Returning was only a two-day trip.  We had no trail to find, and we could cut across country, which we did.  Nobody had very much to say that first day out.

Late on the second day, when we were walking our horses up a long canyon, Kipp said, "That Wheeler, he killed six or seven men."  Nobody said anything to that, and he went on.  "Wait until I tell this in town!  It'll make 0llie Burdette turn green."

"Don't tell him!" Hetrick said angrily.  "Don't say a word about it.  I got back my horses and let's let it lay."

"But why not?  It isn't every day a man kills a Rice Wheeler!"

"You don't know gunmen," Hetrick said testily.  "It will start Burdette hunting the boy all the more."

Reluctantly Kipp agreed, but only after I said, "I don't want that kind of talk about me, I'm not making any reputation."

All the way home I was thinking it out.  I had killed another man.  This was two.  That Mexican...  My shot might have killed him, but it was Pollard's shot that did kill him.  No doubt about that.  And I didn't want to claim any more than I had to.

Liza ran out to meet us as we came up.  "you got the horses!"  She was excited.  "Did you catch the thieves?  Where are they?"

Later, I guess she was told, or she heard about it, because for several days she was very big-eyed around me.  But she didn't say anything to me about it, or to anyone else.  And it wasn't even mentioned for a long time.

Sometimes at night we would sit over the table and talk, and I'd tell them stories about living in the mountains alone, and of some of the places I'd seen.  And once when we were talking I went to my saddlebags and got out Ma's picture and showed it to them.

She was a pretty woman.  Only twenty when the picture was taken.

Mrs. Hetrick looked at it for a long time, then at me.  "Do you know anything about her family?"

"No, ma'am.  Pap told me that when they were married her family sort of got shut of her.  I mean... well, the way I heard it, they didn't think Pap had money enough.  But Pap and Ma, they were happy."

Mrs. Hetrick put the picture down thoughtfully.  "That dress she had on... that was expensive."

I knew nothing about women's clothes.  It looked just like any dress to me.  Women, I guess they know about things like that.  One time, a few days later, I heard her telling Hetrick, "Real lace.  I never saw a prettier collar.  It's a pity the boy doesn't know her family."

Sometimes of an evening Liza and I would walk down to the spring and talk, or out by the corral.  Always in plain sight of the house.  She was a mighty pretty youngster.  Me, I was eighteen, headin' on for nineteen.