Among these scarred but peaceful foothills had been
played and applauded the great, wonderful, sordid, inspired drama of the
early days, the traces of which had almost vanished from the land.
Occasionally also the buckboard paused for water at a more pretentious
place set in a natural opening. There a low, rambling, white ranch-house
beneath trees was segregated by a picket fence enclosing blossoms like a
basket. At a greater or lesser distance were corrals of all sizes
arranged in a complicated pattern. They resembled a huge puzzle. The
barns were large; a forge stood under an open shed indescribably
littered with scrap iron and fragments of all sorts; saddles hung
suspended by the horn or one stirrup; bright milk pails sunned bottom-up
on fence posts; a dozen horses cropped in a small enclosed pasture or
dozed beneath one or another of the magnificent and spreading live-oak
trees. Children of all sizes and states of repair clambered to the fence
tops or gazed solemnly between the rails. Sometimes women stood in the
doorways to nod cheerfully at the travellers. They seemed to Bob a
comely, healthy-looking lot, competent and good-natured.
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