Idling on for a more expansive moment at each cabin door, the conversation had usually shaped itself like this:
"Two has already rid over the Ridge to-day—Old Bernique and the tramp-boy. Old Bernique he's on the trail ag'in. The tramp-boy he's kim along so far with Old Bernique." In saying this, or something very like it, the hill farmer who spoke had always seemed to want it definitely understood that the neighbourhood had its excitements, and seemed to argue that if the stranger knew anything he must know Old Bernique and the tramp-boy. Proceeding leisurely and reflectively, as though he had decided in his own mind how to classify the stranger, the farmer had generally added, "Lots of prospectors ride by nowadays. They head in to the relroad f'm here,—you know you aint a-goin' to ketch the relroad at Poetical?"
"Yes, I know, but when I left my friends at Bessietown yesterday I was hoping I could make it all the way across country to Canaan before to-night."
"Oh, you goin' on to Canaan?"
"Yes, going on to Canaan." Each time the words had echoed through Steering's head with an old-time promise in a mocking refrain, "Going on to Canaan! Going on to Canaan!"
Immediately the hill tribe had eyed him with renewed interest. "Going on to Canaan!" the farmer at their head had repeated, an impressive esteem in his treatment of the word Canaan. "Gre't taown, Canaan! You strike the relroad tha' all righty. Dog-oned ef th'aint abaout ev'thing tha'. Got the cote-haouse an' all, the relroad an' all—Miss Sally Madeira, Mist' Crit Madeira's daughter, she lives tha'."
It had gone like that every time. Not once in the last twenty miles had Steering exchanged a word with man or woman without this sort of reference to Canaan and, collaterally, to Miss Sally Madeira. Miss Sally, he had perceived early, excited in the hill-farm people a species of awe, as though she were on a par with the circus, thaumaturgic, almost too good to be true.
"The court house, the railroad and Miss Sally!" he had finally learned to murmur, in order to meet the demands of the situation.
"Yass, oh yass." The farmer had given his head a dogged twist, and looked as though he were cognisant of the fact that in certain essential particulars Canaan did not have to yield an inch of her title to equality with the biggest and best anywhere. "Yass, saouthwest Mizzourah's hard to beat in spots; th'aint no State in the Union quite like her. She's different," he had said, rocking on his heels, his chest lifting.
"I think you must be right about that," Steering had answered, every time with profounder emphasis.