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
linoleum, hanging curtains, setting up the stove, putting the
kitchen utensils 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
scout, like Kit 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
beaver some new place he knew about. Ha 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 Villa 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 duels, too, the way they
did in those days, and he wasn't afraid of anything.

"Sadie was a beauty, and she flirted with him and drove him