Homestead Ranch

Transcriber's Note: Obvious typographic errors have been corrected. A Table of Contents has been added.
TIRED? HE ASKED. IT'S TOUGH THE FIRST TIME YOU COME OVER THIS TRAIL.
HOMESTEAD RANCH
ELIZABETH G. YOUNG
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY NEW YORK : : LONDON : : MCMXXIII
COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Copyright, 1915, 1919, by Perry Mason Company PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO MARY TRACY HORNE KINDEST OF CRITICS AND WISEST OF FRIENDS

HOMESTEAD RANCH
Now that the train had crossed the Rocky Mountains, most of the passengers in the tourist car were becoming bored and restless. The scenery was less absorbing; there was so much of it that even its magnificence had begun to pall! Yet Harriet Holliday was still deeply interested in everything. There were now only a few hours between her and her destination, and she had begun to look at the solitary ranches, wondering whether her brother's would look like them.
The train was passing across a seemingly endless desert, through ranges of hills without a sign of life, without water, grass or trees to break the monotony of sand and sagebrush. Once in a great while there appeared a row of buildings that, Harriet decided, must be a town—a few boxlike stores, a hotel with an imposing cement block front, a straggling line of cabins, some turf-roofed huts, some tents—then abruptly the gray solitude of the desert came into view once more.