"Why, Brick!" Lahoma reproached him. "THIS has happened—" she nodded at Wilfred Compton. "Don't you call that interesting?"
"That's the way I discusses them books," returned Willock with manifest satisfaction. "I wasn't never no man to be overawed by no book, which, however high and by whoever wrote, ain't no more like life than a shadow in a pool. Try to grab that shadow, and where is it? Just to go out after game and climb the mountains all day and come home of an evening to sit down to a plate of bacon and eggs, and another of the same, with coffee smoking on the little stove, and Lahoma urging on the feast—that's more of real living than you'd get out of a big library. Ain't it, Bill?"
"Now WE want to talk, Brick," interposed Lahoma—"don't we, Wilfred?"
"So your cabin was built," Wilfred prompted her, "and the men took the dugout."
"Yes—and then, oh! the most wonderful thing happened: a family settled in the arm of the mountain at the west end—a family that had a woman and a baby in it—a sure-enough woman with a sweet face and of a high grade though worked down pretty level what from hardships—and a baby that laughed, just laughed whenever he saw me coming in the dugout—and I was over there every day. And that's how I got to be like a woman, and know how to dress, and how to meet strangers without being scared, and preside at table, and use language like this. Other settlers began coming into Greer, but they were far away, and Brick and Bill don't like folks, so they stayed shut up pretty close. But for three years I had the mother and her baby to show me how to be a woman. Then came the soldiers. Brick thinks a big cattle-king stood in with Congress, and he got the soldiers sent here to drive out all the settlers because they were beginning to farm the land instead of letting it grow wild for the cattle. Anyway, all the settlers were driven out of the country—and it's been four years since I lost my only friends in the world—except Brick and Bill. What makes me and Brick and Bill mad is, that the soldiers didn't have any right to drive out the settlers, because Texas claims this country, and so does the United States, but it's never been settled."
"But they didn't drive YOU out," Wilfred remarked inquiringly.
"You see," Brick explained simply, "we didn't want to go."
"It nearly broke Mrs. Featherby's heart to have to leave," Lahoma added, "for they'd got a good stand of wheat and I think she liked me 'most as well as I liked her. But Mr. Featherby came from Ohio, and he had respect to the government, so when the soldiers said 'Go,' he pulled up stakes."
"We ain't got no respect to nothing," Brick explained, "that stands in the way of doing what we're a mind to. The soldiers come to force us out, but they changed their minds. I reckon they knew they hadn't no morality on their side. Sure thing, they knowed they had but very little safety, whilst occupying their position. None was left but us in this country till you cattlemen come monopolizing Heaven and earth. Knowing we got just as much right to this cove as Uncle Sam himself, we expect to stay here at anchor till Lahoma steams out into the big world with sails spread. She expects to tug us along behind her—but I don't know, I'm afraid we'd draw heavy. Until that time comes, however, we 'lows to lay to, in this harbor. We feels sheltered. Nothing ain't more sheltering than knowing you have a moral right and a dependable gun."
"So that's about all," Lahoma went on. "These past four years, we've just been to ourselves, with a long journey once a year to the settlements; and all the time I had those sweet thoughts to dream over, about the little family that used to live in the west mountain. And I've tried to do like Mrs. Featherby used to do, and be like she was, and if I can make as fine a woman I needn't ask any more. She'd been to Europe, too, and she'd taught school in New England. Bill Atkins is higher up than Brick—Bill used to know Kit Carson and all those famous pioneers, and he's been most everywhere—except in settled places. When a boy he saw Sam Houston and ate with him, and he has heard David Crockett with his own ears—has heard him say 'Be sure you're right, then go ahead,' that's how far BILL has been. But it sort of hurt Brick's neck, and even Bill's, to look up high enough to see where Mrs. Featherby had risen. She was like you—right out of the big world. She came out here because the family was awful poor. Is that why you left the big world?"