“Eat? Yes, you can have all you want. Bob, hunt up the cook and get something. Have you travelled far, sir?”
“About a hundred miles, afoot and alone.”
“I guess that a drink of water would help you. We haven’t got much, but what we’ve got you are welcome to. Bob,” he added, as the boy came back after seeing the cook, “scare up a drink of water for this gentleman. I speak of you, sir, as your clothes warrant me to speak. You are not a Texan. You haven’t been long enough in this country to become accustomed to their way of talking. You are from the States.”
“Yes, sir; from Wisconsin,” said Bill, rightly concluding that Mr. Davenport would not be acquainted with anybody in that far off State. “I was engaged in doing a good business in Milwaukee, but I fell in with some fellows who were going to the mines, and there I lost what little money I had.”
“Did you go to California?”
“No; to Denver.”
“Then how did you happen to get way off here? This is not the road to the States.”
“I know it; but I wanted to find my partner, who is in this country engaged in the cattle business.”
“Well, Mr. Faber, if that’s his name, hasn’t got a ranch anywhere around here. The men who live beyond me are Mr. Chisholm——”
Here Mr. Davenport went off into a paroxysm of coughing, to which Bill listened with great concern pictured on his face.