far up the bluff when
the sun sank low in the afternoon.

Behind them grew a small jungle of trees-catalpa and locust among
them--a jungle which surrounded the house, and in summer hid it from
sight entirely.

With the spring creek whispering through the grove and away to where it
was defiled by trampling hoofs in the corrals and pastures beyond, and
with the roses which Phoebe Hart kept abloom until the frosts came, and
the bees, and humming--birds which somehow found their way across the
parched sagebrush plains and foregathered there, Peaceful Hart's ranch
betrayed his secret longing for girls, as if he had unconsciously
planned it for the daughters he had been denied.

It was an ideal place for hammocks and romance--a place where dainty
maidens might dream their way to womanhood. And Peaceful Hart, when all
was done, grew old watching five full-blooded boys clicking their
heels unromantically together as they roosted upon the porch, and threw
cigarette stubs at the water lilies while they wrangled amiably over the
merits of their mounts; saw them drag their blankets out into the broody
dusk of the grove when the nights were hot, and heard their muffled
swearing under their "tarps" because of the mosquitoes which kept the
night air twanging like a stricken harp string with their song.

They liked the place well enough. There were plenty of shady places
to lie and smoke in when the mercury went sizzling up its tiny tube.
Sometimes, when there was a dance, they would choose the best of
Phoebe's roses to decorate their horses' bridles; and perhaps their
hatbands, also. Peaceful would then suck harder than ever at his pipe,
and his faded blue eyes would wander pathetically about the little
paradise of his making, as if he wondered whether, after all, it had
been worth while.

A tight picket fence, built in three unswerving lines from the post
planted solidly in a cairn of rocks against a bowlder on the eastern rim
of the pond, to the road which cut straight through the ranch, down that
to the farthest tree of the grove, then back to the bluff again, shut in
that tribute to the sentimental side of Peaceful's nature. Outside the
fence dwelt sturdier, Western realities.

Once the gate swung shut upon the grove one blinked in the garish
sunlight of the plains. There began the real ranch world. There was the
pile of sagebrush fuel, all twisted and gray, pungent as a bottle
of spilled liniment, where braided, blanketed