ople? You
teach me all that?"

"That's the program. I'm going to civilize you--that means to make you
like white folks. It's going to take time, but the mountains is full
of time."

"You 'civilize' me right now?-- You begin today?" She started up and
stood erect with arms folded, evidently waiting for treatment.

"The process will be going on all the while you're associating with me,
honey. That chief, Red Feather--he has a daughter, hasn't he?"

"No; him say no girl, no boy." She spoke with confidence.

"I see. And your father's dead too, eh?" Evidently Red Feather had
thoroughly convinced her of the truth of these pretenses.

"Both--mother, father. Nobody but me." She knelt down at his side,
her face troubled. "If I had just one!"

"Can you remember either of them?"

"Oh, yes, yes--and Red Feather, him talk about them, talk, talk, always
say me be white with the white people some day. This is the day. You
make me like mother was. You civilize me--begin!" She regarded him
with dignified attention, her little hands locked about her blanket
where it lay folded below her knees. The cloud had vanished from her
face and her eyes sparkled with expectancy.

"I ain't got the tools yet, honey. They's no breaking up and enriching
land that ain't never bore nothing but buffalo-grass, without I have
picks and spades and plows and harrers. I got to get my tools, to
begin."

She stiffened herself. "You needn't be afraid I'll cry. I WANT you to
hurt me, if that the way."

"It ain't like a pain in the stomach, Lahoma. All I gets for you will
be some books. Them is the tools I'm going to operate with."

"Books? What are books?"

"Books?" Willock rubbed his bushy head in desperation. "Books? Why,
they is just thoughts that somebody has ketched and put in a cage where
they can't get away. You go and look at them thoughts somebody capable
has give rise to, and when you finds them as has never ranged in your
own brain, you captures 'em, puts your brand on 'em, and serves 'em out
in your own herd. You see, Lahoma, what you think in your own brain
ain't of no service, for YOU don't know nothing. If you want to be
civilized, you got to lasso other people's thoughts--people as has went
to and fro and has learned life--and you got to dehorn them ideas, and
tame 'em."

Lahoma examined him with new interest. "Are YOU civilized?" Her
countenance fell.

"Not to no wide extent, but I can ford toler'b