e did it was always
some tale of fighting. He was too restless and active to continue at a
book of his own accord for any length of time, but he listened
delightedly to any one who consented to read for him. When his sister
Maud wished to do him a great favor and to enjoy his company (for she
loved him dearly) she read Daredevil Dan, or some similar story, while
he lay out on his stomach in the grass under the trees, with restless
feet swinging like pendulums. At such times his face was beautiful with
longing, and his eyes became dark and dreamy. "I'm going there, Beauty,"
he would say as Maud rolled out the word _Colorado_ or _Brazos_. "I'm
going there. I won't stay here and rot. I'll go, you'll see, and I'll
have a big herd of cattle, too."

His gentlest moments were those spent with his sister in the fields or
under the trees. As he grew older he became curiously tender and
watchful of her. It pleased him to go ahead of her through the woods, to
pilot the way, and to help her over ditches or fences. He loved to lead
her into dense thickets and to look around and say: "There, isn't this
wild, though? You couldn't find your way out if it wasn't for me, could
you?" And she, to carry out the spirit of the story, always shuddered
and said, "Don't leave me to perish here."

Once, as he lay with his head in the grass, he suddenly said: "Can't you
hear the Colorado roar?"

The wind was sweeping over the trees, and Maud, eager to keep him in
this gentle mood, cried: "I hear it; it is a wonderful river, isn't it?"

He did not speak again for a moment.

"Oh, I want to be where there is nobody west of me," he said, a look of
singular beauty on his face. "Don't you?"

"N--no, I don't," answered Maud. "But, then, I'm a girl, you know; we're
afraid of wild things, most of us."

"Dot Burland isn't."

"Oh, she only pretends; she wants you to think she's brave."

"That's a lie." He said it so savagely that Maud hastened to apologize.

CHAPTER II

HIS LOVE AFFAIRS

Naturally a lad of this temper had his loves. He made no secret of them,
and all the young people in the town knew his sweethearts and the
precise time when his passion changed its course. If a girl pleased him
he courted her with the utmost directness, but he was by no
interpretation a love-sick youth. His likings were more in the nature of
proprietary comradeship, and were expressed without caresses or ordinary
words of endearment.

His courtship a