All that I teach you in the winter seems to evaporate from your mind during the summer when you go out riding with the boys." Buddy wiped his face with an up-and-down motion on the roller towel and clanked across to the cupboard which he opened investigatively.

"Any pie ?" he questioned as he peered into the corners.

"Say, if I had the handling of those Utes, mother, I'd fix 'em so they wouldn't be breaking out every few months and making folks leave their homes to be pawed over and burnt, maybe." He found a jar of fresh doughnuts and took three.
"They'll tromp around on your flower-beds--it just makes me SICK when I think how they'll muss things up around here! I wish now," He blurted unthinkingly, "that I hadn't killed the Injun that stole Rattler." "Buddy! Not YOU." His mother made a swift little run across the kitchen and caught him on his lean, hard-muscled young shoulders.

"You--you baby! What did you do?
You didn't harm an Indian, did you, laddie ?" Buddy tilted his head downward so that she could not look into his eyes.
"I dunno as I harmed him--much," he said, wiping doughnut crumbs from his mouth with one hasty sweep of his forearm.

"But his horse came outa the brush, and he never.