LITTLE ARLISS

Though he's twelve years old, everyone tells Arliss he's too little to join up with the trail drive, help track down horse thieves, or whatever; and that makes Arliss brimful of mad—so mad he throws rocks when the men won't take him along on their hunt for Burn Sanderson's unbroken runaway horse. But when the men return without the runaway, Arliss gets Sanderson's promise that he can keep the horse if he catches it—which he proceeds to do, with the help of a nine-yearold orphan girl who's passing through the area with her uncle. The colloquially told story ends realistically with Arliss denied the horse despite the promise, because it's too dangerous for him; and the girl, who wants nothing more than "folks of my own," experiences a parallel disappointment when she learns that Arliss is not to be the cowboy husband her uncle had promised her. Pint-sized grit and frustration, in the Coates family that some will remember from Old Yeller.