Page:Rootabaga Pigeons by Carl Sandburg.pdf/232

 a love print from her lips. Proud she was. They called her Kiss Me.

She didn't like that name, Kiss Me. They never called her that when she was listening. If she happened to be listening they called her Find Me, Lose Me, Get Me. They never mentioned kisses because they knew she would run away and be what her father called her, "a dancing shaft of light on the ax handles of morning."

But—when she was not listening they asked, "Where is Kiss Me to-day?" Or they would say, "Every morning Kiss Me gets more beautiful—I wonder if she will ever in her young life get a kiss from a man good enough to kiss her."

One day Kiss Me was lost. She went out on a horse with a gun to hunt wildcats in the timbers near by. Since the day before, she was gone. All night she was out in a snowstorm with a horse and a gun hunting