must hev slipped outer our emigrant wagon comin' across the plains, or
got left behind at St. Joe. She was a grownd girl fit to marry afore she
was a child. She had young fellers a-sparkin' her afore she ever played
with 'em ez boy and girl. I don't mind tellin' you that it wern't in the
natur of Blair Rawlins' darter to teach her own darter any better, for
all she's been a mighty help to me. So if it's all the same to you,
Mr. Ford, we won't talk about a grownd up school; I'd rather Cress be
a little girl again among them other children. I should be a powerful
sight more kam if I knowed that when I was away huntin' stock or
fightin' stakes with them Harrisons, that she was a settin' there with
them and the birds and the bees, and listenin' to them and to you.
Mebbee there's been a little too many scrimmages goin' on round the
ranch sence she's been a child; mebbee she orter know suthin' more of a
man than a feller who sparks her and fights for her."

The master was silent. Had this dull, narrow-minded partisan stumbled
upon a truth that had never dawned upon his own broader comprehension?
Had this selfish savage and literally red-handed frontier brawler been
moved by some dumb instinct of the power of gentleness to understand his
daughter's needs better than he? For a moment he was staggered. Then
he thought of Cressy's later flirtations with Joe Masters, and her
concealment of their meeting from her mother. Had she deceived her
father also? Or was not the father deceiving him with this alternate
suggestion of threat and of kindliness--of power and weakness. He had
heard of this cruel phase of Southwestern cunning before. With the
feeble sophistry of the cynic he mistrusted the good his scepticism
could not understand. Howbeit, glancing sideways at the slumbering
savagery of the man beside him, and his wounded hand, he did not care
to show his lack of confidence. He contented himself with that
equally feeble resource of weak humanity in such cases--good-natured