Carver worked on alone and at the end of another ten days he viewed with satisfaction the numerous coils of fence wire and the great stack of posts neatly corded behind the deserted buildings of the Half Diamond H.
“At present that assortment is only wood and iron,” he said. “But it’s a real imposing pile nevertheless, and I can likely convert it into dollars when the squatters come romping in.”
When he rode into Caldwell he was amazed at the swift transitions. The incoming transients had trebled the population in the last two months. Being unprepared for this sweeping change he was all the more prepared to lend a willing ear to the prediction that Caldwell was to become the metropolis of the whole Southwest. There was a conversational boom in progress and Carver, looking upon the crowded, teeming streets, the numerous tent houses everywhere in evidence and the new frame shacks in the process of construction through the town, divined the possibility of actual boom days just ahead. He rode out to his little frame cabin to visit with Molly Lassiter whom he had seen but three times in as many months. He found neither Bart nor Molly at home but the door was unlocked and he entered.
The two rooms of the bare little shack had been transformed. Two worn Navajo rugs were spread on the pine-board floor and soft curtain materials were draped across the windows.
“She’s made it all homelike,” Carver said. “Just with a touch here and there. What couldn’t she do with things to work with and a real house to operate on? We’ll give her one some day if only she’ll agree.” He drew forth the lucky dollar and consulted it. “Let’s you and me hatch out a new idea,” he invited. “We can’t be loafing on the job.”
While the idea was hatching he sat peering abstractedly through the doorway, rousing from his reverie only when he found his gaze riveted on the girl as she turned into the pathway leading to the house. Molly halted suddenly when within a few feet of the door, as she saw him sitting just inside it.
“I hadn’t expected you this soon,” she said.
“Bart told me the fence job would keep you another month at least. Did you decide not to finish it?”
“It’s salvaged to the last strand of wire,” he returned. “I speeded up some so as to have it over with.”
“I’m sorry Bart quit,” she said. “You see he won’t stick at anything.”