Page:Ritchie - Trails to Two Moons.djvu/66

 There was no will; Hilma knew nothing about wills, anyway. What had been her father's now was hers; she took that for granted. What disturbed her most was the total absence of ready cash. She could not think of sheep in terms of dollars, and had the vaguest idea of how a sheep or its wool was minted into dollars, what were the transactions of marketing and where the buyer might be found. All those things her father had kept secret, following his fixed idea that a woman had neither competency nor right in matters of business.

"I 've got to find money. Can't run a sheep outfit without money. Can't run myself even without money," Hilma complained querulously as she quit her place in the doorway and began to rummage through the house. She opened the pendulum door of the clock with the picture of the Minnesota State capitol on it and peered into the tiny cubby-hole. She explored all the stones of the fireplace and chimney throat above until her bare arm was sooty to the shoulder, but not one of them was loose or ready to swing out to disclose the hoped for cache.

"That old man!" Hilma caught herself