“Take it easy, honey. When spring comes on there’ll be plenty of hard work for you. Just wait till this cold weather breaks.” But it did not break. One afternoon in late January after a day of dark skies it started to snow in great whirling flakes. By night it was blowing a blizzard, sweeping unbroken across the mesas with a strength that seemed to gather force with every mile, until it hurled itself in fury against the steeps of the mountains at their back. “Well, if we don’t lose us a bunch of steers tonight, this snow’ll save the grass mebbe.” Russell, melting off before the fire, slapped the backs of his hands to bring the blood. He began to warble: “Oh, I am a Texas cowboy, Far away from home, If ever I get back to Texas I never more will roam. “Montana is too cold for me And the winters are too long—” He was unfortunately interrupted by Georgie, who burst in with the message that Elena’s little girls were both sick, and Pancho and Elena wanted Mom and Raquel to please come down there. “I’ll go.” Raquel was already slipping into her sheepskin jacket and she ran out the door calling back, “If you’re needed, Mom, I’ll come back up, or send for what’s wanted. Come on, Tooth, _pronto_.” Out through the frozen patio she ran, and as she squeezed through the snow-blocked gate a cutting gale fairly snatched the breath from her lips. Alternately racing before the wind and stumbling head down against it, she and Georgie made downhill. Blown half the distance in a few minutes, they scrambled and stumbled against the wind the rest of the way for ten or fifteen minutes more. In the little low adobe at the foot of the corral ten-year-old Josefita sat shaking before the fire, torn by one chill after another. On a pallet against the wall a four-year-old baby, tiny Luisita, lay with glazed eyes, her lips drawn back pitifully from teeth and gums. Fragile little fingers plucked at the coverlet “How long has she been like this?” Raquel asked sharply, a sick feeling clutching her throat. “All day, Señorita,” Elena barely whispered, appeal and agony in her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell us before?” Raquel stopped at Elena’s pitiful face. “_Oiga_,” she said in Spanish, “listen. My mother will have to try to come down. I will go to Red Dog for the Doctor. Take that grease, there on the stove, warm it at once and put it on Josefita’s chest and throat with this flannel over it. Make her a hot drink of your _mescal_ water and sugar, Pancho. Put her feet in hot water; wrap her in a hot blanket.” It was so they treated sick creatures in the ranch kitchen. But the baby, Luisita! “This baby, you should have--” No good to scold that poor mother. It looked too late now. She had seen sick lambs so, but this was beyond her skill.