ho naturally loathed a boy with curls even more than male humans of any
age loathe him; and girls can be a lot tauntier when they start out to.
Well, Shelley couldn't lick girls, and he had reached an age when their
taunts cut into his hide like whiplashes, so he knew right well he had
to do something desperate.

Then he went out and run away from the refining influences of his
beautiful home. He took to the hills and landed way up on the north
fork of the Kulanche where Liver-eating Johnson has a sheep ranch.
Liver-eating, who is an unsavory character himself, had once heard
Shelley address a small group of critics in front of the post office,
and had wanted to adopt him right there. He still cherished the fondest
memories of Shelley's flow of language, so he was tickled to death to
have him drop along and stop, seeing that though but a lad in years he
was a man and brother in speech, even if he did look like a brother that
had started out to be a sister and got mixed.

Liver-eating took him in and fed him and cut his hair with a pair of
sheep shears. It was a more or less rough job, because shearing sheep
does not make a man a good human barber by any means. But Shelley
looked at his head in the glass and said it was the most beautiful
haircut in the world. Fussy people might criticize it here and there,
but they could never say it hadn't really been cut.

He was so grateful to Liver-eating that he promised to stay with him
always and become a sheep herder. And he did hide out there several
months till his anguished mother found out where he was. After having
every pond dragged and every bit of woods searched for her boy's body
she had believed he'd been carried off by kidnappers on account of his
heavenly beauty, and she'd probably have to give ten thousand dollars
for his release. She was still looking for a letter from these fiends
when she learned about his being with Liver-eating Johnson and that
this wretch had committed sacrilege on him.

It was a harsh blow to know that her pet had consorted with such a
person, who was not only a sheepman but had earned his nickname in a
way that our best people thought not nice. He'd gone home one day years
ago and found his favourite horse had been took by an Injun. Being a
simple-mannered man of few words, he just said that by sundown to-morrow
he would of et the liver of the Injun that done the stealing. I don't
know, personally, what happened, except that he did come b