household implements scattered about, indicated the "ranch." Like most
pioneer clearings, it was simply a disorganized raid upon nature that
had left behind a desolate battlefield strewn with waste and decay.
The fallen trees, the crushed thicket, the splintered limbs, the rudely
torn-up soil, were made hideous by their grotesque juxtaposition with
the wrecked fragments of civilization, in empty cans, broken bottles,
battered hats, soleless boots, frayed stockings, cast-off rags, and
the crowning absurdity of the twisted-wire skeleton of a hooped skirt
hanging from a branch. The wildest defile, the densest thicket, the most
virgin solitude, was less dreary and forlorn than this first footprint
of man. The only redeeming feature of this prolonged bivouac was the
cabin itself. Built of the half-cylindrical strips of pine bark, and
thatched with the same material, it had a certain picturesque rusticity.
But this was an accident of economy rather than taste, for which
Flip apologized by saying that the bark of the pine was "no good" for
charcoal.

"I reckon Dad's in the woods," she added, pausing before the open door
of the cabin. "Oh, Dad!" Her voice, clear and high, seemed to fill
the whole long canyon, and echoed from the green plateau above. The
monotonous strokes of an axe were suddenly pretermitted, and somewhere
from the depths of the close-set pines a voice answered "Flip." There
was a pause of a few moments, with some muttering, stumbling, and
crackling in the underbrush, and then the sudden appearance of "Dad."

Had Lance first met him in the thicket, he would have been puzzled to
assign his race to Mongolian, Indian, or Ethiopian origin. Perfunctory
but incomplete washings of his hands and face, after charcoal burning,
had gradually ground into his skin a grayish slate-pencil pallor,
grotesquely relieved at the edges, where the washing had left off,