, 1920-01-29
A CHANGE
OF HEART
By CAROLINE LOCKHART
(Copyright.)

(Copyright.)
81 hates kids; / despises kids" said
Dad Walker querulously, as he rubbed
a clean place on the w~indow-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 l
got the right count IN 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
dams, er field-mice, err"
Hes 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 II don't
aim to educate eight Doodys after this
year. I've paid school taxes and
packed schoolmarms back and forth
In to-
"Still, them DoOdys ought to be
company for us his winter, with
everybody movin' out Of the camp"
Company! l won't have nothin' to
do with EN-. / hates half-breeds worse
nor p'izen, and 1 don't want them kid
to git in the habit of runnin' over
here. They're liable to pick up some
thing"
uI.o2 ), - I, Danon -pinl ran1in1 dru-
ly. They might steal the stove. or
the bunk, or that th~irty-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 a 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 a man think of his
| self to marry a blanket squaw?"
To his surprise, he was not molested
by the Doodys.
When the days grew short and the
towering mountains surrounding the
abandoned e~opper-camp of Swift Wa
| ter made them even shorter, the long
evenings seemed in~terminable. 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 sncws ought to have brought
the sheep down." he said n day. re-
garding the white mountains specu-
~latively. 81 h'leeve I'll get Billy Upton
and take a hunt. / hankers 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 sun."
So Bacon-Rind packed his camp out
| fit on a cayuse and started with Billy
| Upton for the hills.
Bacon-Rind was a pinhead-Dad
never had thought OF him as anything
| else: yet he missed his partner un-
commonly. ne Hdu W uuiuil thut'
Late one afternoon he washed a
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 hin of nothing else to do which
would enable him to kill time, he took
his ak out to the grindstone, although
1t was already 20 sharp he could al
most cut hair with 1t.
"If Bacon-Rind amt back pretty
soon," he said peevishly, "T1l git worse
nor the Wild man 1 knowed in Wiscon-
sin, who lived in a holler tree and ct a
deer at a sittin'."