IT having developed that at some former period Blazer Sam had been known by the surname Hopkins, Miss Schofield had agreed with the Rose that the latter should receive her mail under the very respectable superscription of Mrs. Rose Hopkins, and at the camp post-office arrangements had been made to this end. Miss Schofield had further agreed to write. Also that Peanut should write as soon as he was able to do so.

If the Rose went oftener to the camp now, and, bringing home heavier bundles, filled longer days with harder work, it may have been only that she was providing for an old age that could not be far distant, or very luxurious at best.

If the mail service possessed a new attraction for her, she did not show it. Her years of lonely secretive life had been not without their effect. She made no inquiries for letters, and seemed rather surprised when one day in September the storekeeper, who was also postmaster, laid a sealed envelope with her package of coffee on the counter.

Both the address and the letter were printed—type-written. The Rose did not understand this process, and was deeply grateful to Miss Schofield for taking extra pains to make the reading easy. It was not a long letter, telling only of her safe arrival in Chicago with Philip, and the fact that he was already at school, where he would learn very fast. Her friends thought a great deal of her “little mountain boy,” but she was trying not to let them spoil him. She wished to keep his nature as fresh and beautiful as the mountains themselves, adding only such education as would make him understand the higher life, and such knowledge of the world as would fit him to take his part in it by and by. Philip had sent greetings to “Rose and the bears.” He would write before long, himself. He could already shape the letters, and was at his work constantly. If the Rose needed anything, she was of course to let Miss Schofield know. Meantime, she remained, etc., etc.

On the whole it was a satisfactory missive. Peanut was safe and remembered her. He was learning to write, and would send, by and by, letters of his own. To the Rose of Texas the type-written sheet containing these assurances became of more value than all her former possessions. She pinned it against the cabin wall where she could see it and pause before it as she passed in her work.

Only, in one sentence of the letter there was a pang. She had called him her “little mountain boy.” The Rose wondered vaguely if this meant that she herself had surrendered all claim. The sentence about the “higher life” rather pleased her. She took it to mean a more pretentious mode of living. If Peanut should visit her by and by he would probably come in a buggy, wearing a high hat such as she had seen on rich mine speculators. She resolved to make an effort herself to live up to this higher life and so preserve something of her claim on Peanut.

She recalled a tradition that women of the higher life did not drink whisky—at least not regularly. She would give up her toddies—by degrees, of course—but in time enough to do without them almost altogether when Peanut arrived. In the matter of clothes, she had noticed that those worn by Miss Schofield had been quite plain, not at all like her own gaudy finery of former years. She would get some very plain clothes, gradually, as she could earn the money, and have them ready for Peanut’s return. She would also piece together the remnants of her meager education.

She obtained at once such literature as could be had at the camp, and patiently pored over a government survey, and a mutilated primary arithmetic contributed by one of her patrons. A line to Miss Schofield would have brought her quantities of educational matter, but this fact did not occur to her. Indeed, the possibility of ever writing at all did not enter into her dreams.

In October came the first letter from Peanut:

The writing was very round and plain. It seemed marvelous to the Rose that he could do it already. He would reach the higher life sooner than she had thought. She would leave out her “between” toddies to-morrow.

A week later brought still another letter. Already there was improvement.

After that, letters came almost every week, and became the chief life interest of the lonely woman above the clearing. She pinned them side by side to the wall of her cabin, that she might read them without the wear of handling. She learned each by heart as it came, but this in no way destroyed the joy of after-perusal. She compared the writing, too, and his rapid improvement gratified her and spurred her to vigorous new efforts of her own.

I may say here that the boy’s progress gratified Miss Schofield as well. Alert, eager, sensitive to new impressions, Peanut in two months had overtaken many of his own age. Some he had passed altogether. In a November letter, he wrote:

“There is a rale-road here that runs up in the air, and rale-roads on the groun that go all the time, day an nite. I want to see you and the bears and Sams grave. And I want to be in the woods where there are no rale-roads.”

The evident homesickness of this letter touched the Rose deeply. The “rale-road in the air” made her marvel.

The next letter contained further information.

“Wim-men here do not smoak. And they do not say dam. I mean wim-men like Miss Schofield.”

The Rose had never been given to profanity. It had been a luxury, to be indulged in on rare occasions. She could forego it easily. Her pipe would be a harder matter. Harder even than her toddy—yet, she must do it—she would begin at once. She resolved that nothing should stand between her and a share in that higher life for which Peanut was destined.

Later in November there came a letter in which he said:

“The people here have white stones at their graves in-sted of boards. They call them marble. They put their names on them, and when they was born and was kild, or died. They are not alwis kild here. I wish Sam had a white mar-ble stone with his true name on it. We could keep the other too. They have one at each end. When I come back I will by one.”

The Rose toiled earlier and later than before. She no longer had time for solitaire. She also grew thinner, and a new look had come into her face. The possibility of former beauty could be more easily accorded. A miner from the camp came one day and wanted to marry her. Some trace of a far-off former life of coquetry made her laugh and say to him:

“You’re too late. I’ve a sweetheart already. He’s coming in a buggy, with fine clothes on, and a high hat.”

The miner went back to camp and reported that the Rose had caught a speculator, who would take her to Ogden in the spring.

Autumn became winter. The bears went to sleep in their cave, and came no more to the cabin. Blazer Sam’s grave was lost in folds of white, and at times the lone woman above the clearing was shut in for days. But though alone, she was no longer lonely. With work and the letters upon the wall her days had become as dream-days, her nights brief periods of untroubled sleep. It was only when the passes were blocked and detained the stage with Peanut’s letter that she minded the storm. At one time the delay was long. Then she received two, and was proportionately gratified. In the longer of these he wrote:

“Miss Schofield gives shose. She has a lant-ern that makes pic-tures on a big sheet. They are seens of where she goes. Last night she shode the mines and told about them. Then she shode Sams grave with me a-sleep on it, and it was as big as it is there. She came and took my hand and led me up in front of the peo-ple and told them it was the grave of the cel-ib-ra-ted Sam Hopkins, and that he had been called Blazer Sam, and how she found me asleep on his grave, and how he used to make me whissels and go with me over the mount-ins. And how he must have had a good hart to care so much for a lit-tle boy. And when I saw the picture so big and plain and heard how much she liked Sam too, I had to cry, and Miss Schofield says that then all the peo-ple cried, and that she must not do it again. If Miss Schofield was not so good I would come back. I think about the bears up in their cave a-sleep, and how the snow is on Sams grave, and how lonesome you must be there alone. She is almost as good as Sam, and I know now that Sam belonged to the hire life. I guess he lerned it when he was away so much.”

It is doubtful if Miss Schofield saw all the letters which Peanut wrote to the Rose. I have reason to believe that she saw none of them after the first, and that one only to be sure that it was legible and properly addressed. She meant to be liberal, and was so, according to her lights. Her favorite word was “spontaneity” and she was eager to allow the boy his own privacy and expression—any form of freedom, indeed, that did not conflict with the lives of others or with his spiritual development.

Concerning his former guardian and beloved hero, she carefully avoided any suggestion that would tend to destroy a beautiful illusion of childhood. In the boy’s dream-life Sam had been all that he appeared, and there must be no rude awakening. Little by little, as we learn the truth about Santa Claus and fairies, and never wholly lose faith in them, so in due course and almost imperceptibly would come enlightenment and a truer understanding.

But this attitude did not prevent Miss Schofield from dilating upon the lurid history of Blazer Sam in her entertainment, as usually given. Peanut was absent at such times, and the audience unknown to him. It was one of her choicest bits, and the grim humor of it was only heightened by the touch of pathos supplied by the picture of the grave with the sleeping figure of Peanut, the story of his devotion to the outlaw, and his present relation to herself. As I have said, Miss Schofield was, before all, the artist.

Nor would it be fair, I think, to attach blame to Miss Schofield for what the super-sensitive reader might regard as a certain disloyalty to Peanut. Certainly it was proper to leave his faith in Sam’s goodness undisturbed, at least through the boy’s trusting childhood; while it was no less justifiable to make such use of the facts as would best serve their artistic presentation. The ends of art have justified conditions far more questionable than these, and her error, if there was an error, would seem to have been an earlier matter—committed on that August day when, following a sudden half-romantic, half-philanthropic impulse, she was prompted to transplant, to a crowded and noisy environment, a life so essentially a thing of the open sky and the wide freedom of the hills. But perhaps there are no mistakes in this world. A good many otherwise reasonable persons hold by this doctrine.