“You’ll have to show me how, Mr. McMasters. I ain’t never been north of the Red, nor west of the Concho, though south of the Rio Grande, plenty. What I’ve learned is, a cow ain’t worth a damn, and any cow man’s a idjit, and he can’t help keeping on being one.”
“Very well, listen! The Kansas Pacific Railroad is building west across Kansas this spring as fast as they can lay rails. At the last town—that’s Abilene—some men pat their heads together on precisely this question that’s got us all guessing. A cow is worth four dollars—three—nothing down here. At the railroad he’s worth ten, maybe more. East, he’s worth twenty, maybe more. They need beef, and we’ve got beef, or the making of it. It needs no watchmaking to figure that this deadlock has got to break.
“Now, they’ve taken a chance at Abilene; they’ve put up shipping pens—so they told me at Wichita. They said you could follow up the Washita and cross the Canadian and go north; then hit in west of Wichita and swing north across the Arkansas to Abilene. And there’s the market, man!
“That’s the biggest news that ever came to Texas. It’s bigger than San Jacinto. You know what that means, if you could get a herd through? Well, I’d say your boss had a good head on her shoulders.”
“I came in here through Caldwell,” the visitor went on now, explanatory. “I’ve ridden over a perfectly practical trail for nearly a thousand miles so far as grass and water are concerned. I thought I’d bring this news in to Del Sol. I’ve known the Burleson Lockhart family all my life, of course, and of the hard place Colonel Lockhart’s daughter has been forced into by his death. I wanted to ride in and see her, the first time since we were children.”
The young man colored just a trace as he went on. “I wanted to bring her, as owner of a Texas brand, the news of the new market,” said he. “Is she at home?”
“I saw a young man. I didn’t just know——”
“I couldn’t blame you. Well, I’m the only mother that girl has got left. I’m one hell of a mother! But still, I don’t see why you didn’t ride on up to the front door.”
The young man’s face flushed rather hotly, but he was guilty of no nervousness, did not even smile.
“No man could come on better business,” said he. “It was not her fault. She did not know me, nor I her.”