His ranch
was a little two-room box house in a grove of hackberry trees in the
lonesomest part of the sheep country. His household consisted of a
Kiowa Indian man cook, four hounds, a pet sheep, and a half-tamed
coyote chained to a fence-post. He owned 3,000 sheep, which he ran
on two sections of leased land and many thousands of acres neither
leased nor owned. Three or four times a year some one who spoke his
language would ride up to his gate and exchange a few bald ideas with
him. Those were red-letter days to old man Ellison. Then in what
illuminated, embossed, and gorgeously decorated capitals must have
been written the day on which a troubadour--a troubadour who,
according to the encyclopaedia, should have flourished between the
eleventh and the thirteenth centuries--drew rein at the gates of his
baronial castle!

Old man Ellison's smiles came back and filled his wrinkles when he
saw Sam. He hurried out of the house in his shuffling, limping way to
greet him.

"Hello, Mr. Ellison," called Sam cheerfully. "Thought I'd drop over
and see you a while. Notice you've had fine rains on your range. They
ought to make good grazing for your spring lambs."

"Well, well, well," said old man Ellison. "I'm mighty glad to see
you, Sam. I never thought you'd take the trouble to ride over to
as out-of-the-way an old ranch as this. But you're mighty welcome.
'Light. I've got a sack of new oats in the kitchen--shall I bring out
a feed for your hoss?"

"Oats for him?" said Sam, derisively. "No, sir-ee. He's as fat as a
pig now on grass. He don't get rode enough to keep him in condition.
I'll just turn him in the horse pasture with a drag rope on if you
don't mind."

I am positive that never during the eleventh and thirteenth centuries
did Baron, Troubadour, and Worker amalgamate as harmoniously as their
parallels did that evening at old man Ellison's sheep ranch. The
Kiowa's biscuits were light and tasty and his coffee strong.
Ineradicable hospitality and appreciation glowed on old man Ellison's
weather-tanned face. As for the troubadour, he said to himself that
he had stumbled upon pleasant places indeed. A well-cooked, abundant
meal, a host whom his lightest attempt to entertain seemed to delight
far beyond the merits of the exertion, and the reposeful atmosphere
that his sensitive soul at that time craved united to confer upon him
a satisfaction and luxurious ease that he had seldom found on his
tours of the ranches.

A