As I rode I thought about the first young lady with whom my father was in love. She must have been pretty and charming. She might have even become my mother, for a wedding date had been established.

But when the young lady's father died, the wedding was postponed and never rescheduled. I wondered why. I wondered if her mother was concerned about this Mormon maiden marrying a "gentile," such as my father.

Although that maiden may have been charming I can remember being thankful that the wedding had not taken place, for I loved my mother -- the Mormon maiden my father later married in another town.

As the old brown mare and I poked on, I looked across the rabbit brush and greasewood flats. Beyond the hazy blue, I saw the Henry Mountains. And closer in, the blue hills above the cemetery. In that cemetery (which I didn't take time to visit until years later) lay the bodies of many pioneers and their children.