Raquel laughed. “Why, there’s nobody in this country would rustle a calf off Los Ranchos. Come on, Russ, I want to show you how I want the grove cleaned up. If it’s goin’ to be a dry spring we’ll need the reservoir there.” The cottonwood grove down in the glen southeast of the house was an oasis in a desert of grass, the heavy white trunks towering up against the blue sky. In summer it was a green-lighted refuge from the brilliance of the sun, and in the autumn a golden glory, as though the leaves had been marvelously hammered out of beaten gold. But now the grove was a welter of brushwood, old iron and ranch junk: an old plow, an old buggy, an ancient cart with wooden wheels. And the great reservoir in the center was filled with leaves and twigs. When the rainy season was on, the tiny stream that ran through the glade from the mountains behind it would fill the reservoir. There had been a time when the boys used this tank as a swimming hole, to which the cattle did not seem to object. Raquel had in mind to pipe the overflow from the windmill tank at the house down to the glen, and to rely on wind and rain to keep the reservoir water fresh and renewed. She had been wanting to clean the place out for several years, but while Dad spent lavishly on cars, musical instruments and upkeep, he had little use for improvements that were out of sight of the house. The house itself had been newly whitewashed in the early fall and the patio wall given a fresh layer of pink plaster, mixed from a pink silica outcrop in the mountains back of the ranch. Everything else was in excellent shape--pumps, windmills, sheds. Mom had always tended the patio, a small velvet oasis, shut away from desert winds by the pink wall, against which stood vivid hollyhocks. A square of “onhealthy” grass, the boys considered it, because it was so soft and fine; here, too, were beds of old-fashioned flowers, with honeysuckle and bougainvillea hanging thick over the cloistered porches. Mom had a _gracia_ in her fingers that made things grow, just as it made bread rise, Raquel often thought, looking disgustedly at a sickly vine of her own planting. “But Raquel can sew beautiful. Her seams and hems’re so fine you can hardly see ’em,” Mom would defend. “But I can’t _make_ anything a-sewing, Mom! Look at the fit of this darn dress!” They always seemed to turn out very queerly, it was true. So after that Raquel bought what dresses she had in town. They hadn’t been many, for she was only seven when Ole Hossfoot had brought her down a tiny pair of woolies to wear over her ginghams, and before she was in her teens she rode on the roundups always in her cowboy rig. It was so that Jimmy was used to seeing her, like a slim boy, with clustering dark hair, wearing a sombrero, a bright neckerchief, a leather jacket.