"I wish mother'd been along, Sandy; she'd 'a' told 'im a thing or two."
Lysander was discreetly silent. The sage and greasewood ended abruptly, and a row of leafless walnut-trees stretched their gaunt white branches above the road. Here and there an almond-tree, lured into premature bloom by the seductive California winter, stood like a wraith by the roadside. They could see the cabin now. A square of flaring and fading light marked the open doorway. The mules quickened their pace, and the wagon rattled over the stony road.
"Talk about increasin' the value o' this piece o' property!" the man broke out contemptuously. "I told 'im it would take a good deal o' chin to convince the old woman that anything would increase the value o' this ranch o' hern, and danged if I didn't think she was right. I'd pegged away at it two years, an' I couldn't."
"What did he say to that, Sandy?" demanded the woman, with admiring eagerness.
"Say? Oh, he said the soil was good. An' I 'lowed it was,—what there was of it; an' so was the boulders good, for boulders,—the trouble was in the mixin'. 'Don't talk to me about your "decomposed granite,"' says I: 'it's the granite what ain't decomposed that bothers me.' But pshaw!"—and Lysander dropped his voice hopelessly,—"he ain't a-carin'. I'd about as soon work the boulders as try to work him; he's harder'n any boulder on the ranch."
The mules turned into a narrow road, and stopped before the stable, a shackly, semi-tropical structure, consisting of four sycamore posts and a brush-covered roof. The lower half of the firelit doorway beyond suddenly darkened, and there was a swift, scurrying sound among the bushes that intervened between the house and the shed. A succession of heads, visible even in the deepening twilight by reason of a uniform glimmering whiteness, appeared in the barnyard.
Mrs. Sproul ran over the number with a rapid maternal calculation.
"Where's the baby, Sheridan?"
"Grammuzgotim."
Lysander climbed out of the wagon, and came around to his wife's side.