Sometimes she thought of her parents, sister, friends, of how they had persistently refused to believe she could or would stay in the West.  They were always asking her to come home.  And when she wrote, which was dutifully often, the last thing under the sun that she was likely to mention was the change in her.  She wrote that she would return to her old home some time, of course, for a visit; and letters such as this brought returns that amused Madeline, sometimes saddened her.  She meant to go back East for a while, and after that once or twice every year.  But the initiative was a difficult step from which she shrank.  Once home, she would have to make explanations, and these would not be understood.  Her father’s business had been such that he could not leave it for the time required for a Western trip, or else, according to his letter, he would have come for her.  Mrs. Hammond could not have been driven to cross the Hudson River; her un-American idea of the wilderness westward was that Indians still chased buffalo on the outskirts of Chicago.  Madeline’s sister Helen had long been eager to come, as much from curiosity, Madeline thought, as from sisterly regard.  And at length Madeline concluded that the proof of her breaking permanent ties might better be seen by visiting relatives and friends before she went back East.  With that in mind she invited Helen to visit her during the summer, and bring as many friends as she liked.

* * *

No slight task indeed was it to oversee the many business details of Her Majesty’s Rancho and to keep a record of them.  Madeline found the course of business training upon which her father had insisted to be invaluable to her now.  It helped her to assimilate and arrange the practical details of cattle-raising as put forth by the blunt Stillwell.  She split up the great stock of cattle into different herds, and when any of these were out running upon the open range she had them closely watched.  Part of the time each herd was kept in an inclosed range, fed and watered, and carefully handled by a big force of cowboys.  She employed three cowboy scouts whose sole duty was to ride the ranges searching for stray, sick, or crippled cattle or motherless calves, and to bring these in to be treated and nursed.  There were two cowboys whose business was to master a pack of Russian stag-hounds and to hunt down the coyotes, wolves, and lions that preyed upon the herds.  The better and tamer milch cows were separated from the ranging herds and kept in a pasture adjoining the dairy.  All branding was done in corrals, and calves were weaned from mother-cows at the proper time to benefit both.  The old method of branding and classing, that had so shocked Madeline, had been abandoned, and one had been inaugurated whereby cattle and cowboys and horses were spared brutality and injury.