AS I rode north the next few days I had sometimes thought back on that incident. There's probably folks who think I did wrong, but no matter how I thought about it I couldn't make it out that way. That boy was out to bully me, and there was at least four people there with more reason to care more than I did for him, but I was the only one who tried to talk him out of it. Maybe he was as irritating to everyone as he tried to be to me. Maybe the war, maybe losing his father, had turned him bitter. It did plenty of other people. Hell it had hurt me enough. That's probably why I was riding north when everyone else: Commanches, soldiers, settlers, cattlemen, and railway workers were all just stirring with winter's early end. I'd had enough of most people, and enough of killing. I liked being alone in the foothills of the high country, even knowing that a little turn of the weather could bring a blizzard that I'd need shelter from. Seems like I'd needed a lot more alone time the past few years.
It wasn't like that when I was growing up back in Missouri. I liked being around people, talking with them, even arguing with them. One thing that was still the same is that once I decided I was right I wouldn't give in, no matter how small the matter, or how big the consequences. My older brothers, especially Franklin, would talk me down, or kick my butt -- the way somebody shoulda done for that boy in Arizona -- but eventually they weren't around. By my late teens I had my share of enemies, and allies. As you know, the years before the war were contentious times. A lot of the things we did weren't clean. They were for a good cause, but they weren't good.
I'd grown up around a negro couple, and I just couldn't stomach any argument that made out that colored folks were any way less than any other folks. Couldn't keep my mouth shut about it nuther.
Anyway, the time came when doing the right thing put me on the wrong side of the law. Franklin got me a job hunting for some railway builders, and I headed west out of Missouri two jumps in front of the law. Seems to me the law always ends up on the side of them that has the most money or the most friends. The only time I ever stood completely on the right side was the three years I spent in the Union Army. Even though we was mainly right, we did a lot of things that was really wrong.
Most a the time I been outside the law, riding a dark trail and deciding for myself what's right and wrong. But I can only seem to stay really right by staying away from people.
So I warn't none to happy with myself as I rode north, but I was glad to be out in the wilderness where everyday I could see eagles, bears, deer, buffalo, and other critters starting to move with the springtime, and not a one of them was worrying about right or wrong.
I did not know that that blond boy's death had started something in motion that would change the outcome of events still to come, making some folks lives, mine included, different, and ending a few prematurely.
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