n' to
roll three cigarettes a day for thirteen years an' the very day I'm
twenty-one I'm goin' to smoke 'em all."

"You go to your room an' stay there," sez Jabez, white-hot.

"I will," she answers as cool as an icicle, "an' I'm goin' to figure up
how many it will be, so I'll have some sort of fun to look forward
to--when I get of legal age."

After she'd gone Jabez set down on a stone an' wiped his forehead. "She
ain't a child, Happy. She ain't nothin' like a child," sez Jabez to me.
"Here she is only eight year old an' she's got me out beyond my depth
already. I don't know what I ought to do with her. She went to the
spring round-up this year an' slept in a Navajo right outdoors. She
wants to go bear huntin' or anything else 'at's wild an' dis-accordin'
to her nature. What on earth am I goin' to do with her?"

"You ought to have children to play with her. She wants to play all
right, she tries to play; but the only kind of play she knows is
grown-up play. Get some children an' dolls an' pet kittens an' such
things for her; that'll give her a chance," sez I.

"I tried it," sez Jabez. "I tried it last summer, but she about killed
'em. The only children I could get was two little Injuns, but she about
ruined 'em. The only game she would play was war, an' when they
wouldn't stand for her way o' playin' it she got on her pinto--the one
you broke for her--an' roped 'em both an' like to dragged the hide off
'em. I don't know what to do."

"You ought to send her to school," sez I. "They'll be white children
there an' they won't be slow an' gentle like the little Injuns; they'll
be just as full o' devil as what she is, an' she'll get the sharp
corners wore off her."

"Hang it I tried that too. I sent her when she was six year old--I'd
been lookin' forward to it a good long time too, but it didn't do no
good.

"She put in the first day all right, but things went too slow for her
after that, an' she brought home her books an' made me pester over 'em
with her, an' she went into it like a game, an' now she's gone through
about four years' work in two. It's a blame shame, 'cause the school is
only ten miles away an' she could go as well as not, but she's so
terrible impatient. She reads all kinds o' books already, an' sez she's
goin' to read 'em all before she quits. She ain't a bit like a child
an' I don't think it's natural. I wish she'd pester me for dolls an'
pink dresses an' things like that instead of wantin' all ki