where they keep--the best. Don't yuh let up--n'er let
him--whilst they's a dollar left. Put it all--into his
head--then he can't lose it, and he can--make it earn more.
An'--I guess I needn't ask yuh--be good to him. He ain't got
anybody--not a soul--Injuns don't count. You see to it--don't
let up till--it's all gone."

Phoebe had taken him literally. And Grant, if he had little
taste for the task, had learned books and other things not
mentioned in the curriculums of the schools she sent him to--and
when the bag was reported by Phoebe to be empty, he had returned
with inward relief to the desultory life of the Hart ranch and
its immediate vicinity.

His father would probably have been amazed to see how little
difference that schooling made in the boy. The money had lasted
long enough to take him through a preparatory school and into the
second year of a college; and the only result apparent was speech
a shade less slipshod than that of his fellows, and a vocabulary
which permitted him to indulge in an amazing number of epithets
and in colorful vituperation when the fancy seized him.

He rode, hot and thirsty and tired, from Sage Hill one day and
found Hartley empty of interest, hot as the trail he had just now
left thankfully behind him, and so absolutely sleepy that it
seemed likely to sink into the sage-clothed earth under the
weight of its own dullness. Even the whisky was so warm it
burned like fire, and the beer he tried left upon his outraged
palate the unhappy memory of insipid warmth and great bitterness.