The cattleman looked at him. "Can you ride a horse?"
Jack spoke up: "You bet he can, Uncle. He rode in the races."
Burns smiled as a king might upon a young knight seeking an errant.
"Well, if your folks don't object, when you get done with school, and Jack's mother says he can come, you make a break for Abilene; we'll see what I can do with you on the 'long trail.'"
Harold took this offer very seriously, much more so than Mr. Burns intended he should do, although he was pleased with the boy.
Harold well knew that his father and mother would not consent, and very naturally said nothing to them about his plan, but thereafter he laid by every cent of money he could earn, until his thrift became a source of comment. To Jack he talked for hours of the journey they were to make. Jack, unimaginative and engrossed with his studies at the seminary, took the whole matter very calmly. It seemed a long way off at best, and his studies were pleasant and needed his whole mind. Harold was thrown back upon the company of his sweetheart, who was the only one else to whom he could talk freely.
Dot, indolent, smiling creature of cozy corners that she was, listened without emotion, while Harold, with eyes ablaze, with visions of the great, splendid plains, said: "I'm going West sure. I'm tired of school; I'm going to Kansas, and I'm going to be a great cattle king in a few years, Dot, and then I'll come back and get you, and we'll go live on the banks of a big river, and we'll have plenty of horses, and go riding and hunting antelope every day. How will you like that?"
Her unresponsiveness hurt him, and he said: "You don't seem to care whether I go or not."
She turned and looked at him vacantly, still smiling, and he saw that she had not heard a single word of his passionate speech. He sprang up, hot with anger and pain.
"If you don't care to listen to me you needn't," he said, speaking through his clinched teeth.