rom those who really wished
to be her friends. In time people remarked that Ed Austin's
metamorphosis was no harder to understand than that of his wife.

It was true. She had changed. The alteration reached to the very bone
and marrow of her being. At first the general pity had wounded her,
then it had offended, and finally angered her. That people should
notice her affliction, particularly when she strove so desperately to
hide it, seemed the height of insolence.

The management of Las Palmas was almost her only relief. Having sprung
from a family of ranchers, the work came easy, and she grew to like
it--as well as she could like anything with that ever-present pain in
her breast. The property was so large that it gave ample excuse for
avoiding the few visitors who came, and the range boss, Benito
Gonzales, attended to most of the buying and selling. Callers gradually
became rarer; friends dropped away almost entirely. Since Las Palmas
employed no white help whatever, it became in time more Mexican than in
the days of "Old Ed" Austin's ownership.

In such wise had Alaire fashioned her life, living meanwhile under a
sort of truce with her husband.

But Las Palmas had prospered to admiration, and La Feria would have
prospered equally had it not been for the armed unrest of the country
across the border. No finer stock than the "Box A" was to be found
anywhere. The old lean, long-horned cattle had been interbred with
white-faced Herefords, and the sleek coats of their progeny were
stretched over twice the former weight of beef. Alaire had even
experimented with the Brahman strain, importing some huge, hump-backed
bulls that set the neighborhood agog. People proclaimed they were
sacred oxen and whispered that they were intended for some outlandish
pagan rite--Alaire by this time had gained the reputation of being
"queer"--while experienced stockmen declared the venture a woman's
folly, affirming that buffaloes had never been crossed successfully
with domestic cattle. It was rumored that one of these imported animals
cost more than a whole herd of Mexican stock, and the ranchers
speculated freely as to what "Old Ed" Austin would have said of such
extravagance.

It was Blaze Jones, one of the few county residents granted access to
Las Palmas, who first acquainted himself with the outcome of Alaire's
experiment, and it was he who brought news of it to some visiting
stock-buyers at Brownsville.

Blaze was addicted to r