These were but a few of her many ventures. She had her hobbies, of
course, but, oddly enough, most of them paid or promised to do so.
For instance, she had started a grove of paper-shelled pecans,
which was soon due to bear; the ranch house and its clump of palms
was all but hidden by a forest of strange trees, which were
reported to ripen everything from moth-balls to bicycle tires.
Blaze Jones was perhaps responsible for this report, for Alaire
had shown him several thousand eucalyptus saplings and some
ornamental rubber-plants.
"That Miz Austin is a money-makin' piece of furniture," he once
told his daughter Paloma. "I'm no mechanical adder--I count mostly
on my fingers--but her and me calculated the profits on them
eucher--what's-their-name trees?--and it gave me a splittin'
headache. She'll be a drug queen, sure."
"Why don't you follow her example?" asked Paloma. "We have plenty
of land."
Blaze, in truth, was embarrassed by the size of his holdings, but
he shook his head. "No, I'm too old to go rampagin' after new
gods. I 'ain't got the imagination to raise anything more
complicated than a mortgage; but if I was younger, I'd organize
myself up and do away with that Ed Austin.
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