guess.”

“You can do things like that?”

“Yes, indeed. I had to after Mother died and we moved to Bald Mountain where Dad’s mine was. I did all the work for my father and ten Mexicans.”

“You? Why didn’t your father get a woman in?”

Lucy broke into a merry laugh.

“A woman! Why, Aunt Ellen, there wasn’t a woman within twenty miles. It was only a mining camp, you see; just Dad and his men.”

“An’ you mean to tell me you were the sole woman in a place like that?”

Lucy’s silvery laughter floated upward.

“The ten Mexicans who boarded with us were engineers and bosses,” she explained. “There were over fifty miners in the camp besides.”

Stopping midway up the staircase Ellen wheeled and said indignantly: 46

46

“An’ Thomas kep’ you in a settlement like that?”

“Who?”

“Your father.”

“Why not?”

“’Twarn’t no place for a girl.”

“It was the place for me.”

“Why?”

“Because Dad was there.”

Something in the reply left Ellen wordless and made her continue her way upstairs without answering. When she did speak, it was to say in a gentler tone:

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