As for me, I can't remember when I first got on a horse
nor when I learned to swim. That came before my A B C's. Dad owned
cattle ranches on Hawaii and Maui--big ones, for the islands. Hokuna had
two hundred thousand acres alone. It extended in between Mauna Koa and
Mauna Loa, and it was there I learned to shoot goats and wild cattle. On
Molokai they have big spotted deer. Von was the manager of Hokuna. He
had two daughters about my own age, and I always spent the hot season
there, and, once, a whole year. The three of us were like Indians. Not
that we ran wild, exactly, but that we were wild to run wild. There were
always the governesses, you know, and lessons, and sewing, and
housekeeping; but I'm afraid we were too often bribed to our tasks with
promises of horses or of cattle drives.
"Von had been in the army, and Dad was an old sea-dog, and they were both
stern disciplinarians; only the two girls had no mother, and neither had
I, and they were two men after all. They spoiled us terribly. You see,
they didn't have any wives, and they made chums out of us--when our tasks
were done. We had to learn to do everything about the house twice as
well as the native servants did it--that was so that we should know how
to manage some day.
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