RAQUEL OF THE RANCH COUNTRY

I	RAQUEL GOES TO SCHOOL
II	HOME AGAIN
III	PROBLEMS
IV	TAKING STOCK
V	DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAINS
VI	THE HUNT
VII	CHRISTMAS
VIII	LOIS
IX	THE BLIZZARD
X	THAT DANIELS GAL
XI	THE WILD HORSE
XII	DROUTH
XIII	ACROSS THE BORDER
XIV	HIDING
XV	WHAT BECAME OF RAQUEL
XVI	GEORGIE GETS LOST
XVII	FATE PLAYS A TRICK
XVIII	THE MAGIC FLAME
XIX	CONFESSION
XX	HOME WITH THE HERD

• BELOW LAY THE RANCH
• RAQUEL RODE OVER SOUTH TO A WINDMILL
• A MEXICAN WOMAN WAS BAKING TORTILLAS
• IT WAS STILL COOL ON THE DESERT WHEN THEY RODE AWAY OVER THE SANDS

CHAPTER I
RAQUEL GOES TO SCHOOL

Sunset brought Raquel to The Towers, that fashionable school for girls whose turrets overlooked the Hudson. The glow behind her seemed to have lingered to introduce this child of the land of sunshine. It seemed to burnish the dowdy little figure sitting so stiffly in the sedan. Yet she resolutely kept her back to the West, for to see it made her homesick. This was all so different. No wonder a calf bawled for its mother when they took it away!

Three days’ travel from Texas had put a whole world between Raquel and Los Ranchos, the Sunset Limited speeding her back over plains that the covered wagon of her grandparents had not crossed in three months’ journeying. And here she was rolling up a drive toward high iron gates. She leaned forward to peer through. It was even more imposing than she had imagined, this feudal castle in its beautiful grounds, all splashed with the reds and golds of autumn.

Lights were already glowing within the school. The pupils of The Towers always dressed for dinner, and Raquel could see girlish figures passing and repassing before the windows in their soft-colored frocks.

She had never been so afraid of anything in her life as of the prospect of this new world. She was trembling with nervousness. Two girls stood for a moment in one of the windows, each with an arm around the other’s waist. How happy they seemed! Oh, of course she would love school! Homesickness fell away. Raquel leaned forward, sat on the edge of the seat in her eagerness to be inside among those cheerful groups.

The girls of the Misses Carter’s school, watching from the windows as the sedan came to a stop at the entrance, saw a slight figure in a badly fitting suit swing out of the car the moment Jeems opened the door. Before he could stoop for her old calfskin bags the new girl had seized them herself and with a bulging piece of luggage in each hand leaped up the steps ahead of him.

There was a rush from the drawing-room windows. The next moment she was standing in the hall, eager eyes on the faces filling the doorway. They looked mighty pretty. Then the bags dropped to the floor with a thump. A lean hand was thrust out to enclose the plump white one of the younger Miss Carter, and a soft Texan voice was drawling, “Howdy, Ma’am, I sure am glad to be here.”

Then, striding after the floating form of the younger Miss Carter, the new girl was gone up the wide staircase.

“The cowgirl from Texas, or the Girl of the Golden West,” laughed a mischievous voice. “That your new roommate, Lois?”

Lois Wainwright shook a blonde head; her pretty face hardened. “Not if I can help it. I can get along without her in my young life. As a matter of fact I didn’t come here to be forced into any such association.”

“Oh, come, Loie, don’t be a snob!” A long-legged, handsome girl spoke from the depths of an easy chair where she sprawled with a book. “Besides, what do you know about that girl? She’s probably a peach. And she may be the very person that you may need most in your young life, old kiddo.”

---

Upstairs, Raquel Daniels followed Miss Isaphine Carter down carpeted halls strangely soft to unaccustomed feet. Her nostrils widened like a colt’s at the unfamiliar odor of this new atmosphere, a mingling of scented clothing, fine housekeeping, imperceptible to the careful but accustomed nose of Miss Isaphine, ever on the alert for forbidden things—cigarettes, strong perfumes, bubbling fudge after bedtime. At the ranch there was only the odor of fresh alfalfa blossoms to cover the smell of frying meat or sizzling frijoles.

“This will be your room, dear child.” Miss Carter was switching on the lights. Raquel blinked. How pretty! It was prettier than anything at San Antone’s big store. Prettier somehow than Raquel’s own room at home, and she had thought hers was surely the handsomest set of furniture in the world when Dad bought it for her last year.

“You will have a charming roommate, Lois Wainwright, one of our sweetest girls,” Miss Carter smiled professionally. “You had better dress for dinner now, dear, and then come down to the drawing-room as quickly as you can.”

Left alone, Raquel stood for a moment, smiling, excited. Well, here she was. All these girls to be friends with! And she had to learn to act pretty, like them. Dress for dinner, the teacher had said. Was there anything wrong with her new suit? She had thought it very plain-looking, but that was what they had told her to get. Did Miss Carter mean for her to wear her party dress with elbow sleeves, or should she wear the Sunday dress with long sleeves? She knelt before the bags and threw them open—calfskin bags they were, handmade, and polished from a quarter century’s use. The Sunday dress was in the trunk.

They had forgotten to unstrap it, and Raquel attacked the clumsy-looking knotted rope with deft fingers. Custer was such a hand at roping, he couldn’t even let her new trunk be. Raquel was so absorbed that she did not hear the door softly open and close.

“I think there must be some mistake.” It was an almost artificially sweet voice. “I have this room to myself. Perhaps you’d better not unpack until you can be transferred.” Lois’ eyes took in the cheap trunk, the heavy leather valises.

Raquel rose. Surely this was the prettiest girl in the whole world. She could not take her eyes away.

“I reckon you must be Lois Wainwright, aren’t you?”

“Lois Wainwright is my name.”

“Why, then,” the brown hand shot out again, “you’re my roommate sure enough. I’m Raquel Daniels from Los Ranchos.”

But the pride and confidence in her voice faded as her empty hand fell to her side.

“It was Jimmy, Jim Hovey, your cousin, who told us about The Towers. And you being here, and all. And Dad wrote—Jimmy wrote, too—to you. Maybe you didn’t get the letter. He—” Raquel stopped, checked by the utter lack of response. “I’d have known you anywheres from your picture,” she said softly then.

“Really! How interesting,” Lois drawled indifferently. She fancied that her pointless remark was the essence of sarcasm. “My father, however, happened to engage my room for me early last summer. Yes, I believe Jimmy did write about you. But I don’t pretend to keep up with my cousin’s—er—acquaintances.”

It didn’t take schooling for the girl from Los Ranchos to know that she was not wanted. This strange burning in her cheeks and tightness in her throat made it necessary to get away as fast as she could. Stooping quickly, Raquel closed her grips, and striding to the door, threw it open and set the bags, ever so gently this time, outside. Then back; and lifting the heavy trunk on end, she dragged it swiftly and easily to the door, and bumped it over the threshold, Lois standing there motionless, like one fascinated by what she had done.

It was this tableau which flashed before Anne Marvin as she rounded the corner on her way to her room, and stopped before Lois’ open door—Lois standing cool, indifferent, in the center of the room, the new girl flushed, tense, there in the hall in the midst of her own luggage.

Anne knew just what had happened. That was clear enough.

“This is Raquel Daniels, isn’t it?” She laid a cordial hand on Raquel’s arm. “I’ve come up after you—to meet my new roommate. There was some mistake in the rooming plans, and we’re to be partners, you and I. Shall we go right on to my room? There’s just time before dinner.”

Raquel’s head came up proudly. Then she smiled at Anne. “Thank you. My mistake.”

“A game youngster,” thought Anne. She wouldn’t hold up a sore paw. Sporting!

And—here was a girl you could understand, Raquel felt. Easy-handed enough to gentle a stallion colt. That tight feeling in the chest, the hurt in her throat, eased. And if Anne Marvin winced at Raquel’s grip, it did not go unreturned this time.

It needed the reassurance of Anne’s handclasp to carry Raquel through that first meal at The Towers. Such fine linen and silver she had seen in San Antone, and for service, too, the Toltec Hotel, during the cattlemen’s convention, could not be surpassed.

But to sit in the company of all these easy-mannered girls!

“Do you find that even your clothing feels damp in the East, Miss Daniels?”

“Is it true that there’s only one family to a county in Texas, Miss Daniels?”

“Yes’m,” “No’m,” and “Yes, Ma’am,” and “No, Ma’am,” were all Raquel could find tongue for.

It was not until late the next afternoon that Anne Marvin was called to Miss Carter’s office, a formal room of which the girls stood in awe. But Anne never minded being summoned there.

Anne usually had her way in life. And this was as true at The Towers as it had been at home. There was a reasonableness and good humor in Anne’s way, a deep kindness of heart, that argued more eloquently than her words.

Tall, blonde, handsome, she was easily the best and the most simply dressed girl at school. Her hair was ashen fair, her skin a flushed ivory, and she wore tans, ashes of roses, sage greens, deep blues, avoiding the usual pinks and blues affected by blondes. “Insipid,” she said of them.

There was nothing insipid about Anne. Sports and studies alike came easily to her—far too easily, for, although she was talented, she was lazy. Everything had always come too easily to her—family, wealth, position, were hers by inheritance. She might have been a leader among the girls, but leadership did not seem worth exerting herself for. She did what amused or interested her, and read voraciously. She had just finished Cooper’s Pathfinder, and that wonderful tale of the Pueblo Indians, The Delight Makers, which had stirred her enthusiasm for the West. Then Raquel arrived, fresh from that land of adventure, a character out of a book.

Anne’s example did have a great deal of influence at school. She was copied and sought after. But she had not the slightest inclination to manage, and down in her heart she realized that her inertia was often not only lazy but selfish.

“Don’t make me a chairman”—“Don’t ask me to go to her party.” Anne, sprawled with a book, would wave an eager girl away, and offer a mollifying box of candy. “Eat this, please, darling, or I’ll be sick.” Or, “I’ll be skiing when that committee meets.” Anne would not compose the thesis on history that would have added to her own credits, but she did tutor Lillie Matthews so that Lillie could finish two years of French in one.

Needless to say, Anne was amiable, up to a certain point. She was furious with Lois now. But she, too, was “sporting.”

“It isn’t that Lois said anything to her, Miss Carter,” she smiled across the desk at Miss Hetty; “but one can see that Lois and Miss Daniels are not particularly suited to each other. I find her extremely interesting, and she seems not to object to me. So we just paired off.”

Miss Hetty smiled drily. Anne seemed to have taken an unusual amount of trouble!

“Of course I haven’t yet abandoned my custom of making such arrangements myself, Anne. When I do, I may consult the girls beforehand.”

Anne, reddening at the rebuke, still smiled disarmingly. “I thought, before she got settled, Miss Hetty—”

“Very well, Anne, if you wish it. But I thought you particularly wanted to be alone this winter so that you could give more time to extra subjects.”

“I will, Miss Hetty, I will. In fact, I’ll be the gainer, for Miss Daniels can coach me in Spanish; she speaks it like a native. And I will help her in some of her work.”

And so Raquel stayed in Anne’s room, which was plenty large enough for the extra furniture which had to be brought in. It was both gay and comfortable with its English chintzes, even if it was not as exquisite as that other room had been. But it suited Raquel better. Anne could not have imagined her in Lois’ setting of taffetas and filet laces.

As far as Raquel knew, nothing had been said of what happened the night of her coming to The Towers. It did not occur to her that the story had flashed over the whole school and that it was discussed by both younger girls and seniors that night and for a week afterward. Just what had happened, no one knew.

But why had Lois snubbed her? Raquel asked herself. She wasn’t good enough for her; that was it.

After that first night the girls left her alone, except for the perfunctory courtesies of the table. The novelty of the newcomer wore away in a week.

“It’s a curious thing,” observed Miss Hetty to her younger sister, “how all the girls make excuses for Lois Wainwright. She’s a spoiled and sometimes a cold-blooded little thing; I know perfectly well that she said or did something to hurt that Daniels girl. But not one of them would admit it.

“Lois has every one waiting on her and shielding her. But some day she’ll have to face life on her own. She’ll have her first lesson to learn, and this girl from the West may be the one to do it.” Even Miss Hetty was sometimes ungrammatical.

“But she has sweetness and charm.” Miss Isa rushed to Lois’ defense.

“When she wants to be sweet and charming,” Miss Hetty put in grimly. “She has you wound round her finger, too, Isaphine.”

“She’s generous to a fault,” Miss Isa defended stoutly, “always making gifts, and giving her own things away.”

“Yes, it gratifies her and doesn’t cost her anything. And that and her beauty are what bind the other girls to her.... And there is a something,” Miss Hetty mused; “I don’t myself know what it is. Her mother had it, and she was a lovable, selfish creature herself.

“Well, if it weren’t for Lois’ having lost her mother, and for her father’s invalidism, I really wouldn’t have her here another winter. She’s too capricious, and her extravagance sets a bad example. Her father denies her nothing. She spent more than a hundred and fifty dollars on that theater party which we allowed her to take in to town last week, and you know I don’t approve of fifteen-year-old girls doing such things.”

“What shall we do about Raquel Daniels?” Miss Isaphine hastily changed the subject. “Her clothes are not adequate. She hasn’t at all the wardrobe we advise, and I took special pains to describe everything in our correspondence with her father.

“And her hair, Hetty, that awful, masculine short hair! It makes her look so boyish. Hetty, I—”

Miss Hetty interrupted her sister with a withering glance. “What shall we do about her clothes? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Don’t you suppose the child thought they were adequate? Can’t you see the stuff she’s made of? Can’t you see she would suffer if we suggested she discard the clothes she’s brought? Wait until she finds out for herself what she wants to wear. Use a little common sense, Isa,” snapped Miss Hetty. “Besides, Anne Marvin has exceptional taste. She’ll learn.”

And Raquel, off in the wing room, was too absorbed in Anne’s company to give a thought to clothes. She was telling Anne all about Los Ranchos, and Dad, and Mother, and the boys—Grant and Custer and Georgie (he was twelve), and Jim Hovey, who was from Boston.

It helped the home hunger a lot to talk about it to willing ears. It was the only world Raquel knew, and under the spell of Anne’s sympathy she spread its sunny beauty, its simplicity, its vast unfenced reaches before her new friend.

“Dad, he was born under a covered wagon on the way west. His father and mother were the first people who pioneered into that valley of the Pecos. And Dad’s mother was a beauty in the South, though his father was pioneer stock from ’way back.

“Dad’s got an idea he wants me to have schooling. He’s sold more than seventy thousand head of cattle in the last four years, and he said, he and Mom, that this was the time for me to go to school. He aimed to have me learn banking and bookkeeping, because he and the boys have to carry every penny in their heads.

“And they thought I’d worn breeches and ridden the range long enough. They wanted me to go to San Antone at first, but Jimmy—that’s Jimmy Hovey—he persuaded ’em I should come to The Towers—” Raquel stopped a moment, flushing; then went on steadily; “Jimmy, he’s Lois Wainwright’s cousin. He said she was here and would be sweet to me.

“He thinks a lot of Lois and of her Dad. She was like a sister to him, he said; and he used to tease her a lot, but she needed it; though she was a good kid, he said.

“He had a picture of her on his bureau all the time. She was twelve. He hadn’t seen her since. She looked just as she does now. I sure liked to look at that picture. And Custer, he just loved it. He thought she was just like a fairy. He said when she grew up he wanted to marry that little girl!

“I thought when I came here, perhaps she would come back to the ranch to visit us sometimes. But now—” Raquel smiled pityingly at herself for ever having thought of such an impossible thing.

“She is pretty,” Anne conceded warmly. “And she can be sweet when she hasn’t some contrary notion fixed in her mind. Her mother died when she was a tiny girl, you see; and her father, I think, was so afraid he would die, too—he’s sick, you know—and leave her alone that he always gave her everything she wanted.

“He tried to make up to her for the loss of her mother, and as a result, she didn’t know what it was to be crossed. I think she’d have been different if it weren’t for that.

“But tell me, Raquel, how did Jim Hovey happen to be in the West?”

“Lungs. He came out to our ranch and stayed there a long time. Dad and Mother took a fancy to him. We all did. And after Miss Angie left—she was our school teacher for six years, ever since I was seven—he made Dad let him teach us.

“He was a fine teacher. I love to hear him tell about history. He helped me prepare for the examination papers I had to write for Miss Carter before she said I could come here.”

“Raquel, do you mean to say that you’ve never been to regular school before? I think that’s wonderful!”

A warm flush at the praise spread into the roots of Raquel’s cropped hair. It embarrassed her, and she turned her face away; but she was glad to have Anne say it, for she felt a passionate loyalty to this new friend, her first girl friend.

“Well, you’re the only girl here that does.” Raquel grinned bashfully. “Oh, I know! I can see. I guess I don’t eat right or something, the way the girls at our table look at me sometimes. I suppose they’d be ashamed to ask me to their homes.”

“Oh, Raquel, you mustn’t say that! The girls haven’t had a chance really to know you yet. And they’re more or less taken up with the friendships they made last year, and getting settled, and their studies fixed up and all that. Wait until you’ve been at The Towers a few months, dear, and you’ll love it.”

“Oh, I’m glad I came anyways—anyway, I mean—although I guess the proper place for me would have been the State Agricultural College! But I’ve met you, and I’ll never forget that. And Dad wants me to have some life away from the ranch, he says.

“Mom does too. But she’s different from Dad. She doesn’t talk much. She says she was so much alone in the early days, with the mesa and the desert stretchin’ out so silent all ’round, that she guesses she forgot how to talk. Most ranch women are like that. And then when Dad came in, he would do all the talkin’.

“Mom says she wants me to have a plenty of pretty things to think about when I go back home. Ranch women are bound to be alone more or less. But I think it’s mighty pretty to raise the colts and gentle them. That’s my job at home.

“I’m more like Dad, I guess. I like to ride the range. And I haven’t forgotten how to talk.” Both girls laughed spontaneously. “But Dad seems to set a lot of store by his mother’s memory. Says he’d like for me to have some of the things she gave up when she and my granddad went West.

“And he wants me to be able to hold my own out in the world as well as on the range, he says. And I’ve got to do it.”

“Raquel, do you look like this grandmother?”

“Dad thinks so, because he wants to, but no one else seems to. Not even me, and I’d like to, myself! Do you want to see her picture?”

At Anne’s eager nod, Raquel laid before her roommate a tintype from which looked out a vivid, dark face. The finely-cut features, the way the head was set upon the slender throat, made you think of pride, and mettle, the endurance of a blooded horse. She smiled out at you in the strangely lifelike way that tinted tintypes have.

“She is beautiful, Raquel,” said Anne at last, “and you are very like her, except for the curls, and—and the coquetry. I never realized before just how lovely you are.” Anne’s blue eyes looked up in frank and generous admiration at the finely featured brown face bending over her, the sleek, closely cropped brown head, which clever Anne saw had chic—in a day before the boyish bob was smart. She was growing tremendously fond of Raquel.

Too covered with embarrassed shyness to speak, Raquel brought out from the calfskin valise some snapshots of herself and the boys.

“Jimmy took these. There’s Dad. Isn’t he sweet?”—pointing at a tall, lean, bow-legged figure in the middle of the group, horny-handed, weather-beaten. “And Custer, he’s awfully handsome. Mom is right pretty, but she won’t ever stand up for a picture. She had one when she was married, she said, and she’s never had time to be dressed up since.”

“Why, Rakie, Rakie Daniels,” chanted Anne, “is this you in the beauteous leather breeches, with the silver belt and all those silver buttons? And look at the hat! Aren’t you wonderful! Did you bring them with you?”

Raquel grinned sheepishly.

“Took up the whole bottom of my trunk, and I guess I won’t get to wear ’em anyway.”

“Let me see ’em, quick! Oh, I want to wear—”

Some one was knocking insistently at the door, and Anne, springing up belatedly to answer, was drawn mysteriously into the hall.

“I really can’t,” Raquel could hear the answer. “No, well, I’m sorry, Lois, but if you can’t, I can’t.”

“Do you mean to say,” came in audible exasperation from the other side of the door, “that you won’t go anywhere without—” The door was quickly and decisively closed.

Anne came back in a few moments with an elaborate air of unconcern, but the magic spell was broken. Raquel had relapsed into the subdued, colorless, and somewhat stiff young person who took her seat each day at the table with the throng of careless, happy, moody, flippant, serious, generous, and thoughtless girls at The Towers.

---

Autumn flew by. The red haze of autumnal sunsets deepened, and each night the red haze of war, the Great War, spread further over the country, until at last it colored even the atmosphere of the schools, including that of The Towers School for Girls.

“Barry has enlisted with the French flying corps,” Anne announced one afternoon as Raquel came in to find her tearful but proud, a letter from home in her hand.

To youth, there was thrilling excitement in the Great Adventure. It did not loom with the deadly portent which weighted the spirits of their elders. Somehow it could not touch them with its lean and cruel finger, or had not, as yet.

There was a rush of gayeties, a feverish busyness, those days; innumerable parties planned to cheer the boys, to keep up their “morale.” Even the school girl was called upon to do her bit.

The girls at The Towers were to take charge of the booths at a Red Cross benefit fair to be held in the near-by village. Nearly all the older girls had been invited to a party and a dance to be given afterward for the lads about to sail for France.

Raquel had never yet been included in those little gayeties given surreptitiously in one girl’s room or another’s; she never seemed to be gathered into those little chatting bevies that foregather in a corner. And so far she had not been asked to take any part in preparations for the fair.

The older girls had been organized into committees of arrangements. Would they have her sell something, Raquel wondered. Shyness, partly, and partly the consciousness of that first snub, had held her aloof ever since her coming to The Towers. Raquel was not in the least selfconscious, but instinctively she drew herself into a shell of silence, and like the plants of her own desert, thrust out little thorny spikes that said “Keep off” just as effectively as if the words had been visible.

And she found little time for play in this new and ordered existence. The rising bell, the quick shower, adopted after observing Anne’s habits for a week; prayers, breakfasts—they always left her hungry for they were daintier but not half so satisfying as breakfasts at Los Ranchos—and then classes and study periods in quick succession.

Raquel worked hard and stood well in her studies at the end of the first half term, in spite of the fact that she could hardly understand the marked English accent of one of her teachers. She probably could not have understood her at all, had it not been for her experience with Jimmy Hovey’s crisp Boston elegance of diction.

She began to feel less constraint with the girls too. But she and Lois Wainwright had never spoken to each other since that first evening. Lois, whose serene face betrayed nothing of what might be passing within her head, gave no sign of any secret compunctions.

Once she stopped in the hall beside Raquel, however, as if to speak to her. But Raquel remained quietly studying the bulletin board, and after a moment Lois shrugged her shoulders and went on. Raquel knew that Lois was standing there, but she was afraid of another snub and had made up her mind not to put herself in the way of it. Raquel did not know how to forgive gracefully. In her country it was etiquette not to forgive an insult. She had been brought up on tales of men’s vengeance, of killings for insults—Dad had always said a man could steal him blind, but insult him—never!

Once when a group of girls from The Towers were riding, Raquel and Marian, a plump, highly manicured girl of sixteen who was always in Lois’ wake, with several of the younger girls galloped ahead of the party. Raquel, who was well in the lead, became separated from the others as she mistook the road, turning off in another direction.

When finally she overtook her party, pulling up after a furious gallop, she was escorted by two nice-looking boys who reined in their mounts beside the girls. Marian recognized the boys as coming from a preparatory school about two miles from The Towers. Smiling her prettiest and edging her horse closer to Raquel’s, she waited for an introduction to the attractive strangers.

Raquel, untrained in such amenities and coquetries, was chatting easily and brightly with her appreciative companions.

“Thank you so much for settin’ me on my way. I sure was lost. That was a nice race we had, and I’ll be glad to beat you again any other day. These are my friends from The Towers.” She waved a comprehensive hand at the other girls. “But don’t let us make you any later.”

Marian was glaring at her, the other girls noticing her curiously, as if for the first time. How attractive Raquel was in her riding clothes! Why, she looked stunning! As the boys lifted their caps with a flourish and cantered away, Marian turned on Raquel.

“Well, what was the object in not introducing those boys?”

“Why-a,” stammered Raquel, “I don’t know their names. I—”

“Oh,” interrupted Marian scornfully, “so you picked them up! I suppose they do that sort of thing where you come from.”

Her sarcasm flew wide of the mark, because it was a simple truth.

“We don’t see any harm in thankin’ a stranger who is polite to us, an’ we let alone those who ain’t.” Raquel, furious, gathered her reins, and under a mysterious pressure of her knees, the horse sprang into a full run, and they were off and down the road in a clatter of shod hoofs before Marian could think of an answer.

“Gee,” said Nancy, one of the Gerould twins, “she surely got off on the right foot! The riding master can’t even do that, throw his mount into a run from a standstill. Thought you said, Marian, that cowgirl couldn’t ride a real horse?”

“Got off on the right word, too, if you ask me,” giggled Gloria, the other twin. “Who said she was dumb?”

Helen Virginia Jones, a plump southern girl of fifteen, made no comment, for she was busy thinking to herself that she would cajole her mother into getting her a new riding suit of that tan deerskin cloth, with the faintest twill, and have the breeches fitting snugly at the knees just as that Daniels girl’s did. Why, it was actually the smartest thing at The Towers!

Raquel might have felt happier had she heard her champions. And her habit was beautiful. She had chosen the cloth because it did look like deerskin, and Anne’s tailor had done the rest. But her pleasure in the new outfit was spoiled, and all the way back she felt miserably guilty and uncomfortable at the rebuke.

The day for the Fair drew near. Every one except little Emmy Martin and the eleven-year-old Geroulds was planning a booth. But no one had yet said anything to Raquel about helping. Still, she really thought they would ask her. She would not have inquired about it for anything. Girls were strange, after all, Raquel felt. If it had been a bunch of men or boys, now—well, you could step right up and ask, straight out.

Anne, as usual, had shunted aside any committee work, with the easy assurance of plunging in at the last moment and doing whatever she could, whatever remained to be done, to help.

“They like it,” she argued comfortably; “it’s good for them. I don’t like it. And there’s always a lot to be done at the last. They always need some one to step in at the last minute.”

So she gave the Fair little thought and didn’t realize that Raquel was being left out.

Two days beforehand, Raquel, dressing back of a curtain in the Gym, heard her name.

“Raquel Daniels. Dress her up and take her along. I like that girl and she surely can ride.”

“No,” impatiently, in Marian’s voice. “She’s such a stick. She couldn’t wear the clothes if she had ’em. No! Can’t be bothered. She wouldn’t know how to act, and the fellows simply wouldn’t have a good time with an unattractive girl. Cowgirl! What does she know of—of romance, or managing things?”

“Oh, I think you ought to ask her.” It was Helen Virginia’s voice, amiable and drawly. “She’s not even been given a booth at the Fair. Why not put her at the fudge booth? She can surely sell candy.”

“Raquel Daniels couldn’t sell Red Cross stamps! Besides, Lois’s the chairman and she’s got it all arranged. Raquel will have to help her country some other way.” And there was a laugh.

Raquel had wanted to speak,—to let them know at once that she was there. But instinctive kindness kept her from presenting herself, to the embarrassment of the speakers, when unkind things had been said about her. But the last words—these girls sure used a mean quirt. Tears stung Raquel’s eyes. She could not have uttered a word. Then rage boiled up to her rescue.

So they wouldn’t even let her sell fudge? A little old candy! Why, all they could make and sell wouldn’t bring as much as one good steer. Well, there were other ways of helping one’s country. Perhaps she didn’t know how to dress or act. Why should she? But she could go back and ride the range, and raise stock to feed the armies.

Beef’d carry ’em a lot further than fudge. At the comforting thought Raquel was able to smile.

In her pocket was a letter from Dad. Custer had enlisted one day and Grant the next. They were already in training camp. And good old Jimmy, who couldn’t make it for overseas service, was teaching at one of the new training camps.

“But all right, little girl,” wrote Dad. “We don’t need you—at least not yet. You just stay on and get all the learnin’ and fun you can. I’ll let you know when I need you.”

Dad had always said she was as good as a couple of hands; she burned to show him what she could do now.

---

After all Raquel did not have to endure the Fair where she could not help. Coming into her room the next afternoon, dispirited, feeling, she thought to herself, like a prickly pear, she was met by Anne waving a letter from her mother.

“You’re coming home with me for Thanksgiving. Yes, you are. Here’s a letter from Mother saying so. I didn’t know whether she’d have room or not, and as she always makes room if one of us asks to bring some one home, I waited. Come on, Rakie, let’s go tonight.”

It was a home-coming that Raquel never forgot; Anne’s father, eyes twinkling, voice booming out, “Well, here’s our little Texan;” Anne’s mother, clasping Raquel close, mothering her, so that she felt at once enveloped in affection and understanding. She marveled at the personal daintiness of Anne’s mother, the faintly scented lace in her bosom, so different from Raquel’s own best violet soap at ten cents a cake. Why, Anne’s mother had gray hair, yet she was dressed up as pretty and sweet and her hair was done as nicely as a young girl’s.

The great house with its crystal lights, its damask walls, its bowls of flowers, was to remain always in Raquel’s mind as an incredible vision, somehow too beautiful for daily use. If school had seemed luxurious it now paled into simplicity beside the finished elegance of the Marvin house, where living was made a fine art.

There was breakfast in bed the next morning on a tray that looked like a bed of Mom’s posies, sure enough. There was a maid to draw her bath, and slip her feet into red leather shoes, and throw a velvety red robe around her shoulders.

“A guest gift from Mrs. Marvin, Miss,” she explained.

Raquel didn’t see Anne until ten o’clock, when she came trailing in in great good spirits.

“Shopping. You and me, Rakie. Come on, the car’ll be here in ten minutes.”

There were shops and things such as Raquel had never dreamed of. And Anne looking at all sorts of clothes! That pink and flame georgette—oh, Raquel had never really wanted clothes like this before!

The money Dad had given her—she had spent but a little of it yet, for her riding habit. This was the time to do it. She would get some new clothes to wear at Anne’s house. This novel idea was no sooner imparted to Anne than saleswomen came hurrying, and racks and chairs bloomed.

Try them on? But of course.... Mademoiselle had an excellent straight back.... But she must not be stiff. But there, that was better. Relax. So!

It was a different Raquel who emerged from that shop an hour later, in a simple suit of golden tan tweed, a jaunty hat of dark brown velour, and a Scotch heather top coat.

And it was a vision in pale pink and flame-color, satin-shod, that descended the staircase in the Marvin home the next evening, Thanksgiving night. At the foot Barry Marvin, home for the holidays, fine and handsome in his uniform, waited for her—waited to take her in to dinner.

“Oh, God,” prayed Raquel earnestly, “I can ride a bucking bronco, I can rope and tie a Latin verb, but, oh, God, please, don’t let me slip on the floors and disgrace myself before Anne’s family.”

“What a pity the girls at school couldn’t see Raquel now,” thought Anne. If Lois could, she would either turn a little bit green or else come around generously, in the way her friends adored, and admit Raquel the equal of any girl at school, even if she couldn’t see her superiority when it wasn’t dressed up.

But Lois was not to see Raquel in the chiffon gown. The flowering was but for a night. And there, too, Fate was to take a hand. For Barry Marvin carried away with him when he sailed for France that week the memory of a vivid dark face, lit from within with candles of happiness that seemed to warm to life an unexpected humor.... Or was it just the surprise of such penetrating honesty, such simple candor?

Barry, the charmer, the gay and reckless Barry who was never hard hit by any girl! But this was different. A little girl, he said to himself, just a little Texas girl. But what a find! A memory for any chap to tie to!

Anne, crouching on Raquel’s bed late that night, talked and talked, laughing, romancing, going off in gay flights of imagination which literal-minded Raquel could scarcely follow. “La Principessa Raquela, with the spell cast off. She was a bewitched princess shut up in The Towers.”

“Hmm. You’re more like it. I always pictured you,” Raquel’s thought came hesitatingly, “when we read that poem, The Princess. I never did see any one look more beautiful than you did tonight, Anne. You sure did look lovely in that changeable taffeta, blue and silvery. And your hair braided round your head shines so.

“I was just thinkin’ how the boys, Grant and Custer, and Russell and Jami—they’re our ropers I told you about—would sit up and stare if they could see you. Oh, Anne, you must come out to Los Ranchos some day. We’d sure treat you like a princess.

“Me, I’m just a desert plant. Made to stand a hard life—and bloom once in fifteen years. Tomorrow I’ll be the same old ugly Rakie again.”

---

There was a long yellow envelope awaiting Raquel when she and Anne set down their bags three mornings later in the great hall at The Towers, a night message from Dad.

“Enlisted today. Assigned to animal transport section,” it ran. “Need you back to run the rancho.” He was to leave as soon as she could get home. Dad enlisted! And she was to be the Boss of the Lazy L!

Curiously enough Miss Hetty Carter was at almost the same moment reading a message from Mr. Wainwright. Lois was not to return to school, he was sorry to say. The doctors had ordered him west; he had little time to live, though Lois did not know it. And he felt that he could not bear to be parted from her—so she was going with him.

When the girls were assembled in the auditorium, Miss Hetty Carter stepped before them to make an announcement. Something in her manner commanded a deeper hush than usual.

“I have two announcements to make which I know you will all be sorry to hear.”

The news of Lois’ departure was received with whispered “Ahs” of surprise and disappointment, which rose from all over the assembly room.

Miss Carter waited a moment and then spoke quietly. “We have had with us this year another classmate whom some of you have not come to know very well—Raquel Daniels. Raquel is in her room now, packing to leave us. She has been called home to run the ranch while her father and brothers are at war.

“It is a big thing to do, an important one. And it falls upon the shoulders of a girl of barely sixteen years. I should be happy if you would offer Raquel some evidence of your good wishes and appreciation of what she is doing for her country.”

---

It was always bewildering to Raquel, the recollection of that leave-taking at The Towers. Deep in the old trunk, with Anne sorting her traveling clothes, she rose at a knock to see the whole school, apparently, trying to crowd into her room. Girl after girl, they squeezed in, and then bright little Lillie Matthews was speaking for them.

They’d heard she was going. They were all so, so sorry. But wasn’t it splendid? And The Towers was so proud of her; any one who could be really useful. And here was a token of their esteem. And earnest little Lillie, eyes suddenly brimming, planted a kiss on Raquel’s cheek.

And then a shower of books, scarves, boxes of candy, girls’ trinkets, came pouring into Raquel’s lap and trunk, and Raquel was standing up before them all.

“I’m glad you came. Thank you. And for the presents. I—I don’t deserve any, but I’m sure glad not to quit an outlaw—to part friends.”

That same afternoon two west-bound trains sped into the setting sun, bearing two girls—one back to the country she knew and understood; the other away from all the scenes that knew and understood her, into a strange country where life might deal none too gently.

CHAPTER II
HOME AGAIN

Down at the end of the corral in the hot sunshine of midday, Panchito Esquibal was energetically currying his burro.

“It is necessary, for the padroncita comes. But thou art going to be most beautiful, my little one; therefore do not budge.”

He spoke reassuringly, judging no doubt that the burro had the same objections as he had himself to submitting to such an operation.

“Rest tranquil,” advised Pancho the elder, who watched his son from the shadow of the corral sheds, a lazy cigarette drooping from his lips. “He will not run. It would take more than currying.”

“Hey, you Pancho Esquibal,” yelled a voice from inside the shed, “I wish I knew what would make you run, or work, once. Not a pinny do you get this month till you get these here saddles every one worked over.

“Here. Supple up them cinch straps on Raquel’s saddle. They’ll be here any minute now.”

Russell—if he had another name no one knew it—was polishing, as he spoke, the silver fittings on a beautiful saddle of Spanish leather, with an energy that made his red face even more fiery.

“Russell certainly ain’t purty,” Mr. Daniels had often said of the gangling cowboy, “but he’s as faithful as that ole houn’ dawg, an’ a durn good hand.”

At the bunkhouse an extraordinary activity was going on, currying of heads and grooming of beds.

“Chuck them dirty shirts under your bunk, Ang-hel,” shouted Jami Jamison. “D’ye want the boss to see ’m?”

Jami had washed and washed on the bunkhouse veranda until even his fingernails were clean. He was now struggling into new boots, which fitted so tightly over the instep that the operation was excruciating. But the boots were the finishing touch to a superb costume—cowhide chaps, buff corduroy shirt, beaver hat limbered up to a picturesque limpness, and a blue and orange silk neckerchief, the loose elegance of the whole artfully filling out six feet two of incredibly thin cowboy.

“’Pears to me,” observed Ole Hossfoot Cantnor, who, having oiled his hair, now sat on the edge of a bunk oiling a gun, “you’re takin’ a awful lot o’ trouble fer just seein’ Raquel again.” He squinted down the barrel of the gun, a pretty little twenty-two that he himself had given Raquel two years ago.

“Brr-rr,” snarled Jami, “I see you shaved your chin first time in twenty years, stid of mowin’ it off with a pair o’ sheep shears.” And, having at last worked into the boots, for which he had spent the whole of his past two months’ salary, namely forty dollars, Jami examined his own chin for any fugitive blonde down that might not have been revealed the first time. He scorned notice of Hossfoot’s new red flannel shirt and his best corduroy breeches.

Up at the ranch house there was an air “de fiesta,” as Mariquita Esquibal confided to her little sister. Mrs. Daniels, a green apron over her fresh gingham, knelt before the open oven turning a pan of light bread. On the long kitchen table twelve big golden-brown loaves cooled, giving off a delicious odor. They never baked less than twenty-four loaves at a time at Los Ranchos, and they baked every other day.

The verandas had been swept and scoured with lava sand and buckets of hot water, the kitchen floor freshly oiled. A clean red cloth covered the kitchen table. There were three smaller rooms opening from the kitchen, pantries and storerooms, and in the middle one of these there lay on a massive table a full haunch of venison, which Ole Hossfoot had brought down with him from the mountains the day before.

Beside it were spread some three dozen plump little birds, all skinned, ready for the frying pan—late quail that Russell had shot at daybreak that morning. Mrs. Daniels rose and passed through the three rooms to an outer one, where, over a spring bubbling from the virgin rock floor, the milk shelves were hung. Lifting down one of the blue pans, she unrolled from the top of the milk a little blanket of cream half an inch thick, popped it into a glass churn standing near, and returned to the kitchen with the clabber.

“Think I’ll make a mess of gingerbread,” she explained to the resplendent Jami, who lounged into the kitchen just then. “Raquel always did like it. Expect I have time before they git here.” She smiled a crinkly-eyed, patient little smile. “Them prune pies aren’t goin’ to last very long.”

Mrs. Daniels was a short, plump woman, small-boned. Her cheeks were round, and rosy under the brown skin, thin and smooth like a baby’s, except around the eyes where tiny wrinkles protested against the desert glare.

She stooped to take out the second pan of bread, and the smell of roasting venison escaped as the oven door was opened. The mingling of meat odors and fresh bread brought the hound dogs sniffing at the kitchen screens. On the back of the stove the inevitable frijole beans simmered.

“A fiesta,” said thirteen-year-old Mariquita, who sat in a corner peeling a mound of potatoes. Beside her on the floor sat her little sister, in her lap a bowl of scarlet chili which she was crushing with bare hands.

“Gimme that chili, Josefita; you’ll burn your little hands with that old hot stuff.” Mrs. Daniels’ voice had the caressing drawl of the Oklahoma born. She took the dish from the little girl, and gave her a sack of tiny piñon nuts to crack instead.

“They’re coming! They’re coming!” shouted Jami from the front veranda, and yells of announcement were heard from corral and bunkhouse. Mrs. Daniels hurried out to the piazza where Jami, his eyes glued to a pair of field glasses, was looking towards the pass through which ran the road to town.

“They’re only six miles away. Just hit the pass,” he yelled. “Guess I’ll ride out to meet ’em at the pasture gate,” and he threw down the glass and bolted for his horse.

But Russell was ahead of him, and already clattering out of the corral.

As the big Pathfinder struck the top of the Organ pass and began to coast down the mountain slope, a full view of the Daniels’ ranch spread before the returning party.

Beneath them the road fell away, and with the roar of the Pathfinder’s engines shut off, they seemed to float down through the clear air. Below lay the ranch, resting on the eastern slope of one of those sharp, sheer spurs of the southern-most Rockies.

Away, almost as far as you could see, stretched mile after square mile, the fenced acres of the Ranch of the Lazy L. In those days Los Ranchos boasted thirty-five square miles, besides ten thousand acres of rented range, a feudal domain, larger by far than that ruled over by many a baron or prince of old.

In that land Dad Daniels’ word was law, though there were few men to heed it, and the wild creatures that warred against cattle and cattlemen had a law of their own.

For thirty-five miles to the north or east you might travel and neither see smoke in a chimney nor speak to a man. For there would be neither chimney nor man, and for twenty miles to the south only the cowboy or an overland car; but westward it was just eight miles to the little mining town over the pass. From there it was fifteen miles to the nearest railroad station, bank, and ice cream fountain.

“Well, there’s home, Rakie.” Old Man Daniels leaned forward from the back seat, where he sat with Georgie, whose round face belied the man’s estate claimed by a pistol holster on the hip. “That’s your’n from now on for a spell, by right of eminent domain.”

As the scent of the mesa blew fresh in her face, and the familiar sight of the ranch house and its outlying buildings, their cream-plastered walls vivid in the late afternoon sun, came nearer and nearer, Raquel drew a sigh of content. Her eyes sparkled as she called over her shoulder, “I pretty nearly forgot what the sun looked like back there.”

“What!” Jimmy Hovey, back on a three days’ leave, beamed from the driver’s seat beside her. “What, didn’t the sun go with you then? Why, it’s been much darker since you went away. This is a special illumination in your honor.”

“Aw, cut it out, Jimmy,” growled Georgie. “Rakie’s gonta have an awful swelled head anyways. Say, Sis, thought you were goin’ to be wearin’ some real purty clothes, velvet or silk or somep’n.” He looked with disdain at her homespun. “That coat looks just like Jimmy’s.”

They were nearing the upper pasture, where the radiant Jami waited, swinging wide the gate to let the Pathfinder through. Had it not been for a deep arroyo between the upper and the lower pastures, the car could have coasted straight to the ranch house door, but Jimmy deftly threw in his clutch and started the engine just as they struck heavy sand. Roaring boastfully of its eighty horsepower, the car slid through the outer gate and rolled quietly to a stop before the patio door.

“Howdy, howdy, Raquel.” There was the canny Russell, redder than ever, who had ridden back through a short cut so that he might be the first to shake Raquel’s hand, which he was now awkwardly pumping up and down. And Ole Hossfoot. And if there wasn’t Angel, and Pancho Esquibal, extending the most ceremonious and courtly greeting of them all to his “muy querida padroncita.”

“Where’s Mom?” Raquel’s eyes looked eagerly ahead through the open patio door, across the courtyard and into the house.

“Oh, that poor old mother-woman,” Mr. Daniels answered, “most likely she’s a-hidin’ out like she always does when any one comes home. ’Fraid she’ll cry. Guess I’ll have to go and drag her out of the ice house.”

And in fact they did. Even when Dad and Raquel appeared in the ice house door, their eyes searching the dark recesses, Mom was so busy with imaginary duties that she could not hear them.

“Mother, you in there?” they called.

“Yes’m,” she answered desperately. “You back, Raquel?—Did you have a good time? Sure has been a dry winter here.”

Raquel threw her arms around her mother’s neck and kissed her cheeks and Mrs. Daniels pulled her apron over her head and wept.

Later, as they walked together towards the ranch living-room, Mrs. Daniels said, “That’s sure a purty suit and coat you brought back, Raquel honey. Did you get you a red dress while you were away?” that having been the fondest fancy of Raquel’s childhood.

“Yes’m.” Raquel remembered the pink and flame-colored chiffon, an ethereal realization of that red dress of her early dreams, and as different from it as that other world which it brought back for a moment—so far away that already it seemed like a dream.

The thought of her school life had been with her constantly on the train, but now it slipped from her mind completely as her father called her out to the veranda to point out how dry the grass was over the mesa at their feet. The sun was setting in a splendor of unbroken crimson that faded through the spectrum into the dark blue of the overhead sky. In the east another spur of mountains glowed like living opals with reflected color. Across the great mesa rolling away from their door stretched an unbroken vista of thirty-five miles.

“I’d hoped to ride the range with ye tomorrow, Raquel,” said Mr. Daniels, “but I’m due to sail any minute. Everything’s in good shape but—feed’s scarce. And looks like there’ll be little seed for spring.” Mr. Daniels spoke wistfully. “Seems I’m due along to catch some vessels goin’ straight over, transportin’ cattle.

“It’s time to bring down that bunch of cattle up t’ the Ruidoso. They’s five, six, hundred, up there. They should bring a fancy price on all that good grass—seventy-five dollars a head. I cleaned up this fall, sold twenty thousand head for feeders from forty-five dollars to fifty dollars on the hoof, which cleared up every cent we owed on bank stock, and that herd of thoroughbreds I bought last year. Not more’n five thousand left now.”

“Where’s all the boys?” asked Raquel.

“Oh, I had to let ’em go when Custer and Grant enlisted. They was ’leven of ’em down in the bunk house. Guess you c’n make out with Russell an’ Jami.

“Poor Russ had flat feet, bad eyes, boils, an’ what not, which don’t seem to interfere none with his bein’ as good a roper as ever forked saddle leather. And Jami—well even a high instep and a good fittin’ boot didn’t get him past. Underweight, they says, even with shot sewed in his pockets, an’ him the fightinest young catamount an’ the toughest, in these here parts.

“Pancho Esquibal, he’s on the commissary same as usual. Hasn’t no use for legal shootin’, Pancho hasn’t, and the draft ain’t drawed him yet. Watch that thievin’ coyote—but I never found his beat for brandin’, saddle work, an’ the like.

“An’ Ole Hossfoot stands ready on call to look after my gal. But I guess you don’t need much lookin’ after, Rakie. You’ll about do all the lookin’ after yourself. Girl’s brains’re as good as man’s brains any time, and you been brung up on the runnin’ of the Rancho. They’s nothin’ new to you in the cattle business.”

Dad looked fondly and sentimentally at Raquel. Stern overlord, shrewd cattleman and financier, Old Man Daniels was tender, if strict, with his family; and proud, particularly of his only daughter.

“I’m not tellin’ ye to be a man, Rakie. I don’t want for ye to be. We got men enough in the fam’ly. And Georgie here is the man of the place to look after the women folks. He’s been as good as two hands since Grant and Custer left.”

It was true that Raquel knew each trick of grazing, branding, the business of the roundup, the horses. She had been keeping books for her father after a crude way of her own before she left for school, and the three months’ training in accounting she had taken would make it infinitely easier now.

She knew the packing houses and commission merchants with whom her father dealt; she followed the market quotations on beef which he read laboriously from the Sunday paper every week, as a matter of course—as other girls follow hat sales. She knew the business of shipping, from the drive down to the railroad yards to the telegram announcing the shipment of the cattle.

But this would be an unusually hard year. Before Raquel lay the problem of looking after the herd that remained, with four boys instead of the twelve or fourteen they usually had in the summer; bringing the leaner cattle or the weaklings down to the corrals to be fed up, riding the range to keep an eye on the new calves in the spring, especially if it should be a cold or late season; and then, after the rodeo and branding, the job of selling, feeding the cattle before shipping, and delivering safely to the yards. But that was all work which a good overseer could handle. Today Dad’s business had grown to such proportions that the financial end of it was half the work.

“The main thing you’ll have to handle, Raquel,” Dad said, looking keenly at her, “is meetin’ our notes. Thirty thousand dollars on the Valley Grant land, due April first, and the interest on our other two loans.

“That means you’ll ship at least a thousand head of cattle early in March.

“I wouldn’t have expanded so much, takin’ in extra range, if I’d realized I’d have to be leavin’ it all to you like this.

“Bein’ as we’re borrowed up to the hilt, if anything should come up unexpected we’d have to turn over our cattle quick. The banks have all loaned the limit to the stockmen this fall, and although I stood to make a fortune, I’m afeared there’s trouble ahead for the stockmen.

“A. B. Meyers has been made director in our bank to succeed me. You know he’s swore to git me for callin’ that note of his two years ago?” Dad chewed his long mustache. “As a matter of fact if he hadn’t been forced to draw in and sell some o’ his stock, he’d be broke and most likely rustlin’ cattle to start a new herd today.

“But that don’t make him feel no better, knowin’ that. And he may cause some trouble. So remember you got to have thirty-five thousand dollars by April first. You’d better ship the first week in March.”

“Don’t worry, Dad. Leave it to me. We’ll ship ’em. I’ve got ’em off before. I can do it again.”

A. B. Meyers, known in that part of the country as “A. B.,” himself an old-timer, figured with Old Man Daniels as one of the biggest cattlemen in that part of Texas. He had disputed the open range with Dad for twenty years, and the enmities of the cattle country were still bitter at the time of the Great War.

A. B.’s range touched Los Ranchos land at two points. And A. B. fought secretly and openly for every piece of property that Daniels would be likely to want. It had been nip and tuck, with Dad getting the best of it two-thirds of the time.

Two years before, the Valley Grant, a rich range that Meyers had been after for five years, had been granted by the Land Office to Old Man Daniels. Neither his popularity nor his influence had succeeded in winning him this new range, but the fact that he was a sounder business man than A. B., and one whose dealings were absolutely square.

Dad had then borrowed money from the bank to acquire the intervening land, thus extending his range enormously. He had also bought some new stock, and for two years had not sold any cattle in order to increase the stock on the fresh range. Then the War had come and he had had to begin selling his cattle.

“But when it comes to sellin’, have nothin’ to do with these travelin’ commission men,” Dad impressed Raquel for the fiftieth time. “There’s bound to be a lot of ’em prowlin’ around durin’ this war, or I miss my guess. Beware of ’em.

“You sell straight to Cudalow’s in Kansas City or Shift’s in Chicago, an’ rest content at the market price. Bank everything an’ go slow. Guess that’s all.

“Jimmy,” as Jimmy himself came round the veranda end, “Jimmy here, says he’ll be able to get off maybe every couple of months, an’ he’ll come out an’ cheer you all up.”

On the stillness of the December air, chill with the penetrating cold that steals into your bones with sundown in that altitude, clanged the welcome note of the dinner bell.

Not all ranch houses boast a dining-room, but Los Ranchos had rooms to spare. The rambling old building, once a fort, later a road house, was high-ceilinged, deep-walled, to the width of three full adobe bricks, and built around a fifty-foot square patio, in the fashion of the country.

Old Man Daniels led the way through the house to the patio, and along the veranda to the dining-room. As he opened the door a wave of warmth and light streamed out. A large baseburner glowed where once had been a fireplace, and this, with the heat from the kitchen and from an acetylene lamp hanging over the table, made the big room comfortable.

The feudal board bore up sturdily under the food that Mother Daniels had prepared in honor of Raquel’s return and Dad’s last night at home. The juicy haunch of venison was at one end, a platter of golden brown quail at the other, flanked with savory bacon. Huge bowls of flaky potatoes, chili and beans, winter squash, and Mother Daniels’ sweet-pickled peaches, made a continuous round of the table. The mounds of bread would have appalled a camp baker. And the dishes of gravy seemed like never-failing pitchers of Baucis and Philemon.

In a moment they were all seated, taking the fringed napkins from the glasses, and piling the plates with unpampered appetite.

“My goodness,” thought Raquel, as Ole Hossfoot speared a piece of bread, deftly reaching across Jimmy’s face. Jami’s smooth cheek was bulging, and Georgie’s face was bisected with a whole slice of bread and butter. Angel’s eyes followed lovingly the bowl of beans, which, never stopping its circuit of the table, was now in Dad’s hands.

“’Pears like some one’s missin’.” Mr. Daniels peered down the table, counting ten heads. “Where’s Russell?”

There was a momentary pause in the clatter of fork and knife against plate long enough to hear a pounding on the dining-room floor from beneath.

“He’s down in the storm cellar,” and Mr. Daniels, pushing back his chair, strode towards an inner wall, stopped, and pulled up a trap door in the floor. It was like releasing a jack-in-the-box, for simultaneously Russell’s red and agitated face popped up, and he clambered out, bearing a big jug and a little jug.

Every one roared, except Russell and Georgie, who sank down in his seat. “I forgot to let him out,” he mumbled.

Russell had brought his contribution to the feast, some sparkling hard cider, and a peach brandy which he had buried in the earth more than a year before.

In spite of the mighty prowess of the diners scarcely a dent seemed to be made in Mother Daniels’ provisions. When the meal was over, Raquel and Georgie rushed to their mother’s side, and each seized an arm.

“No, you don’t, Mom. Come on. The boys will wash dishes tonight.”

“Well, mind you don’t chip ’em any, Ang-hel,” Mom cautioned, “an’ don’t rub the gold hard.” For Mom had got out the best dishes, with a gold band and a large gold D initialed on each piece. It was an elegant set, all right, and Dad sure liked the looks of that gold.