to question, since the woman so plainly sought to intrigue me.
Even when we skirted a clump of cottonwoods and came--through another
perfect gate--upon a most amazing small collection of ranch buildings,
dying of desertion, I retained perfect control of a rising curiosity.

By unspoken agreement we drew rein to survey a desolation that was still
immaculate. Stables and outbuildings were trim and new, and pure with
paint. All had been swept and garnished; no unsightly litter marred the
scene. The house was a suburban villa of marked pretension and would
have excited no comment on Long Island. In this valley of the mountains
it was nothing short of spectacular. Only one item of decoration hinted
an attempt to adapt itself to environment: in the noble stone chimney
that reared itself between two spacious wings a branding iron had been
embedded. Thus did it proclaim itself to the incredulous hills as a
ranch house.

Flowers had been planted along a gravelled walk. While I reminded myself
that the gravel must have been imported from a spot at least ten miles
distant, I was further shocked by discovering a most improbable golf
green, in gloomy survival. Then I detected a series of kennels facing a
wired dog run. This was overwhelming in a country of simple, steadfast
devotion to the rearing of cattle for market.

Ma Pettengill now spoke in a tone that, for her, could be called hushed,
though it reached me twenty feet away.

"An art bungalow!" she said, and gazed upon it with seeming awe. Then
she waved a quirt to indicate this and the painfully neat outbuildings.
"A toy for the idle rich--was that it? Well, you said something. This
was one little _per-diem_ going concern, all right. They even had the
name somewhere round here worked out in yellow flowers--Broadmoor it
was. You could read it for five miles when the posies got up. There it
is over on that lawn. You can't read it now because the letters are all
overgrown. My Chinaman got delirious about that when he first seen it
and wanted me to plant Arrowhead out in front of our house, and was
quite hurt when I told him I was just a business woman--and a tired
business woman at that. He done what he could, though, to show we was
some class. The first time these folks come over to our place to lunch
he picked all my pink carnations to make a mat on the table, and spelled
out Arrowhead round it in ripe olives, with a neat frame of celery
inclosing same. Yes, sir!"

This wa