“Oh, yes, better than all the flowers on the prairie. My mamma loves them, too, because they made her think once papa wasn’t dead.”
“Thaine, what do you mean to do when you grow up?” Horace Carey interrupted the child.
“I’m going to be a soldier like my papa was,” Thaine declared decisively.
“But there will probably be no wars. You see, your papa and I fought the battles all through and settled things. Maybe you can’t go to war,” Dr. Carey suggested.
“Oh, yes, I can. There’ll be another war by that time, and I’m going, too. And when I come back I’m going away to where the purple notches are and have a big ranch and do just like my papa,” Thaine asserted.
“Where are the purple notches?” the doctor asked.
“See yonder, away, way off?”
Thaine pointed toward the misty southwest horizon where three darker curves were outlined against a background of pale purple blending through lilac up to silvery gray.
“I’m going there some day,” the boy insisted.
“And leave your papa and mamma?”