quick as yours!"

So the relationship of mother and daughter which had grown into that of
a warm, intimate friendship now developed into closer, more intimate
companionship. Together they found bright, brimming days that
otherwise might have been dull and empty.

Wanda came to realise that a woman who is forty may be, in all
essentials, as young as a girl of twenty, and that the added score of
years while it brings truer insight and perhaps a steadier heart does
not quench ardour or deaden the emotions.

"Mamma," she said one day, looking up brightly from the development of
a film from her mother's kodak, "you are just a girl yourself!"

And Mrs. Leland was just girl enough to flush, and youthful enough to
laugh as musically as her daughter.

Thus, as the days went by and they were frequently alone together,
Martin Leland being often away on the business upon which he and Arthur
Shandon had entered with Sledge Hume, the two women were not lonely.
Mrs. Leland accompanied Wanda everywhere to take pictures showing the
girl climbing for a lofty bird nest, clinging to the cliffs at the
upper end of the valley, crouching hidden among the bushes waiting for
a rabbit to hop into the picture, even on the deer "hunt" they had
already begun.

So the late summer slipped by more swiftly in its smooth channel than
ever, the leaves in the orchard yellowed with the fall, the light green
tips upon the fir branches turned dark green, the cattle were driven
down to the lower valleys along the creeks, and the first snows of
winter dimmed the shortening days.

With the passing of the summer, Garth Conway came again to be a
frequent visitor at the Echo Creek ranch house. Since the letter from
Wayne Shandon in New York he had had but one communication from the man
who now owned the Bar L-M. It had been characteristically short,
written in London.

"I am leaving the destiny of the cows In your competent hands," Wayne
wrote. "I am legally giving you a power of attorney. This authorises
you to run the outfit as you judge best. Make what sales you want to
to pay the boys and yourself. Bank the money or re-invest for
improvements and more cattle. The Lord knows when I'll come back . . .
provided the Devil has told Him."

And then, in a postscript, hastily scribbled he had added,

"I have made my will . . . Imagine me making a will! . . . and if I
don't come back at all the outfit is yours. Love to the Lelands."

And then,