“My baby says I got ter stay out here and keep house for him—though he’s off in them hills now and his home might’s well be an Injun wigwam.”
Mrs. Petterby agreed, however, to be housekeeper and caretaker of the ranch-house. Lance was going to stay on with the Hardin outfit, and his mother was a spry old lady and was glad of the position Aunt Winnie offered her.
“For we shall be coming out here often,” declared Mrs. White. “I know my brother, Major Dale, will like it immensely, once he’s well enough to visit the ranch. And the young folk are quite crazy over it.”
Ned was determined to go into the cattle business and stock raising—when he was out of college.
“What’s the use of boning at books, then?” demanded Nat. “‘All Gaul is divided into three parts’ isn’t going to help you raise longhorns for the market.”
“How do you know?” asked his brother, coolly. “And the cattle business will be a sideline.”
When old Mrs. Petterby took hold of affairs at the big house Aunt Winnie began to have a better time. “Help” was hard to get in that region and Mrs. White and the girls had done all but the kitchen work since coming to the ranch.
Now she had time to ride with Dorothy and Tavia as far as Desert City, and meet the men who were going to make possible the great transformation scene in that part of the desert that was to be irrigated with the water from Lost River.
Dorothy and Tavia enjoyed these jaunts immensely, too, but in between they had found time to ride up into the hills occasionally to see the tall young cowpuncher who guarded the river. Tavia would go, and Dorothy did not propose to let her go alone.
That was what Tavia was hinting at on the morning of the trunk packing incident. The following afternoon they were to ride into Dugonne, taking train next morning for the East.