t 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 th