Carver allowed his mental vision to travel far beyond the horizon which cut off his physical view, and he saw other wagons coming. He pictured them scattered along the roads of Kansas, Nebraska and Missouri, of Illinois and Iowa. From far and near the landless of a vast country were converging upon this last corner left unsettled, their worldly effects crowded into the bulging beds of old-time prairie schooners, their live stock trailing behind and the tousled heads of their youngsters peering curiously from the wagons as they rolled through country strange to them. Their pace was slow and plodding but intensely purposeful, a miniature reproduction of that general movement which had resulted in reclaiming the Great West from savagery a few decades before,--a movement which Carver felt could not long be forestalled. He addressed his luck piece in prophetic vein. “It’s coming and we can’t head it off. In ten years there’ll be a squatter on every second section and the old free range cut up with fence. Little lonely dollar, what will you and me be doing then? That’s the prospect that’s looming just ahead of us.” In fact this prospect seemed nearer still when he crossed back with Hinman’s cows some weeks thereafter. With the first warm days of approaching spring the slow stream of incoming squatters had increased and there were more outfits camped along the line. Carver rode up to the ranch house in the gray light of dawn to report that the herd was back on Hinman’s own range once more. He found old Joe at breakfast and was invited to sit in. “Draw up your stool and toss a feed in you,” the old man greeted. “Tell me how everything came to pass.” “It was a right uneventful trip,” Carver reported. “There was only one patrol came messing through and we shifted the bunch down on to the Half Diamond H for a week or more.” “The Half Diamond H!” Hinman exclaimed. “Then Nate Younger must have died without me getting word of it. I’ll send over some flowers right away. It’s a moral certainty that roan-whiskered old lizard wouldn’t let one of my cows have a spoonful of grass if he was alive and kicking.” “On the contrary,” said Carver; “he put himself out to invite us down in case we thought best to pull off the quarantine belt. He ordered his north fence laid flat as soon as he gets word we’re in the country with your cows, and announced that he’d be palsied and paralyzed and even worse than that before he’d be found lacking in hospitality toward a friend in need.” “Yes,” said Hinman. “Go right on. What else did he say?” “Nothing to speak of,” Carver said. “He did sort of mention that you was welcome to throw as much stuff as you liked on the Half Diamond H as long as he was running it. So you might say the trip was more or less of a holiday.” Hinman allowed his gaze to rove through the window and settle upon a covered wagon crawling slowly southward.