In the same old garden patch.
“But I’d rather be a wild, wild weed
Than a sluggish yellow squash:”
“And I’d so much rather be a pumpkin than the wildest of all wild weeds,” she said. “There’s only that little difference between the two of us.”
“Tell me,” he urged, “what sort of a quiet home life do you pine for most? Does your preference run to a cottage in town or stray off towards a dwelling in the country?”
“The country,” she returned. “Somewhere on a farm where I could watch things grow.”
“That’s my choice too,” he confessed. “Whatever business I settle on will have to be at the source of things. Like you said, I want to watch things grow—calves or crops, it don’t much matter which. I’ll start casting about for a farm right off.”
After leaving her he mingled with the swarming crowds on the main street. The conversational boom was in full swing and he heard it discussed on all sides. There were but few who dissented from the general prediction that an era of great prosperity lay ahead for Caldwell. Carver put in three active hours, then sought out Nate Younger to draw his back wages for the spring work, a sum totalling a trifle less than two hundred dollars.
He found Younger in his room at the hotel in conference with Joe Hinman. The two old cowmen had pooled resources and formed the Plains Land and Cattle Company, Younger having purchased grasslands adjoining Hinman’s holdings. They planned to make the new concern a beef ranch straight through instead of a breeding ranch as now operated by Hinman.
“We’ll be the biggest outfit in this end of the State,” Hinman was predicting, as Carver thrust his head through the door. “Come in, son, and set on the bed. The Plains Land and Cattle Company is going to be the biggest of the lot.”