"He bites off his words," continued Valmore; "he sits for an hour in the
store and then goes away, and doesn't come back to say good-bye when he
leaves town. What has got into him?"
Freedom gathered up the reins and spat over the dashboard into the dust of
the road. A dog idling in the street jumped as though a stone had been
hurled at him.
"If you had something he wanted to buy you would find he talked all
right," he exploded. "He skins me out of my eyeteeth every time he comes
to town and then gives me a cigar wrapped in tinfoil to make me like it."
* * * * *
For some months after his hurried departure from Caxton the changing,
hurrying life of the city profoundly interested the tall strong boy from
the Iowa village, who had the cold, quick business stroke of the money-
maker combined with an unusually active interest in the problems of life
and of living. Instinctively he looked upon business as a great game in
which many men sat, and in which the capable, quiet ones waited patiently
until a certain moment and then pounced upon what they would possess. With
the quickness and accuracy of a beast at the kill they pounced and Sam
felt that he had that stroke, and in his deals with country buyers used it
ruthlessly.
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