d,
sat on her haunches, industriously licking at the white fur of her
breast, while near at hand, by the railing of the porch, Presley
pottered with a new bicycle lamp, filling it with oil, adjusting the
wicks.

Harran kissed his mother and sat down in a wicker chair on the porch,
removing his hat, running his fingers through his yellow hair.

Magnus Derrick's wife looked hardly old enough to be the mother of two
such big fellows as Harran and Lyman Derrick. She was not far into the
fifties, and her brown hair still retained much of its brightness. She
could yet be called pretty. Her eyes were large and easily assumed a
look of inquiry and innocence, such as one might expect to see in a
young girl. By disposition she was retiring; she easily obliterated
herself. She was not made for the harshness of the world, and yet she
had known these harshnesses in her younger days. Magnus had married her
when she was twenty-one years old, at a time when she was a graduate
of some years' standing from the State Normal School and was teaching
literature, music, and penmanship in a seminary in the town of
Marysville. She overworked herself here continually, loathing the strain
of teaching, yet clinging to it with a tenacity born of the knowledge
that it was her only means of support. Both her parents were dead; she
was dependent upon herself. Her one ambition was to see Italy and
the Bay of Naples. The "Marble Faun," Raphael's "Madonnas" and "Il
Trovatore" were her beau ideals of literature and art. She dreamed of
Italy, Rome, Naples, and the world's great "art-centres." There was no
doubt that her affair with Magnus had been a love-match, but Annie Payne
would have loved any man who would have taken her out of the droning,
heart-breaking routine of the class and music room. She had followed his
fortunes unquestioningly. First at Sacramento, during the turmoil of
his political career, later on at Placerville in El Dorado County, after
Derrick had interested himself in the Corpus Christi group of mines, and
finally at Los Muertos, where, after selling out his fourth interest
in Corpus Christi, he had turned rancher and had "come in" on the new
tracts of wheat land just thrown open by the railroad. She had lived
here now for nearly ten years. But never for one moment since the time
her glance first lost itself in the unbroken immensity of the ranches
had she known a moment's content. Continually there came into her
pretty, wide-open e