56 Rod, Gun, and Palette in the High Rockies 



encountered, however, was Mistress Kerzenmacher herself, when 

 Fred, with the matter-of-course at-home-ness of this section of 

 the West, placed his hand on the knob of the house door, and 

 without knocking, walked into the lady's kitchen, followed by the 

 artist, immediately thereafter presented to its mistress. Mrs. 

 Kerzenmacher, a comely woman well above the average stature, 

 with a fresh clear skin, of an attractive neatness of person and 

 appointments, received her visitors with a fineness of manner 

 that left no sort of doubt of their welcome. The lady's steady, 

 <lirect gaze, a poise of manner that showed a very complete 

 mastery of all possible exigencies of the life of a rancher's wife, 

 a clear voice of an agreeable pitch, together with a certain dignity 

 of bearing, coupled with a genial and sincere courtesy to her guests, 

 well prepared one for the further discovery that she was of High- 

 land Scots descent, but one generation removed from Gaelic- 

 speaking forbears who had settled in Southern Pennsylvania. 



The windows of a bright, fresh kitchen were filled with prize 

 geraniums, products of Mrs. Kerzenmacher's skill and care. 

 Grown in tomato cans, with sturdy, full leafed stems, each plant 

 bore a massive head of bloom, some two or three, with each single 

 floret developed to the full. Ranging in color from the palest 

 rose to the deepest crimson, they were worthy to rank with the 

 finest of prize flowers that the writer could recollect ever having 

 seen at sundry flower shows in past years. Raised in the first 

 instance from seed, and thereafter by slips, from the strongest 

 plants, with a professional gardener's skill shown in crossing the 

 different strains, nursed through the unspeakable chills of Montana 

 winters, a continual feast of perfume and pleasure the year round, 

 they were an eloquent testimony to an innate love of beauty. 



Her two boys, fair-haired, blue-eyed, with deep chests and 

 broad shoulders, had a strong fineness of the open air and moun- 

 tains about them that made the city children imaged freshly in 

 the artist's recollection, appear coarse beside them, or where not 

 that, unhealthy and under-developed. 



Other company present in the Kerzenmacher kitchen were 

 Miss Sontag the local school ma'am, Mrs. Fred Lamoureaux 

 with her baby, and Jack Dolan, the mail carrier between Grayling 

 and Lake, Idaho, thirty-five miles away, making the trip three 

 times a week. 



