with him all his life.

The next spring he traded a carbine that he brought home from the army
for an Indian pony, and then he began business for himself. He organized
the cows of the town into a town herd and took them every morning to
pasture on the prairie. All day he rode in the open air, and the town
boys came out to play with him, and they explored the cave by his
mother's house, and with their sling-shots killed quails and prairie
chickens and cooked them, and they played war through the long summer
days. But John did not grow as the other boys grew; he remained
undersized, and his limp put him at a disadvantage; so he had few
fights, but he learned cunning, and got his way by strategy rather than
by force--but he always had his way. He was strong; the memory of what
he had seen and what he had been that one awful day in the battle made
lines on his face; sometimes at night he would wake screaming, when he
dreamed he was running away from the surgeon with the bloody knife in
his teeth and that the man was going to throw an arm at him. And when he
wished to bring Ellen Culpepper to time he would begin in a low
terrorful voice, "And I saw--the man--take--a--g-r-e-a-t l-o-n-g knife
d-r-i-p-p-i-n-g with r-e-d-b-l-o-o-d out of his t-e-e-t-h and go slish,
k-slish," but he never got farther than this, for the girl would begin
shaking, and if they were alone, would run to him and grab him and put
her hand to his mouth to make him stop.

And so his twelfth year passed under the open sky in the sunshine in
summer and in winter working after school in town where men were
wanting, and where a boy could always find work. He grew brown and
lean, and as his voice grew squeaky and he sang alto in the school, he
became more and more crafty and masterful. The fact that his mother
was the teacher, did not give him more rights in school than other