Navvy evidently had never been ridden, for he began a fair imitation of a bucking bronco.  Billy held on, but the smile vanished and he corners of his mouth drew down.

“Hang on, Billy, hang on,” cried August Naab, in delight.  Billy hung on a moment longer, and then Navvy, bewildered by the pestering crowd about him, launched out and, butting into Noddle, spilled the four youngsters and Billy also into a wriggling heap.

This recess-time completed Hare’s introduction to the Naabs.  There were Mother Mary, and Judith and Esther, whom he knew, and Mother Ruth and her two daughters very like their sisters.  Mother Ruth, August’s second wife, was younger than Mother Mary, more comely of face, and more sad and serious of expression.  The wives of the five sons, except Snap Naab’s frail bride, were stalwart women, fit to make homes and rear children.

“Now, Jack, things are moving all right,” said August.  “For the present you must eat and rest.  Walk some, but don’t tire yourself.  We’ll practice shooting a little every day; that’s one thing I’ll spare time for.  I’ve a trick with a gun to teach you.  And if you feel able, take a burro and ride.  Anyway, make yourself at home.”

Hare found eating and resting to be matters of profound enjoyment.  Before he had fallen in with these good people it had been a year since he had sat down to a full meal; longer still since he had eaten whole some food.  And now he had come to a “land overflowing with milk and honey,” as Mother Ruth smilingly said.  He could not choose between roast beef and chicken, and so he waived the question by taking both; and what with the biscuits and butter, apple-sauce and blackberry jam, cherry pie and milk like cream, there was danger of making himself ill.  He told his friends that he simply could not help it, which shameless confession brought a hearty laugh from August and beaming smiles from his women-folk.

For several days Hare was remarkably well, for an invalid.  He won golden praise from August at the rifle practice, and he began to take lessons in the quick drawing and rapid firing of a Colt revolver.  Naab was wonderfully proficient in the use of both firearms; and his skill in drawing the smaller weapon, in which his movement was quicker than the eye, astonished Hare.  “My lad,” said August, “it doesn’t follow because I’m a Christian that I don’t know how to handle a gun.  Besides, I like to shoot.”

In these few days Hare learned what conquering the desert made of a man.  August Naab was close to threescore years; his chest was wide as a door, his arm like the branch of an oak.  He was a blacksmith, a mechanic, a carpenter, a cooper, a potter.  At his forge and in his shop, everywhere, were crude tools, wagons, farming implements, sets of buckskin harness, odds and ends of nameless things, eloquent and pregnant proof of the fact that necessity is the mother of invention.  He was a mason; the levee