“You must have had pretty tough times, aunt.”
“Well, they might have been improved, but Dinah and I managed to get along a great deal better than some of our neighbors. Here in Texas we were so far from the war 5 that I may say I never heard a hostile shot fired, except by the Indians who came down this way now and then.”
“They were the same, I suppose, that still trouble us.”
“I believe so, mostly Comanches and sometimes Kioways, with perhaps others that we didn’t know. They did much to prevent our life from becoming dull,” added the brave little lady, with another smile.
“The women in those days had to know how to shoot the rifle, ride horses, and do the work of the absent men.”
“I don’t know how we could have got along if we hadn’t learned all those things. For years I never knew the taste of coffee, and only rarely was able to obtain a pinch of coarse brown sugar; but we did not suffer for meat, and, with the help of Dinah, we could get a few things out of the earth, so that, on the whole, I think I had much easier times than my husband.”
“I am not so sure of that,” remarked Captain Shirril, rousing himself; “we had rough days and nights, beyond all doubt, but after 6 all, there was something about it which had its charm. There was an excitement in battle, a thrill in the desperate ride when on a scout, a glory in victory, and even a grim satisfaction in defeat, caused by the belief that we were not conquered, or that, if we were driven back, it was by Americans, and not by foreigners.”
“That’s an odd way of putting it,” remarked the wife, “but was it not the high health, which you all felt because of your rough outdoor life? You know when a person is strong and rugged, he can stand almost anything, and find comfort in that which at any other time brings only wretchedness and suffering.”
“I suppose that had a good deal to do with it, and that, too, may have had much to do with sustaining you and Dinah in your loneliness.”
The captain raised his eyes and looked at two old-fashioned muzzle-loading rifles, suspended on a couple of deer’s antlers over the fireplace, and smiling through his shaggy whiskers, said: