"But Roberts wasn't my father's name. He never knew what his name was. Roberts was the name of a gold-miner who adopted him. You see, it was this way. When they was Indian-fightin' up there with the Modoc Indians, a lot of the miners an' settlers took a hand.
Roberts was captain of one outfit, and once, after a fight, they took a lot of prisoners--squaws, an' kids an' babies. An' one of the kids was my father. They figured he was about five years old.
He didn't know nothin' but Indian."
Saxon clapped her hands, and her eyes sparkled: "He'd been captured on an Indian raid!"
"That's the way they figured it," Billy nodded. "They recollected a wagon-train of Oregon settlers that'd been killed by the Modocs four years before. Roberts adopted him, and that's why I don't know his real name. But you can bank on it, he crossed the plains just the same."
"So did my father," Saxon said proudly.
"An' my mother, too," Billy added, pride touching his own voice.
"Anyway, she came pretty close to crossin' the plains, because she was born in a wagon on the River Platte on the way out."
"My mother, too," said Saxon. "She was eight years old, an' she walked most of the way after the oxen began to give out."
Billy thrust out his hand.
"Put her there, kid," he said. "We're just like old friends, what with the same kind of folks behind us."
With shining eyes, Saxon extended her hand to his, and gravely they shook.
"Isn't it wonderful?" she murmured. "We're both old American stock. And if you aren't a Saxon there never was one--your hair, your eyes, your skin, everything. And you're a fighter, too."
"I guess all our old folks was fighters when it comes to that. It come natural to 'em, an' dog-gone it, they just had to fight or they'd never come through."
"What are you two talkin' about?" Mary broke in upon them.
"They're thicker'n mush in no time," Bert girded. "You'd think they'd known each other a week already."
"Oh, we knew each other longer than that," Saxon returned.
"Before ever we were born our folks were walkin' across the plains together."
"When your folks was waitin' for the railroad to be built an' all the Indians killed off before they dasted to start for California," was Billy's way of proclaiming the new alliance.
"We're the real goods,Saxon an'n me, if anybody should ride up on a buzz-wagon an' ask you."
"Oh, I don't know," Mary boasted with quiet petulance. "My father stayed behind to fight in the Civil War. He was a drummer-boy.
That's why he didn't come to California until afterward."
"And my father went back to fight in the Civil War," Saxon said.
"And mine, too," said Billy.
They looked at each other gleefully. Again they had found a new contact "Well, they're all dead, ain't they?" was Bert's saturnine comment. "There ain't no difference dyin' in battle or in the poorhouse. The thing is they're deado. I wouldn't care a rap if my father'd been hanged. It's all the same in a thousand years.
This braggin' about folks makes me tired. Besides, my father couldn't a-fought. He wasn't born till two years after the war.
Just the same, two of my uncles were killed at Gettysburg. Guess we done our share."
"Just like that," Mary applauded.
Bert's arm went around her waist again.
"We're here, ain't we?" he said. "An' that's what counts. The dead are dead, an' you can bet your sweet life they just keep on stayin' dead."
