"I kin pray first-rate when I git started," said the Baptist teamster.
The prayer-meeting took place. Afterwards Ajax said to me--
"She's very small, is Whey-face, but somehow she seemed to fill the adobe."
In the afternoon we had an adventure which gave us further insight into the character and temperament of the new schoolmarm.
We all walked to Paradise across the home pasture, for Miss Buchanan was anxious to inspect the site--there was nothing else then--of the proposed schoolhouse. Her childlike simplicity and assurance in taking for granted that she would eventually occupy that unbuilt academy struck us as pathetic.
"I give her one week," said Ajax, "not a day more."
Coming back we called a halt under some willows near the creek. The shade invited us to sit down.
"Are there snakes--rattlesnakes?" Miss Buchanan asked nervously.
"In the brush-hills--yes; here--no," replied my brother.
By a singular coincidence, the words were hardly out of his mouth when we heard the familiar warning, the whirring, never-to-be-forgotten sound of the beast known to the Indians as "death in the grass."