Episode scene:

While driving cattle north to Canada, the Virginian and his trail boss and old friend, Slim Jessup, encounter a farm boy interested in working for them as a cowhand. The Virginian is reluctant to hire someone so inexperienced, but Slim reminds him of the time he hired a kid “ fresh out of the state of Virginia. Had the same kind of look about him, too, y’know, scared but full of grit.” When the embarrassed Virginian weakly protests “No kid I remember ever looked that green,” Slim fires back the words above. The Virginian agrees to give the boy a job, and makes him Slim’s responsibility.

Quotations from the book:

(Chapter 4):
...he had set out for a “look at the country” at the age of fourteen; and by his present age of twenty-four he had seen Arkansas, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. Everywhere he had taken care of himself, and survived...

(Chapter 22):
Along Bear Creek...Molly and [the Virginian] took a ride...and she was telling him about Vermont.
“I never was there,”said he. “Never happened to strike in that direction.”
“What decided your direction?”
“Oh, looking for chances. I reckon I must have been more ambitious than my brothers - or more restless. They stayed around on farms. But I got out... I have earned my living since I was fourteen. And that’s from old Mexico to British Columbia.”

Additional comments:

1. For more about the Virginian’s past, see If You Have Tears.
2. Trampas talks a lot in this episode about visiting a girl named Lulubelle when he gets to Moose Jaw. In Chapter 9 of the book (The Spinster Meets the Unknown) the Virginian keeps a song going about his “Looloo girl” whose lyrics “were quite unptrintable, and rejoiced his brother cow-punchers monstrously.”.