They were not bad fellows, you understand--just the rakehelly, reckless sort that keep hanging on to the edge of things and making a living by their wits.

I'd come West without any definite idea of what I wanted to do, and I fell in with these men naturally and easily, because they were of my type.
"I had three intimates among them--a tall, clean-limbed fellow with the bluest and steadiest eyes I ever saw in a man, who called himself 'Nebraska'; a rangy Texan named Quint Taylor, who maintained that manual labor was a curse and quoted the Scriptures to prove it; and Tom Taggart.

Tom and I were thick.

I liked him, and he'd done things for me that seemed to prove that he thought a lot of me.

He didn't like it a little bit when I married your mother--her name was Mary Lannon, and I'd got acquainted with her while riding for a few months for her father, who owned a ranch near Eagle Pass, close to the Rio Grande.
She was white, boy, and so were her folks, and you can be proud of her.
And if she had lived you could be proud of me--she'd have kept on making me a man.
"Taggart didn't like the idea of me getting hooked up.