which name, when the preacher came, he insisted upon her
retaining.

As Echo grew older, in order that she might have a companion,
Colonel Allen went to Kentucky and brought back with him a little
orphan girl, who was a distant relative of his wife. Polly Hope
her name was, and Polly Hope she insisted on remaining, though
the Allens would gladly have adopted her.

Colonel Allen trained the girls in all the craft of the plains,
just as if they were boys. He taught them to ride astride, to
shoot, to rope cattle. They accompanied him everywhere he went,
cantering on broncos by the side of his Kentucky thoroughbred.
Merry, dark-eyed, black-haired Echo always rode upon the off
side, and saucy Polly, with golden curls, blue eyes, and
tip-tilted nose, upon the near. The ex-Confederate soldier
dubbed them, in military style, his "right and left wings." As
the three would "make a raid" upon Florence, the county town, the
inhabitants did not need to look out of doors to ascertain who
were coming, for the merriment of the little girls gave
sufficient indication. "Here comes Jim Allen ridin' like the
destroyin' angel," said young Sheriff Hoover, on one of these
occasions, "I know him by the rustlin' of his 'wings.'"

The household was again increased a few years later by the
generous response of the Allens to an appeal from a Children's
Aid Society in an Eastern city to give a home to two orphaned
brothers, Richard and Henry Lane. "Dick" and "Buddy" (shortened
in time to Bud), as they were called, being taken young, quickly
adapted themselves to their new environment, and by the time they