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cars, where he could boil up more coffee than usual. The steaming liquid was then poured into several extra cooking pots to be used when the outfit woke up in the wee hours. This was done in order to keep the camp a cold one.
    When the horses had been fed and saddled, and all were aboard their mounts, and just before Charley gave the signal to move out, he sensed something was wrong.
    â€œWhere’s Henry Ellis?” he called out. “Where has my grandson run off to now?”
    There was some commotion near the rear of the column. Henry Ellis rode to the front to join his grandfather.
    â€œWhere have you been, son?” asked Charley. “We darn near left without you.”
    Henry Ellis looked up, smiling.
    â€œI heard some noise in the night while I was trying to sleep,” he told his grandfather. “I didn’t go far . . . just far enough to find this.”
    He reached behind and opened the buckled strap on his left saddlebag.
    Charley glanced over.
    The wet nose and glistening brown eyes of a mongrel puppy’s face pushed itself up from under the open flap. The young dog looked over at Charley.
    â€œWhy, I’ll be,” said Charley. “A pup.”
    â€œI’ve already given him a name, Grampa,” said the boy. “I call him Buster Number Two.”

C HAPTER S EVEN
    1961
    Â 
    â€œHenry Ellis found a puppy to replace old Buster. Isn’t that neat?” said Noel.
    â€œOnly I wouldn’t have called him Buster Number Two,” said Caleb. “I’d have called him Blackie, or Spot . . . you know, after whatever color his coat was.”
    â€œWell,” said Hank, “Buster Number Two seemed like the right thing to call him at the time. The main reason was that Charley had just lost Buster number one. I would imagine that Henry Ellis was thinking of how sad his grampa must have felt over losing the old Buster, and that’s why he named the puppy Buster Number Two.”
    â€œCan I have another root beer, Mom?” called out Josh, the older one.
    â€œThey’re in the ice chest, sweetheart,” said Evie. “Who was your servant last year?”
    Grumbling, Josh got to his feet and stumbled over to the ice chest. He rummaged through the slush until he found his root beer, then he brushed off the melting ice that was still clinging to the can. “Where’d you put the opener, Caleb,” he hollered.
    â€œI didn’t use it last,” said Caleb. “Grampa Hank did.”
    Hank held out the rusty old bottle opener, and Josh took it from him.
    â€œThanks, Grampa Hank,” he said as he put a V-shaped hole near the lip of his soft drink can with a single flick of the wrist.
    â€œI’ll be needing that opener back, son,” said Hank. “It’s my personal opener. Grampa Charley gave it to me when I turned twenty-one. He said a man . . . especially a Texas man . . . had always better have his own church key.”
    â€œIs that what they called one of those things back then, Grampa?” asked Noel.
    â€œPeople still call it a church key today,” said Caleb, moving over to the ice chest for his own can of soda.
    Hank lent him the opener so he could expose the contents of his container. Caleb opened the can, then handed the opener back to his great-grandfather.
    â€œYou can open both cans and bottles with my opener,” said Hank. “Look at both ends . . . one for cans, one for bottle caps.”
    â€œI bought one of those new pop-tab cola cans the other day,” said Josh. “It was real cool. You pull the attached tab off the top, and the opening you drink from is right there on top of the container for you. I hear that pretty soon they’re going to have bottle caps you can open with your thumb, too.”
    â€œI’d like to see that,” said Hank.
    â€œPlus, screw-off caps,” said Evie, the children’s mother. “They’re making things so easy for us these