"I don't need all that money.
If you need any- "
He laughed soundlessly.
"I'm O.K.
Thanks, anyway."
"Sure?"
He chuckled again, wondering what she would say if she knew about the six-thousand-acre ranch he had in Texas, about the half interest in the Wild-West show.
He, too, had learned a great deal from the old man.
Money was only good when it was working for you.
"Sure," he said. He got to his feet and walked toward her. "Now go to bed, Rina. You're out on your feet."
He followed her into the bedroom and took a blanket from the closet as she got into bed.
She caught his hands as he walked by the bed.
"Talk to me while I fall asleep."
He sat down on the side of the bed. "What about?" he asked.
She still held onto his hand. "About yourself.
Where you were born, where you came from – anything."
He smiled into the dark.
"Ain't very much to tell," he said.
"As far as I know, I was born in West Texas.
My father was a buffalo-hunter named John Smith and my mother was a Kiowa princess named- "
"Don't tell me," she interrupted sleepily. "I know her name. Pocahontas."
He laughed softly.
"Somebody told you," he said in mock reproach. "Pocahontas.
That was her name."
"Nobody told me," she whispered faintly. "I read it someplace."
Her hand slipped slowly from his and he looked down.
Her eyes were closed and she was fast asleep.
Quietly he got up and straightened the blanket around her, then turned and walked into the other room.
He spread a blanket on the couch and undressed quickly. He stretched out and wrapped the blanket around him.
John Smith and Pocahontas.
He wondered how many times he had mockingly told that story.
But the truth was stranger still. And probably, no one would believe it.
It was so long ago that there were times he didn't believe it himself any more.
His name wasn't Nevada Smith then, it was Max Sand.
And he was wanted for armed robbery and murder in three different states.
2.
IT WAS IN MAY OF 1882 THAT Samuel Sand came into the small cabin that he called home and sat down heavily on a box that served him for a chair.
Silently his squaw woman heated some coffee and placed it before him.
She moved heavily, being swollen with child.
He sat there for a long time, his coffee growing cold before him.
Occasionally, he would look out the door toward the prairie, with its faint remnant patches of snow still hidden in the corners of rises.
The squaw began to cook the evening meal. Beans and salt buffalo meat.
It was still early in the day to cook the meal, because the sun had not yet reached the noon, but she felt vaguely disturbed and had to do something.
Now and then, she would glance at Sam out of the corners of her eyes but he was lost in a troubled world that women were not allowed to enter.
So she kept stirring the beans and meat in the pot and waited for his mood and the day to pass.
Kaneha was sixteen that spring and it was only the summer before that the buffalo-hunter had come to the tepees of her tribe to purchase a wife.
He had come on a black horse, leading a mule that was burdened heavily with pack.
The chief and the council of braves came out to greet him.
They sat down in a circle of peace around the fire with the pot of stew cooking over it.
The chief took out the pipe and Sam took out a bottle of whisky.