So my childish memories of the great open, that lies naked to the sun-glare and the chilling breath of the _northers_ year on year, grew fainter and more like something of which I had dreamed. Dad would come home occasionally, stay a day or two, perhaps a week, sometimes even a month; but my mother never went west of the Mississippi—nor did I. I often plagued them to let me go to the ranch during vacation, but they evidently considered it best to keep me away from the round-ups and horse-breaking and such, till I was old enough to see that there was another side to the life besides the sunshiny, carefree one that makes an irresistible appeal to a youngster. And then, just a week after my twentieth birthday, my dad, slow-voiced, easy-going old Jack Sumner rode his horse into the smiling Red and drowned under the eyes of twenty men. I was sitting on our front steps grouching about the heat when the messenger brushed by me with the telegram in his hand. Mother signed for it, and he ran down the steps whistling, and went about his business. There was no sound within. I had no hint of trouble, till a maid screamed. Then, I rushed in. Mother was drooping over the arm of a Morris chair, and the bit of yellow paper lay on the rug where it had fluttered from her hand. I carried her to a couch, and called a doctor. But he could do nothing. Her heart was weak, he said, and might have stopped any time; the shock had merely hastened her end. I’m going to pass lightly over the week that followed. I was just a kid, remember, and I took it pretty hard. It was my first speaking acquaintance with death. A few of my mother’s people came, and when it was over with I went to Virginia with an uncle, a kindly, absent-minded, middle-aged bachelor. But I couldn’t settle down. For a week or ten days I fidgeted about the sleepy Southern village, and then I bade my uncle an abrupt good-bye and started for St. Louis. Little as I knew of business and legal matters I was aware that now the Sumner herds and ranches were mine, and I had a hankering to know where I stood. Except that there was a ranch and cattle in Texas I knew nothing of my father’s business. It didn’t even occur to me, at first, that I was a minor and consequently devoid of power to transact any business of importance. I knew that certain property was rightfully mine, and that was all.