neral
roared still another from somewhere behind her.

Now I had never met the Captain. He held out both hands in greeting. One
of those hands was for me to shake. The other held a huge glass of hot
scotch. The hot scotch was in the right hand!

CHAPTER III

THE PEOPLE AND THE PLACE

They warmed me through, and then another old soldier named Redmond took
me up to show me where I lived. We clambered up narrow boxed stairs that
turned three ways; we walked down a narrow passage; turned to the right;
walked down another narrow passage, climbed three steps to open a door;
promptly climbed three steps down again; crossed a screened-in bridge to
another wing; ducked through a passageway, and so arrived. The ranch
house was like that. Parts of it were built out on stilts. Five or six
big cottonwood trees grew right up through the verandahs, and spread out
over the roof of the house. There are all sorts of places where you hang
coats, or stack guns, or store shells, or find unexpected books;
passageways leading to outdoor upstairs screened porches, cubby holes
and the like. And whenever you imagine the house must be quite full of
guests, they can always discover to you yet another bedroom. It may, at
the last, be a very tiny bedroom, with space enough only for a single
bed and not much else; and you may get to it only by way of out of
doors; and it may be already fairly well occupied by wooden decoys and
shotgun shells, but there it is, guests and guests after you thought the
house must be full.

Belonging and appertaining unto the house were several fixtures. One of
these was old Charley, the Chinese cook. He had been there twenty-five
years. In that time he had learned perfect English, acquired our kind of
a sense of humour, come to a complete theoretical understanding of how
to run a ranch and all the people on it, and taught Pollymckittrick what
she knew.

Pollymckittrick was the bereaved widow of the noble pair of yellow and
green parrots Noah selected for his ark. At least I think she was that
old. She was certainly very wise in both Oriental and Occidental wisdom.
Her chief accomplishments, other than those customary to parrots, were
the ability to spell, and to sing English songs. "After the Ball" and
"Daisy Bell" were her favourites, rendered with occasional jungle
variations. She considered Charley her only real friend, though she
tolerated some others. Pollymckittrick was a product of artificial
civil