These and several more were at the table.

"Eat your dinner," the Chief advised, and I ate, from steak to pie. The
three meals there were breakfast, dinner, and supper. No lettuce-leaf
lunch for them.

Dinner disposed of, I turned my attention to making my cabin fit to
live in. The cook had his flunky sweep and scrub the floor, and then,
with the aid of blankets, pictures, and draperies from my trunks, the
little place began to lose its forlorn look. White Mountain contributed
a fine pair of Pendleton blankets, gay and fleecy. He spread a Navajo
rug on the floor and placed an armful of books on the table. Ranger Fisk
threw the broken chair outside and brought me a chair he had made for
himself. Ranger Winess had been riding the drift fence while we worked,
but he appeared on the scene with a big cluster of red Indian paintbrush
blossoms he had found in a coulee. None of us asked if they were picked
inside the Park.

No bed was available, and again Ranger Fisk came to the rescue. He lent
me his cot and another ranger contributed his mattress.

White Mountain was called away, and when he returned he said that he had
hired a girl for the fire look-out tower, and suggested that I might
like to have her live there with me. "She's part Indian," he added.

"Fine. I like Indians, and anyway these doors won't lock. I'm glad to
have her." So they found another cot and put it up in the kitchen for
her.

She was a jolly, warm-hearted girl, used to life in such places. Her