The thrashing outfits are over at Casa Grande, and my being a mere spectator of the big and busy final act of the season’s drama reminds me of three years ago, just before Dinkie arrived. Struthers, however, is at Casa Grande and in her glory, the one and only woman in a circle of nine active-bodied men.

I begin to see that it’s true what Dinky-Dunk said about business looming bigger in men’s lives than women are apt to remember. He’s working hard, and his neck’s so thin that his Adam’s apple sticks out like a push-button, but he gets his reward in finding his crop running much higher than he had figured. He’s as keen as ever he was for power and prosperity. He wants success, and night and day he’s scheming for it. Sometimes I wonder if he didn’t deliberately use his cousin Allie in this juggling back of Casa Grande into his own hands. Yet Dinky-Dunk, with all his faults, is not, and could not be, circuitous. I feel sure of that.

He became philosophical, the other day when I complained about the howling of the coyotes, and protested it was these horizon-singers that kept the prairie clean. He even argued that the flies which seem such a pest to the cattle in summer-time are a blessing in disguise, since the unmolested animals over-eat when feed is plentiful and get black-rot. So out of suffering comes wisdom and out of endurance comes fortitude!