By all these signs and tokens he had learned his West, and
should have taken himself back to civilization when came the
frost. He had come to get into touch with his chosen field of
fiction, that he might write as one knowing whereof he spoke.
So far as he had gone, he was in touch with it; he was steeped
to the eyes in local color--and there was the rub The lure of it
was strong upon him, and he might not loosen its hold. He was
the son of his father; he had found himself, and knew that, like
him, he loved best to travel the dim trails.

Gene Wasson came in and slammed the door emphatically shut after
him. "She's sure coming," he complained, while he pulled the
icicles from his mustache and cast them into the fire. "She's
going to be a real, old howler by the signs. What yuh doing,
Bud? Writing poetry?"

Thurston nodded assent with certain mental reservations; so far
the editors couldn't seem to make up their minds that it was
poetry.

"Well, say, I wish you'd slap in a lot uh things about hazy,
lazy, daisy days in the spring--that jingles fine!--and green
grass and the sun shining and making the hills all goldy yellow,
and prairie dogs chip-chip-chipping on the 'dobe flats.
(Prairie dogs would go all right in poetry, wouldn't they?
They're sassy little cusses, and I don't know of anything that
would rhyme with 'em, but maybe you do.) And read it all out to
me after supper. Maybe it'll make me kinda forget there's a
blizzard on."