notice came in his mail. There was a big touring car in the garage on the
back of the lot, and there was a colored couple who lived in two rooms of
the bungalow for sake of the fire insurance and as a precaution against
thieves, and to keep the lawn watered and clipped and the dust off the
furniture. They admitted that they had a snap, for they were seldom
disturbed in their leisurely caretaking routine save in the winter. Even
Mary V always tired of the place after a month or two in it, and would
pack her trunk and "hit the trail" for the Rolling R.

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.

So the bungalow stood there in the glaring sun, surrounded by a scrap of
lawn which the Arizona winds whipped and buffeted with sand and wind all
summer, and vines which the wind tousled into discouragement. And fifty
yards away squatted the old adobe house in the sand, with a tree at each
front corner and a narrow porch extending from one to the other.

Beyond the adobe, toward the sheltering bluff, a clutter of low sheds,
round-pole corrals, a modern barn of fair size, and beside it a square
corral of planks and stout, new posts, continued the tale of how progress
was joggling the elbow of picturesqueness. Sudden's father had built the
adobe and the oldest sheds and corrals, when he took all the land he
could lawfully hold under government claims. Later he had bought more;