limped away until the trail of his blood was obscured.

Every time I came into town I was subjected to wolfish leers from some member of this gang.  Evidently they had taken up Lamborn’s cause.  Something was preying upon him.  He was drinking more heavily.  Perhaps he was tormented with the thought that I knew his secret and abided some vengeance upon him.  Perhaps his conscience tortured him.  At any rate he had become a skulking figure of hatred, showing his teeth and snarling when he saw me and sidling away like a wolf.  He had muttered curses as he hurried to one side.  “Bloody Englishman” and the like were his remarks.  Something told me to watch him, to watch the McCall boys.  I began to take pains to guard my house in the country, sleeping always with my rifle by my side; and I had provided my men with rifles, instructing them to shoot if trespassers approached during suspicious hours or when warned away.

The autumn was the most delicious weather I had experienced since coming to America.  Enough of the summer was carried over into October, and even November, to keep the days warm and full of sunlight, while the nights were clear and frosty, and always over this boundless prairie the far scattered stars.  I had bought an astronomical chart and located the constellations, in which Zoe had joined me in increasing wonder.  Then I had a taste of real hunting.  Reverdy and I had gone to marshes a few miles away for wild geese and ducks; and we had come back loaded with game for ourselves and friends.  There were many parties and what were called “shucking bees,” where the company set to to assist the host in ridding the corn of its sheath; and quilting bees; and apple parings.  These were occasions of festival, the local rituals of Dionysius.  Earlier in the fall I had gone to a county fair and had seen the products of the field on display; and had studied the people:  the tall angular gawks, the men carrying whips, the dust, the noise, the cheap fakirs and gamblers, the fights, the drunkenness, the women tired and perspiring carrying their babies and leading a brood.  To me it was more like a cattle pen befogged with dust than an assemblage of human beings.  And there was no happiness, no real joy; only barbaric breaking away from hard labor and the silence of the farms; only a reeling and a howling and a war dance; and only here and there a flash of breeding and fineness, and intelligent use of the occasion for sweeter joys and fuller life.