Burch was a stocky boy who would never be tall, but well built. He got what he could out of the little school near the Three Sorrows. Once there was a young fellow at the MacGregor ranch, a civil engineer, who taught him mathematics and said the boy was a wonder at it. He went no more to the doctor in Fort Worth. Miss Valeria, whose hair was all white now above her dark eyes and brows, had tried once or twice to insist that he was ailing—and got laughed at for her pains, by the boy himself and by Hank. Hank, quick to note every change in his boy and girl as they grew up, had already met the new look in young Burchie’s eyes. He watched for it in the countenance of his unconscious girl. “Parents has got to face it,” he sighed, unaware that he spoke aloud, one rainy day when he and Shorty and Snake were mending harness. “Face what?” demanded Snake testily. “What in the old cat are you talking about?” “About children,” Pearsall explained. “These growing children, you don’t never know where you lose ’em. Some day or other, you come up and slap your youngster on the back and commence talking free—like you’ve been used to—giving orders or making fun; and suddenly a lady or gentleman that you’ve never seen before turns around on you, with a polite look, as much as to say, ‘I reckon you’ve got the advantage of me, sir!’” “Well—then what?” demanded the solicitous Shorty, whose three-year-old bandit of a red-headed daughter held him in shameful subjection. “Only one thing, as I figger it,” said Hank. “Don’t waste no time whining about duty, and what’s due you for past care and labor. Just whirl in and court and make much of that stranger. If it’s a boy, my observation is that he mostly wants to lick you; and if it’s a girl, she’s keen to hide everything from you.” Again he sighed. “You’re a stranger to the stranger, and the circumstances is all against you. Any confidence you get you’ll earn hard.” And Hilda? Hilda was seventeen now, of fair height for her years, but slim and undeveloped. The great dark eyes, with their heavy fringing and the level brows above them, were still her only marked beauty. She studied hard and was apt to stand high with her teacher; released to the playground, she ran rampant. Shorty said she was a good mixer. She rode with the unconscious courage and freedom of the cowpunchers. It never seemed to occur to her that she could not do with her pony anything that they could do with theirs. She and Uncle Hank had had some little difference of opinion from time to time in the matter of what horses she should ride, and what ones she should let strictly alone. The letting strictly alone went strongly against Hilda’s grain. About this time Uncle Hank brought home a steel blue roan—a snorting, up-headed, four-year-old whose neck had never felt a rope, whom Buster and Shorty, between them, with the genial irony of the cowpuncher, re-named Creeping Mose, because he could run like a streak of blue lightning.