Ranch house

“ 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 ”

“ From them branched veins supplying the fields with the water that gave them life—the water without which the land was waste and barren; but with which it bore marvellously with the stored fertility of fallow centuries. Away at one end of the ranch, sheltered to north and west by low hills, was the ranch house itself, surrounded by young orchards, the stables, the corrals, the granaries, the cattle sheds, tool and implement houses. ”

“ So, then, it was no surprise to the ranchhold when the buckboard spun to the door, and Raidler took up his debile protégé like a handful of rags and set him down upon the gallery.
McGuire looked upon things strange to him. The ranch-house was the best in the country. It was built of brick hauled one hundred miles by wagon, but it was of but one story, and its four rooms were completely encircled by a mud floor "gallery." The miscellaneous setting of horses, dogs, saddles, wagons, guns, and cow-punchers' paraphernalia oppressed the metropolitan eyes of the wrecked sportsman. ”

“ There was the long, low ranch house facing the wide reach of the prairie. Behind it, and connected with it by a covered way, were the dining room and the cook room. Beyond that was the long bunk house where the men slept, flanked by another building for the Mexican servants. There were stables, sheds, a storehouse and saddle-room, and a blacksmith's shop. Below the house an oblong bit of fenced ground showed a riot of color—Genevieve's flower garden. Below that was a vegetable garden. There was a large corral for the cattle, and a smaller [85] one, high and circular, for the horses. ”

“ Well-built horse corrals, branding shute and branding pen beyond. A well-irrigated alfalfa patch, blooming and ripe for cutting. A small blacksmith shop surrounded by mowers, rakes, and two round-up wagons. Everything neat and orderly, rare indeed, for a cattle ranch.
The ranch house and adjacent bunk house were whitewashed, and climbing the walls were masses of morning glories. Wild rose bushes, pink blossoms wet with the early morning dew, lined the gravel walk that led to the doors. All around were the tall cottonwoods.
“Gosh!” whispered Shorty, and removed his hat.
Tad followed suit. ”

“ Already she was miserably homesick for the ranch. She remembered the days she had spent in the little dairy-house, happy in her work, making butter and cheese; skimming the great pans of milk, scouring the copper vessels and vats, plunging her arms, elbow deep, into the white curds; coming and going in that atmosphere of freshness, cleanliness, and sunlight, gay, singing, supremely happy just because the sun shone. ”

“ A typical ranch-house, that, for instance, of our hospitable friend Major McClung, on his section of the subdivided property, is a long, two-story dwelling, painted in the Indian-red so popular throughout the country. It is raised on posts considerably above the ground, to allow of a free circulation of air underneath. ”

“ And to an Eastern man it appears almost as lonely. Some light-houses are isolated in the ocean, some stand in bays, and some in harbors; and in the same proportion the ranches in Texas differ in size, from principalities to farms no larger than those around Jersey City. The simile is not altogether exact, as there are small bodies of men constantly leaving the “ranch-house” and wandering about over the range, sleeping wherever night catches them, and in this way different parts of the ranch are inhabited as well as the house itself. ”

“ Eight thousand graded merino sheep, with the necessary equipment of horses, vehicles and general ranch paraphernalia. Ranch-house built of brick, with six rooms comfortably furnished according to the requirements of the climate. All within a strong barbed-wire fence.
“‘The present ranch manager seems to be competent and reliable, and is rapidly placing upon a paying basis a business that, in other hands, had been allowed to suffer from neglect and misconduct. ”

“ Just beyond the abrupt turn of a bald knob he came upon a ranch—long, sod-roofed, and log-walled house and lean-to sheds behind the corral. The clutter of buildings, dun-colored and squatting low against the hillside, might have appeared to one less literal than the rider a coyote brood crouching timorously in the scrub to dodge the striding feet of wilderness winds. This was the only ranch encountered out of Two Moons. Original had not been long enough on the Crazy Squaw range to know, offhand, the name of the ranch or its owner. ”

“ There was a ranch below him whose acres stretched like a patterned cloth along the hill's slant. The house, white-painted, stood in the midst of cultivated land which he would have to cross to reach it. But driven by hunger he stole down, his way marked by a swaying in the close-packed foliage. He could see the smoke rising in a blue skein from its chimney and at night its windows break out in bright squares. He drew close enough to watch the men go off to their work and the women move, sunbonneted, about the yard. ”

“ Her father's ranch lay forty miles from San Lorenzo, high up in the foothills--a sterile tract of scrub--oak and cedar, of manzanita and chaparral, with here and there good grazing ground, and lower down, where the creek ran, a hundred acres of arable land. Behind the house bubbled a big spring which irrigated the orchard and garden.
Teamsters, hauling grain from the Carisa Plains to the San Lorenzo landing, a distance of nearly a hundred miles, would beguile themselves thinking of the apples which old man Ransom would be sure to offer, and the first big drink from the cold spring. ”

“ She always had a baby in her arms and another at her heels. She adored Jack. I never knew them to have a quarrel. I soon grew to love the life at the ranch. I liked the big, half-finished house, its untidyness and comfort—its pleasant, healthy atmosphere. I loved the children, the household pets—Shep, the sagacious dog; Thad, the clever cat; the hens and sheep; the horses Dolly, Dot, and Daisy, that did the plowing, and the marketing at Denver, twelve miles away, and were so gentle and kind we used to ride them without saddle or bridle. ”

“ A house, it would seem, is almost the least important part of a ranch; one can camp, with frying pan and blankets, in the shade of a bush or the shelter of canvas. But to do anything upon a ranch, one must have many things—burnable things, for the most part, as Manley was to learn by experience when he left Val at the hotel and rode out, the next day, to Cold Spring Coulee. ”

“ This discovery simply served to strengthen all the more the theory that the ranch was the site of the missing loot, and again these two sleuths set diligently to work to find it, making an exhaustive hunt of the premises, exploring the barn from mudsill to rafter, prying into every nook and corner of the house, wielding the pick and shovel in the garden, the corrals, the field, questing with the ardor of bloodhounds each spot or locality where a man would be tempted to conceal a stolen fortune. ”

“ They were two Arapahoes, a Blackfoot, and a Delaware, and they followed the ravine and soon came in sight of the little [Pg 275] mountain pasture, dotted with cedar bushes and sparsely covered with grass, which sloped gently down the mountain side. In the fading twilight the so-called ranch stood vaguely outlined, the nature of its log and adobe walls indiscernible, its mill and the still house looming vaguely over the main building against the darker background of the slope. ”

“ Babs chattered as the four girls with their hats on and their bags ready, sat peering ahead, “Peyton wrote in his very last letter that he hasn’t even opened the old ranch house yet. He is leaving it for us to do.”
“I adore old houses,” Betsy began, when Virginia exclaimed as she pointed out the windows. “See that dark hole in the mountain just ahead of us?” The others leaned forward to look.
“Oh, good!” Margaret exclaimed. “It’s the last tunnel, and Silver Creek station is just beyond.” Megsy turned toward her adopted sister, a flushed eagerness betraying the excitement she felt. ”

“ In about ten days we reached the ranch near Eureka; it was set in five thousand acres of prairie, a big frame dwelling, that would hold twenty men; but it wasn't nearly so well-built as the great, brick stable, the pride of Reece's eye, which would house forty horses and provide half a dozen with good loose boxes besides, in the best English style. ”

“ They are no more ranchmen than the absentee landlord who lives in his London house is a gentleman farmer.
The largest ranch in the United States, and probably in the world, owned by one person, is in Texas, and belongs to Mrs. Richard King, the widow of Captain Richard King. It lies forty-five miles south of Corpus Christi. ”

“ As the rain began to fall in torrents, we heard the men who had been detailed to guard the La Monte place galloping off.
An itinerant tailor had pulled into the ranch just before our return, and was peacefully sleeping in his wagon. He was awakened when the horses were driven into the corral, and came out to learn the cause of the commotion. He was so excited when he heard that an insane person was in the vicinity he asked to sleep at the bunk house with the men. They tried to laugh him out of his fears, but his fright was so genuine they told him to “come on.” ”

“ CHAPTER XVI BUD'S STRANGE TALE Darkness, which shrouded Death Valley shortly after the search started, was a severe handicap. Even the most skillful followers of a trail, and there were several such among the cow punchers, could do little in the night. Still they rode out in various directions from the Dot and Dash ranch house—big, stern-faced men, with lariat and gun ready and determined looks in their eyes. ”

“ Speaking of Mary V, you would know that a girl with modern upbringing lived a good deal at the ranch. You could tell by the low, green bungalow with wide, screened porches and light cream trim, that was almost an exact reproduction of the bungalow in Los Angeles. A man and woman who have lived long together on a ranch like the Rolling R would have gone on living contentedly in the adobe house which was now abandoned to the sole occupancy of the boys. It is the young lady of the family who demands up-to-date housing. ”

“ When the ranchman mounts his horse in the morning to make his daily rounds he has a clear field before him. He is "monarch of all he surveys" and practically owns the earth, since his neighbors live many miles away and his road leads in any direction clear to the horizon.
The average ranch is not intended to furnish luxuries, but to serve the best interests of the business in hand, that of growing cattle. It is usually a "stag camp" composed entirely of men who occupy a rude cabin near some convenient spring or stream of water, where they keep house in ranch style and live after a fashion. ”

“ The Big House was the hub of the ranch organization. Half a mile from it, it was encircled by the various ranch centers. Dick Forrest, saluting continually his people, passed at a gallop the dairy center, which was almost a sea of buildings with batteries of silos and with litter carriers emerging on overhead tracks and automatically dumping into waiting manure-spreaders. Several times, business-looking men, college-marked, astride horses or driving carts, stopped him and conferred with him. ”

“ But it was sport to hang him up as I had seen the men do at the ranch when butchering a sheep, to skin him and dress the meat, and pretend it was a stew for Isabel, the doll. I had a large collection of squirrel skins tacked up on the barn at the Shepherd house.
After a couple of years we built our own house in the same neighborhood on the south-east corner of Court and Hill Streets. It began as a seven room cottage, white with green blinds to suit father. Later the roof was raised and a second story inserted and the house painted a more fashionable all-over gray, to suit the ladies. ”

“ Within a mile of the house, in the cañon which Polly calls home, there is a horse ranch in a lovely valley opening toward the river. All around it are these treeless hills that look so barren and feed so many wild lives. The horses have a beautiful range, from the sheltered valley up the gulches to the summits of the hills and down again to the river to drink. The men live in a long, low cabin, attached to a corral much bigger than the cabin, and have an extremely horsey time of it. ”

“ It might be well for us to stay here in the house for the night. We can settle on a bunk house later. The rest of you can make yourselves generally useful. I'll go 'tend to the eats. Mex, we need food! Where's the kitchen?"
Apparently understanding, the Mexican led the way toward the rear, followed by the Kid. The lay-out of the place was a great deal like that of the ordinary cattle ranch. Indeed, if one were not wholly familiar with the types of dwellings which dot the Texas border, he would be hard put to show the difference between a cattle and a sheep ranch. ”