"I
had to go to work. I couldn't have earned my board in New York, so I
chummed a while with old Sandford, one of the syndicate that owned the
ranch before Colonel Beaupree bought it, and got a place down here. I
wasn't manager at first. I jogged around on ponies and studied the
business in detail, until I got all the points in my head. I saw where
it was losing and what the remedies were, and then Sandford put me
in charge. I get a hundred dollars a month, and I earn it."
"Poor Teddy!" said Octavia, with a smile.
"You needn't. I like it. I save half my wages, and I'm as hard as a
water plug. It beats polo."
"Will it furnish bread and tea and jam for another outcast from
civilization?"
"The spring shearing," said the manager, "just cleaned up a deficit in
last year's business. Wastefulness and inattention have been the rule
heretofore. The autumn clip will leave a small profit over all
expenses. Next year there will be jam."
When, about four o'clock in the afternoon, the ponies rounded a
gentle, brush-covered hill, and then swooped, like a double
cream-coloured cyclone, upon the Rancho de las Sombras, Octavia gave
a little cry of delight. A lordly grove of magnificent live-oaks cast
an area of grateful, cool shade, whence the ranch had drawn its name,
"de las Sombras"--of the shadows.
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