“You talk as though you were there,” Bert commented.

 

“My mother was,” Saxon answered proudly. “She was nine years old that winter.”

 

They were seated around the table in the kitchen of the little Pine Street cottage, making a cold lunch of sandwiches, tamales, and bottled beer. It being Sunday, the four were free from work, and they had come early, to work harder than on any week day, washing walls and windows, scrubbing floors, laying carpets and linoleum², hanging curtains, setting up the stove, putting the kitchen utensils³ and dishes away, and placing the furniture.

 

“Go on with the story, Saxon,” Mary begged. “I'm just dyin' to hear. And Bert, you just shut up and listen.”

 

“Well, that winter was when Del Hancock showed up. He was Kentucky born, but he'd been in the West for years. He was a scout⁴, like Kit¹ Carson, and he knew him well. Many's a time Kit Carson and he slept under the same blankets. They were together to California and Oregon with General Fremont. Well, Del Hancock was passing on his way through Salt Lake, going I don't know where to raise a company of Rocky Mountain trappers to go after beaver⁵ some new place he knew about. He was a handsome man. He wore his hair long like in pictures, and had a silk sash around his waist he'd learned to wear in California from the Spanish, and two revolvers in his belt. Any woman 'd fall in love with him first sight. Well, he saw Sadie, who was my mother's oldest sister, and I guess she looked good to him, for he stopped right there in Salt Lake and didn't go a step. He was a great Indian fighter, too, and I heard my Aunt Villa⁶ say, when I was a little girl, that he had the blackest, brightest eyes, and that the way he looked was like an eagle. He'd fought

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