Bohm went up toward the wind-mill. As I turned away I caught a curious expression on his face—a faint gleam of something.
As I came through the meadow gate, Owen was getting into the buggy.
“Hello,” he called, “I’ve been looking for you everywhere. I have to drive over to Three Bar. Do you want to go?”
I was always ready to go anywhere, so while Owen was driving the horses about, I ran in to get my hat.
Not one of our horses was thoroughly broken, so we always had to follow the same method of procedure before starting anywhere. After the horses were hitched up, Charley, to whom fell odd jobs of every sort, stood at their heads until Owen was fairly seated and had the lines firmly in his hands. Then, after a few ineffectual attempts to kick or run down Charley before he could get out of the way, off dashed the horses around and around the open space between the house and the pond, until a little of the edge had been taken off their spirits. Then Owen stopped them for one moment, I made a quick jump into the buggy, and away we went at top speed toward the gate that Charley had run to open. We usually missed the post by a quarter of an inch, and at that juncture I invariably shut my eyes and held my breath.
The road to Three Bar Ranch led to the North and wound up a very long hill, then across a rolling mesa. The prairie was covered with short grama grass, just turning a faint brown, the yellow sunflowers and great clumps of rattleweed, with its spikes of lovely purple, giving a touch of color to the scene before us. The Spanish bayonet dotted the hillsides, and over all hung the summer sky like burnished copper. The only sound, aside from that of the horses’ hoofs and the crunch of the wheels on the soft prairie road, was the occasional song of the meadow lark, all the joy of the summer day sounding in its one short thrilling note. In the gulches, where the grass grew deep and rank, the wind tossed it softly, and it rippled and sparkled in the shifting light, as water gleams in the sun. Everything was so still that animation seemed for the time suspended, as we drove along silenced by the spell of the prairies.
Three Bar, one of the oldest ranches in the country, stood against the side of a hill. It was a long, low structure of logs built in the prevailing fashion of the early ranch houses, room after room opening into one another, usually with an outside door to each.
The ranch was owned by the Mortons, English people, who were among the earliest settlers in the country. They greeted us most cordially, and as Owen went out to the corral with Mr. Morton to look at some horses, Mrs. Morton took me into the house.
The room we entered had very little furniture, but was redeemed from bareness by a wonderful old stone fireplace at one end.
Mrs. Morton was short and heavy set. “Spotless” was the only word her appearance suggested when I first saw her. Her skin was as fair as a child’s, while her hair was as white as the apron she wore.