promised if I should be riding by this way again, I've stopped to say
'howdy.' Doesn't seem a month has passed since I stayed over night
with you? How's Mrs. Stevenson? Hope you're both well."

"Just feeling fair, just fair. Glad you stopped, Bryant," was the
answer. "My wife was wondering only the other day what had become of
you. Bring your horse around to the corral."

They went behind the house, where the young man removed saddle and
bridle from Dick and turned him into the enclosure. Stevenson gathered
an armful of hay from a small heap near by and tossed it over the
fence to the horse, which began to eat eagerly. Lee glanced about,
gave a sharp whistle; from the trail by the creek a bark answered him.
Then an Airedale came racing through the sagebrush, now and again
leaping high to gain a view of his master and finally breaking out
upon the clear ground about the ranch house.

"Mike, you're too inquisitive about other animals' dwellings," Lee
addressed him as he arrived, wet from an immersion in the creek and
panting from his run. "Some day a rattler in a hole you're digging
into will nip you on the nose and you'll wish you'd been more polite.
Come along now and be good."

He walked with Stevenson back to the house, where leaving the dog to
drop in the shade outside they entered. The interior was cool and dim
after the hot, glaring sunshine; and Bryant, having greeted Mrs.
Stevenson, sat down gratefully in a rocking-chair, glad to avail
himself of the room's comfort. Crude as an adobe house is both in
appearance and in construction, it is admirably adapted to the climate
of the arid Southwest; its flat dirt roof and thick walls built of