Poor Phil. Strangely enough, he married a woman like Mother. His children barely tolerate him. I expect to see him more often as we all age.

By rights I should have hated my sister Eugenie. She was short and plump like Father, with an extravagant array of dimples and an honest-to-goodness beauty mark next to her right eye. Her hair was naturally curly. She was frequently called upon to entertain visitors with “Horatio at the Bridge,” or “The Wreck of the Hesperus.” Heavens, she clasped her hands and rolled her eyes upward and really ripped into that old Longfellow poem.

Eugenie turned into a lovely woman. I am told that her come-out was the highlight of the 1882 Omaha social season. (It had been prudently postponed from the 1881 debut calendar to give the gossip and scandal time to fade away. More about that later.) Eugenie wasn’t exactly covered over with intelligence, but she was always comfortable to be around, and knew which fork to use. More important, she loved me no matter what.

That was our family, or nearly so. Let me add this about my maternal grandmother Casey: Grandpa Casey made his fortune in beer, a fact which Mother preferred to overlook. In her letters to me, Grandma Casey chuckled at Mother’s snobbery. “Money’s money, Lizzie, and don’t you forget it. Damned stuff comes in handy.”

Before she died, she turned into a true eccentric, reading French novels and the Police Gazette and sleeping in the altogether with the windows wide open (the drapes, too, if you can believe her neighbors). She admired my latent independence and helped me out beyond measure when I really needed it. On the anniversary of her death, Duncan and I toast her with beer. She would have liked that.

Other relatives came and went, but none of them are of sufficient interest to include here. I might add that any relative staying with us for at least six months at a stretch was entitled to a free lifetime pass on the Union Pacific. We had lots of company.

That enough about my family for now; they will show up again in this narrative. I believe you get the gist, if you have been paying attention, and I need to get on with my story.

I should state here that I never would have spent nearly eight weeks with the Nez Perce if I hadn’t developed a bosom.

Chapter Two

My story is what Duncan refers to as “the ultimate tourist experience.”

I blame it all on my bosom. Mother never held out much hope that my bosom would exceed or even match the ordinary, and I shared her fear. I gangled though my early teen years until Something Happened. My freckles vanished, never to return, and my nose – granted, a somewhat commanding specimen – finally began to fit my face. Then, lo and behold, after years and years of staring down at my chest and waiting for some sign of maturity, I developed breasts.