He was gambler and sport and cowboy, too,
And he led the pace in an outlaw crew;
He was sure on the trigger and staid to the end,
But he was never known to quit on a friend;
In the relations of death all mankind is alike,
But in life there was only one George W. Pike.”
Strange, contrasting personalities—in awe of nobody, quite as ready to converse familiarly with the President as with Owen, but probably preferring Owen because they knew he was a fine horseman.
Persons and things outside their own world held but slight interest for them. At first I had a hazy idea that I might be the medium through which a glimpse of the outside world would broaden the narrow limits of their lives. I planned to get books for them and to arrange a reading room, but my dream was soon shattered upon discovering that this broader view possessed no charm. Indeed, when I offered to teach Joe to read he refused my offer without a moment’s hesitation, firmly announcing “I ain’t goin’ to learn to read, ’cause then I’d have to!” “Why, Mrs. Brook,” he added, looking with scorn at the book I held in my hand, “I wouldn’t be bothered the way you are for nothin’, havin’ to read all them books in there,” nodding his head in the direction of our cherished library. This was certainly a fresh point of view regarding education. About the same time I found that the Sears and Roebuck or Montgomery Ward catalogue might be fittingly called the Bible of the plains. Night after night the boys pored over them absorbed in the illustrations, of hats, gloves, boots and saddles, the things most dear to their hearts, for on their riding equipment alone they spent a small fortune.
Improvident and generous, however great their vices might be, their lives were free from petty meanness; the prairies had seemed to
“Give them their own deep breadth of view