Andrei and his wife talked together in the cow-shed, before the old man hobbled out to gather the mushrooms. Poverty and suffering had made them hard and the sight of this stranger with so much gold was too much for them. So it was a plate full of death cups which Andrei's wife cooked for the brown-faced stranger with the loud laugh. And they stood about and watched him eat them. Then he died, as Andrei knew he must die. But the old woman hid in the cow-shed until it was over, for it took some time. Together then the old couple searched the dead man's bags and his pockets. They found papers and certain marks on his body. They knew then that they had murdered their own son. The old man hobbled all the way to the nearest village, where he sent a letter to Olga's father and bought a clothes-line to take home. The journey took him an entire day. With that clothes-line Andrei Przenikowski and his wife hanged themselves, from one of the rafters in the cow-shed.
Olga said that she was only five years old then, but she remembered driving over with the others, after the letter had come to her father's place. She can still remember seeing the two old bodies hanging side by side and twisting slowly about in the wind. And she saw what was left of the mushrooms. She says she can never forget it and dreams of it quite often. And Olga is not what you would call emotional. She told me, as she dried her hands and hung up the dish-pan, that she can still see her people staring down at what was left of that plate of poisoned death cups, which had turned quite black, almost as black as the dead man she saw them lift up on the dirty bed.
_Monday the Twelfth_
Yesterday was Sunday and Olga in her best bib and tucker sat out in the sun with Dinky-Dink. She seemed perfectly happy merely to hold him. I looked out, to make sure he was all right, for a few days before Olga had nearly given me heart failure by balancing my boy on one huge hand, as though he were a mutton-chop, so that the adoring Olie might see him kick. As I stood watching Olga crooning above Buddy Boy, Percy rode up. Then he came over and joined Olga, who carefully lifted up the veil covering Dinky-Dink's face, and showed him off to the somewhat intimidated Percy. Percy poked a finger at him, and made absurd noises, and felt his legs as Olga directed and then sat down in front of Olga.
They talked there for a long time, quite oblivious of everything about them. At least Percy talked, for Olga's replies seemed mostly monosyllabic. But she kept bathing him in that mystic moonlight stare of hers and sometimes she showed her teeth in a slow and wistful sort of smile. Percy clattered on, quite unconscious that I was standing in the doorway staring at him. They seemed to be great pals. And I've been wondering what they talked about.
_Wednesday the Fourteenth_
To-day after dinner Dinky-Dunk took the Boy and held him up on Paddy's back, where he looked like a bump on a log. And that started me thinking that it wouldn't be so long before my little Snoozerette had a pony of his own and would be cantering off across the prairie like a monkey on a circus horse. For I want my boy to ride, and ride well. And then a little later he would be cantering off to school. And then it wouldn't be such a great while before he'd be hitting the trail side by side with some clear-eyed prairie girl on a dappled pinto, and I'd be a silvery-haired old lady wondering if that clear-eyed girl was good enough for my son! And there I was, as usual, dreaming of the future!
All day long the fact that Dinky-Dunk is getting extravagant has been hitting me just under the fifth rib. So I asked him if we could really afford a six-cylinder car with tan slip-covers and electric lights. "Afford it?" he echoed, "of course we can afford it. We can afford anything. Hang it all, our lean days are over and we haven't had the imagination to wake up to the fact. And d'you know what I'm going to do if certain things come my way? I'm going to send you and the Babe down to New York for the winter!"
"And where will you be?" I promptly inquired. The look of mingled pride and determination went out of his face.
"Oh, I'll have to hang around the Polar regions up here to look after things. But you and the Boy have got to have your chance. And I'll come down for two weeks at Easter and bring you home with me!"
"And will you be enjoying it up here?" I inquired.
"Of course I won't," acknowledged Dinky-Dunk. "But think what it will mean to you, Gee-Gee, to have a few months in the city again! And think what you've been missing!"
"Goosey-goosey-gander!" I said as I got his foolish old head in Chancery. "I want you to listen to me. There's nothing I've been missing. And you are plum locoed, Honey Chile, if you think I could ever be happy away from you, in New York or any other city. And I wouldn't go there for the winter if you gave me the Plaza and all the Park for a back yard!"
That declaration of mine seemed to puzzle him. "But think what it would mean to the Boy!" he contended.
"Well, what?" I demanded.
"Oh, good--er--good pictures and music and all that sort of thing!" he vaguely explained. I couldn't help laughing at him.
"But, Dinky-Dunk, don't you think Babe's a month or so too young to take up Debussy and the Post-Impressionists, you big, foolish, adorable old muddle-headed captor of helpless ladies' hearts!" And I firmly announced that he could never, never get rid of me.
_Thursday the Fifteenth_
Now that Olga is working altogether inside with me she is losing quite a little of her sunburn. Her skin is softer and she has acquired a little more of the Leonardo di Vinci look. She almost seems to be getting spiritualized--but it may be simply because she's lengthened her skirts. She loves Babe, and, I'm afraid, is rather spoiling him. I find her a better and better companion, not only because she talks more, but because she seems in some way to be climbing up to a newer level. Between whiles, I'm teaching her to cook. She learns readily, and is proud of her progress. But the thing of which she is proudest is her corsets. And they _do_ make a difference. Even Dinky-Dunk has noticed this. Yesterday he stood and stared after her.
"By gum," he sagely remarked, "that girl is getting a figure!" Men are so absurd. When this same Olga was going about half uncovered he never even noticed her. Now that she's mystified her nether limbs with a little drapery he stands staring after her as though she were a Venus de Milo come to life. And Olga is slowly but surely losing a little of her Arcadian simplicity. Yesterday I caught her burning up her cowhide boots. She is ashamed of them. And she is spending most of her money on clothes, asking me many strange questions as to apparel and carrying off my fashion magazines to her bedroom for secret perusal. For the first time in her life she is using cold cream. And the end seems to justify the means, for her skin is now like apple blossoms. Rodin, I feel sure, would have carried that woman across America on his back, once to have got her into his atelier!
Last week I persuaded Terry to take a try at Meredith and lent him my green cloth copy of _Harry Richmond_. Three days ago I found the seventh page turned down at the corner, and suspecting that this marked the final frontier of his advance, I tied a strand of green silk thread about the volume. It was still there this morning, though Terry daily and stoutly maintains that he's getting on grand with that fine green book of mine! But at noon to-day when Dinky-Dunk got back from Buckhorn he handed Terry a parcel, and I noticed the latter glanced rather uneasily about as he unwrapped it. This afternoon I discovered that it held two new books in paper covers. One was _The Hidden Hand_ and the other was called _The Terror of Tamaraska Gulch_. Terry, of late, has been doing his reading in his own room. And Nick Carter, apparently, is not to be so easily displaced. But a man who can make you read his books for the third time must be a genius. If I were an author, that's the sort of man I'd envy. And I think I'll try Percival Benson with _The Terror of Tamaraska Gulch_ when Terry is through with it!
_Friday the Sixteenth_
We were just finishing dinner to-day, and an uncommonly good one it seemed to me, and I was looking contentedly about my little family circle, wondering what more life could hold for a big healthy hulk of a woman like me, when the drone and purr of an approaching motor-car broke through the sound of our talk. Dinky-Dunk, in fact, was laying down the law about the farmer of the West, maintaining that he was a broader-spirited and bigger-minded man than his brother of the East, and pointing out that the westerner's wife was a queen who if she had little ease at least had great honor. And I was just thinking that one glorious thing about this same queen was that she at least escaped from all the twentieth-century strain and dislocation in the relationship between city men and women, when the hum of that car brought me back to earth and reminded me that I might have a tableful of guests to feed. The car itself drew up, with a flutter of its engine, half-way between the shack and the corral, and at that sound I imagine we all rather felt like Robinson Crusoes listening to the rattle of an anchor cable in Juan Fernandez's quietest bay. And through the open window I could make out a huge touring-car pretty well powdered with dust and with no less than six men in it.