:

"Young Annixter sold his wheat stubble on the ground to the sheep
raisers off yonder;" he motioned eastward toward the Sierra foothills.
"Since Sunday the herd has been down. Very clever, that young Annixter.
He gets a price for his stubble, which else he would have to burn, and
also manures his land as the sheep move from place to place. A true
Yankee, that Annixter, a good gringo."

After his meal, Presley once more mounted his bicycle, and leaving the
restaurant and the Plaza behind him, held on through the main street of
the drowsing town--the street that farther on developed into the road
which turned abruptly northward and led onward through the hop-fields
and the Quien Sabe ranch toward the Mission of San Juan.

The Home ranch of the Quien Sabe was in the little triangle bounded on
the south by the railroad, on the northwest by Broderson Creek, and on
the east by the hop fields and the Mission lands. It was traversed in
all directions, now by the trail from Hooven's, now by the irrigating
ditch--the same which Presley had crossed earlier in the day--and again
by the road upon which Presley then found himself. In its centre were
Annixter's ranch house and barns, topped by the skeleton-like tower of
the artesian well that was to feed the irrigating ditch. Farther on,
the course of Broderson Creek was marked by a curved line of grey-green
willows, while on the low hills to the north, as Presley advanced, the
ancient Mission of San Juan de Guadalajara, with its belfry tower and
red-tiled roof, began to show itself over the crests of the venerable
pear trees that clustered in its garden.

When Presley reached Annixter's ranch house, he found young Annixter
himself stretched in his hammock behind the mosquito-bar on the front
porch, reading "David Copperfield," and gorging himself with dried
prunes.

Annixter--after the two had exchanged greetings--complained of terrific
colics all the preceding night. His stomach was out of whack, but
you bet he knew how to take care of himself; the last spell, he had
consulted a doctor at Bonneville, a gibbering busy-face who had filled
him up to the neck with a dose of some hogwash stuff that had made him
worse--a healthy lot the doctors knew, anyhow. HIS case was peculiar. HE
knew; prunes were what he needed, and by the pound.

Annixter, who worked the Quien Sabe ranch--some four thousand acres
of rich clay and heavy loams--was a very young man, younger even than
Presley,