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THE SCHOOLMA'AM OF COYOTE COUNTY.
35
THE SCHOOLMA'AM'S INTERESTING CLASS.
Despairing of first-day excellence in spelling, the teacher led them on to the last of the "Three R's." After the expert accountant, Bud Lake, had figured out that 4x3 equals 15, Big Ben was released from his wicker cage and told to find what 5x4 equals. When he proclaimed the answer to be 24, he was crowned with a dunce's cap and sent back to his corner. At this point "The Heathen" began to count rapidly on his fingers, and going to the board he marked down his answer to the problem in Chinese heiroglyphics.
"Humph/' muttered Big Ben, "looks like a laundry ticket !"
Heedless of this comment, "The Heathen" started explaining his solution on his fingers to Miss Ryan, who finally wrote down "20" as the translation of his Oriental figuring, and, much to the chagrin of the other scholars, and the delight of the "Yellow Peril," marked the answer "correct."
Considering that they had had enough brain work for their first day, Miss Ryan dismissed the class. By the time she was ready to go, the school
room was deserted. But as she left the door a smiling face appeared around each corner of the house — Big Ben and "The Heathen." They stopped smiling when they saw each other, and the bully chased his Confucian rival away, against the protests of Miss Ryan, who, however, allowed Ben to escort her home from her first day's work as their schoolma'am.
Bye and bye work at the mines picked up again, and Miss Ryan lost "the boys" as scholars, but not as friends.
On the day when operations re-commenced, Henry Allen, the mine owner, stood at the entrance of a shaft-house awaiting the arrival of a new foreman. The latter soon appeared, with a letter which introduced him as Robert Buckley. The newcomer was evidently an Easterner, but hardly a tenderfoot. At least, that was the way Big Ben summed him up in a hardly-tolerating glance, when he was delegated to show the foreman over the lay-out."
One afternoon, not long after, Big Ben went around to the hotel to make