The Heart of Rachael

"Well, we've had a night of it, eh?" he said kindly. "Funny how

much one takes the little beggars for grawnted until it's one's

own that kicks up the row? You've not seen her--she's a nice

little beggar. You might get some sleep, I should think. I'm going

to hang around until some sort of a family jamboree is over, at

one o'clock--your mother insists that we have dinner--and then

I'll go out to the rawnch. But I'll be in in the morning!"

"Girl!" said Clara, apologetically, whimsically, deprecatingly,

her weak fingers clinging tightly to his.

"Ah, well, one carn't help that!" he answered philosophically.

"We'll have a row of jolly little chaps yet!"

But there was never another child. Clara, having cast her fortunes

in with her lord, was faithful to him through every breath she

drew. But before Rachael's first crying, feverish little summer

was over there had been some definite changes at the ranch. Thomas

was gone, and Clara, pale and exhausted with the heat, engaged

Ella, a young woman servant of her mother's selecting, to bake and

wash and carry in stove-wood. Clara managed them all, Gerald, the

baby, and the maid. Perhaps at first she was just a little

astonished to find her husband as easily managed as Ella and far

more easily managed than Rachael. Gerald Fairfax was surprised,

too, lazily conceding his altered little wife her new and

energetic way with a mental reservation that when she was strong

and well again and the child less a care, things would be as they

were. But Clara, once in power, never weakened for a moment again.

Rachael grew up, a solitary and unfriendly, yet a tactful and

diplomatic, little person on the ranch. She early developed a

great admiration for her father, and a consequent regard for

herself as superior to her associates. She ruled her mother

absolutely from her fourth year, and remained her grandmother's

great favorite among a constantly increasing flock of

grandchildren. Some innate pride and scorn and dignity in the

child won her her own way through school and school days; her

young cousins were bewildered themselves by the respect and fealty

they yielded her despite the contempt in which they held her

affectations.

Clara had never been a religious woman and, married to an utter

unbeliever, she had little enough to give a child of her own. But

Clara's mother was a church woman, and her father a deeply

religious man. It was his mother, "old lady Mumford"--Rachael's

great-grandmother--who taught the child her catechism whenever she

could get hold of that restless and lawless little girl.

Rachael had great fear and respect for her great-grandmother, and

everything that was fine and good in the child instinctively

responded to the atmosphere of her little home. It was an

unpretentious home, even for Los Lobos: only a whitewashed

California cabin with a dooryard full of wall flowers and

geraniums, and pungent marigolds, and marguerites that were

budding, blossoming, and gone to rusty decay on one and the same

bush. The narrow paths were outlined with white stone ale-bottles,

turned upside down and driven into the soft ground, and under the

rustling tent of a lilac bush there were three or four clay pots

filled with dry earth. There was a railed porch on the east side

of the house, with vines climbing on strings about it, and here

the old woman, clean with the wonderful, cool-fingered cleanness

of frail yet energetic seventy-five, would sit reading in the

afternoon shade that fell from the great shoulders of the blue

mountains.