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