, beside
which, with no attempt to protect them from the weather, stood a
dish-wheeled hay rake, and a rusty mowing machine, its cutter-bar
buried in weeds.

Passing through a small clump of cottonwoods, in which three or four
raw-boned horses had taken refuge from the mosquitoes, she came
suddenly upon the ranch house, a squat, dirt-roofed cabin of unpeeled
logs. So, _this_ was the Watts ranch! Again and again in the delirium
that preceded her father's death, he had muttered of Monte's Creek and
the Watts ranch, until she had come to think of it as a place of cool
halls and broad verandahs situated at the head of some wide mountain
valley in which sleek cattle grazed belly-deep in lush grasses.

A rabble of nondescript curs came snapping and yapping about her
horse's legs until dispersed by a harsh command from the dark interior
of the cabin.

"Yere, yo' git out o' thet!"

The dogs slunk away and their places were immediately taken by a
half-dozen ill-kempt, bedraggled children. A tousled head was thrust
from the doorway, and after a moment of inspection a man stepped out
upon the hard-trodden earth of the dooryard. He was bootless and a
great toe protruded from a hole in the point of his sock. He wore a
faded hickory shirt, and the knees of his bleached-out overalls were
patched with blue gingham.

"Howdy," he greeted, in a not unkindly tone, and paused awkwardly
while the protruding toe tried vainly to burrow from sight in the hard
earth.

"Is--is this the Watts ranch?" The girl suppressed a wild desire to
burst into tears.

"Yes, mom, this is hit--what they is of hit." His fingers picked
vaguely at his scraggly beard. An idea seemed suddenly to strike him,
and turning, he thrust his head in at the door. "Ma!" he called,
loudly, and again "Ma! _Ma!_"

The opening of a door within was followed by the sound of a harsh
voice. "Lawzie me, John Watts, what's ailin' yo' now--got a burr in
under yo' gallus?" A tall woman with a broad, kindly face pushed past
the man, wiping suds upon her apron from a pair of very large and very
red hands.

"Sakes alive, if hit hain't a lady! Hain't yo' done tol' her to git
off an' come in? Looks like yer manners, what little yo' ever hed of
'em, fell in the crick an' got drownded. Jest yo' climb right down
offen thet cayuse, dearie, an' come on in the house. John, yo' oncinch
thet saddle, an' then, Horatius Ezek'l, yo' an' David Golieth, taken
the hoss to the barn an' see't he