She told several different reasons for the cause of his death but the two elements that remains consistent in her writings is her confusion as to what was going on, and her inability to comprehend the idea that her father would never be returning. The second element that remains consistent was how distraught her mother was, Louise wrote "Coming from one of those broken homes where one of the parents is dead and the other is grief-stricken beyond all recovery.I found myself a very lonely children sitting for hours in a corner listening to my mother play the piano." .
A happier time in her childhood came in1890, when Louise went to stay with her stepgrandfather at his mining station. It was located several miles away from the nearest town, very much isolated from civilization. While she was there she learned how to ride horses and lived a life less filled with conventions as to how a young lady should act, instead she played in the desert with horses and dogs. "It was a strange and curious bringing up," Louise wrote about her experiences there many years later. Certainly if she learned nothing else from her experiences in this environment she saw a different type of lifestyle and a completely different way of living from what she was used to. While she was away she wrote to her mother several times a month her mother though only wrote once a year. Louise often felt that her mother resented her for looking so much like her father . Her stepgrandfather would tell her, "never to forget that you are your fathers daughter." .
Unfortunately when she was 12, her mother called for her return so she could attend school and become more refined. Upon her return she found her mother remarried to railmen named Sheridan Bryant, who gave Louise her last name. Louise made the transition to her new life with relative ease, she was what society at that time would consider to be a appropriate young women.