Tom Osby seemed to have pursued his game as far as he cared to do at this time. "S'pose we stop along somewhere in here," he suggested, "and eat a little lunch? My horses gets hungry, and thirsty, the same as you, Mr. Ellsworth. Whoa, boys!"
Descending from his high seat, he now unhitched his team and strapped on their heads the nose-bags with the precious oats, after a pail of not less precious water from the cask at the wagon's side. Methodically he kicked together a little pile of greasewood roots.
"We're to have some tea, you know," he remarked. "I don't charge nothin' extry for tea, whiskey, or advice on this railroad of mine. Get down now, ma'am," he added, reaching up his arms to assist Constance from her place. "Come along, set right down here on the ground in the sun. It's good for you. Ain't it nice?
"There's the back of old Carrizy just beginnin' to show," he explained; "and there's the Bonitos comin' up below. That's Blanco Peak beyond, the tallest in the Territory; and them mountings close in is the Nogales. There ain't a soul within many and many a mile of here. And now, with them old mountings a-lookin' down at us on the strict cuidado, not botherin' us if we don't bother them, why, ain't it comfortable? This country'll take hold of you after a while, ma'am. It's the oldest in the world; but somehow it seems to me onct in a while as if it was about the youngest, too."
Constance took the counsel offered her, and seated herself in full glare of the Southwestern sun. She looked about her and felt an unwonted sense of peace, as though she were rocked in some great cradle and under some watchful eye. "Dad," said she, quietly, "I'm not going home. I'm going to spend a month at Sky Top."
"Has it caught you, ma'am?" asked Tom Osby, simply.
"She talks as though there were no business interests anywhere to be taken care of," grumbled her father.
"Oh, now, interests ain't exclusive for the States," said Tom Osby. "You come all the way out here to steal a town, and you couldn't do it. Give the girl a month, an' she'll just about have the town—or her and me together will. You settin' there talkin' about goin' home! Go on home if you feel like it. Me and Miss Constance will stay out here, and take care of the business interests ourselves."
"We're personally conducted, dad," laughed Constance.
"Listen," said their personal conductor, balancing a cup of tea upon his knee. "Now, you folks has got money behind you that's painful. You don't have to steal, Mr. Ellsworth. It's only a habit with you. Now s'pose Miss Constance comes along, allowin' that God can plat a town as well as a surveyor, and allowin' that the first fellers that finds it has as good a right to it as the last ones—which she does allow, and know. Now, here's what she says. Says she, 'We'll go in with this outfit, and we won't try to steal the landscape. We'll pay for every foot of ground that's claimed by anybody that seen it first. We won't try to move no ancient landmarks, like log houses that dates back to Jack Wilson. We'll put in the yard at the lower end of the town, provided that Mr. Thomas Osby, Esquire, gives his permission—always admittin' there may be just as good places for Mr. Thomas Osby, Esquire, a little farther back in the foot-hills, if he feels like goin' there. Now I reckon Miss Constance makes Mr. Thomas Osby, Esquire, yardmaster at the new deepot."