Free Kiowa Trail (1964) by Louis L'amour

I do not believe it was what they saw.
    Although I was only sixteen, I was more than six feet tall, slim but strong. A friend of Captain Edwards had come down from West Point to help me choose the proper outfit, so there was nothing strange in my appearance, and the only way they could have known me was by my age and the darkness of my skin, browned by Texas sun and wind.
    The girl knew me at once, and came to me, her hand outstretched. "You must be Conn Dury. I am Felicia Kirkstone - James Sotherton was my uncle."
    She was pretty, and pretty in a way I vaguely remembered from the years before my folks moved west.
    "How do you do?" I said. "Mr. Sotherton told me about you."
    "Conn ... Mr. Dury ... my grandfather, Sir Richard Sotherton."
    We talked a little of my crossing, which had been a wild one, due to the terrible storms of that year, and we walked to the open carriage that waited for us.
    Sir Richard drove, and we rode the short distance to Sotherton Manor behind a handsome pair of blacks. When the trip had been planned I was uneasy about it, for all I knew had been taught me by Jim Sotherton, aside from my earlier training at home; and I had never traveled.
    Sotherton Manor was a large, rambling old house of gray stone, half covered with vines. There was a wide stretch of lawn in front and a winding gravel drive that led to the door. It was far more grand than any place I had ever seen before.
    They asked me about my own country, the country where I had worked for Jim; and looking around me, I wondered how I could make them understand. Everything around me indicated that this was a long settled land - the spreading lawns, the carefully planted trees, the green well-kept beauty of it all. Even the woodlands had definite borders, for this was a land where everything had been decided long, long ago.
    Here there was custom, tradition, and a common law built upon hundreds of years of living on the same ground, in somewhat the same way. And my land in the Big Bend of the Rio Grande was still wild, untamed. Nothing there was ordered and arranged, nor were there customs or traditions. Everything was raw and new, and the laws were the laws of the sun and the water holes, the wind and the sparse grazing.
    But that evening, after dinner, I tried to tell them.
    "When Jim Sotherton rode into the Big Bend," I said, "there weren't twenty men in the whole area, and most of them gathered at the old Presidio, a place they called Fort Leaton, down on the Rio Grande."
    "How big an area is it?" Sir Richard asked.
    "The Big Bend? I don't actually know, but it is larger than Wales ... perhaps a third the size of Ireland. And this is only a small piece of Texas."
    They did not believe me. I could see the doubt in their eyes, and knew it was a poor way to begin our acquaintance, though it was the truth. And I had promised to tell them.
    "It's wild, lonely country. Almost everything that grows there has a thorn. The mountains are rugged, bare rock, the country is desolate, yet beautiful - beautiful in a way you'd have to see to understand. There's wild horses, wild cattle, mountain lions, wolves, and rattlesnakes. There are deer, antelope, and javelinas."
    "What?"
    "Javelinas - wild pigs."
    "My uncle told us you had lived with the Apaches," the girl said.
    "Yes, ma'am. For most of three years."
    Gradually, I began to realize that Mr. Sotherton had written them a good deal about me - about my parents being killed by the Indians, my captivity, and the education he had begun giving me.
    Later that night, when we were alone, Sir Richard said, "The men who killed my son ... they had worked for him, I believe?"
    "Yes, sir. They thought he was hunting hidden treasure ... there are rumors of Spanish treasure in the Big Bend. After he returned from New Orleans and spent some gold money, they came for him. He was dead when I got back to the ranch."
    "I see. And the men who killed him? They were apprehended by the law?"
    The law? There was no law west of