Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/21



The old saying that truth is stranger than fiction is emphasized in the life of every man whose career has been one of adventure and danger in the pursuit of a livlihood. Knowing nothing of the art of fiction and but little of any sort of literature; having been brought up in the severe school of nature, which is all truth, and having had as instructor in my calling a man who was singularly and famously truthful, truth has been my inheritance and in this book I bequeath it to my readers.

My name is William F. Drannan, and I was born on the Atlantic ocean January 30, 1832, while my parents were emigrating from France to the United States.

They settled in Tennessee, near Nashville, and lived upon a farm until I was about four years old. An epidemic of cholera prevailed in that region for some months during that time and my parents died of the dread disease, leaving myself and a little sister, seven months old, orphans.