Encouraged at this, Sam stepped up and shook hands with Mrs.Buford and with the girl, not forgetting Aunt Lucy, an act which singularly impressed that late inhabitant of a different land, and made him her fast friend for life.
"Well, so long," he said to them all in general as he turned away, "and good luck to you.

You ain't makin' no mistake in settlin' here.
Good-bye till I see you all again." He stepped into the buckboard and clucked to his little team, the dust again rising from under the wheels.

The eyes of those remaining followed him already yearningly.

In a half hour there had been determined the location of a home, there had been suggested a means of livelihood, and there had been offered and received a friendship.
Here, in the middle of the great gray Plains, where no sign of any habitation was visible far as the eye could reach, these two white men had met and shaken hands.

In a half hour this thing had become matter of compact.