"Why, right this way."
Lancaster caught the other by the bootstrap. "Shore?" he asked.
"Sure," repeated Lounsbury; "sure as death and taxes. It's bound to run somewhere between the coulée and Medicine Mountain, and it'll stop—at least for a few years—at the Missouri. With those sloughs in the way at the south end of the gap, it can't reach the river without coming over your land. First thing you know, you'll have stores and saloons around your house. There's going to be a town on the Bend, sir."
The elder man scanned the younger's face. Lounsbury was smiling half teasingly, yet undoubtedly he was in earnest.
"W'y, Lawd!" breathed the section-boss, realising the whole import of the news. A railroad would mean immeasurable good fortune to the trio of settlers who, like young prairie-chickens that fear to leave the side of their mother, had chosen quarter-sections near the guarding fort. And to him, penniless, with motherless girls, it meant——
"The ferrying's so good right here," went on the storekeeper. "Why, it's a ten-to-one shot the track'll end on your claim."
With one accord all looked across the level quarter, where the new green was creeping in after the late rains.
"A railroad! An' a town!" The section-boss pulled at his grizzled goatee. "They'll make this piece worth a heap!"
"They will," agreed Lounsbury. "But road or no road, seems to me you've got about the cream of this side of the river."
"You' right," said Lancaster. But the girls were silent, except that Dallas gave a sigh, deep and full of happiness.