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.
He plumped the heavy glass down upon the grimy counter in the dusty far corner of the little store and stared sourly at Pete Hamilton, who was apathetically opening hatboxes for the inspection of an Indian in a red blanket and frowsy braids.
"How much ?" The braided one fingered indecisively the broad brim of a gray sombrero.
"Nine dollars." Pete leaned heavily against the shelves behind him and sighed with the weariness of mere living.
"Huh! All same buy one good hoss." The braided one dropped the hat, hitched his blanket over his shoulder in stoical disregard of the heat, and turned away.
Pete replaced the cover, seemed about to place the box upon the shelf behind him, and then evidently decided that it was not worth the effort.
He sighed again.
"It is almighty hot," he mumbled languidly.

"Want another drink, Good Injun ?" "I do not.

Hot toddy never did appeal to me, my friend.

If you weren't too lazy to give orders, Pete, you'd have cold beer for a day like this.
You'd give Saunders something to do beside lie in the shade and tell what kind of a man he used to be before his lungs went to the bad.