In thirty days more, I was to die for her, and had no other wish or expectation.
Close in the wake of the bugle music tame the soft, distant, mournful howl of a wolf. That was Rain's call!
Oh, then I knew I had been too good too long. With a sigh for departed virtue, I swung off round the stables, dodged behind them, climbed the manure heap piled against the stockade, and there stood looking out across the plains. From somewhere close at hand in the dusk, I heard a most seductive little howl. At that, I sent Rich Mixed home, dropped lightly down the outer side of the rampart, and pounded across the boulder flats until I saw a little heap of something up against the sky-line.
"Oo-oo!" said the little heap, and "Oo-oo-oo!"
I scrambled up the bank of Old Man's River and whispered: "Is that you?"
"Oo."
So I squatted, with ominous cracks at the seams, on one spurred heel, then lighted a cigarette, so she might see my little new mustache. "Well," I puffed, with becoming condescension. "What's up?"
Of course, I adored her, but with a woman it never pays to be monotonous, for if she knows exactly what to expect, she loses interest.
"Once, in the very-long-ago-time," she crooned, in a sing-song voice, "there used to be a queer person called Boy-drunk-in-the-morning."
"Oh, bosh!" said I, hating the memory of such a name. "You mean Charging Buffalo."