“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. I was just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shot my father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robbed him of his life and his horse and $150 in cash money plus two California gold pieces that he carried in his trouser band.”

— Charles Portis , book True Grit

Source: True Grit (1968), Chapter 1, p. 9 : thoughts of 'Mattie Ross'

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Charles Portis 24

American actor 1933

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