“Hush up,” her brother whispered, poking her reprovingly in the ribs. “Don’t be a tell-all.”
“Oh, you’ll like it, I reckon,” said Azalea. “Anyway, it’s worth while to learn to read and write, isn’t it? People who get on in the world all know how to read and write.”
“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.”