Chapter 3:

Chapter 3 begins the next segment of the book a little over a year after Buck's arrival in boomtown Aven. The hick from the sticks who'd never even seen a train a few months before now recognizes each engineer's whistle and pawning those railroad men's pocket watches is the new crop country boy Buck is tending now. Harvest time is every railroad man's payday and Buck knows he's on the path to riches because he's "willin' to live like a hog in the back of Green's store, and stayin' lonesome because you can't make money by lendin' to friends."

While working up the courage to ask the richest man in town for a loan, Buck reflects upon his new life as he walks down one of Aven's new residential streets. Aven has grown from a row of wooden shacks across from a railroad depot. Fresh water from a spring a half mile away from the depot has led to the construction of a whiskey distillery and with it a new commercial district to compete with the one containing the store where Buck works. Aven hasn't progressed to the point of actually having a bank so negotiations for Buck's first business loan will occur on the front porch of Amos Longshore's big house.  Longshore's daughter answers Buck's knock at the door and this results in Buck discovering he wants a little more from Longshore than just his money. As he watches the pretty girl walk down the hall to go get her father, Buck craves what he sees, "like finding rock candy in the syrup bucket."