CHAPTER IV

A year before this story opens the town of Ranger, Texas,
consisted of a weatherbeaten, run-down railroad station, a
blacksmith shop, and a hitching rail, town enough, incidentally,
for the limited number of people and the scanty amount of
merchandise that passed through it. Ranger lay in the dry belt
--considered an almost entirely useless part of the state--where
killing droughts were not uncommon, and where for months on end
the low, flinty hills radiate heat like the rolls of a steel mill.
In such times even the steep, tortuous canyons dried out and there
was neither shade nor moisture in them. The few farms and ranches
round about were scattered widely, and life thereon was a grim
struggle against heartbreak, by reason of the gaunt, gray, ever-
present specter of the drought. Of late this particular region had
proven itself to be one of violent extremes, of extreme dryness
during which flowers failed to bloom, the grass shriveled and
died, and even the trees refused to put forth leaves; or, more
rarely, of extreme wetness, when the country was drowned beneath
torrential rains. Sometimes, during unusual winters, the heavens
opened and spilled themselves, choking the narrow watercourses,
washing out roads and destroying fields, changing the arid arroyos
into raging river beds. At such times life for the country people
was scarcely less burdensome than during the droughts, for the
heavy bottom lands became quagmires, and the clay of the higher
levels turned into putty or a devilish agglutinous substance that
rendered travel for man or beast or vehicle almost impossible.

There appeared to be no law of average here. In dry times it was a