Ranse went to the water barrel and washed the red from a cut on
his chin in the stream from the faucet.
On his face was a grin of satisfaction.
Much benefit might accrue to educators and moralists if they
could know the details of the curriculum of reclamation through
which Ranse put his waif during the month that he spent in the San
Gabriel camp. The ranchman had no fine theories to work out—perhaps
his whole stock of pedagogy embraced only a knowledge of
horse-breaking and a belief in heredity.
The cowpunchers saw that their boss was trying to make a man out
of the strange animal that he had sent among them; and they tacitly
organised themselves into a faculty of assistants. But their system
was their own.
Curly's first lesson stuck. He became on friendly and then on
intima
