The Cross Timbers by Edward Everett Dale Page B

pleased to note that Alice had an attractive home and seemed to be very happy.
    We reached the western edge of the Upper Cross Timbers at Bowie and emerged from them near Aurora. Just ten days after leaving Navajoe we rolled up to the home of Tom and Lucy. Our ten-day trip would now be considered only a half-day’s drive by car.
    I was delighted to see George again and much pleased to see Tom and Lucy. It seemed that we had been away a long time and the familiar scenes of the Cross Timbers neighborhood looked very good to me after an absence of some eight months. While we could not occupy our own home until the old renter, Mr. Pulliam, and his two daughters, commonly called “Adar” and “Idar,” had harvested their crops, it would be fun to live with Tom and Lucy for a time.
    The few months of life in the Prairie West had stimulated my imagination. I had seen real cowboys and Indians, had lived for several weeks in a half dugout, and had often climbed the Navajoe Mountains, only a mile east of the little town named for them.
    Of course, after we had returned to our Cross Timbers home I was not slow in telling my boy friends of these experiences and adventures with enough details and embellishments to make my stories interesting. When asked about Indians, I assured my questioner that they often camped near town and came to my brother Henry’s store wearing blankets and moccasins, with their hair in two long black braids, and their faces painted.
    Yes, I had seen the great Comanche Chief Quanah Parker many times. My brother Henry had traded with the Comanches so much that he knew their language fairly well and he had taught me some words and how to count in the Comanche tongue. When my bug-eyed listeners demanded a demonstration, I began, “sem-us, wo-hot, pie-heet, ah-tery-o-quit, mah-vit, nah-vit, tie-suit, nem-o-wah-sute, wo-ma-nie, say-men.” This is one to ten.
    While this boosted my stock a bit among my Cross Timbers playmates, by far the most important result of my western tripwas that I had read a great deal more than I would have had the opportunity to do if we had spent the winter on the Cross Timbers farm. Some of it was trash but the major part was good literature, which, even as a boy, I preferred to read when given a choice. Reading greatly affected both my work and play, not only in my boyhood days but throughout my life.

5. “Six Days Shalt Thou Labor”
    John Clark once remarked that “Heaven will be jus’ lak it is here ’ceptin we won’t hafta work.” If John was correct in his conception of Paradise there were a few men in our Cross Timbers community who were enjoying Heaven here on earth! Not so my father. He had little patience with loafers and wondered how they were able to live in idleness. Yet, I heard him say once that it seemed sometimes that there was not more than fifty cents difference between the man who worked and the man who didn’t, and that the one who didn’t got the fifty cents!
    This was obviously only a joke, for up to the time of his final illness his amazing energy was noted by all who knew him. Even at the age of sixty-five he could do more work in a day than any of his seven sons. Not only did he work hard himself but he demanded that his children do the same. Summer or winter he was up at dawn and calling George and me before he started to the barn to milk our three or four cows. Winter mornings in our attic bedroom was like the Arctic Circle; we would count “one, two, three,” at which point we would toss back the covers and hit the icy floor with our bare feet. Dressing was quickly done, for we slept in our underwear. In two or three minutes we were clothed and standing before the fire downstairs, for Fatheralways lighted fires in both the fireplace and kitchen stove before going to milk the cows.
    Just when I started to do useful work and ceased to be a total liability is impossible to say, but it must