Calkins coming along with one of his trains and he bought me of those Navajos.  I remember he gave fifty silver dollars for me to the chief.  Well, when I told him all that I could remember about myself—­of course the people that did the killing scared a good deal of it out of me—­he took me to Kansas City where he lived, and went to law and made me his son, because he’d lost a boy about my age.  And so that’s how we have different names, he telling me I’d ought to keep mine instead of taking his.”

She was excited by the tale, which he had told almost in one breath, and now she was eager to question, looking over to see if her father would not also be interested; but the latter gave no sign.

“You poor little boy, among those wretched Indians!  But why were your father and mother killed?  Did the Indians do it?”

“No, not Indians that did it—­and I never did know why they killed them—­they that did do it.”

“But how queer!  Don’t you know who it was?”

Before answering, he paused to take one of the long revolvers from its holster, laying it across his lap, his right hand still grasping it.

“It was tiring my leg where it was,” he explained.  “I’ll just rest myself by holding it here.  I’ve practised a good smart bit with these pistols against the time when I’d meet some of them that did it—­that killed my father and mother and lots of others, and little children, too.”

“How terrible!  And it wasn’t Indians?”

“No—­I told you that already—­it wasn’t Indians.”

“Don’t you know who it was?”

“Oh, yes, I know all of them I want to know.  The fact is, up there at Cedar City I met some people that got confidential with me one day, and told me a lot of their names.  There was Mr. Barney Carter and Mr. Sam Woods, and they talked right freely about some folks.  I found out what I was wanting to know, being that they were drinking men.”

He had moved slightly as he spoke and she glanced at the revolver still held along his knee.

“Isn’t that dangerous—­seems to me it’s pointed almost toward father.”

“Oh, not a bit dangerous, and it rests me to hold it there.  You see it was hereabouts this thing happened.  In fact, I came down here looking for a big man, and a little girl that I remembered, whose father and mother were killed at the same time mine was.  This little girl was about three or four, I reckon, and she was taken by one of the murderers.  He seemed like an awful big man to me.  By the way, that’s mean whiskey your Bishop sells on the sly up at Cedar City.  Why, it’s worse than Taos lightning.  Well, this Barney Carter and Mr. Sam Woods, they would drink it all right, but they said one drink made a man ugly and two made him so downright bad that he’d just as lief tear his wife’s best bonnet to pieces as not.  But they seemed to like me pretty well, and they drank a lot of this whiskey that the Bishop sold me, and then they got talking pretty freely about old times.  I gathered that this man that took the little girl is a pretty big man around here.  Of course I wasn’t expecting anything like that; I thought naturally he’d be a low-down sort to have been mixed up in a thing like that.”