Charley and I spent about a week in Lawrence, and then we headed our separate ways. Charley took off for his family's farm near Ellsworth, and I took the train back to Denver. My mother was not particularly happy about me moving back to Denver, but she finally agreed that it was where I had mapped out my future with Mallie.

"If there is a wedding, you make sure I know about it so I can be there," she said. "But if there is no wedding and you move on, you make sure I know about that too."

When I arrived in Denver (the six-hundred-mile train trip took about forty-eight hours in those days), I made my way back to the same boardinghouse I lived in when I first arrived in Denver almost two years before. Fortunately, a room was available, and Mrs. Lenora Ashford, who owned t...

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