It was my effort, in depicting the West, to depict it as it was.
My wife was delighted with the home I had given her amid the prairies of the far west.
But the love of adventure was in father's blood.
General Custer was a close observer and student of personal character.
With the help of a friend I got father into a wagon, when the crowd had gone. I held his head in my lap during the ride home. I believed he was mortally wounded. He had been stabbed down through the kidneys, leaving an ugly wound.
Frontiersmen good and bad, gunmen as well as inspired prophets of the future, have been my camp companions. Thus, I know the country of which I am about to write as few men now living have known it.