CHAPTER XII.
I Begin to Realize.
If I had hoped that I'd gotten over any foolishness by spending the fall and winter away from White Divide--or the sight of it--I commenced right away to find out my mistake.

No sooner did the big ridge rise up from the green horizon, than every scar, and wrinkle, and abrupt little peak fairly shouted things about Beryl King.
She wasn't there; she was back in New York, and that blasted Terence Weaver was back there, too, making all kinds of love to her according to the letters of Edith.

But I hadn't realized just how seriously I was taking it, till I got within sight of the ridge that had sheltered her abiding-place and had made all the trouble.
Like a fool I had kept telling myself that I was fair sick for the range; for range-horses and range-living; for the wind that always blows over the prairies, and for the cattle that feed on the hills and troop down the long coulee bottoms to drink at their favorite watering-places.

I thought it was the boys I wanted to see, and to gallop out with them in the soft sunrise, and lie down with them under a tent roof at night; that I wanted to eat my meals sitting cross-legged in the grass, with my plate piled with all the courses at once and my cup of coffee balanced precariously somewhere within reach.
That's what I thought.

When things tasted flat in old Frisco, I wasn't dead sure why, and maybe I didn't want to be sure why.