"You're a man with a vision, Waco," Tom said soberly, meaning every word. "I'm only a man with a scheme."
"You've got men breakin' up that sod, and them fields old man Ellison used to have corn in, ain't you? You're makin' a start on your scheme, ain't you?"
"But I don't know how far it will go. Even Mrs. Ellison thinks I've got a leak somewhere when I talk of a thousand, five thousand, acres of wheat. Well, I'll do fine if I get a hundred in this fall, I expect, but the big time's coming, boys; the big time's coming. You'll see this country all one wheatfield before ten years have come and gone."
"Yes, it's the right lookin' kind of ground."
"Mrs. Ellison said, when I talked of buying her ranch, you know, and she put the ice on me so hard I'm cold yet"
"Froze you stiffer 'n a corncob," Waco chuckled at the recollection. "Said no man'd ever git his hands on that land unless he married it—biddin' for me to step up and ask her. But I ain't no marryin' man at my age; not any more, Tom."
Both laughed at this, and at the memory of the widow's indignation at the proposal to sell the land she had held to through privation and lean years, going without dresses to pay the taxes sometimes. And all because Ellison had said the day was coming when the land would be worth fifteen dollars an acre. The day came when it was worth ten times that, and before there were many more gray hairs on the widow's head.
"I always suspected you was one of them lord-dukes,"
