Little Jim liked to go to town with his father, yet he considered town
really a sort of suburb to his real world, the homestead, which he had
seen change from a prairie level of unfenced space to a small--and to
him--complete kingdom of pasture lot, hayfield, garden, corrals, stable,
and house. Town was simply a place to which you went to buy things, get
the mail, exchange views on the weather and grazing, and occasionally
help the hands load a shipment of cattle. Little Jim helped by sitting
on the top rail of the pens and commenting on the individual
characteristics of the cattle, and, sometimes, of the men loading them.
In such instances he found opportunity to pay off old scores.
Incidentally he kept the men in good humor by his lively comment.

Little Jim was six years of age when his mother left to resume her
former occupation of waitress in the station restaurant of Laramie,
where she had been popular because of her golden hair, her blue eyes,
and her ability to "talk back" to the regular customers in a manner
which they seemed to enjoy. Big Jim married her when he was not much
more than a boy--twenty, in fact; and during the first few years they
were happy together. But homesteading failed to supply more than their
immediate needs.

Occasional trips to town at first satisfied the wife's craving for the
attention and admiration that most men paid to her rather superficial
good looks. But as the years slipped by, with no promise of easier
conditions, she became dissatisfied, shrewish, and ashamed of her lack
of pretty things to wear. Little Jim was, of course, as blind to all
this as he was to his need for anything other than his overalls, shoes,
and jumper. He thought his mother was pretty and he often told her so.