Her eyes then would wander around familiar objects in the shabby little room, and frequently they would come to rest upon her father's saddle or her father's chaps: the chaps especially seemed potent reminders of her father, and drew her thoughts to him and held them there.

The worn leather, stained with years of hard usage and wrinkled permanently where they had shaped themselves to his legs in the saddle, brought his big, bluff presence vividly before her, when she was in a certain receptive mood.

She would forget all about her story, and the riding and shooting and roping she had done that day to appease the clamorous, professional appetite of Robert Grant Burns, and would sit and stare, and think and think.

Always her thoughts traveled in a wide circle and came back finally to the starting point: to free her father, and to give him back his home, she must have money.

To have money, she must earn it; she must work for it.