The three walked a little way apart; which left Constance to the tender mercy of Tom Osby.
"That's all right, ma'am," said he, when she objected to his cleaning the knives by sticking them into the sand.

"I don't reckon you do that way back home, but it's the only way you can get a knife plumb clean." "So this is the way men live out here ?" mused Constance, half to herself.
"Mostly.

You ought to see him"-- he nodded toward Dan Anderson--"cook flap-jacks.

The woman who marries him will shore have a happy home.
We're goin' to send him to Congress some day, maybe." Constance missed the irrelevance of this.

"I wonder," said she, gently, "how he happened to come out here--how any one happened to come out here ?" "In his case," replied Tom, "it was probably because he wanted to get as far away from Washington as he could--his mileage will amount to more.
This is one of the best places in America, ma'am, for a man to go to Congress from." Constance smiled, though the answer did not satisfy her.
"There are folks, ma'am," Tom Osby continued, "that says that every feller come out here because of a girl somewheres.