ded
laughingly to Mr. Hartley, "I happen to live next to Tilly, myself!"

From both carriage and wagon, now, came a babel of eager chatter. There
was so much to be seen on the one hand, so much to be explained on the
other. The buildings and corrals were plainly visible by this time, and
each minute they became more clearly defined.

"Do you mean that all that belongs to just one ranch?" demanded Tilly.

"Sure!" twinkled Mr. Hartley. "You see, if folks can't borrow of us, we
can't borrow of them, either; so it's rather necessary that we have all
the comforts of home ourselves."

"Well, I guess you've got them," laughed Tilly, looking wonderingly
about her.

"I reckon we have," nodded Mr. Hartley, as he began to point out one and
another of the buildings.

There was the long, low ranch house facing the wide reach of the
prairie. Behind it, and connected with it by a covered way, were the
dining room and the cook room. Beyond that was the long bunk house where
the men slept, flanked by another building for the Mexican servants.
There were stables, sheds, a storehouse and saddle-room, and a
blacksmith's shop. Below the house an oblong bit of fenced ground showed
a riot of color--Genevieve's flower garden. Below that was a vegetable
garden. There was a large corral for the cattle, and a smaller one,
high and circular, for the horses. There were three or four green trees
near the house--tall, thin cottonwoods that had grown up along the
slender streams of waste water from the windmill.

CHAPTER VII

THE RANCH HOUSE

"And here we are at the Six Star Ranch," cried Mr. Hartley, as he leaped
from the carriage before the wide-open door of the ranch house. "Well,
Mammy Lindy," he added, as the kindly, wrinkled old face of a colored
woman appeared in the doorway, "I've corralled the whole bunch and
brought them West with me!"

A little stiffly the girls got down from their seats--all but Genevieve.
She, in the space of a breath, seemingly, had leaped to the ground and
run up on to the wide gallery where the negress, with adoring eyes,
awaited her.

"Laws, chil'e," Tilly, who was nearest, heard a tenderly crooning voice
say, "but I am jes' pow'ful glad to see ye, honey!"

"Mammy, you old darling!" cried Genevieve, giving the rotund, gayly-clad
figure a bear-like hug. "You look just as good as you used to--and my,
my! just see all this new finery to welcome me," she added, holding off
her beaming-faced old nur