Cholo was not much like an English gentleman, but it was his gentleness and skill with horses, in contrast to Bob’s incompetence, that made her want badly to encourage him to stay with them. He talked little, which would be a problem if she put him in a story—the people in the stories she read seemed to talk a great deal. He had been stolen as a child by Comanches and had gradually worked his way north, traded from one tribe to another, until he had escaped one day during a battle. Though he was an old man and had lived among Indians and whites his whole life, he still preferred to speak Spanish. Clara knew a little from her girlhood in Texas, and tried to speak it with him. At the sound of the Spanish words his wrinkled face would light up with happiness. Clara persuaded him to teach her girls. Cholo couldn’t read, but he was a good teacher anyway—he loved the girls and would take them on rides, pointing at things and giving them their Spanish names.
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