"Oh yes, indeed," she answered; "and I know something of your foothill
folks. I've been a book agent. Oh, indeed? You know that. Well, I did
first-rate, but that was the book, which sold itself--a beautiful
book. Maybe you know it--_The Milk of Human Kindness_? When we're
better acquainted, I'd like to read you," she looked hard at Ajax,
"some o' my favourite passages."

"Thanks," said Ajax stiffly.

Next day was Sunday. At breakfast the schoolmarm asked Ajax if there
was likely to be a prayer-meeting.

"A prayer-meeting, Miss Buchanan?"

"It's the Sabbath, you know."

"Yes--er--so it is. Well, you see," he smiled feebly, "the cathedral
isn't built yet."

"Why, what's the matter with the schoolhouse? I presume you're all
church-members?"

Her grey eyes examined each of us in turn, and each made confession.
One of the teamsters was a Baptist; another a Latter-Day Adventist;
the Spaffords were Presbyterians; we, of course, belonged to the
Church of England.

"We ought to have a prayer-meeting," said the little schoolmarm.

"Yes; we did oughter," assented Mrs. Spafford.

"I kin pray first-rate when I git started," said the Baptist teamster.

The prayer-meeting took place. Afterwards Ajax said to me--

"She's very small, is Whey-face, but somehow she seemed to fill the
_adobe_."

In the afternoon we had an adventure which gave us further insight
into the character and temperament of the new schoolmarm.

We all walked to Paradise across the home pasture, for Miss Buchanan
was anxious to inspect the site--there was nothing else then--of the
proposed schoolhouse. Her childlike simplicity and assurance in taking
for granted that she would eventually occupy that unbuilt academy
struck us as pathetic.

"I give her one week," said Ajax, "not a day more."

Coming back we called a halt under some willows near the creek. The
shade invited us to sit down.

"Are there snakes--rattlesnakes?" Miss Buchanan asked nervously.

"In the brush-hills--yes; here--no," replied my brother.

By a singular coincidence, the words were hardly out of his mouth when
we heard the familiar warning, the whirring, never-to-be-forgotten
sound of the beast known to the Indians as "death in the grass."

"Mercy!" exclaimed the schoolmarm, staring wildly about her. It is not
easy to localise the exact position of a coiled rattlesnake by the
sound of his rattle.

"Don't move!" said Ajax. "Ah, I see him! There he is! I must find a
stic