Here was another saloon, and rooms above it, and several
disreputable cottages about which Cherry sometimes saw odd-looking
women.

Not everyone in Red Creek was poor, by any means. It was a
district bursting with prosperity; all summer long wheat and fruit
and butter and beef poured through it out into the world. Down the
road a mile or two, and back toward the far hills, were
comfortable ranches where trees planted fifty years before had
grown to mammoth proportions, and where the women of the family
cultivated gardens. Every family had pigs and cattle and fine
horses, and mud-spattered motor cars were familiar sights in Red
Creek's streets.

Cherry used to wonder why anybody who could live elsewhere lived
here. When some of the ranch girls told her that they always did
their shopping in San Francisco, she marvelled that they could
reconcile themselves to come home.

The days went on and on, each bringing its round of dishes, beds,
sweeping, marketing, folding and unfolding tablecloths, going back
and forth between kitchen and dining room. Martin's breakfast was
either promptly served and well cooked, in which case Martin was
silently satisfied, or it was late and a failure, when he was very
articulately disgusted; in either case Cherry was left to clear
and wash and plan for another meal in four hours more. She soaked
fruit, beat up cake, chopped boxes into kindlings, heated a kettle
of water and another kettle of water, dragged sheets from the bed
only to replace them, filled dishes with food only to find them
empty and ready to wash again.