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“I think I’d rather go to work,” he answered. “When will you start, Billy?”

“Next week. Come on into town. We’ll see Mr. Russell. He’ll fix you out.”

“Maybe I’m too small.”

“No, you aren’t. Size isn’t what counts, out here. It’s what a fellow does, not how he looks. See?”

This sounded encouraging, for Billy seemed to know. Hadn’t he gone to work himself herding cattle for the Russell, Majors & Waddell Freighting Company, when he was aged only ten? And now at thirteen he was almost the same as a man! Davy determined to show his own pluck, and do his best, and make himself a place as a worker in those busy days when the great West was being settled.

That noon Billy borrowed a couple of ponies from a neighbor, and he and Dave rode in to Leavenworth City.

“That Mr. Russell is the finest man you ever met,” declared Billy. “Mr. Majors is a good one, too, but Mr. Russell is the one who’s taken special care of me. He was a mighty close friend of my father’s; when dad was selling hay to Fort Leavenworth Mr. Russell let me ride about the country with him and I learned a lot about the freighting business. Times looked kind of hard and somebody stole my pony, and he told me to keep a stiff upper lip and come to Leavenworth and he’d give me a job herding at twenty-five a month. That was four years ago. I’ve been working for the company ever since, except when I had to go to school. When I started in, it was just Russell & Majors—William H. Russell and Alexander Majors; last spring Mr. William Waddell joined them, and now the company is Russell, Majors & Waddell. Mr. Majors has been freighting ever since eighteen forty-eight, on the Santa Fe Trail down into New Mexico. Now the company hauls all the government stuff from Fort Leavenworth across the plains to Fort Laramie and over to Salt Lake. That train I went out with last summer carried nearly two hundred thousand pounds of freight. They’re running about three thousand wagons now, and use four thousand men. They’re a big company, but they treat their men right; and whatever Mr. Russell or Mr. Majors offers you, you take. If we don’t find either of them at the fort they’ll be in town, I reckon.”