Twelve year old Alf Smith trembled with excitement when the four cowboys rode past him as he walked home from school. This was Illinois farming country and he had never seen a real cowboy. The big Mexican saddles, the tall boots with the jingling spurs and the pistols strapped on their sides, they were just like the Texas cowboys he had read about in books and newspapers. Alf hurried home to tell his parents but his excitement soon turned to horror when he arrived to find the farmhouse engulfed in flames. Later, when the fire had burned itself out, neighbors found his parent's ashes in the...