nd the help at the depot hotel. Still," he added
apologetically, "folks soon gets used to the noise. I don't mind it no
more at all."

Buford smiled as he glanced quizzically at the faces of his
"women-folks." At this moment Sam broke out with a loud exclamation.

"Say!" he cried.

"Yes, sir," said Buford.

"I'll tell you what!"

"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 for