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.