d dad bought the rights to, and raise goats!"

"Yes, we have--not!"

"We have. Dad said so. We've got to do it, Vic. I expect we'd better
start as soon as the insurance is paid, and that ought to be next week.
Malpais is the name of the darned place. Inez Garcia says Malpais means
bad country. I asked her when she was here yesterday. I expect it does,
though you can't tell about Inez. She's tricky about translating stuff;
she thinks it's funny to fake the meaning of things. But I expect it's
true; it sounds like that."

"I should worry," Vic yawned, with the bland triteness of a boy who
speaks mostly in current catch phrases. "I've got a good chance for a
juvenile part in that big five-reeler Walt's going to put on. Fat chance
anybody's got putting _me_ to herding goats! That New Mexico dope got my
number the first time dad sprung it. Not for mine!"

Helen May sat down on the arm of a Mission chair, wrapped her kimono
around her thin figure, and looked at Vic from under her lashes. Besides
raising goats and living out in the open, she was to make a man of Vic.
She did not know which duty appalled her most, or which animal seemed to
her the more intractable.

"We've got to do it," she said simply. "I don't like it either, but that
doesn't matter. Dad planned that way for us."

Vic sat up crossly, groping for the top button of his pajama coat. His
long hair was tousled in front and stood straight up at the back, and his
lids were heavy yet with sleep. He looked very young and very unruly, and
as though several years of grace were still left to Helen May before she
need trouble herself about his manhood.

"Not for mine," he repeated stubbornly. "You can go if you want to, but
I'm going to stay in pictures." No film star in the city could have
surpassed Vic's tone of careless assurance. "Listen! Dad was queer along
towards the last. You know that yourself. And just because he had a nutty
idea of a ranch somewhere, is no reason why we should drop everything--"

"We've got to do it, and you needn't fuss, because you've got to go
along. I expect we can study up--on goats." Her voice shook a little, for
she was close to tears.

"Well, I'm darned if you ain't as nutty as dad was! Of course, he was
old and sick, and there was plenty of excuse for him to slop down along
towards the last. Now, listen! My idea is to get a nifty bungalow out
there handy to the studios, and both of us to go into pictures. We can
get a car; w