They managed to scratch a lean living for themselves, and that was all.

Cady--he was the saloonkeeper--had been a soldier in my father's company, and he always swore by Captain Kit, which was their nickname for him.

My father had kept the surgeons from amputating his leg in the war, and he never forgot it.

He was making money in the hotel and saloon, and I found out afterward he helped out a lot to pay the doctors and to bury my mother alongside of father.

I was to go to Uncle Will--that was my mother's wish; but there had been fighting up in the Ventura Mountains where his ranch was, and men had been killed.