Nínake, the younger sister, was the favorite of Yellow Bird. She was lively, a great talker, and gave him a good time. But I liked Katoyísa better, a quiet bashful girl of nineteen, with shapely head and good features. Her black hair hung in two heavy braids almost to her knees. She wore homemade cotton gowns of thin material which showed her slender graceful form. From the look in her eyes and expression of her face, I knew she had courage and character. In her was the stuff of our bravest pioneers. After we had finished with the hay of the scout, Yellow Bird and I went to their ranch to help with their crops. The girls cooked and gave us good food, fresh vegetables from their garden, beef, bread and butter and milk. Many years have passed, but they have not dimmed the memory of those happy days without a care in the world, the primitive simplicity of that family, and the way they made me one of them. We both enjoyed our work, we were near the girls from morning till night, and that kept us in a good humor. Then the scout wanted timber from the mountains, so we took two teams and made ready the wagons. We threw off their beds and placed the wheels far apart by means of a long reach, to hold the heavy logs. Yellow Bird drove one wagon and I the other. For me it was a new thing to drive a team of broncos. I sat on the reach, on a gunnysack stuffed with hay. I had to wield a whip with a long lash, and had a heavy chain for binding the logs together. We left the ranch soon after sunrise and went to a burned stretch of timber on a slope of the Rockies. We felled only trees that were sound and well-seasoned, cutting them into logs and snaking them down the forest trails to be loaded on our wagons. At first it was hard to chop hour after hour with an axe. I blistered my hands and was drenched with sweat; my arms and back ached; I felt weak in the knees and had a consuming thirst. Then I became accustomed to the work and had a feeling of exhilaration. I liked the fresh odor of the wood, the ring of my axe and the feeling of a good stroke, to know my sharp blade was cutting deep. There was always danger of being cut with an axe, from felling trees that had lodged, and from Yellow Bird; sometimes his trees fell perilously near. Once I was nearly struck by a pine that let go at the roots; I heard a sharp crackling, saw it coming towards me and jumped just in time. But for me the hardest work was the loading of the wagons. The heavy logs were twenty-five feet long and from one to two feet in diameter. The roads were steep and rough and our brakes would not hold. But we always joked about hard work and danger, and had to look out for ourselves.