"I yelled at them a lot," Dani says of her initial reaction to the Texas child welfare officials and her forced stay at a temporary shelter in San Angelo. "I told them I needed my mother the very most!"

Autumn is called Autty for short, a term of endearment for the brown-eyed girl who often clung to her big sister's skirt after being separated from her mother.

"I can't believe we were without our mother!" says Autumn, taking her eyes off her mother's face for a brief moment before tucking her face back under her mother's chin.

Sarah's mother, Elizabeth Johnson, came to town a few days ago in anticipation of helping her daughter take care of her children.

"They are so precious," Johnson gushes, giving each child a big hug as they wiggle through the back door. "We are so grateful they are home."

Rebekah has a hard time thinking about what she just went through. It's even more difficult trying to express herself to a reporter.

"I never dreamed of being taken away from home like that," says the 13-year-old, whose copper-gold hair falls to her waist in one long braid. "I was the only teenager in a place with children all younger than 5. The children all treated me just like I was their big sister."

Rebekah's calm and loving nature helped the children adjust and face their new surroundings, her mother says. It was a task meant for someone older, but her quiet, shy daughter knew the children needed her.

"Everywhere she went she had two or three little children hanging on to her skirt," Sarah says. "She loved them and they loved her."

The nights, Rebekah recalls, "were always the hardest."

"All the children would come find me. None of them wanted to go to bed without me. Autumn would cry nearly every night," she says, putting her hand over her eyes.

It is not a memory that Rebekah wants to recall.

"I don't like to remember. I don't like to look back on it," she says, leaning on her mother's arm and covering her face. "It makes me ..."

Sarah finishes her daughter's thought out loud, "It's depressing. But we will take it one day at a time. We will be all right."

Going back to live on the YFZ Ranch may not be an option right away for Sarah and her children. Texas Child Protective Services isn't requiring parents to live outside the ranch, but some mothers have chosen to do so hoping to avoid additional scrutiny that living there could bring.

"It's not like we're totally free to go wherever we want to go," she says.

For now, home is right here in Abilene, and for now, that's enough.

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E-mail: nperkins@desnews.com