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And Thomas was a bit taller than I, so his father was possibly the tallest man I had ever heard of. I said, "A head taller?"

"At least. He’s well known for it. Mama always said it was a blessing they had no sisters—" But then she looked at me and blushed.

I said, "Thomas hardly ever speaks of his relations. It makes me wonder if there’s ill feeling."

"I don’t think so. You could ask Mama. But everyone is always wondering what Mr. Newton thinks. It’s quite a feature of our group. They chose him to bring over those rifles because they thought he was the least likely to divulge the information. Or any information of any kind."

We couldn’t gossip away the afternoon, because Susannah had duties at home. I saw, though, that there was much to be learned, and I was eager to learn it.

Thomas, Frank, and I made pleasant companions, and I didn’t at all mind Frank’s presence—for you had to call it that, even though the boy was perennially off doing something. Once he and Thomas had built him a lean-to on the side of the cabin and a little bed to put in it, we weren’t always sure where he was. He thought nothing of running off to Lawrence, for example. Literally running. Thomas and I could walk to Lawrence, if the ground was hard, in half a morning. On Jeremiah it was an easy hour. Some days, Frank would go off to Lawrence before breakfast and come back before supper, his pockets full of bits of things he had found and was keeping to trade, or of pennies and dimes he had gotten through his trades. One night, he said, "I an’t never seen such a place for folks dropping stuff."

"Haven’t ever seen," said Thomas.

"I’ll be goin’ along, an’t nobody around anywhere, and here I see a saucer buried in the grass. I picked one up yesterday, all painted with violets and all, gold rim, and it said ’Hampton’ on the bottom. Not a single chip, but no cup, neither. And this morning I got me a perfectly good boot, almost new, hardly even broken in yet. Just sittin’ there. Folks in town is just as bad."

"Are just as bad," I said.

"You just got to keep your eyes on the ground. I got me a dollar between today and yesterday. Mr. Stearns give me two bits for that boot, ’cause he said, ’Someday a one-legged fella’s gonna walk into this store looking for a boot, and if it’s the left leg he’s lost, well, then, I’ll fix him right up.’ "

But for Thomas and me, Lawrence seemed a long way off. We didn’t leave the claim twice in a week, except to go to a neighbor cabin. And it wasn’t only that our work at home filled our days; it was also that we were disinclined to be swept up in the talk and upsets of town. It was easier to deepen our well with a shovel and a bucket and a rope and a pulley, wet and shivering, than it was to know what to think with every new bit about the depredations of the Missourians. Frankly, we considered the Missourians less important to our future well-being than the well. Now that our little area was more thickly settled by our friends, I had to go farther afield for game, and I had to bring more home, too, because I knew that what we weren’t sharing now (and we were sharing some) we would be sharing later. It was a source of wonder to the New Englanders that Frank and I were such successful meat gatherers, and they put this down to our western nature. Mrs. Holmes, for example, asked me if Quincy was in Kentucky, and when I said no, it was in Illinois, she guessed that such places were all the same in the end, weren’t they, and did we have animal skins stretched over the outer walls of our house in Quincy, and did my brother-in-law the farmer have to carry his rifle into the fields with him to frighten off the red Indians? But she thanked me anyway for the meat and told me I would be repaid in heaven, as if she had a personal account there. Well, I didn’t like her, I admit it.

Every night, Thomas read us something from his store of books. Before Frank, we had been having Mr. Emerson every night, but Frank yawned