near the artificial surface tanks, all but dried into mud holes.

It was a farm of this character that Gray's driver finally pointed
out as the Briskow ranch. The house, an unsightly story-and-a-half
affair, stood at the back of what had once been a cultivated
field, and the place was distinctive only in the fact that it gave
evidence of a good water well, or a capacious reservoir, in the
form of a vivid green garden patch and a few flourishing peach
trees immediately behind the residence--welcome relief to the eye.

Nobody answered Gray's knock at the front door, so he walked
around the house. Over the garden fence, grown thick with
brambles, he beheld two feminine figures, or rather two faded
sunbonnets topping two pairs of shoulders, and as he drew nearer
he saw that one woman was bent and slow moving, while the other
was a huge creature, wide of hip and deep of bosom, whose bare
arms, burnt to a rich golden brown, were like those of a
blacksmith, and who wielded her heavy hoe as if it were a toy. She
was singing in a thin, nasal, uncultivated voice.

Evidently they were the Briskow "help," therefore Gray made his
presence known and inquired for the master or mistress of the
place.

The elder woman turned, exposing a shrewd, benevolent face, and
after a moment of appraisal said, "I'm Miz' Briskow."

"Indeed!" The visitor smiled his best and announced the nature of
his errand.