- The chapter begins just as Emil and Alexandra are done with their trip to the river territory and are heading back to the Divide.
- They spent five days there, and Alexandra has learned a lot from talking to the farmers. But she doesn't see any reason for her family to move there.
- Emil wonders why his sister looks so cheerful on the ride home.
- The narrator comments that this might be the first time anyone looked upon this country with "love and yearning" (1.5.3). The "Genius of the Divide" has begun to bend to Alexandra's will.
- Later, Alexandra meets with her whole family to report on what she's seen in the river country. She tells them her new idea: rather than selling their property and moving, they should mortgage their farm and buy up as much property as possible, starting with the Linstrum land.
- Lou flips out when he hears Alexandra suggests that they work to pay off another mortgage. Oscar is bewildered.
- Alexandra starts to get nervous, but stands her ground. She insists that the land will pay for itself in time.
- When Lou doesn't believe her, she tells him that she knows the land will make them rich. She can "feel it coming" (1.5.10). Call it Farmer ESP.
- Oscar, sounding defeated, says he doesn't know how they're supposed to work all that land.
- Alexandra assures him that they won't have to work the land themselves; none of the rich landowners farm their own land. She wants her brothers to be independent landowners, not farm laborers, and she hopes Emil will be able to go to college.
- When Lou still thinks she's crazy, and asks her why no one else is doing what she suggests, Alexandra reminds him that they descend from better people than their neighbors, and that they owe it to themselves to try.
- Dinner ends, and they all go their separate ways.
- A while later, Alexandra finds Oscar looking down in the dumps by the windmill.
- She tells him he doesn't have to do anything he doesn't want. His biggest hang-up is agreeing to take on more debt.
- After Oscar takes off, Alexandra stays and looks at the stars, thinking about how much this land is part of her, and she is part of it.