"Nineteen, I think. Of course I don't know my exact age."
"No, I suppose not. Then I'm not so much older than you. I'm twenty-seven.
But yours is a strange story. Dave, we are brothers in misfortune."
"Brothers in misfortune! What do you mean?" cried the young cowboy.
"I mean, that I haven't any near relatives either. And while I do know who I am, and who my parents were, still that isn't much satisfaction. I have lost them."
"Lost them?" Dave echoed.
"Yes, and in a flood, such as nearly claimed your life. I must find out just what town you came from. It may be that our folks lived in the same place. It would be a strange coincidence, but it might be that it is so. I lost all my folks, including a baby brother in a Western flood. I don't know many of the particulars, for I was with relatives in Ohio at the time, so I escaped.
"I am anxious to hear Mr. Carson's story. It interests me mightily. To think that we have gone through much the same sort of suffering. But I should have thought so small a baby as you must have been at the time would have been drowned."
"I would have been if it hadn't been for one thing," returned our hero, with an odd little smile.
"One thing? What was that?"
"I doubt if you can guess."