ails me. I'd
ought to go up to Sulphur to see a doctor, but there don't seem to be any
free time. I 'pear to have lost my grip. Food don't give me any strength.
I saw you talking with Ross Cavanagh. There's a man--and Reddy. Reddy is
what you may call a fancy rancher--goes in for alfalfy and fruit, and all
that. He isn't in the forest service for the pay or for graft. He's got a
regular palace up there above Sulphur--hot and cold water all through the
house, a furnace in the cellar, and two bath-rooms, so they tell me; I
never was in the place. Well, I must go back--I can't trust them girls a
minute." She turned with a groan of pain. "'Pears like every joint in me
is a-creakin' to-day."

"Can't I take your place?" asked Lee Virginia, pity deepening in her heart
as she caught the look of suffering on her mother's face.

"No; you better keep out o' the caffy. It ain't a fit place for you. Fact
is, I weren't expecting anything so fine as you are. I laid awake till
three o'clock last night figurin' on what to do. I reckon you'd better go
back and give this outfit up as a bad job. I used to tell Ed you didn't
belong to neither of us, and you don't. I can't see where you _did_ come
from--anyhow, I don't want the responsibility of havin' you here. Why,
you'll have half the men in the county hitchin' to my corral--and the
males out here are a fierce lot o' brutes." She studied the girl again,
finding her so dainty, so far above herself, that she added: "It would be
a cruel shame for me to keep you here, with all these he-wolves roamin'
around. You're too good to be meat for any of them. You just plan to pack
up and pull out to-morrow."

She went out with a dragging step that softened the girl's heart. It was
true there was little of real affection between them. Her memories of
Eliza up to this moment had been rather mixed. As a child she had seldom
been in her arms, and she had always been a little afraid of the bold,
bright, handsome creature who rode horses and shot pistols like a man. It
was hard to relate the Eliza Wetherford of those days with this flabby,
limping old woman, and yet her daughter came nearer to loving her at this
moment than at any time since her fifth year.

III

LEE VIRGINIA WAGES WAR

IN truth, Lize had risen that morning intending "to whirl in and clean up
the house," being suddenly conscious to some degree of the dirt and
disorder around her, but she found herself physically unequal to t