There began the real ranch world. There
was the pile of sagebrush fuel, all twisted and gray, pungent as
a bottle of spilled liniment, where braided, blanketed bucks were
sometimes prevailed upon to labor desultorily with an ax in hope
of being rewarded with fruit new-gathered from the orchard or a
place at Phoebe's long table in the great kitchen.
There was the stone blacksmith shop, where the boys sweated over
the nice adjustment of shoes upon the feet of fighting, wild-eyed
horses, which afterward would furnish a spectacle of unseemly
behavior under the saddle.
Farther away were the long stable, the corrals where
broncho-taming was simply so much work to be performed,
hayfields, an orchard or two, then rocks and sand and sage which
grayed the earth to the very skyline.
A glint of slithering green showed where the Snake hugged the
bluff a mile away, and a brown trail, ankle-deep in dust,
stretched straight out to the west, and then lost itself
unexpectedly behind a sharp, jutting point of rocks where the
blufF had thrust out a rugged finger into the valley.
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