touch liquor," I sang,
"shall never touch mine!"

But I was mistaken. And Dinky-Dunk only laughed in a quiet inward
rumbling sort of way that was new to him. "I believe I am drunk, Boca
Chica," he solemnly confessed, "drunk as a lord!" Then he took both my
hands in his.

"D'you know what's going to happen?" he demanded. And of course I
didn't. Then he hurled it point-blank at me.

"_The railway's going to come!_"

"Come where?" I gasped.

"Come here, right across our land! It's settled. And there's no mistake
about it this time. Inside of ten months there'll be choo-choo cars
steaming past Casa Grande!"

"Skookum!" I shouted.

"And there'll be a station within a mile of where you stand! And inside
of two years this seventeen or eighteen hundred acres of land will be
worth forty dollars an acre, easily, and perhaps even fifty. And what
that means you can figure out for yourself!"

"Whoopee!" I gasped, trying in vain to figure out how much forty times
seventeen hundred was.

But that was not all. It would do away with the road haul to the
elevator, which might have taken most of the profit out of his grain
growing. To team wheat into Buckhorn would have been a terrible
discount, no matter what luck he might have with his crops. So he'd been
moving heaven and earth to get the steel to come his way. He'd pulled
wires and interviewed members and guaranteed a water-tank supply and
promised a right of way and made use of his old engineering
friends--until his battle was won. And his last fight had been against
the liar who'd sent in false reports about his district. But that was
over now, and Casa Grande will no longer be the jumping-off place of
civilization, the dot on the wilderness. It will be on the time-tables
and the mail-routes, and I know my Dinky-Dunk will be the first mayor of
the new city, if there ever is a city to be mayor of!

_Friday the Thirtieth_

Dinky-Dunk came in at noon to-day, tiptoed over to the crib to see if
the Boy was all right, and then came and put his hands on my shoulders,
looking me solemnly in the eye: "What do you suppose has happened?" he
demanded.

"Another railroad," I ventured.

He shook his head. Of course it was useless for me to try to guess. I
pushed my finger against Dinky-Dunk's Adam's apple and asked him what
the news was.

"Percival Benson Woodhouse has just calmly announced to me that, next
week, _he's going to marry Olga_," was my husband's answer.