Kid Cassidy's father was a plantation owner in the antebellum south, and despite being a better master than most, still treated his slaves as slaves. Kid and Reno Jones, a young slave, played together as children, but had grown apart as they grew older. When the Civil War broke out Cassidy enlisted on the side of the Confederates and came home to discover that his house had been attacked by Union soldiers, and his father killed. After the war, his old friendship with Reno was revived and the two rode together for awhile as partners in pursuit of Reno's love Rachel who had been carried off by the Union soldiers. During this time Kid genuinely became sick of racism.