"That boy uh mine's goin' to do better 'n that, by God!" he had sworn, and the words had sounded like a vow.
When, two months after that, he had faced--incredulously, as is the way with strong men--the fact that for him life was over, with nothing left to him save an hour or so of labored breath and a few muttered sentences, he did not forget that vow. He called Phoebe close to the bed, placed the bag of gold in Grant's trembling hands, and stared intently from one face to the other.
"Mis' Hart, he ain't got--anybody--my folks--I lost track of 'em years ago. You see to it--git some learnin' in his head. When a man knows books--it's--like bein' heeled--good gun--plenty uh ca't'idges--in a fight. When I got that gold--it was like fightin' with my bare hands--against a gatlin' gun. They coulda cheated me--whole thing--on paper--I wouldn't know--luck--just luck they didn't. So you take it--and git the boy schoolin'. Costs money--I know that--git him all it'll buy. Send him--where they keep--the best. Don't yuh let up--n'er let him--whilst they's a dollar left. Put it all--into his head--then he can't lose it, and he can--make it earn more. An'--I guess I needn't ask yuh--be good to him. He ain't got anybody--not a soul--Injuns don't count. You see to it--don't let up till--it's all gone."
Phoebe had taken him literally. And Grant, if he had little taste for the task, had learned books and other things not mentioned in the curriculums of the schools she sent him to--and when the bag was reported by Phoebe to be empty, he had returned with inward relief to the desultory life of the Hart ranch and its immediate vicinity.
His father would probably have been amazed to see how little difference that schooling made in the boy. The money had lasted long enough to take him through a preparatory school and into the second year of a college; and the only result apparent was speech a shade less slipshod than that of his fellows, and a vocabulary which permitted him to indulge in an amazing number of epithets and in colorful vituperation when the fancy seized him.
He rode, hot and thirsty and tired, from Sage Hill one day and found Hartley empty of interest, hot as the trail he had just now left thankfully behind him, and so absolutely sleepy that it seemed likely to sink into the sage-clothed earth under the weight of its own dullness. Even the whisky was so warm it burned like fire, and the beer he tried left upon his outraged palate the unhappy memory of insipid warmth and great bitterness.