He had mentioned the fifteen thousand bushels of wheat casually and without elation. It would pay for the new farm machinery with which the Half Diamond H was now stocked but for which he still owed, leaving him a big margin for future operations. This first year’s crop would put him on a solid basis and well on his way toward the maturity of his original plan to buy all of the best land in the valley. By the time other homesteaders could prove up on their filings he would be in a position to buy out all who would sell. He had no present need even to avail himself of the assistance which both old Joe Hinman and Nate Younger were anxious to extend. Younger’s outfit had been the largest in the unowned lands in the old days and now Carver was building it up into the largest of the new day that had dawned. He had been top hand for both the Box Bar and the Half Diamond H under the old régime, a moving spirit among the riders of the Cherokee Strip, and now he had become a leader among the settlers. Both of his old employers, having taken a part in raising him, were duly proud of the fact; theirs still the loyalty that had always prevailed between an owner and the men who rode for his brand. The easy road to success now opened invitingly to Carver but he found no joy in the prospect. He had worked steadily toward his original aim but his initial enthusiasm was lacking. The girl had observed this change and it troubled her. Of late Carver had exhibited a restlessness that was akin to Bart’s; and she wondered. He had gone so far; would he turn back now? She accompanied him but a short distance and the conversation was confined to impersonal topics. She observed that for the first time in six months he was wearing his gun. As they parted he noted her troubled gaze resting upon it. “Sho! This?” he said, tapping the weapon. “I someway don’t feel dressed up without it. I wear it as an ornament, kind of, the way a girl wears a ribbon,” and he moved on up the trail. A few days later Molly mounted the ridge and watched the start of the harvesting. There was nothing to attract swarms of harvest hands such as crowded into the country farther north where the whole landscape seemed a solid body of wheat. Another year, when the acreage seeded to wheat would be increased fourfold, then they would come. But Carver had found no scarcity of hands to help him harvest his crop. From her point of vantage the girl could see tall-hatted, chap-clad men toiling in the fields. Later in the season, after the wheat had been stacked, she would see them plowing. They rode their horses out to their work as they had always done, and left them standing about.