“Rakie, you’re a financier! I am lost in pure and simple admiration. And luck’s with you, too. The market’s gone up.” Jimmy pointed to a place he had marked in the paper. “I know. We can ship a thousand head in another week, including the six hundred strays. Russ has got all but a few of them back now. They just did us a good turn by savin’ half our shipment out for a higher price. In fact, delayin’ the cars brought us fifty-five dollars a head for those we did ship instead of fifty, and we’ll get sixty for this next bunch.” “Well, you owe that to ‘A. B.’ too, I suspect,” said Jimmy. “The delay in the cars, I mean. I found out that it was he who pulled the wires over the freight agent’s head, without lettin’ him know that it was the Daniels’ ranch he had it in for, of course. Just slippin’ friends of his in ahead. I found out, too, that his El Paso bank holds a couple of notes of the agent’s. “Your order for cars could just as well have gone through at any time, barring the usual delays, I imagine, for when my friend, the Major, got down there the morning after you wired me, the order was forthcoming from the agent himself without any difficulty. There was a loud-mouthed fellow in a plaid overcoat in the office at the same time, blustering about something or other, but the agent just waved him aside.” “That miserable commission man!” Raquel exclaimed. “Didn’t Dad warn me? Offering me fifteen dollars a head less than the market, and trying to tell me he could get me cars if I’d just close the deal right off.--You know, I was pretty near ready to take his offer there for a time. Everything looked so discouraging.” She made the admission shamefacedly. “He thought he could put anything over on you because you were a girl and he would just pocket the difference. He thought he had you either way. If you had agreed to sell you would never have got your money in time to meet the note. Wonder if Pancho knew anything about all this?” Jimmy turned inquiringly to Mom. “Where is he?” “He hasn’t come back. Elena doesn’t know where he is. Over at La Bolsa, I guess, gettin’ ready to brand all the strays and drifters from Colorado down he can lay his hands on, with that big old Flying H. Ain’t nobody but Pancho would be that cute to make him such a handy brand.” Mom had been silent as usual but there was nothing in the proceedings or conversation that she had missed. Had they been able to see Pancho at that moment--and it was too bad that they could not--they would have beheld a most chagrined hombre. Leaning over a little table in a barroom in La Cruz, he was glaring angrily at the cattleman who sat opposite him. “I have done all you said. Hol’ back the cow work three, four week; I stop the sheepment. I want my money. _My esposa_, my wife, she no speak to me. She’s good _amiga_ to _el padron, la padrona_; she think he can not help take her father’s Rancho. Me, I _take_ what coming to me. I want my money now.” The cowman shook his head imperturbably.