“Yes?”

“Now, you listen to me.  I’ll tell you what!  You see, this here place where we are now is just about a mile from the White Woman Sinks, and that is, as I was sayin’, just about halfway between Ellisville and Plum Centre.  Now, look here.  This country’s goin’ to boom.  They’s goin’ to be a plenty of people come in here right along.  There’ll be a regular travel from Ellis down to Plum Centre, and it’s too long a trip to make between meals.  My passengers all has to carry meals along with ’em, and they kick on that a-plenty.  Now, you look here.  Listen to me.  You just go down to the White Woman, and drive your stake there.  Take up a quarter for each one of you.  Put you up a sod house quick as you can—­I’ll git you help for that.  Now, if you can git anything to cook, and can give meals to my stage outfit when I carry passengers through here, why, I can promise you, you’ll git business, and you’ll git it a-plenty, too.  Why, say, this’d be the best sort of a lay-out, all around.  You can start just as good a business here as you could at Ellisville, and it’s a heap quieter here.  Now, I want some one to start just such a eatin’ place somewheres along here, and if you’ll do that, you’ll make a stake here in less’n two years, sure’s you’re born.”

Sam’s conviction gave him eloquence.  He was talking of business now, of the direct, practical things which were of immediate concern in the life of the region about.  The force of what he said would not have been apparent to the unpracticed observer, who might have seen no indication in the wide solitude about that there would ever be here a human population or a human industry.  Buford was schooled enough to be more just in his estimate, and he saw the reasonableness of what his new acquaintance had said.  Unconsciously his eye wandered over to the portly form of the negress, who sat fanning herself, a little apart from the others.  He smiled again with the quizzical look on his face.  “How about that, Aunt Lucy?” he said.

“Do hit, Mass’ William,” replied the coloured woman at once with conviction, and extending an energetic forefinger.  “You jess do whut this yer man says.  Ef they’s any money to be made a-cookin’, I kin do all the cookin’ ever you wants, ef you-all kin git anything to cook.  Yas, suh!”

“You ain’t makin’ no mistake,” resumed Sam.  “You go in and git your land filed on, and put you up a sod house or dugout for the first season, because lumber’s awful high out here.  It’s pretty late to do anything with a crop this year, even if you had any breakin’ done, but you can take your team and gether bones this fall and winter, and that’ll make you a good livin’, too.  You can git some young stock out of the trail cattle fer a’most anything you want to give, and you can hold your bunch in here on the White Woman when you git started.  You can cut a little hay a little lower down on the White Woman for your team, or they can range out in here all winter and do well, just like your cows can.  You can git a lot of stock about you before long, and what with keepin’ a sort of eatin’ station and ranchin’ it a bit, you ought to git along mighty well, I should say.  But—­’scuse me, have you ever farmed it much?”