Eight hours later Georgie stood by Raquel’s bed, shaking her to wake her up. He shook and shook. “What was that? _What?_ The steers _stampeded_?--Wait now, let’s get this straight. Last night, after I left? “Oh, stop sniffling, Georgie. What’s to prevent getting them back for a late shipment tonight? “Nearly half the rodeo?--Well, let Russ tell me himself then!” Raquel sprang from bed. She was shaking with the shock of this misfortune. This was more than a cowman’s luck. This was--disaster. Just to miss the amount of the note! No use trying to dicker at the bank. She was dressing rapidly, as these thoughts flashed through her mind. Six hundred head at fifty dollars a head, was thirty thousand dollars. Where could she get ten thousand more? There was a knock at the door and a fat letter was pushed beneath. “Registered letter come last night for Miss Raquel Daniels,” announced a hoarse voice that sounded like music to Raquel. _Something_ had to happen. This must be it. She had almost forgotten---- * * * * * “And that was all there was to it, Jimmy,” said Raquel exultingly a week later. She had reached that point in her story of the deal as she and Jimmy sat before a fire in the ranch sitting-room. It was a week from the Sunday after Raquel’s birthday. Jimmy had come over for a day. “Go on,” he roared. “It may be all as far as you are concerned, but you haven’t told me yet a word of what really happened in between.” “Well, when I got down to the yards, there were Jami and Russ lookin’ as if they’d lost their last friend on earth. They had six hundred head of cattle ready to ship, but six hundred more were out on the mesa. They figured it would take a week to get them in, scattered as they were. “Some one had deliberately spooked them, of course, and only Mom here knew who that some one was.” Mom had come in and was rocking with expressive contentment. You could generally tell Mom’s emotions by the speed of her rocker. “It seems that that same night about eight o’clock,” Raquel went on, “Elena came up here crying her eyes out. She’d just come back from La Bolsa, and didn’t know we’d gone with the cattle. Wanted to know where I was and when we were taking _el ganado_ down into town to the railroad. “She said that Pancho was a bad hombre, and though he had threatened her she would not keep silent any more. Dad had always been kind to her, and we cured her little girls just a few weeks ago. “Well then, she would tell everything. Pancho was not only working here at Los Ranchos; he was also working for ‘A. B.,’ and always told him just what Los Ranchos was going to do. It was Pancho who stampeded the cattle in order to hold things up as much as possible.