And how was she ever going to take the place of Dad, and Custer and Grant--all three. But Mom had had to take the place of three--she had done the work of three women--without runnin’ water, for so long, and--things must be easier for Mom, from now on. Raquel fell into dreamless sleep. CHAPTER III PROBLEMS They were gone. Raquel and Mom stood at the end of the long veranda running the length of the house, and watched the car as it climbed towards the pass. Mom looked like some hurt thing; she was too unconscious of anything but that they had gone to try to hide her feelings. She and Raquel walked side by side back into the house, Georgie following. Raquel put her arm around Mom’s waist. She felt strong, and tender, and it comforted Mom. Words and caresses were few, but understanding was there. “Georgie.” Mom reached out and drew him, the only baby she had left, into her lap, rocking him there tight in her arms. She rocked and rocked till gradually the strain eased and they began to talk about how much milk Ruth was giving, and all the jobs Georgie would have to take on. Georgie at twelve was very round of face, very skinny of leg, snubby of nose, and liberally freckled. His two front teeth had reached their majority before the rest of him had, thus endowing him with the hated nickname of “Tooth,” but to Mom he had not yet lost his pearly baby teeth. “Look after your mother and sister, Georgie,” was all that Dad had told him when he said good-by. “Remember you’re man breed.” Dad had looked strange in a store suit, with a white collar that parted fearlessly each side of his Adam’s apple. In his red tie there gleamed like a cat’s eye a huge yellow diamond, purchased from a Mexican refugee. It was the outfit Dad usually wore to Bank Directors’ meetings. Now that he was gone, his flannel shirt hung limply on a nail on the kitchen porch. His famous two-gallon hat, without which he never left the house, hung beside it. There it would hang till his return. Raquel, looking at it, grinned ruefully. “I wish what Dad kept under his hat was there now.” Old Man Daniels had made plenty of enemies in his time, but there was no one, at the time of our story, who would rather have shot his hat and what was under it, full of holes than “A. B.” Meyers. It was not only the matter of losing out on fresh range, but that called loan at the bank had filled “A. B.” so full of poisoned hatred that he would stop at little to get back at the Boss of the Lazy L. As the Pathfinder, carrying Dad to the railroad station, swooped down through Red Dog, and swirled past the saloon, “A. B.” looked out. “Daniels off to take charge of cattle transportation overseas,” reported Red Bailey, the proprietor of the saloon, as the car disappeared in a cloud of dust. “Got his gal home from school in the East to run the rancho.” “Takes more than fancy ropin’ and trick ridin’ to carry on the cattle biz,” remarked “A. B.” drily.