She studied it abstractedly, as she would study herself in her mirror, conscious of the individuality, its likeness to herself.
"I don't know what kind of a mess you'll make of it," she said to her shadow, "but you're going to tackle it, just the same.

You can't do a thing till you get some money." She turned then and went thoughtfully up to the house and into her room, which had as yet been left undisturbed behind the bars she had placed against idle invasion.
The moon shone full into the window that faced the coulee, and she sat down in the old, black wooden rocker and gazed out upon the familiar, open stretch of sand and scant grass-growth that lay between the house and the corrals.

She turned her eyes to the familiar bold outline of the bluff that swung round in a crude oval to the point where the trail turned into the coulee from the southwest.

Half-way between the base and the ragged skyline, the boulder that looked like an elephant's head stood out, white of profile, hooded with black shade.

Beyond was the fat shelf of ledge that had a small cave beneath, where she had once found a nest full of little, hungry birds and upon the slope beneath the telltale, scattered wing-feathers, to show what fate had fallen upon the mother.