From the main room there was another and much smaller opening into the
sod foundation, and below it,--a dog-kennel. Slightly apart from the
shack stood a twin structure even less assuming, its walls and roof
being wholly built of sod. It was likewise without partition, and was
used as a barn. Hard by was a corral covering perhaps two acres,
enclosed with a barbed-wire fence. These three excrescences upon the
face of nature comprised the "improvements" of the "Big B Ranch."

Within the house the furnishings accorded with their surroundings. Two
folding bunks, similar in conception to the upper berths of a Pullman
car, were built end to end against the wall; when they were raised to
give room, four supports dangled beneath like paralyzed arms. A
home-made table, suggesting those scattered about country picnic
grounds, a few cheap chairs, a row of chests and cupboards variously
remodelled from a common foundation of dry-goods boxes, and a stove,
ingeniously evolved out of the cylinder and head of a portable engine,
comprised the furniture.

The morning sunlight which dimmed the candles of Mick Kennedy's saloon
drifted through the single high-set window of the Big B Ranch-house,
revealing there a very different scene. From beneath the quilts in one
of the folding bunks appeared the faces of a woman and a little boy. At
the opening of the dog-kennel the head of a mottled yellow-and-white
mongrel dog projected into the room, the sensitive muzzle pointing
directly at the occupied bunk. The eyes of woman, child, and beast were
open and moved restlessly about.

"Mamma," and the small boy wriggled beneath the clothes, "Mamma, I'm
hungry."