It was seven o’clock in the morning when the doctor beckoned Raquel outside. Mrs. Daniels had gone home about dawn. Inside the two little girls slept quietly. With every care they would recover. The world was one glittering expanse of snow, gleaming whiteness stretching everywhere, clear and cold and quiet under a dazzling sun. The mountains looked like a frosted Christmas card. Raquel was tired. Even her youthful face was drawn in that searching light. “Well, well, young lady, you mustn’t look so sad. Think of what you have accomplished in the last twelve hours. Come, a little breakfast will fix you up,” and Doctor Merrick put a hand under her elbow. “What’s that you’ve got there?” “Just a branding iron.” Raquel lifted the heavy bar. In the snow at her feet a large letter H was cut diagonally. She rubbed it out with her boot, and shouldering the iron walked up the hill with the doctor. So Pancho _was_ the rustler! Living right here on Dad’s land! She had noticed the iron in a corner back of the kitchen stove as she sat tending the fire and boiling water during the night. Well, at any rate, Pancho cared enough about his babies to have forgotten such incriminating evidence. He had left it right out where it could be seen. Ordinarily such a discovery would have driven any ranch owner wild, but now, somehow, the struggle for the children’s lives during the night had made other things seem unimportant. As she passed the bunk house, Russ and Jami came out. “We’re startin’ out to see how the steers on the mesa stood the storm.” Russ looked at the Boss for confirmation, and Raquel nodded. “Russ, did you ever see any Lazy L whitefaces, or cattle that looked like Ranchos whitefaces, branded like this?” She held up the iron. “About a month ago George and I found a heifer at the spring below La Bolsa. It was one that I had branded last summer and was burned over like this.” Russ swore a round range oath. “Beg your pardon, ma’am, but--” and he sputtered. “Don’t say a word, Russ. I found it in Pancho’s cabin this morning. Wait till the little girls are well and we’ll fire him clean off Los Ranchos. Dad always said he was mean, but never thought that he would steal.” After breakfast Raquel slipped into her icy room, crept between blankets that Mom had warmed in the kitchen, and slept for six hours. She woke refreshed, so invigorated by the bracing air that she did not feel the exertion of the night before at all. Georgie was in the kitchen, on his knees behind the stove, where he had a pair of twin lambs, poor little early offspring that Russ had rescued from a snow drift. Their mother’s body over them had saved them from her fate. Mom and Georgie had poured warm milk from a spoon down their throats, and the little pink noses were beginning to quiver with returning life. They made awkward movements in their soft nest, and blindly adopted the nursing bottle for their mother.