True Grit

by Charles Portis

PEOPLE DO not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father’s blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day.

If Papa had a failing it was his kindly disposition. People would use him. I did not get my mean streak from him.

I said to the captain, “Perhaps you are wondering who I am.” “Yes, I was wondering that,” said he. “I thought you were a walking hat.”

It was a cashier’s check for $2,750 drawn on the Grangers Trust Co. of Topeka, Kansas, to a man named Marshall Purvis. I said, “This is a cashier’s check for $2,750 drawn on the Grangers Trust Co. of Topeka, Kansas, to a man named Marshall Purvis.”

Time just gets away from us. This ends my true account of how I avenged Frank Ross’s blood over in the Choctaw Nation when snow was on the ground.