As the summer came near to its end and the Homers got back from a trip to Europe, Heyes went to see Charlie Homer in his apartment. He showed him the clipping picturing Heyes in the little local Boulder paper – the first time either of the boys had ever had an image published. "I was awful mad when I saw it, Charlie. But the Kid says in a telegram, in our code of course, that when he hired Eakins he didn't have any idea the guy did newspaper work. I remember Eakins introduced himself to me as the finest technical photographer in the state. He may be right – does good work! I guess no photographer could make a living out there just doing technical photography or just shooting for the Boulder paper. He probably does portraits, too. Whatever you asked him to do with a camera, he'd say yes. And if you didn't ask him about the newspaper stuff, it'd never come up. So I don't blame the Kid for the photographer. But for the snake, yes!"

The two westerners laughed. "Hate snakes myself, Heyes!" said Homer, "I don't imagine anyone will ever see that photograph again. Or I hope not. Such a little western paper – doubt you have much to worry about there. And with you wearing your glasses in the picture, I'll bet most folks who saw you before won't even recognize you in that fuzzy halftone. And for the people who do see it, it just confirms that you're Joshua Smith, not Hannibal Heyes."

Heyes shrugged, "I don't know – it could destroy my life and Beth's or never show up again. Sometimes I don't know anymore who or what I am – or what I can do about my past. Maybe nothing. It's my future I care about now - our future. As long as one day I can get amnesty so I can teach math and get paid for it. So Beth and I can live our lives – that's all I want."

Homer chuckled rather fondly at his prize student, "Come on, Heyes! That's a lot of hard things to ask! But the teaching math for pay – how'd you like to start that right now?"

Heyes' eyes lit up, but he looked skeptical. "I'd love it, Charlie! I'd really go for some teaching experience, but how can I? I'm not even in grad school yet."

"Well, not as a teaching assistant – that has to wait for you to start grad school next year, as you know. But how about as a tutor? Just for an hour or so a week with one undergrad. It'd be good experience for you, and bring in a little cash that I'm sure you can use. What about it?"

Heyes was intrigued, "Tell me about it, Charlie."

Homer watched Heyes carefully to gauge his reaction. "Sure. He's from Montana. He's just fifteen. He finished school early, like your pal Huxtable. And like Huxtable, he's very bright. But he doesn't have Huxtable's advantages – no professor parents here. I think Tom might just need a bit of help to bridge the gap from one-room school houses to undergrad college, especially in math. Just someone extra in his corner, you know – to go over things with him. And he has – some little problems. Nothing you can't handle. Will you take him on?"

"You know how many problems I started out with myself! Sure – I'll do what I can for him. He's a westerner!" Heyes couldn't help but identify with this young student he hadn't even met yet. He didn't know what problems Charlie might be talking about – but it would be a rare problem that would stop Heyes from starting his teaching career by helping a fellow troubled westerner trying to make a go of it in college in New York.

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The next day Heyes and Homer walked over to the dorm hall where Heyes' new student lived. "His name is Tom O'Keeffe," said Homer. "I haven't told him about your – problems – just as I haven't told you about his. He just knows that you're a brilliant mathematics student from the West. I think it's better that way. You get to know each other honestly. And, of course, he will have no idea of who . . ."

Heyes nodded. Of course his real identity was always a secret. That was the given with everyone except his new friend Peale. He longed for the day when going straight meant that he could be truly honest with people from the moment he met them, instead of having such a long process of gauging who he could tell his real name to and who he couldn't.

O'Keeffe's room was on the first floor. Homer knocked, "Tom! You there?"

There was a pause before the door opened and they could hear a slow knocking and dragging on the floor. Heyes therefore was not that surprised to see, when the door opened, that Tom walked with crutches. His legs were very thin and didn't really support him well, especially the twisted left one. He wore heavy metal leg braces. The boy was short and slight. He looked more like he was twelve than fifteen – except for the powerful arms that he used to make up for what his legs couldn't do. He looked up hopefully at his visitors with lively grey eyes from under a thick mop of wavy brown hair, "Good afternoon, Professor! And you must be Mr. Smith. I'm glad to meet you." The young voice sounded more confident than Heyes had expected.

Heyes looked into the boy's eyes and was glad to see how strongly the keen young eyes met his, "Yes, Tom. I'm glad to meet you, too. Please call me Joshua." Tom expertly tucked his right crutch under one arm and balanced on just the one crutch and leg so that he could shake his new tutor's hand.

"I hope you two will get along," said Homer. "I know you both love to read. Moby Dick is a particular favorite of Joshua's, Tom."

"Oh! Did you read it in college, Joshua?" asked Tom.

Heyes answered with just a slight hesitation – wondering if too much honesty would undermine his authority. But he preferred to me as honest as he could. It was clear to him that Homer had chosen him for Tom because of all they had in common. "No – my tutor introduced me to it before I got to Columbia."

Homer smiled, "I've got a meeting, so I'd better get on my way."

"Good-bye, Professor," said Tom, "and thank-you!"

"Wait until you get some work with Smith under your belt before you thank me, Tom. He's not going to take it easy on you!" Homer called lightly as he left.

Tom sat on his bed, while he invited Joshua to sit on his one chair – a heavy, comfortable arm chair that would be suited for Tom's needs.

Tom looked back at Joshua Smith curiously. "You had a tutor? I thought you were such a great student – why would you need a tutor?"

Heyes grinned and looked down, embarrassed that his image and his past didn't match. "Actually, I never finished school out West. Never got even close. But Charlie tells me that you did finish. All the way to eleventh grade?"

Tom nodded, "Yeah. I was lucky. We had a very good teacher on the place – the ranch where my folks worked - when I was in high school. And look at me – you know there wasn't anything I needed to do on the ranch that was going to take me out of school the way it does so many guys out there. So I just read and studied all I could. I know I'll need to support myself with my mind." Heyes was surprised, and impressed, to hear how honest Tom was about his own condition. It gave Heyes the courage to be as honest as he could in his turn.

"Was it farm or ranch work that took you away from school, Joshua?" Tom asked.

Heyes looked Tom squarely in the eyes. "No." It was so tempting to distract the boy and say this was about him and not his tutor, but Heyes knew that wasn't the way to go. The troubles in his past might help this ambitious young man to identify with him and to deal with his own troubles as he started school. "I ran away from the home for . . . waywards when I was fifteen – and they didn't do much teaching there anyhow."

"Waywards?" Tom was taken aback. This wasn't the past he expected from a star college student.

"I – my cousin and I – we were . . . orphaned when we were little – in the Kansas border wars. I didn't get to go on with school until three years ago."

"Three years ago! That's a long time out of school. You aren't regular school age – you must be in your thirties, right?" Heyes nodded. "You must have done something else for a long time. What got you back to school – and from Kansas to New York City?"

"Well, how'd you get here from Montana? That's a long way, too."

Tom laughed. He was utterly unintimidated. "I asked first!"

Heyes couldn't get around the boy. "So you did. I . . . my tutoring was at the Leutze Clinic for Aphasia Patients. Do you know what aphasia is?"

Tom took the question as a challenge. "Let's see – it's from the Greek. A means something negative . . . but what's phasia? What couldn't you do?"

"Talk. Or write." Heyes pushed back the long hair from his left temple.

Tom's eyes opened wide. "Wow! That's some scar. Almost as good as mine. So that's why you kind'a pause sometimes when you're talking?"

"Yeah." Heyes tried to resist wincing. The boy sure was blunt! And observant.

Tom inquired eagerly, "What happened?"

"Bullet in the head. How'd you get your scar?" Heyes tried to get the subject off of himself and onto his new student.

"Just surgery to try to repair my left leg. Didn't work." Tom was just as reluctant to talk too much about his own physical problems.

"I'm sorry," said Heyes.

Tom shrugged. "Just the way it is. How'd you get shot?"

Joshua shrugged in his turn. "Just an accident – stray bullet. I don't remember anything until after I woke up a few days later. It happened out in the mountains. Bullet glanced off a rock and hit me."

Tom was excited by this adventure story. "Who saved you? Out in the mountains? You weren't just left alone – you'd have died."

"That's right. My partner Thaddeus saved my life. He's in Colorado now."

Tom's eyes lit up."Your partner? Like some of those western heroes I've read about?! Like Kid Curry and Hannibal Heyes!"

It was one of the great acting jobs of Heyes' life not to blush at that or react in any way. Looking into Tom's perceptive young eyes was at least as revealing as looking into a mirror. The bright grey eyes looked thoughtful. The boy saw something in his new tutor's eyes, obviously, but not enough for it to give Heyes away. Otherwise, this very frank boy would surely have said something.

Heyes smiled. "Yeah, kinda like that. Thaddeus - he's my second cousin."

"You must miss him." The emotion in Tom's voice made Heyes wonder who it was the boy himself was missing – he guessed it was his parents.

"Yeah, I do miss him. But I go out there every Christmas and every summer, so we get to ride around together some."

"Oh. So you're really good at math?" Tom, like a much younger boy, jumped from one subject to the next without any transition.

"Yeah. Always was. But you never said how you got here from Montana."

For the first time, Tom's reaction wasn't instant and blunt. There was a decided hesitation on the boy's part. "My Ma's brother Hiram lives . . . lived in New York. He . . . was an engineer. I was supposed to live with him while I was studying. He got killed a month ago, building a bridge."

"I'm really sorry to hear that, Tom. Would you rather talk about school?" Heyes could see what a hard emotional time his new student must be having. Tom fell silent. "We do need to talk about what you need to work on." Heyes tried to urge Tom on to academics.

"You were a cowboy?" But Tom wouldn't take the hint.

"I thought we were going to talk about school!" Heyes worried about being able to keep charge of the wayward Tom.

Tom badgered away at Smith, "Well, I've known plenty of cowboys, and not one of them cared about math. So what made you want to teach math?"

Heyes answered honestly, "Having a couple of great math teachers. And just happening to be good at it. Very good at it."

"Professor Homer's one of those great math teachers?"

Heyes grinned at Tom. "Of course!"

"And you want to be like him?" Tom, again, cut right to the heart of the matter without regard for his tutor's dignity.

"Yeah, I do want to be like Charlie Homer." Once again, Heyes was as utterly honest as his new student was.

"You don't want to be a cowboy again?"

"No. You know that that's a hard life and it doesn't pay enough to support a wife. I want to get married and settle down."

"You picked out the girl?" Tom asked with a smile.

Heyes smiled back, "I sure have. She was my tutor at the clinic. When we first met, I couldn't say a word. Now, as my partner says, I won't shut up!"

"So being a tutor . . ." Tom, for once, was feeling his way.

Heyes understood where he was going, "Tutoring can sure lead to a friendship. But in the mean time, first it means helping you get started on college."

Finally Tom was ready to really talk about school. "I'm good at reading and writing and stuff, but math is harder for me. I guess that's why Professor Homer picked you." Tom looked appraisingly at Smith.

Smith looked keenly back, "Let me guess – you like to skip over the steps for figuring and guess the answers?"

"Yeah, I do." Tom said with his usually honesty and quickness.

Heyes conked his new student's pride on the head with a straight-forward statement. "Won't work with college math. At least not most of the time. It's just too complicated."

Tom, finding this subject dull, jumped back to personal questions. "When you started college, did you still have a real hard time talking?"

Heyes shook his head, "You are the bluntest guy I've ever met, Tom! Yeah, I did."

"And did the other guys tease you?" Tom continued his tactless questioning, but Heyes was determined not to let it faze him.

"Yeah. Called me old man and cowboy and hick and slow. Tried to beat me up. Tried. . ." Heyes couldn't keep a note of pride out of his voice.

Tom was as honest about himself as he was about his new tutor. "Nobody tries to beat me up – there's no challenge to it. Well, they do trip me sometimes. And they tease me."

"Anybody tries either one of those things when I'm around, they'll regret it!" Heyes wanted to make sure that Tom knew that he had a champion on campus already.

Tom laughed. "You don't have to be around – I make 'em regret it all by myself."

"With that sharp tongue of yours?"

"You got it, Joshua!"

Oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

A month later, Heyes and Beth were having dinner with the Homers at their apartment where they had all spent so much time together after Heyes had been shot in the hip. "So how's it going with Tom, Heyes?" asked Charlie.

"He's a handful, that boy! I got to use every kind of trick to get him to take time to do all the steps on his math problems. He's just in such a hurry with everything all the time. Wants to get past it and not bother with doing it right."

"But his math teacher tells me he's doing really well - after his sessions with you!" said Homer.

Beth and Charlie Homer grinned at Heyes and at each other. It sounded mighty familiar to them from working with Heyes not that long ago. "What kind of tricks do you use with Tom, Heyes?" asked Beth.

Heyes shrugged "Oh, I hold out little rewards, you know. And remind him of how rare a chance college is."

"What kind of rewards?" Charlie wanted to know. "His professors would sure love to know what he values enough that it'll make him really work! He's so smart, but he'll only do what he wants to do."

Heyes ducked his head and shrugged. "Oh, you know."

"No, I don't know. Nobody else has found any way to make Tom O'Keeffe do anything he's bored with. The boy is just too smart, but too immature!" Charlie sighed.

Heyes looked down and couldn't meet any of their eyes, in embarrassment. "I . . . um . . . I tell him stories. Stories about my life out west. Can't tell the real exciting ones, of course – the Devil's Hole stories. But there are plenty of things I can tell him without putting anyone's life in danger. With his problems, you know, he's never gotten to just get on a horse and ride off the way the Kid and I used to do all the time. Just ordinary stories about the West. When Tom was out there, he didn't dare ask anybody to tell him. He'll work like the devil just so he can hear a good story. Sometimes, I got to admit, I change a few names and tell him some pretty exciting ones."

Homer laughed. "What do you know? How'd you figure it out, Heyes?"

Heyes snorted, "What do you mean? It's so obvious! From the moment we met, he did nothing but ask me about my past out West! All I had to do was make him wait a bit for some answers."

Homer shook his head, "All I can say is, nobody else has figured it out – and all of his professors have been trying for a month! He'll work on things that interest him, but anything where the interest isn't obvious, he just won't even try."

Heyes couldn't believe that his own insights were so rare. "Come on, it's not just stories. It isn't hard to get Tom interested in the driest things, if you just take the time and bring out the interest you see in it."

Charlie, Beth, and Marie all laughed. "I think somebody else has been learning this semester, don't you Charlie?" said Marie.

Charlie nodded. "Yeah, I'd say my student is learning how to teach."

"But it's so easy! All you have to do is care," said Heyes earnestly.

"There you are!" smiled Charlie Homer, "In just a month, he's found the center of the profession. Anyone who won't hire you to teach, Heyes, is a damned fool."