1. What causes John Shipman's wagon to wreck, killing Pa?

2. How does Reuben know that Blair Meacham is not an honorable man when Joey thinks of him as friendly?

3. Why does Joey go to the trouble to free the fly from the spider web?

4. Why does young Joey take his father's straight razor with him on his journey west?

5. In what ways does Beau need the young boy Joey? In what ways does young Joey need the drunken Beau?

6. Why does Joey not agree with Judge Henry Smith's "swift and terrible justice" for those arrested for crimes?

7. How much of Beau's dissolute life was caused by his father's telling him he would "never amount to nothin"?

8. What causes Miller Dawson to protect Joey from his outlaw partner Hull?

9. Why did Joey's pa not indulge much "in food that came in air tights"?

10. Canned sardines and...