Gwen's Canyon

Book Excerpt: ...umor was not his forte, and his attempts in this direction in the weeks that followed would have been humorous were they not so pathetic. How I did my part I cannot tell. Those weeks are to me now like the memory of an ugly nightmare. The ghostly old man? moving in and out of his little daughter's room in useless dumb agony; Ponka's woe-stricken Indian face; Joe's extraordinary and unusual but loyal attempts at fun-making grotesquely sad, and the Duke's unvarying and invincible cheeriness; these furnish light and shade for the picture my memory brings me of Gwen in those days. For the first two weeks she was simply heroic. She bore her pain without a groan, submitted to the imprisonment which was harder than pain with angelic patience. Joe, the Duke and I carried out our instructions with careful exactness to the letter. She never doubted, and we never let her doubt, but in a few weeks she would be on the pinto's back again and after the cattle. She made us pass our word for this till it seeme...