I'd buy a cow and I'd offer a man half as much again as she was worth if he'd sell me the mineral rights at a fair price, and he'd do it.

He never had no use for 'em, an' I didn't know as I should either; but that young engineer o' yourn talked so positive I thought I might as well git 'em inside my pasture-fence." He sat back and looked at Keith with quizzical complacency.
"Come a man to see me not long ago," he continued; "Mr.
Halbrook--black-eyed man, with a face white and hard like a tombstone.
I set up and talked to him nigh all night and filled him plumb full of old applejack.

That man sized me up for a fool, an' I sized him up for a blamed smart Yankee.

But I don't know as he got much the better of me." Keith doubted it too.
"I think it was in and about the most vallyble applejack that I ever owned," continued the old landowner, after a pause.

"You know, I don't mind Yankees as much as I used to--some of 'em.