Full of his new strength and with the thought of Ed's
wife and the sullen-faced son in his mind, Sam sprang upon him and had
revenge for the beating received in the office of Ed's hotel by beating
this fellow in his turn. When the tall youth had partially recovered from
the beating and had staggered to his feet, he ran off into the darkness,
stopping when well out of reach to hurl a stone that splashed in the mud
of the road at Sam's feet.
Everywhere Sam sought people who would talk to him of themselves. He had a
kind of faith that a message would come to him out of the mouth of some
simple, homely dweller of the villages or the farms. A woman, with whom he
talked in the railroad station at Fort Wayne, Indiana, interested him so
that he went into a train with her and travelled all night in the day
coach, listening to her talk of her three sons, one of whom had weak lungs
and had, with two younger brothers, taken up government land in the west.
The woman had been with them for some months, helping them to get a start.
"I was raised on a farm and knew things they could not know," she told
Sam, raising her voice above the rumble of the train and the snoring of
fellow passengers.
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