“All right. Thank you, Mr. Majors.”
“If I were you, my lad, I wouldn’t stay around here long,” continued Mr. Majors to Davy. “This place is going to be a good place, and I haven’t any doubt that lots of gold will come out of these mountains as soon as the people are experienced in finding it. But looking for gold haphazard is a poor job for a boy. I think you’ll do much better on the plains. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, you know; and there’s a big work to be done in helping these people live. If the freight outfits aren’t kept moving the diggings will starve. If you’ll come in to Leavenworth we’ll put you to work with the bull trains.”
“You’d better do it, Davy,” advised Mr. Baxter. And Davy soberly nodded.
“I guess I will, then.”
“I’m up at our Nebraska City office most of the time now,” said Mr. Majors. “But you’ll find Mr. Russell at Leavenworth and I’ll tell him to fix you out.” And Mr. Majors shouldered his way into the hotel.
“Whar’s the post-office, stranger?” asked a voice; and turning they faced an emigrant evidently newly arrived.
“I don’t know. We’re lost around here, ourselves,” explained Mr. Baxter.
“Pardon. I tella the way,” spoke somebody else. He was a tall, swarthy-visaged man, with heavy black moustache and black bushy eyebrows, a large meerschaum pipe in his mouth. However, he was neatly dressed, even to natty shoes. He looked like a foreigner, and his accent sounded foreign. He continued rapidly: “That beeg house w’ere you see-a the line of men.”
“Thank ’ee,” acknowledged the emigrant, after a hearty stare. And he strode off.
“And you, signors? Canna I direct you zomeplace?” inquired the foreign man, with a bow.