the proprietor of the ranch that he would entertain offers on a
property to which he had no title other than that entailed in the God-
given right of every American citizen to squat on a piece of land until
he is driven off, was received as a rare piece of humor. In disgust the
founder of the Hat Ranch abandoned his vegetable business, loaded his
worldly effects on two burros and departed, leaving the kitchen door
wide open. He never returned.

In the course of time a young woman with a two-months-old daughter came
to San Pasqual to accept the position of cashier in the eating-house.
The old adobe ranch was still deserted--the kitchen door still wide
open. It was the only vacant dwelling in San Pasqual, and the woman
with the baby decided to move in. She hired a Mexican woman to clean
the house, sent to Bakersfield for some installment furniture and to
Los Angeles for some assorted seeds. About a week later a Cahuilla buck
with his squaw alighted from a north-bound train and were met by the
woman with the baby girl. That night the entire party took possession
of the Hat Ranch.

That first mistress of the Hat Ranch was Donna Corblay's mother, so
before we plunge into the heart of our story and present to the reader
Donna Corblay as she appeared at twenty years of age behind the counter
at the eating-house on the night that Bob McGraw rode into her life on
his Roman-nosed mustang, Friar Tuck, a short history of those earlier
years at the Hat Ranch will be found to repay the time given to its
perusal.

For more than sixteen years after her arrival in San Pasqual, Donna's
mother had presided behind the eating-house pay counter. She was quiet
and uncommunicative--a handsome woman whose chief beauty lay in her