Clark goes out West to visit his daughter and son-in-law; during his visit, Willie and Missie's infant daughter Kathy dies, "She stopped breathing" as Missie would cry aloud an only explanation and then confessing to Belinda. She said: "I put her to bed just like always and in the morning, she wasn't breathing...". Land baron and mayor Doros hires Willie as town sheriff, since grief-stricken Missie has quit her job as schoolteacher and the LaHayes need the money. Doros uses Willie as sheriff to try to evict ranchers who have fallen behind on payments. Missie helps one family of an formerly widowed remarried preacher turned rancher and her best friend Belinda by selling most of her most prized possessions, including the gold locket her mother gave her, otherwise $2 short, the Jefferson 2 $ bill, the Klines would have been forced out of their land, home, and livestock, as happened to another rancher Joe Paxon, who lost everything for a loan from the mayor and "had to send his wife and daughter away because [he] couldn't provide for them anymore." as Sheriff Willie Nathan LaHaye put it to his employer.