extent. She
said she thought it must be ripping, what with chasing the wild cattle
over hill and dale to lasso them, and firing off revolvers in company
with lawless cowboys inflamed by drink. She went on to give me some more
details of ranch life, and got so worked up about it that we settled
things right there, she being a lady of swift decisions. She said it
wouldn't be very exciting for her, but it might be fine for son and
daughter, and bring them all together in a more sacred companionship.

"So I come back and got that place down the creek for her, and she sent
out a professional architect and a landscape gardener, and some other
experts that would know how to build a ranch _de luxe_, and the thing
was soon done. And she sent son on ahead to get slightly acquainted with
the wild life. He was a tall bent thing, about thirty, with a long
squinted face and going hair, and soft, innocent, ginger-coloured
whiskers, and hips so narrow they'd hardly hold his belt up. That rowdy
mother of his, in trying to make a companion of him, had near scared him
to death. He was permanently frightened. What he really wanted to do, I
found out, was to study insect life and botany and geography and
arithmetic, and so on, and raise orchids, instead of being killed off in
a sudden manner by his rough-neck parent. He loved to ride a horse the
same way a cat loves to ride a going stove.

"I started out with him one morning to show him over the valley. He got
into the saddle all right and he meant well, but that don't go any too
far with a horse. Pretty soon, down on the level here, I started to
canter a bit. He grabbed for the saddle horn and caught a handful of
bunch grass fifteen feet to the left of the trail. He was game enough.
He found his glasses and wiped 'em off, and said it was too bad the
mater couldn't have seen him, because it would have been a bright spot
in her life.

"Then he got on again and we took that steep trail up the side of the
canon that goes over Arrowhead, me meaning to please him with some
beautiful and rugged scenery, where one false step might cause utter
ruin. It didn't work, though. After we got pretty well up to the rim of
the canon he looks down and says he supposes they could recover one if
one fell over there. I says: 'Oh, yes; they could recover one. They'd
get you, all right. Of course you wouldn't look like anything!'

"He shudders at that and gets off to lead his horse, begging me to do
the same