Gilpin observer., 1920-01-29
A CHANGE
OF HEART
BY CAROLINE LOCKHART
(Copyright.)

tCopyrlHht)
II hates kids; despises kids" said
Dad Walker Querulously, as he rubbed
a clean place on the window-pane and
looked at the household goods of
DoOdy, the squawman, going into the
log shack across the street. There's
eight of them Doody young uns, If
got the right count ON them. They
mill round so fast it's like countin'
sheep"
| "Some folks Is all-same pigeons" OBJ
served Bacon-Rind Dick, who was mix
ing baking-powder biscuit in the dish
pan.
"Er Belgian hares, er French Cana
dians er tield-mice, err"
| "He's come up Off the reservation
to put his kids in school, l reckon"
"He furnishes the school and we
furnish the teacher. Personally my
self" declared Dad. sourly 81 don't
aim to educate eight Doodys after this
year. I've paid school taxes and
packed schoolmarms back and forth
from the railroad as long as I'm 60
In to-"
"Still, them Doodys ought to be
company for us this winter, with
everybody movin' out of the camp"
"Company won't have nothin' to
do with 'em. hates half-breeds worse
nor p'izen and I don't want them kids
to git in the habit of runnin' over
here. They're liable to pick up some
thing"
"That's So" Bacon-Rind replied dry
ly. "They might steal the stove. or
the bunk, or that thirty-pound bear
trap"
"Makes no diff'runce; and If they
start visitin' here, I'll tell 'em where to
get off at"
BY dwelling upon the Doodys and
the manner in which they would over
run him during the winter, Dad be-
came n kind of monomaniac upon the
subject, and each morning when he
looked through the window-pane he
demanded with the same regularity
with which some people comment upon
the weather:
"Whatever kin man think Of his
self to marry blanket squaw?"
To his surprise, he was not molested
by the Doodys.
When the days grew short and the
towering mountains surrounding the
abandoned copper-camp of Swift Wa
ter made them even shorter, the long
evenings seemed interminable. Bacon
Rind thought wistfully of the DOody
family, whose shrieks of exuberant
laughter frequently penetrated the ST.
lence which lay between the two part
ners long since talked out.
"These SHOWS ought to have brough,
the sheep down." he said one day. re-
garding the white mountains specu
latively. II h'leeve I'll get Billy Upton
and take hunt. bankers for sheep
meat. You won't be lonesome"
Lonesome Me?" Dad snorted. 81
was seven months alone onct, whar
the timber was SO thick you had to
lay on your back to see the SUM-"
So Bacon-Rind packed his camp out
fit on a cayuse and started with Billy
Upton for the hills.
Bacon-Rind was a pinhead-Dat
never had thought Of him as anything
else; yet he missed his partner un'
commonly. He had to admit that.
Late one afternoon he washed q
place on the window, lower down
where he could sit and look at the
"injun outfit" across the way. He was
lonely he had to admit that, too. and
1t looked kind of sociable to see the
black heads bobbing behind the win
dows of the log house opposite.
Dad oiled his boots with bear grease
and darned his socks; then, when he
could think of nothing else to do which
would enable him to kill time, he took
his AK out to the grindstone although
1t was already so sharp he could al
most cut hair with 1t.
"If BacOn-Rind amt back pretty
soon" he said peevlshly, ''Ill git worse
nor the wild man I knowed in Wiscon
sin, who lived in a holler tree and ct Q
deer at 'sittIn."