Ajax
christened him The Babe, because he had a milk-and-roses complexion,
and a babe's capacity for, and love of, liquid refreshment. Perhaps
the archdeacon thought that the West was a sort of kindergarten, where
children like The Babe are given, at small expense, object-lessons and
exercises peculiarly adapted to young and plastic minds. In Central
America certain tribes living by the seaboard throw their children
into the surf, wherein they sink or learn to swim, as the Fates
decree. Some sink.
When The Babe's two hundred pounds were spent, he came to us and asked
for a job. He said, I remember, that he was the son of an archdeacon,
and that he could trust us to bear that in mind. We were so impressed
by his guileless face and cock-a-hoop assurance, that we had not the
heart to turn him away.
At the end of a fortnight Ajax took pencil and paper, and computed
what The Babe had cost us. He had staked a valuable horse; he had
smashed a patent reaper; he had set fire to the ranch, and burnt up
five hundred acres of bunch grass; and he had turned some of our quiet
domestic cows into wild beasts, because--as he put it--he wished to
become a vaquero.
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