hawks passing with their falcon
dart; little gaudy sparrow hawks on top the telephone poles; buzzards,
stately and wonderful in flight, repulsive when at rest; barn-owls
dwelling in the haystacks, and horned owls in the hollow trees; the
game in countless numbers; all the smaller animals and tiny birds in
species too numerous to catalogue, all these drew their full sustenance
of life from the ranch's smiling abundance.

And the mules; I must not forget them. I have the greatest respect for a
mule. He knows more than the horse; just as the goose or the duck knows
more than the chicken. Six days the mules on the ranch laboured; but on
the seventh they were turned out into the pastures to rest and roll and
stand around gossiping sociably, rubbing their long, ridiculous Roman
noses together, or switching the flies off one another with their
tasselled tails. Each evening at sunset all the various teams came in
from different directions, converging at the lane, and plodding dustily
up its length to the sheds and their night's rest. Five evenings thus
they come in silence. But on the sixth each and every mule lifted up his
voice in rejoicing over the morrow. The distant wayfarer--familiar with
ranch ways--hearing this strident, discordant, thankful chorus far
across the evening peace of the wide country, would thus have known this
was Saturday night, and that to-morrow was the Sabbath, the day of rest!

CHAPTER XIV

THE HEATHEN

This must be mainly discursive and anecdotal, for no one really knows
much more than externals concerning the Chinese. Some men there are,
generally reporters on the big dailies, who have been admitted to the
tongs; who can take you into the exclusive Chinese clubs; who are
everywhere in Chinatown greeted cordially, treated gratis to strange
food and drink, and patted on the back with every appearance of
affection. They can tell you of all sorts of queer, unknown customs and
facts, and can show you all sorts of strange and unusual things. Yet at
the last analysis these are also discursions and anecdotes. We gather
empirical knowledge: only rarely do we think we get a glimpse of how the
delicate machinery moves behind those twinkling eyes.

I am led to these remarks by the contemplation of Chinese Charley at the
ranch. He has been with Mrs. Kitty twenty-five years; he wears American
clothes; he speaks English with hardly a trace of either accent or
idiom; he has long since dropped the decei