“Sam Simms can’t read nor write none,” said Bud, “and he’s got six mules and ten head of cattle and his own house and fields.” Azalea flushed a little. It came back to her memory that it was a part of the delight of mountain people to catch each other tripping. They liked a tussle of wits; it was an intellectual game with them. “Oh, well,” she said, “there’s more than one way of getting on, of course. But Mr. Simms must have been a smart man to get all those things without having reading and writing to help him. I don’t suppose there’s another man in the country who could have done that and been so ignorant.” “Ignorant?” retorted Bud Coulter. “He ain’t ignorant. He knows just what to do for sick horses and how to gather in swarming bees and lots of other things.” “How clever of him,” said Azalea. “I’d like to know him.” “No, you wouldn’t,” declared Bud emphatically. “He’s about the meanest man around. He can shoot like—” Azalea stopped him on that last word. She knew quite certainly what it was going to be. “He wouldn’t want to shoot me, would he?” she asked smilingly. “I only wanted to meet him because he could do so many things, although he could not do the best ones—he couldn’t read in books what other men thought, and he couldn’t write down any of his own thoughts. That leaves him in a bad way, doesn’t it? Many men not nearly so clever could get ahead of him.” Azalea paused a moment. Then she cried: “Why, come in, quick, and I can show you how to get ahead of him yourself.” Bud’s calm was broken. He looked at Azalea for the first time as “teacher.” “Can you, now?” he asked. She threw open the schoolroom door, showed the children where to put their hats and ran to the blackboard. “You must tell me your real name,” she said. “Surely it isn’t Bud?” “No’m. It’s Laurence Babbitt Coulter.” “Laurence Babbitt Coulter,” she wrote on the blackboard in very plain letters. “Can you write that, Bud?” “No’m.” “Do you know your letters?” “When I don’t forget.” “By the end of the week,” said Azalea with decision, “you will know your letters and you will be able to write your own name. Then you can do something that Mr. Simms can’t do.” The boy grinned. “I can come it over him,” he said. He was again enjoying the encounter of wits. This made Azalea say hastily: “But of course, since he’s so much older than you, Bud, you mustn’t let him know that you can come it over him.” “Sure, I must,” cried the boy. “He’s been mean to my pa. He’s the meanest man in these parts, and he’s got a son—at least it ain’t really his son—it’s his brother’s son—who’s so meachin’ that he don’t even know enough to be mean, and if that white-livered boob tries to come up here to this here school—” “Why, we’ll teach him how to write his name, too,” said Azalea valorously. “I won’t stay in no school that Skully Simms comes to,” declared Bud.