Someone else's money [antikvár]

PrologueThrough the branches of the oak tree, the moon shone bright as a Mexican dollar. It glistened wet as water on the moatlike white gravel drive in front of the ranch house. The house, of wood mainly, had been built in the lee of a slight rise in the midst of the black sea of the plains.Upstairs in the Big House, the sleeping child dreamed that his mother was riding to him across a sunlit field of waving grass. He was five years old. It had been a lovely day; the heat of summer was abating, and the evening brought with it a faint, cool breath that hinted of winter building up hundreds of miles to the north, beyond the Rockies.He had spent the day playing with the berry-brown sons of the vaqueros, the only other little boys within forty miles. Before supper he had been given a favorite treat, a canter around the yard perched on the silver-inlaid pommel of the saddle of Ildario, the head vaquero. He wished his grandfather and father could have been there to see him, but they had gone off the evening before on a business trip. His sister wasn't there either; she was far away, up North, visiting her grandparents, the ones he wasn't kin to. But his mother had left her piano lesson to come to the porch to watch his triumphant circuit of the yard and had told him how proud he made her. Afterward, he and his mother, and her piano teacher, had had an early supper. When he was taken up to bed, his mother had read to him from his favorite book; it was about Mulberry Street, in a huge city far away, called New York, which his mother talked about sometimes. All sorts of wonderful things happened on Mulberry Street. There were a blue elephant and a wonderful, strange horse, not at all like the ranch ponies. His mother had promised she'd take him to Mulberry Street one day. He wondered if his friend Ildario could come too.