was half-sarcastic. “’Pears like you ain’t never seen no rabbits before, ’stead a bein’ raised with ’em.” Brownie gave a little shake of her pretty head and crowded her long-suffering mate back into the road again. I was becoming very much interested. This man was a distinctly new type to me. I did not know then that he was the old-time cow-puncher, with an ease of manner a Chesterfield might have envied, and an unfailing, almost deferential, courtesy toward women.

Never shall I forget that first drive across the prairie,—not a house, not a tree in sight, except where the cottonwoods traced the borders of a waterless creek. Gently rolling hills were all about us, instead of the flat country I had expected to see; hills which failed to reveal anything when we reached the top, but yet higher hills to climb. An unexpected vastness seemed to extend to the very boundaries of the unknown, as we looked about on all sides, only to see the soft green circle of the hills, on which the bluest of skies gently rested, sweep about us. I felt the spell of unlimited space, and smiled as I thought of the tearful farewell of one of my bridesmaids. She had “hated” to think of my being “cooped up on a ranch.” “Cooped up” here, when for the first time I realized what unhampered freedom might mean in a country left as God had made it, with so little trace of man’s interference!

At last we came to a gate made of three strands of barbed wire, fastened together in the middle and attached to a stick at each end. It was a real gate when up, but when opened, it was a floppy invention of the Evil One, designed to tax the patience of a saint. The strands of wire got mixed and crossed and grew perceptibly shorter, so that it required superhuman strength and something of a disposition to get the end of the stick through the loop of wire, which held it in place again.

This gate marked the Southern boundary of the ranch, ten miles from the railroad station. We reached the top of a hill and looked up a long valley, where the creek wound its way, fringed by great cottonwood trees, until its source was lost behind three prominent buttes, purple in the haze of the late afternoon. Beyond the buttes stood Pike’s Peak, snow-capped and alone, guardian of the valley, the whole length of which it commanded. Through some peculiarity of position all the other peaks of the Rockies remained invisible, while this one mountain rose in majestic isolation from the plain.

Tex stopped the horses for a moment, and without a word pointed with the whip toward a clump of cottonwoods in the distance.

“The ranch?” I asked.

He nodded.

In the beautiful valley it stood, the white fences, corrals and outbuildings gleaming in the sun. Nestled among the trees, planted so densely that only a suggestion of its white walls showed between them, was the house—our first home!

As we drove up to the gate, a short man, with a thick beard, bustled out to meet us.

“Well, here you are! Got here all right. Sorry I couldn’t meet you. Come right in. You must be tired settin’.” And before we quite realized that we had arrived, we were ushered into the house through the back door.

As a matter of fact, there was no front door. Two outside doors opened into the kitchen, one on either side, and since the kitchen was in truth the “living-room,” what need of a front door?

A placid-faced, elderly woman greeted us, and after a few moments conducted us up a crooked stairway to a room under the eaves.

Owen left hastily “to look around outside,” and I followed as quickly as possible for I knew that if I looked around inside for any length of time, I should start back to the railroad station on foot.

Old Mr. and Mrs. Bohm had lived on the place for over thirty years in this house, which was the evolution of a dug-out, with many subsequent periods in prospect before it became a possible home. Mrs. Bohm had recently been having “fainting spells,” which frightened her