“You look like you could fly as well as hop.”

“Oh, I’m on pins,” cried Molly. “I’ll never be able to thank you enough.”

“Howdy, Caleb,” spoke up Summers. “Reckon you’ve got time to come inside a minute.”

“Mawnin’, Enoch,” replied See, which greeting included the others present. “I’m in a hurry.”

“Wal, come in anyhow,” returned Summers, bluntly, and went into the store.

See grumbled a little, as he wound the reins around the brake-handle, and laboriously got down. He was a heavy man, no longer young. All the loungers on the porch followed him into the store, but Andy Stoneham remained in the door, watching Molly.

“That lout’s makin’ sheep eyes at you, Molly,” said Mrs. See.

Molly did not look. “He just said some nasty things to me,” she confided. “Then the fool asked me to go to a dance at Hall’s Mill.”

“Molly, you’re growin’ up an’ it’s time you got some sensible notions,” said Mrs. See, seriously.

“I’m goin’ to Flag,” trilled Molly, as if that momentous adventure was all that mattered.

“Lass, you’re a bad combination. You’re too pretty an’ too crazy. I reckon it’s time to get you a husband.”

Molly laughed and blushed. “That’s what ma says. But it’s funny. I have to work hard enough now.”

Caleb See came stamping out of the store, wiping his beard, sober of face where he had been merry. Without a word he stepped into the buckboard, making it lurch, and drove away. Molly was reminded of the news about the drift fence.

“Mrs. See, while I was waitin’ for you Seth Haverly rode up,” said Molly. “He’d just come in from the Diamond with my brother Arch. They’d been to Flag. An’ he was tellin’ old Enoch Summers about a fence that was bein’ built, down across the country. A drift fence, he called it. What’s a drift fence?”

While Mrs. See pondered over the query Caleb answered.

“Wal, lass, it’s no wonder you ask, seein’ we don’t have no fences in this country. On a free range cattle travel all over, according’ to water an’ grass. Now a drift fence is somethin’ that changes a free range. It ain’t free no more. It’s a rough country this side of the Diamond. All the draws head up on top an’ run down into the West Fork, an’ into the Cibeque. Water runs down these draws, an’ feed is good.