Chapter XI. Following the Dim Trails!

Thurston did not go on the horse roundup. He explained to the boys, when they clamored against his staying, that he had a host of things to write, and it would keep him busy till they were ready to start with the wagons for the big rendezvous on the Yellowstone, the exact point of which had yet to be decided upon by the Stock Association when it met. The editors were after him, he said, and if he ever expected to get anywhere, in a literary sense, it be-hooved him to keep on the smiley side of the editors.

That sounded all right as far as it went, but unfortunately it did not go far. The boys winked at one another gravely behind his back and jerked their thumbs knowingly toward Milk River; by which pantomime they reminded one another--quite unnecessarily that Mona Stevens had come home. However, they kept their skepticism from becoming obtrusive, so that Thurston believed his excuses passed on their face value. The boys, it would seem, realized that it is against human nature for a man to declare openly to his fellows his intention of laying last, desperate siege to the heart of a girl who has already refused him three times, and to ask her for the fourth time if she will reconsider her former decisions and marry him.

That is really what kept Thurston at the Lazy Eight. His writing became once more a mere incident in his life. During the winter, when he did not see her, he could bring himself to think occasionally of other things; and it is a fact that the stories he wrote with no heroine at all hit the mark the straightest.

Now, when he was once again under the spell of big, clear, blue gray eyes and crimply brown hair, his stories lost something of their virility and verged upon the sentimental in tone. And since he was not a fool he realized the falling off and chafed against it and wondered why it was. Surely a man who is in love should be well qualified to write convincingly of the obsession but Thurston did not. He came near going to the other extreme and refusing to write at all.

The wagons were out two weeks--which is quite long enough for a crisis to arise in the love affair of any man. By the time the horse roundup was over, one Philip Thurston was in pessimistic mood and quite ready to follow the wagons, the farther the better. Also, they could not start too soon to please him. His thoughts still ran to blue-gray eyes and ripply hair, but he made no attempt to put them into a story.

He packed his trunk carefully with everything he would not need on the roundup, and his typewriter he put in the middle. He told himself bitterly that he had done with crimply haired girls, and with every other sort of girl. If he could figure in something heroic--only he said melodramatic--he might possibly force her to think well of him. But heroic situations and opportunities come not every day to a man, and girls who demand that their knights shall be brave in face of death need not complain if