moment of silence Lincoln added: "What is your ambition?"

"It is very modest," said Samson. "I've been thinking that I'd like to go
into some kind of business and help develop the West."

"Well some one has got to provide our growing population with food and
clothing and tools and transportation."

"And see that they don't get El Doradoed," said Harry.

At early candlelight they reached the sycamore woods very hungry. It was
a beautiful grove-like forest on the shore of a stream. The crossing was
a rough bridge of corduroy. A crude log tavern and a cruder store stood
on the farther shore of the creek. The tavern was a dirty place with a
drunken proprietor. Three ragged, shiftless farmers and a half-breed
Indian sat in its main room in varying stages of inebriacy. A well
dressed, handsome, young man with a diamond in his shirt-front was
leading a horse back and forth in the stable yard. The diamond led Samson
to suspect that he was the man Davis of whom Mrs. Brimstead had spoken.
Our travelers, not liking the look of the place, got some oats and rode
on, camping near the farther edge of the woods, where they built a fire,
fed and tethered their horses and sat down and ate from the store in
their saddle-bags.

"I was hankering for a hot supper," said Abe as they began eating.
"Washington Irving wrote in his journal that if he couldn't get a dinner
to suit his taste he endeavored to get a taste to suit his dinner. That
is what we must do."

They made out very well in the undertaking and then with their knives Abe
and Samson cut big armfuls of grass from the near prairie for the horses
and a bed upon which the three men lay down for the night. Harry had
dried out their saddle-blankets by the fire and these were their bed
clothing.

"This hay may have some bugs in it but they won't tickle so bad as those
in the tavern," Abe laughed.

Then Harry remarked: "There was lots of bad company in that tavern. The
towel that hung over the washstand was as black as the ground."

"It reminded me of the tavern down in Pope County," Abe yawned. "A
traveler found fault with the condition of its one towel and the landlord
said: 'Go to h--ll, stranger. More than fifty men have used that towl
to-day an' you're the first one that's complained of it.'"

Samson had that gift of "sleeping with one eye open" which the perils of
the wilderness had conferred upon the pioneer. He had lain down on the
side of their bed near the horses, whi