Jeff didn't approve of Tom's handling of the cattle. Power cattle and Morgan cattle grazed with Firth cattle and some others Tom had picked up while working at the store. Jeff's experience had taught him that no real good came of grazing cattle together. Even when you seemed to be making a profit, you were sowing the seeds of your own destruction to feed the cattle. He looked at the Galiuro Mountains and knew they had found the place he had searched for for so long.

The Galiuro Mountains run perpendicular and then parallel to Aravaipa Canyon, just to the south and west of the canyon. They are rugged basalt mountains, cut by two main canyons running roughly northwest to southeast—Redfield Canyon to the east and Rattlesnake Canyon to the west. Both of the canyons have good sources of water, and Rattlesnake Canyon, which gets its name from the serpentine wanderings of Rattlesnake Creek at its bottom or from the abundance of rattlesnakes, especially the fat, irritable Mojaves that thrive there, striking cattle and cowboys alike until it was hardly worth trying to make a go of it with cattle in that canyon, seemed to Jeff Power perfect.

Jeff made Tom cut out Firth's and the other lease cattle from the herd and return them where he got them. Jeff had the idea that they might be better served by sending Tom to school with Ola May rather than cowboying for pocket change. Tom was the smart one, at least among the boys. Charlie was headstrong, and John was simply strong, but Tom had qualities the others didn't share. While Jeff didn't approve of Tom's business dealings—he had left him in Aravaipa Canyon to watch over his own cattle, for God's sake, not to set up business running other people's cattle—he admired Tom's ability to see money in a situation most people would see as simply drudge work worth a few coins here and there. Tom had Jeff's brains and, just maybe, better luck. Tom could be the one to strike it rich. Jeff had no question that the Power family was going to be rich. He questioned only which one would uncover the opportunity. He wanted Tom to get himself educated, believing, though, as he always would, that smart was entirely preferable to educated.

The situation was not much to Tom's liking. Sitting in a schoolhouse seemed a waste of time. The activities there, the reading and writing and reciting, seemed baby work and unprofitable. He knew how to read and write and add and subtract. Beyond that, education seemed frivolous. But despite his months on his own, being his own boss, his father was back in charge and making decisions for him.