My older brothers liked to tease me. They thought it was funny when I lost my temper. They knew just how to trigger it. Then they laughed when I got furious with them. I hated to be laughed at. But just because they thought it was funny didn't mean that Mama and Papa thought it was funny.

Oh, Papa scolded them for needling me but that didn't stop them; they just did it when no one was looking.

"Sadie," Papa would warn me after I had thrown another fit. "Your temper is going to get you in trouble. You've got to learn to control it."

Mama did more than that. We had a big family Bible and Mama read to me out of. She let me look at and I loved it -- most of the time. I started practicing my reading in that book. There were pictures in it, Noah and his big ark, Jonah getting swallowed by that great fish and the Baby Jesus in a crib. But I didn't like it so much when I lost my temper because then Mama showed me verses in the Bible about how I should love others. She made me memorize Proverbs 10:12 - I had to write it on my slate, over and over. I still have it memorized. "Hatred stirreth up strife, but love covereth all sins."

I couldn't figure out why she didn't show the boys some verse on the evils of teasing a sister, but she didn't.

I had to memorize a lot of Bible verses about wrath. She made me memorize Ephesians 4:26, "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath, neither give place to the devil." I had a hard time understanding what that word wrath meant. Mama said it was temper and she said that when I lost my temper I was giving place to the devil. But in spite of all the lectures I got I thought I had every right to get angry. It was all my brothers' fault for teasing me.

Now we didn't have a church for awhile in La Junta, so the Santa Fe Railroad set a coach on a siding each Sunday, to be used for services. The first Sunday of every month the circuit preacher came from Las Animas to hold services in a coach in the Santa Fe yards. There weren't many places to go in those days and it was pleasurable to see our friends and neighbors. Just about every one in town came to the services.

Old Charlie was a cowboy who worked on a farm just outside of town. He got drunk quite regularly. La Junta was a wild and wooly town in those days. Charlie always carried a flask in his pocket and said it was his medicine but there were times when he acted like he had more medicine than he should have had. Charlie staggered a little when he walked, claimed to have an old injury from the War Between the States. On some days he had a strange odor about him. Course Charlie didn't get too close to water, so it was a might hard to distinguish between the smell of his medicine and the odor of dirt and sweat, especially in the summer.

Now when Charlie was behaving himself he was in church just about every week. But some of the time he slipped off the straight trail and he didn't come to services for several weeks. Personally I would have been glad if he NEVER came to church, but the church council always paid a call on Charlie and they'd haul him over the coals. My older brother and Papa were on the council and Oscar and Albert overheard them talking about it.

"The church council went to see Charlie again," Oscar whispered.

"He hasn't been in church lately," I said. "Guess he's been swallowing too much medicine again, huh?"

"Council wants him to get back in church, before he kills himself," Albert said.

"I wonder if he could kill himself with that," Oscar muttered.

Every Sunday we had services even if we didn't have a preacher. We had singing and talking. Papa and some of the other men in town read out of the good book. We had our own band. It was made up of one man playing a guitar and another playing his harmonica. The choir sat in the front seats and stood when they sang. Most of them sang on tune, but Miss Snyder couldn't carry a tune in a pail. She sounded just like a cat with his tail caught in the barn door.

When he did come to church old Charlie, who most often was late to service, always stood beside my seat until I scooted over. We had bench seats and they were comfortable enough if only two people sat in them, but just because I was small old Charlie picked on me. Then I'd have to sit in the middle and hold my nose. The boys teased me and said that it was my punishment for having such a bad temper.

Mama and Papa felt sorry for Charlie, but I didn't. They said he was fighting the devil over his drinking, just like I was fighting the devil over my bad temper. That really made me mad. How could they compare their own daughter to the town drunk?

In the wintertime it was cold in the coach, so Charlie couldn't come to church as often. When he did get there the smell wasn't as bad in the cold. The men took turns going to the coach and building a fire early in the morning. There was a pot bellied stove in the center of the railroad car and the early to church folks got the warm, cozy seats. Since there were so many of us Millers we didn't usually get to church early, so we had to sit way back in the cold seat section. We carried blankets to the meetings and wrapped up like Indian squaws to keep warm.

The winter of 1885 was a hard one. I was 11 years old then but I still remember all the blizzards we had. One bad storm in December left dead cattle all over the plains. Papa said that Sheriff Mixon lost a bunch of cattle and most of his horses. There were some Sundays that we had to shuffle through the snow to get to the coach. When the snow piled up high it was warmer in the coach but it sure was hard to dig out of the house. On those days we were later than ever.

Parson Millakin knew how to keep the attention of the crowd. He could out holler anyone. Not too many people went to sleep in his sermons, but if they did Usher Higgins stood by with a long-handled stick to tap them on the head or shoulder and wake them up. Old Charlie went to sleep quite often, so that meant Usher Higgens was always tapping Charlie on the head. That sure made me feel embarrassed, the old coot.

That summer the coach was mighty hot. There wasn't any air conditioning in that day. We made our own breeze with our fans. You could hear those fans whooshing all over that train. Everyone had a fan.

Summertime and all that heat made Charlie smell even worse than ever and finally my temper got the best of me. One morning he stood there beside and I tried to ignore him. But it didn't do any good. The music was playing as he whispered "Move over, little girl."

I figured it was someone else's turn to smell that old man. I lost my temper and said, "Go away, you old drunk." I meant to whisper it but somehow it came out louder and just at the time I got the words out the music stopped. Everyone looked at me, including Papa and Mama, who gave me the "LOOK."

Old Charlie turned around, he walked down that aisle and straight out the door.

My temper had got me in trouble again. I knew my afternoon would be spent writing those Bible verses on the slate over and over again.

It was a long service, it seemed much longer than normal for me because I knew I was in for it when I got home. Well, I didn't care, it wasn't my fault he smelled so bad. I was tired of him sitting beside me all the time.

But when we got home no one said anything. My brothers didn't even poke fun at me and Papa and Mama didn't say anything. I wondered what they were going to do and the suspense was worse than if I'd been spanked.

When Mama helped me say my prayers that night she only prayed, "Help Sarah want to control her temper." And she prayed for old Charlie, prayed that the Lord would take away his spirit habit.

We didn't see old Charlie at church for a few Sundays, but he sure made it into my dreams. I kept dreaming that he wanted to sit beside me and I wouldn't let him.

Then one hot August Saturday Papa came home and told about what had happened at one the local saloons the night before.

"A mob of drunk cowboys wandered all over La Junta yelling and shooting guns," Papa said. "Some of them fired through Mayor Dalton's store and put holes in some other houses. It kept Marshal Lothrop busy all night. I think one of those drunks were killed."

I immediately thought about old Charlie.

"It wasn't Charlie was it?" I asked.

"I don't know Sadie, who it was," Papa said. "I do know there are somewhere around 20 cowboys sobering up in the black hole."

"What's the black hole?" I asked.

"The town jail," Papa explained.

That night I dreamed about old Charlie. I dreamed again that Charlie was standing there and I wouldn't let him sit beside me. He turned around and went right out in the street and got himself killed. I was crying so hard I woke myself up. Mama was standing beside me.

"Sadie," she whispered. "You're having a bad dream."

I grabbed at her and hugged her. "Oh, Mama, I dreamed that old Charlie got killed."

"It was only a dream," Mama said. "Now you go back to sleep. Parson Millakin is here this Sunday and you'll feel better after you hear him preach."

I didn't know if I would ever feel better. I was sure that old Charlie was dead and I'd never get a chance to treat him kindly, but finally I went back to sleep for awhile.

The next thing I knew Mama was telling me it was time to get up. I didn't feel like going to church, I was feeling mighty guilty now, but I got ready and we crossed the street to the coach. I sat with my head down.

Suddenly I saw a pair of legs standing there. I was almost afraid to look up, but when I did I was overjoyed. There stood old Charlie.

"May I sit here Missy?" he asked.

"Oh, yes," I scooted over. For some reason I didn't mind how he smelled, I was so happy to see him I could have hugged him.

I figured we could both fight the devil, side by side. I would start fighting my temper as he fought his battle with the bottle.