He selected a farm where a ridge of foothills overlooked a broad valley receding into the mountains. The dealer had no idea of selling him this particular piece of land; they were bound for a half section farther up the slope when Grant stopped on the brow of the hill to feast his eyes on the scene that lay before him. It burst upon him with the unexpectedness peculiar to the foothill valleys; miles of gently undulating plain, lying apparently far below, but in reality rising in a sharp ascent toward the snow-capped mountains looking down silently through their gauze of blue-purple afternoon mist. At distances which even his trained eye would not attempt to compute lay little round lakes like silver coins on the surface of the prairie; here and there were dark green bluffs of spruce; to the right a ribbon of river, blue-green save where the rapids churned it white, and along its edge a fringe of leafy cottonwoods; at vast intervals square black plots of plowed land like sections on a chess-board of the gods, and farm buildings cut so clear in the mountain atmosphere that the sense of space was lost and they seemed like child-houses just across the way.
Grant turned to his companion with an animation in his face which almost startled the prosaic dealer in real estate.
“Wonderful! Wonderful!” he exclaimed. “We don’t need to go any farther if you can sell me this.”
“Sure I can sell you this,” said the dealer, looking at him somewhat queerly. “That is, if you want it. I thought you were looking for a wheat farm.”
The man’s total lack of appreciation irritated Grant unreasonably. “Wheat makes good hog fodder,” he retorted, “but sunsets keep alive the soul. What is the price?”
Again the dealer gave him a queer sidelong look, and made as though to argue with him, then suddenly seemed to change his purpose. Perhaps he reflected that strange things happened to the boys overseas.
“I’ll get you the price in town,” he said. “You are sure it will suit?”
“Suit? No king in Christendom has his palace on a site like this. I’d go round the world for it.”
“You’re the doctor,” said the dealer, turning his car.
Grant completed the purchase, ordered lumber for a house and barn, and engaged a carpenter to superintend the construction. It was one of his whims that he would do most of the work himself.