emed to have become in a sense a celestial--or at
least an aerial--affair: the world was your balloon.

After the third creek-crossing the road ran straight as an avenue
through a broad, level reach, and we flew along gayly. The little
mesquite-trees, prim, dainty, and delicate, stood about in seeming
order, civilizing the landscape and giving it the air of an orchard; the
prairie-dog villages were thrown into a tumult of excitement by our
passage; a chaparral-cock slipped out of a bush, stared an instant,
pulled the string that lifts his tail and top-knot, and settled down for
a race directly under the horses' feet. We passed the point of a hill,
gained a slight rise, and the ranch was in sight. It must be confessed
that it was not in appearance all that the name might imply,--not the
sort of place for which one starts after having provided one's self with
a navy revolver and a low estimate of the value of human life. It was,
in fact, a very pretty and domestic scene, a little village of half a
dozen buildings and a net-work of white limestone and brush corrals.
Shortly I was supping in a neat little cottage, and endeavoring in the
usual way to be agreeable to some one in muslin. In this modern world we
change our skies, truly, but not--not our bric-a-brac. On the walls of
the pretty dining-room one beheld with rising feeling one's old friends
the Japanese fan and the discarded plate still clinging with the
touching persistence of the ivy to the oak. To be sure, there was a tall
half-breed Indian moving about with the silent agility of the warpath,
but he wore a white apron, and his hideous intention was to fill one's
wineglass. If the longitude had led me to meditate right buffalo's hump,
"washed down" with something coarse and potent enough to justify the
phrase, it was clear that I was painfully behind the stroke of the
clock. Life, good lady, takes an undignified pleasure in arranging these
petty shocks to the expectations, which we soon learn to dismiss with a
smile. The cold mutton and _ordinaire_ were excellent, and we had some
coffee and a cigarette on the piazza. The sun was setting far away
behind a hill on the other side of the creek. A soft sound came down the
valley from a remote flock of sheep. A little breeze sprang up and ran
tremulously about, shaking the tufted grass and the slim boughs of the
mesquites, and putting some question with a wistfully hopeful swish.
Plainly, one could be very much at home h