Me Smith

cattle-thieves is not the work of a day or a week, but sometimes of months; and when evidence of another stolen beef was found upon the range, Ralston realized that his efforts lay in that vicinity for some time to come. He decided to ride over to the MacDonald ranch that evening and have a look at the bad hombre who masqueraded as a bug-hunter—bug-hunter, it should be explained, being a Western term for any stranger engaged in scientific pursuits.
    While Ralston was riding over the lonely road in the moonlight, Dora was arranging the dining-room table for her night-school, which had been in session several evenings. Smith was studying grammar, of which branch of learning Dora had decided he stood most in need, while Susie groaned over compound fractions.
    Tubbs, with his chair tilted against the wall, looked on with a tolerant smile. In the kitchen, paring a huge pan of potatoes for breakfast, Ling listened with such an intensity of interest to what was being said that his ears seemed fairly to quiver. From her bench in the living-room, the Indian woman braided rags and darted jealous glances at teacher and pupil. Smith, his hair looking like a bunch of tumble-weed in a high wind, hung over a book with a look of genuine misery upon his face.
    “I didn’t have any notion there was so much in the world I didn’t know,” he burst out. “I thought when I’d learnt that if you sprinkle your saddle-blanket you can hold the biggest steer that runs, without your saddle slippin’, I’d learnt about all they was worth knowin’.”
    “It’s tedious,” Dora admitted.
    “Tedious?” echoed Smith in loud pathos. “It’s hell! Say, I can tie a fancy knot in a bridle-rein that can’t be beat by any puncher in the country, but darn me if I can see the difference between a adjective and one of these here adverbs! Once I thought I knowed something—me, Smith—but say, I don’t know enough to make a mark in the road!”
    Closing his eyes and gritting his teeth, he repeated:
    “‘I have had, you have had, he has had.’”
    “If you would have had about six drinks, I think you could git that,” observed Tubbs judicially, watching Smith’s mental suffering with keen interest.
    “Don’t be discouraged,” said Dora cheerfully, seating herself beside him. “Let’s take a little review. Do you remember what I told you about this?”
    She pointed to the letter a marked with the long sound.
    Smith ran both hands through his hair, while a wild, panic-stricken look came upon his face.
    “Dog-gone me! I know it’s a a , but I plumb forget how you called it.”
    Tubbs unhooked his toes from the chair-legs and walked around to look over Smith’s shoulder.
    “Smith, you got a great forgitter,” he said sarcastically. “Why don’t you use your head a little? That there is a Bar A. You ought to have knowed that. The Bar A stock run all over the Judith Basin.”
    “Don’t you remember I told you that whenever you saw that mark over a letter you should give it the long sound?” explained Dora patiently.
    “Like the a in ‘aig,’” elucidated Tubbs.
    “Like the a in ‘snake,’” corrected the Schoolmarm.
    “Or ’wake,’ or ’skate,’ or ‘break,’” said Smith hopefully.
    “Fine!” declared the Schoolmarm.
    “I knowed that much myself,” said Tubbs enviously.
    “If you’ll pardon me, Mr. Tubbs,” said Dora, in some irritation, “there is no such word as ‘knowed.’”
    “Why don’t you talk grammatical, Tubbs?” Smith demanded, with alacrity.
    “I talks what I knows,” said Tubbs, going back to his chair.
    “Have you forgotten all I told you about adjectives?”
    “Adjectives is words describin’ things. They’s two kinds, comparative and superlative,” Smith replied promptly. He added. “Adjectives kind of stuck in my craw.”
    “Can you give me examples?” Dora felt encouraged.
    “You got a horrible pretty hand,” Smith replied, without hesitation. “‘Horrible pretty’ is a adjective describin’ your hand.”
    Dora burst out laughing, and Tubbs, without knowing why, joined in heartily.
    “Tubbs,” continued Smith, glaring at that person, “has got the horriblest mug I ever seen, and if he opens it and laffs like that at me again, I aims to break his head. ’Horriblest’ is a superlative adjective describin’ Tubbs’s mug.”
    To Smith’s chagrin and Tubbs’s delight, Dora explained that “horrible” was a word which could not be used in conjunction with