Almost her first answer to Trevors's _coup_ was to telegraph San
Francisco for a Firth milking-machine, together with an expert sent out
by the Firth Company to install and superintend its working for the
first few days. At the same time she hired from one of the Sacramento
dairies a man who was to be foreman of her own dairy industry, a
capable fellow with an intimate practical knowledge of automatic
milkers. He, with a couple of strippers paid overtime wages managed
until the dairy crew could be builded up again. Her new foreman from
the first took the greater part of this burden off her shoulders.

Mrs. Simpson, the matron from Rocky Bend, arrived, true to her promise
and, motherly soul that she was, took a keen interest in Judith's
comforts and in caring for the big house, of which she immediately
waxed proud with an air of semiproprietorship. Jose, from the first,
bestowed upon the cheerful, bustling woman a black hatred born of his
thoroughgoing Latin jealousy. From this or that corner, appearing
unexpectedly, glaring darkly at her in a manner which ruffled her
placidity and suggested to her lively imagination terrible visions of
knives in one's back, he brought an actual thrill into Mrs. Simpson's
long days of routine.

Busy days also for Bud Lee, who had already begun the education of a
string of colts. Busy days for Doc Tripp who, unhampered, trusted,
aided at every turn by his employer, was from dawn until dark among the
ranch live stock, all but feeling pulse and taking temperature of
horses, cows, colts, calves, hogs, and mules. He stopped the calf
sickness; effected cures in every case excepting one. And the rest of
the stock he finally gave a clean bill of health.

Busy days for Carson. Painstakingly he estimated, to the head, the
number of cattle the pastures should be carrying, counting from long
experience upon the hard months to come from August until December;
estimating values; appearing at the week's end to suggest the purchase
of a herd of calves from the John Peters Dairy Company, to be had now
at a very attractive figure. And suggesting, almost insistently, upon
buying a certain Shorthorn bull worth twice the twelve hundred dollars
asked for him. Busy days for the foremen who had held over from the
management of Trevors or who had been taken on since. The first crop
of alfalfa, shot through with foxtails, must be cut without delay and
fed into the silos before the beards of the i