“That’s whatever!  How can it help it?  It’s goin’ to be a division point on the road.  It’s goin’ to have all the cattle-shippin’ trade.  After a while it’ll have all the farmin’ trade.  It’s goin’ to be the town, all right, don’t you neglect that.  They’s fifteen thousand head of cattle in around here now.  Town’s got two hotels, good livery stable—­that’s mine—­half a dozen stores, nigh on to a dozen saloons, an’ two barber-shops.  Yes, sir, Ellisville is the place!”

“Which way are you bound, sir?” asked the stranger, still sitting, apparently in thought, with his chin resting on his hand.

“Well, you see, they’s another town goin’ up below here about twenty mile—­old man Plum’s town, Plum Centre.  I run the mail an’ carry folk acrost from Ellisville to that place.  This here is just about halfway acrost.  Ellisville’s about twenty or twenty-five mile north of here.”

Sam spoke lucidly enough, but really he was much consumed with curiosity, for he had seen, behind the driver of the wagon, a face outlined in the shade.  He wondered how many “women-folk” the new mover had along, this being ever a vital question at that day.  The tall man on the wagon seat turned his face slowly back toward the interior of the wagon.

“What do you think, Lizzie?” he asked.

“Dear me, William,” came reply from the darkness in a somewhat complaining voice, “how can I tell?  It all seems alike to me.  You can judge better than I.”

“What do you say, niece?”

The person last addressed rested a hand upon the questioner’s shoulder and lightly climbed out upon the seat by his side, stooping as she passed under the low bow of the cover frame.  She stood upright, a tall and gracious figure, upon the wagon floor in front of the seat, and shaded her eyes as she looked about her.  Her presence caused Sam to instinctively straighten up and tug at his open coat.  He took off his hat with a memory of other days, and said his “Good-mornin’” as the schoolboy does to his teacher—­superior, revered, and awesome.

Yet this new character upon this bare little scene was not of a sort to terrify.  Tall she was and shapely, comely with all the grace of youth and health, not yet tanned too brown by the searing prairie winds, and showing still the faint purity of the complexion of the South.  There was no slouch in her erect and self-respecting carriage, no shiftiness in her eye, no awkwardness in her speech.  To Sam it was instantaneously evident that here was a new species of being, one of which he had but the vaguest notions through any experiences of his own.  His chief impression was that he was at once grown small, dusty, and much unshaven.  He flushed as he shifted and twisted on the buckboard seat.

The girl looked about her for a moment in silence, shading her eyes still with her curved hand.

“It is much alike, all this country that we have seen since we left the last farms.  Uncle William,” she said, “but it doesn’t seem dreary to me.  I should think—­”