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“I should think it would make an awful noise, Uncle Hank.”

“It does, that. You can hear one of them yelpin’ schools for nigh a mile.”

“But—I should think you couldn’t learn anything—on account of the noise,” the little girl went on.

“You got to learn,” Hank said. “Teacher cuffs you side o’ the head if you don’t. You can get used to most any way of doing things, Pettie. I got as far as long division, in the cipherin’, and read ’way into the Bible—taking all the hard words as they come. Then my pa died off, of lung fever,—pneumonia they call it now—and I had to go home and run the farm for my mother. We hadn’t got to grammer yet. Don’t know if the teacher knew it himself. So you see that left me with just the English language to use, and after I come to Texas I picked up the Texas language that a man uses workin’ cattle.”

“Well, you can run a ranch ’most better than anybody, and Shorty and all the boys say so.”

“Yes, your Uncle Hank can run a ranch.”

“Well—you can teach me that—you can teach me to run a ranch.”