He had to fight and wrangle and grapple with life as he did.
Do you remember that night the Minneola fellows came up with their ox team and their band of killers to take the county records--" and there was more of it--the old story of the town's wild days that need not be recorded, and in the end, in answer to some query from the general on John's courage, Watts replied, "John was always a bold little fice--he never lacked brass." "Was he going with Jane Mason then, Watts,--I forget ?" queried the general.
"Yes--yes," replied McHurdie.

"Don't you remember that very next night she sang in the choir--well, John had brought her over from Minneola two days before, and that Sunday when the little devil went in the culvert across Main Street and blew up the Minneola wagons, Jane was in town that day--I remember that; and man--man--I heard her voice say things to him in the duet that night that she would have been ashamed to put in words." The two old men were silent.

"That was youth, too, Watts,--fighting and loving, and loving and fighting,--that's youth," sighed the general.
"Well, Johnnie got his belly full of it in his day, as old Shakespeare says, Phil--and in your day you had yours, too.

Every dog, General--every dog--you know." The two voices were silent, as two old men looked back through the years.
McHurdie put the strap he was working upon in the water, and turned with his spectacles in his hands to his comrade.

"Maybe it's this way: with a man, it's fighting and loving before we get any sense; and with a town it's the same way, and I guess with the race it's the same way--fighting and loving and growing sensible after it's over.