I got to be quite looked up to by the other boys of my age. I “lived at the hotel,” had “nobody to boss me around,” didn’t have to “run errands and chop kindling and go after the groceries and carry milk.” When a new boy showed up, I was the one to show him around. I remember distinctly, now, that in less than a year after I left the Sisters, I was going down the street with a new boy when we came upon one of the town drunkards and bad men. I pointed him out with pride. “See that old fellow? That’s old Beverly Shannon. He’s been out to Leadville. He killed a man out there and nearly got hung. You ought to hear him swear when he gets drunk and falls down and nobody will help him up.”

There was admiration in my voice. Our town was full of bad men. All had been in the war on one side or the other. Everybody had a pistol or two, and a shotgun or a rifle. Everybody knew how to use them. No small boy’s outfit was complete without a pistol. Usually it was a rusty old “horse pistol,” a cap-and-ball affair, some old relic of the Civil War. By a great stroke of fortune I got two of them. I was helping an old lady to move some things out of her cellar when we ran across them in a trunk.