And in a few weeks John was out of the hero business, working in Culpepper's store after school, and getting used to a limp that stayed with him all his life.
The next spring he traded a carbine that he brought home from the army for an Indian pony, and then he began business for himself.

He organized the cows of the town into a town herd and took them every morning to pasture on the prairie.

All day he rode in the open air, and the town boys came out to play with him, and they explored the cave by his mother's house, and with their sling-shots killed quails and prairie chickens and cooked them, and they played war through the long summer days.

But John did not grow as the other boys grew; he remained undersized, and his limp put him at a disadvantage; so he had few fights, but he learned cunning, and got his way by strategy rather than by force--but he always had his way.

He was strong; the memory of what he had seen and what he had been that one awful day in the battle made lines on his face; sometimes at night he would wake screaming, when he dreamed he was running away from the surgeon with the bloody knife in his teeth and that the man was going to throw an arm at him.