She raised her head and looked across the swift water-stream to the high shoulder of the distant ridge, but there was no fear in the calm depths of her eyes. She stood so, quiet, tired, at ease, until the horses had drunk their fill and with windy breaths of satisfaction were ready to go on across the flat to the stable and corral. Here she left them in the hands of a boy of seventeen, very much after her own type, but who walked with a hopeless halt, and went on to the cabin. “Hello, Mammy,” she said, smiling—and if she had been beautiful before she was exquisite when she smiled, for the red lips curled up at the corners and the blue eyes narrowed to drowsy slits of sweetness. But there was no answering smile on the gaunt face of the big woman who met her at the door with work-hardened hands laid anxiously on her young shoulders. “Nance, girl,” she said straightly, “I heard a shot this afternoon—I reckon it whistled some out there in th’ field?” “It did,” said Nance honestly, “so close it made Dan squat.” In spite of her courage the woman paled a bit. “My Lord A’mighty!” she said distressedly, “I do wish your Pappy had stayed in Missouri! I make no doubt he’d been livin’ today—and I’d not be eating my heart out with longin’ for him, sorrow over Bud, an’ fear for you every time you’re out of my sight. And th’ land ain’t worth it.” But Nance Allison laid her hand over her mother’s and turned in the doorway to look once again at the red and purple veils of dusk-haze falling down the mountain’s face, to listen to the song of Nameless River, hurrying down from the mysterious cañons of the Deep Heart hills, and a sort of adoring awe irradiated her features. “Worth it?” she repeated slowly. “No—not Papp’s death—not Bud’s lameness—but worth every lick of work I ever can do, worth every glorious hour I spend on it, worth every bluff I call, every sneak-thief enemy I defy—and some day it will be worth a mint of gold when the cattle grow to herds. And in the meantime it’s—why, Mammy, it’s the anteroom of Heaven, the fringes of paradise, right here in Nameless Valley.” The mother sighed. “You love it a lot, don’t you?” she asked plaintively. “I think it’s more than love,” said the big girl slowly as she rolled her faded sleeves higher along her golden arms preparatory to washing at the well in the yard, “I think it’s principle—a proving of myself—I think it’s a front line in the battle of life—and I believe I’m a mighty fighter.” “I know you are,” said the woman with conviction, faintly tinged with pride, “but—there’ll be few cattle left for herds if things go on the way they have gone. Perhaps there’ll be neither herds nor herders——” But her daughter interrupted. “There’ll be a fight, at any rate,” she said as she plunged her face, man fashion, into the basin filled with water from the bucket which she had lifted, hand over hand—“there’ll be a fight to the finish when I start—and some day I’m afraid I’ll start.”