“The best land in this whole country,” he stated. “Every acre of it will bring from twelve to fifteen dollars the day a man gets his patent. I’ll buy it up piece by piece, a quarter at a time, as fast as any party wants to sell; mortgage a part of it to buy more and turn back every dollar that comes off of it into more land. Some day I’ll own all that lower valley with the Half Diamond H at the head of it so we can look out across it all from the house. I’ll follow the price up till it touches forty and then stop buying. Then there’ll come a day when we can stand there at the old ranch house and know that every acre between it and the flourishing city of Alvin will be worth a hundred dollars flat.” As he sketched his plans she could vision thousands of acres of ripening grain waving in the bottoms; the huge new barns of the Half Diamond H groaning with hay and forage crops for feeding the hundreds of sleek thoroughbred cattle with which the place was stocked. But all that was a matter of the future and the present was sufficiently amazing in itself. A few months back she had resided in an isolated line camp on Turkey Creek with no other habitation within a dozen miles. Now she was blocked in on all sides by neighbors; Mrs. Cranston, the ample lady who resided on the next claim below Molly’s,--and her husband was not really a gloomy soul. He had merely been over anxious during the days preceding the run, harassed by a haunting dread that he would not be successful in locating a home for his family. He was in reality a rather genial party, Molly had found. Then there was Mrs. Downing, the hysterical lady, who was not in the least hysterical but quite normal since Molly had nursed her through an illness brought on by the excitement of the stampede; the Lees, with whom Mrs. Downing had been so anxious to neighbor, had proved to be delightful neighbors indeed. There was Orkstrom, the big Dane whose wife toiled with him in the field; Arnold Crosby, fresh from school, who had brought his girl bride to share his little frame homestead shack; old Judd Armstrong and his serene little mate. The whole countryside for miles around was peopled with a motley assortment ranging from retired professional men to foreigners who spoke scarcely a word of understandable English. “You told me once the sort of quiet home life you pined for most,” he said. “And I volunteered to set out in search of it. This is it, all round us, just as you pictured it to me on that day in Caldwell.” “Yes,” she said. “This is it--exactly what I’ve always been wanting.”