led to take him to school. Pan was not used to strangers.
The men in the streets, the grown boys all bothered him. Cowboys were
scarce, and that was a great disappointment to Pan. It lowered
Littleton in his estimation.

It developed that Pan was left handed. Now Miss Jones considered it
wrong for anyone to write with his left hand so she tied Pan's fast to
the desk, and made him practice letters with his right. What a dreary
unprofitable time Pan had of it! So many little boys and girls
confused him, though he was not backward in making acquaintance. But
he wanted Curly and the prairie. He would rather be with Lucy. Most
of all he wanted the cowboys.

Dick Hardman came again into Pan's life, fatefully, inevitably, as if
the future had settled something inscrutable and sinister, and
childhood days, school days, days of youth and manhood had been
inextricably planned before they were born. Dick was in a higher grade
and made the fact known to Pan. He had grown into a large boy,
handsomer, bolder, with a mop of red hair that shone like a flame. He
called Pan "the little skunk tamer," and incited other boys to
ridicule. So the buried resentment in Pan's depths smoldered and burst
into blaze again, and found fuel to burn it into hate. He told his
mother what Dick had got the boys to call him. Then he was indeed
surprised to see his sweet soft-eyed mother give way to quick-flashing
passion. Somehow this leap of her temper strengthened Pan in his
resentment. He had her blood, her fire, her pride, though he was only
a child.

Then the endless school days were over for a while. Summer had come.
Pan moved back to the beloved homestead, to the open ranges, to Curly
and Lucy. Only she had changed. She could stand at his knee and call
him Tex. He resumed his old games with her, and in time graduated her
to a seat on the back of Curly. If she had not already unconsciously
filled his heart that picture of her laughing and unafraid would have
done so.

Another uncle had moved into the country to take up a homestead. Pan
now had a second place to ride to, farther away, over a wilder bit of
range, and much to his liking. He saw cowboys every time he rode there.

One day while Pan was at this new uncle's, a dreadful thing
happened--his first real tragedy. Some cowboy left the slide door of
the granary open. Curly got in there at the wheat. Before it became
known he ate enormously and then drank copiously.