common physical feature. In the wet season they were running streams,
but for most of the year they were dry, with here and there a waterhole,
flowers and chaparral growing in them, and, at intervals, pecans. The
pecan-trees grew thickly along the borders of the creeks, while the
mesquites cloaked with gossamer wide portions of the flats; and here and
there in the valleys and on the sides of the hills the sombre,
self-enwrapped live-oaks stood about, like philosophers musing amid the
general lightness. Spanish-dagger, bear-grass, and persimmon-bushes
freckled the sides of the rocky divides with dark spots, and mistletoe
hung its fine green globes like unillumined lanterns in the branches of
the mesquites. Over the plains and slopes a sparse turf of various
grasses, differing in color and changing with the season, gave the airy
landscape its brilliant and versatile complexion. A dozen varieties of
cactus, portulaccas, geraniums, petunias, verbenas, scattered over the
prairie, morning-glories and sunflowers in the arroyos and along the
creeks, and many a flower nameless to the general, abounded. So, it
should be added, did in their season plover, snipe, ducks, and geese.

The business of the ranch was the antediluvian occupation of rearing and
shearing sheep, and to that end the village included a shearing-shed and
a large wool-house. Besides these there were three cottages and several
other buildings, among which one called the "ranch-house" was the focus
of the activity of the place, and, being also a survival from a
comparatively early day, was a somewhat characteristic affair. It was a
box-house, painted red, with a broad porch thatched with bear-grass, and
a saddle-shed butting up against it. The interior, barring a little
store at one end, was a single large room, bedroom, sitting-room,
office, furnished with home-made tables with blankets for cloths,
knocked-up chairs with cowhide seats and coyote-skin backs, deers'
antlers draped with "slickers" (Texan for the 'longshoreman's yellow