who
had put her tiny foot down and commanded the removal from the fever
flatlands of Colusa to the healthy mountains of Ventura; who had backed
the savage old Indian-fighter of a father into a corner and fought the
entire family that Vila might marry the man of her choice; who had flown
in the face of the family and of community morality and demanded the
divorce of Laura from her criminally weak husband; and who on the
other hand, had held the branches of the family together when only
misunderstanding and weak humanness threatened to drive them apart.

The peacemaker and the warrior! All the old tales trooped before Saxon's
eyes. They were sharp with detail, for she had visioned them many times,
though their content was of things she had never seen. So far as details
were concerned, they were her own creation, for she had never seen an
ox, a wild Indian, nor a prairie schooner. Yet, palpitating and real,
shimmering in the sun-flashed dust of ten thousand hoofs, she saw
pass, from East to West, across a continent, the great hegira of the
land-hungry Anglo-Saxon. It was part and fiber of her. She had been
nursed on its traditions and its facts from the lips of those who had
taken part. Clearly she saw the long wagon-train, the lean, gaunt men
who walked before, the youths goading the lowing oxen that fell and
were goaded to their feet to fall again. And through it all, a flying
shuttle, weaving the golden dazzling thread of personality, moved the
form of her little, indomitable mother, eight years old, and nine ere
the great traverse was ended, a necromancer and a law-giver, willing her
way, and the way and the willing always good and right.

Saxon saw Punch, the little, rough-coated Skye-terrier with the honest
eyes (who had plodded for weary months), gone lame and abandoned; she
saw Daisy, the chit of a child, hide Punch in the wagon. She saw the
savage old worried father discover the added burden of the several
pounds to the dying oxen. She saw his wrath, as he held Punch by
the scruff of the neck. And she saw Daisy, between the muzzle of the
long-barreled rifle and the little dog. And she saw Daisy thereafter,
through days of alkali and heat, walking, stumbling, in the dust of the
wagons, the little sick dog, like a baby, in her arms.

But most vivid of all, Saxon saw the fight at Little Meadow--and Daisy,
dressed as for a gala day, in white, a ribbon sash about her waist,
ribbons and a round-comb in her hair, in he