"Cap', you can explain away things about the best of any man I ever saw; but this here is principle with me. There isn't any explaining it away. As I said, I don't care a durn for this country. It's too fur out. But if I help anybody get it, that anybody is Uncle Sam."
"Now, Brown, that's sentiment. Your Uncle Sam doesn't want the country. If he does, why hasn't he made it his own long ago? The truth is, the United States already has more territory than it knows what to do with. England can use California to splendid advantage. The people here are crying for her to come. Brown, her coming is inevitable."
"Perhaps so. Just the same, I don't put my shoulder to her wheel and push her in here. No, sir!"
Farquharson placed his hand on Brown's arm. "See here, my friend, I don't forget you risked your life for me that afternoon in Monterey."
"That's all right, Cap'. I'll remark here, there's nothing personal to you in my present position."
"Well, stay with me. Ask no questions, and I'll see you have a grant of land here twenty times the size of your average Missouri farm."
"Not if I'm to help you or anyone to make this place over to England. Whatever I've done in that way previous was without my knowledge."
"Brown, we shall leave our hill-camp immediately and live in Monterey. You will have nothing to do but carry messages for me. Stay on, now, like a good fellow, and in a half dozen years you can visit your old Missouri home as a rich man."
"No use, Cap'. I've never been so sorry to quit a man, but I have to go."
"Well, Brown, if being a landed proprietor doesn't appeal to you, why not stay on the basis of the friendship that has grown between us?"'