CHAPTER XIII. 

FLAXEN'S GREAT NEED. 

Flaxen wrote occasionally, during the next year, letters all too short and too far between for the lonely man toiling away on his brown farm. These letters were very much alike, telling mainly of how happy she was, and of what she was going to do by and by, on Christmas or Thanksgiving. Once she sent a photograph of herself and husband, and Anson, after studying it for a long time, took a pair of shears and cut the husband off, and threw him into the fire. 

"That fellow gives me the ague," he muttered. 

Bert did not write, and there was hardly a night that Ans lay down on his bed that he did not wonder where his chum was, especially as the winter came on unusually severe, reminding him of that first winter in the Territory. Day after day he spent alone in his house, going out only to feed the cattle or to get the mail. The sad wind was always in his ears. But with the passage of time the pain in his heart lost its intensity. 

One day he got a letter from Flaxen that startled and puzzled him. It was like a cry for help, somehow. 

"Dear old pap, I wish you was here," and then in another place came the piteous cry, "Oh, I wish I had some folks!" 

All night long that cry rang in the man's head with a wailing, falling cadence like the note of a lost little prairie-chicken. 
was there a particular season that made him think of Bert more?
there was hardly a night that Ans lay down on his bed that he did not wonder where his chum was, especially as the winter came on