ver-lead prepositions,
and onct I had a oil preposition up in the Swift Current country."

Smith reached inside his coat and pulled out the carved, ivory-handled
six-shooter which he wore in a holster under his arm. He laid it on the
table beside his grammar, and looked at Tubbs.

"Feller," he said, "I hates to make a gun-play before the Schoolmarm, but
if you jump into this here game again, I aims to try a chunk of lead on
you."

"If book-learnin' ud ever make me as peevish as it does you," declared
Tubbs, rising hastily, "I hopes I never knows nothin'."

Tubbs slammed the door behind him as he went to seek more amiable company
in the bunk-house.

Save for the Indian woman, Smith and Dora were now practically alone; for
Ling had gone to bed, and Susie was oblivious to everything except
fractions. Smith continued to struggle with prepositions, adjectives, and
adverbs, but he found it difficult to concentrate his thoughts on them
with Dora so close beside him. He knew that his slightest glance, every
expression which crossed his face, was observed by the Indian woman; and
although he did his utmost not to betray his feelings, he saw the sullen,
jealous resentment rising within her.

She read aright the light in his eyes; besides, her intuitions were
greater than his powers of concealment. When she could no longer endure
the sight of Smith and the Schoolmarm sitting side by side, she laid down
her work and slipped out into the star-lit night, closing the door softly
behind her.

Smith's judgment told him that he should end the lesson and go after her,
but the spell of love was upon him, overwhelming him, holding him fast in
delicious thraldom. He had not the strength of will just then to break
it.

Dora had been reading "Hiawatha" aloud each evening to Susie, Tubbs, and
Smith, so when she finally closed the grammar, she asked if he would like
to hear more of the Indian story, as he called it, to which he nodded
assent.

Dora read well, with intelligence and sympathy; her trained voice was
flexible. Then, too, she loved this greatest of American legends. It
appealed to her audience as perhaps no other poem would have done. It was
real to them, it was "life," their life in a little different environment
and told in a musical rhythm which held them breathless, enchanted.

Dora had reached the story of "The Famine." She knew the refrain by heart,
and the wail of old Nokomis was in her voice as she repeated from me