Her fragility had always been more apparent than real. Back of her slenderness was a good deal of wiry strength. As the months passed she took on flesh, and by spring was almost plump. The open life she cultivated did not help her pink-and-white complexion, but brought solidity to her frame and power to her muscles.
The boy was born in early April. Norma Tait and Mrs. Stovall nursed her back to health, and in a few weeks she was driving over the ranch in consultation with Jennings.
She had a new venture in her mind, one of which he did not approve at all. She intended to raise head lettuce for the market.
Her foreman did his best to dissuade her from such a radical undertaking.
“This here is a cattle country, ma’am. Tha’s what the Lord made it for. O’ course it’s proper to put in some wheat an’ some alfalfa where we can irrigate from the creek. I got nothing to say against that, because with the price of stock good an’ the quality improved we can’t hardly afford to have ’em rough through the way they used to do. We got to feed. Tha’s reasonable. But why lettuce? Why not cabbages or persimmons or sweet peas, ma’am, if you come to that.”
Jennings softened his derision with a friendly smile.
“Because there is money in this head lettuce. I’ve been reading about it and corresponding with a farmer in Colorado who raises it. He has made a lot of money.”
“Prob’ly he ships to Denver. But Denver ain’t such a big city that it can’t be overstocked with a commodity. It ain’t any New York.”
“But he ships to New York and all over the country. It’s like this. By midsummer the lettuce crop of most of the country is exhausted. The weather is too hot for it. But up in the mountains it can be raised. It develops into a fine solid head, the crispest in the world. Mr. Galloway, the ranchman I told you about, writes that there is no limit to the market and that this is going to be a permanent and a stable crop for the Rocky Mountain country. He is very enthusiastic about it.”
“Tha’s all right too. I don’t claim he ain’t right. But we’re cattlemen. The Circle Diamond is a cattle ranch. It ain’t any Dago truck farm. Me, I’d never make a vegetable-garden farmer, not onless my farmin’ could be done from the saddle. We know cattle; we don’ know lettuce.”