edley of sounds peculiar to the farm.

In due time we found ourselves at the foot of a couple of wooden steps,
which we ascended, and, crossing a broad veranda, entered a doorway.
Here we stood awaiting further commands in utter ignorance of our
surroundings. Of course, we surmised we were in the ranch house which we
saw from the table rock, but this was only a surmise.

"Gentlemen," said the strange old man, "you are welcome to my home, and
allow me to add that you are the only white men who have ever crossed
the threshold of this house."

As he ceased speaking he removed the bandages from our eyes.

CHAPTER XVIII

It was a strange place, indeed, in which I found myself. Our eyes were
unbandaged after we entered the portal of the ranch house, and when Big
Pete and I turned toward our guide, we were facing in a direction that
gave us a sweeping view of the entire ranch. And what we saw made us
marvel.

This farm, between the towering, almost insurmountable mountains, had
evidently been wrenched from what two decades before had been as much of
a wilderness as the Darlinkel Park across the divide. Timber clothed the
mountains on either hand but the fertile valley bottom was as rural as a
district of the middle west. On one hand stretched acres and acres of
ripened grain. Beyond was pasture land dotted with strange whitefaced
animals, which later proved to be hybrid buffalos, a strange cross
between wild and domestic cattle.[3] In other pastures and on the
hillsides I could see goats and sheep, and these too were evidently a
cross breed of wild and domestic stock, the goats having a very strange
resemblance to the fleet-footed shaggy old fellows we had seen on the
mountains, while the sheep closely resembled usual domestic sheep.

[Footnote 3: Since that time the late Buffalo Jones has bred
buffalo and domestic cattle and called the offspring "catelow."]

There were stables, too, and corrals, all made of logs, as was the ranch
house, but what seemed very strange to me was the fact that there were
no horses in sight. All of the animals at work in the fields were those
strange hybrid buffalo-oxen, all save one, a single, lame and apparently
almost blind burro that I saw lying in the sun. From his grayness about
the head I had little doubt that he was of great age.

There were hordes of strange poultry too,--strange to me at least, for
never had I expected to find flocking together wild turkeys, Canadian