I wondered just what he might mean by "you fellows," but he was silent again.
"You don't live near here," he stated at last.
"No," said I. "I am just passing through."
"If you lived in these parts," said he, "you'd know him."
"I dare say," I replied. "Who is Jack?"
I was a little piqued at his rudeness; for he returned no reply. Then I saw that he was gazing into vacancy again so absently that I should have pronounced his case one of mental trouble if his appearance had not been so purely physical. He took from a cigar-case a big, dark, massive cigar, clubhouse shape like himself, gave it to me and lighted the twin of it. I thought myself entitled to reparation for his maltreatment of me, and, seeing that it was a good cigar, I took it. As for any further converse, I had given that up, when there rumbled forth from him a soliloquy rather than a story. He appeared to have very little perception of me as an auditor. I think now that he must have been in great need of some one to whom he might talk, and that his relations to those about him forbade any outpouring of expression. He seemed all the time in the attitude of repelling attack. He did not move, save as he applied the cigar to his lips or took it away; and his great voice rolled forth in subdued thunder.
"I've got four sections of ground," said he, "right by the track.... Show you the place when we go through. Of course I've got a lot of other truck scattered around.... Land at the right figger you've got to buy—got to.... But when I hadn't but the four sections—one section overruns so they's a little over twenty-six hundred acres—I thought 'twas about the checker f'r a man with three boys.... One f'r each o' them, you understand, an' the home place f'r mother if anything happened.... Mother done jest as much to help git the start as I did.... Plumb as much—if not more.
"Tom an' Wallace is good boys—none better. I'd about as quick trust either of 'em to run the place as to trust myself."
There was a candid self-esteem in the word "about" and his emphasis on it.
"I sent Wallace," he resumed, "into a yard of feeders in Montana to pick out a trainload o' tops with a brush and paint-pot, an' I couldn't 'a' got a hundred dollars better deal if I'd spotted 'em myself.... That's goin' some f'r a kid not twenty-five. Wallace knows critters ... f'r a boy ... mighty well.... An' Tom's got a way of handlin' land to get the last ten bushel of corn to the acre that beats me with all my experience.... These colleges where they study them things do some good, I s'pose; but it's gumption, an' not schoolin', that makes boys like Tom an' Wallace.... They're all right.... They'd 'a' made good anyhow."