Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/92

80 After a time they came to a loose wire gate. Daphne hopped down to hold it aside, and so they drove into the tract owned by Brainerd.

The way led alongside a barbed wire fence, around the corner of a hill; and so, by a gentle grade to the bungalow. In the flat was an orchard of ten or twelve acres; up the cañon stretched a narrow strip of grain land; the sagebrush hills crowded close around; almost in the back dooryard rose the first abrupt, dark, chaparral-covered slopes of the Sur. The place did not look prosperous. Under the orchard trees the earth had been left too long uncultivated and the trees themselves were in need of pruning; deep ruts from the last rains made driving difficult; the paint on the low attractive bungalow had peeled and blistered in the sun. Nevertheless, there was none of the shiftless disorder usual in the premises of the average "sagebrusher." The few agricultural implements were under cover, there were no broken tools nor baling wire nor bottles and tin cans scattered about, the windmill had all its blades.

The Colonel hitched his team to the corral fence, and the two moved down on the bungalow.

"Daddy must be up the cañon fussing with the water," pronounced Daphne. "You go into the living room and I will have something in a jiffy. No, I don't want any help."

The Colonel walked on the wide veranda to the front of the house. The boards underfoot, slightly warped by the sun and the lack of paint, creaked under his deliberate tread. He entered the living room and sat down in a very worn leather chair, sighing with the comfort of an anticipated quarter hour's rest. His keen old eyes moved slowly from object to object in the long and narrow room. They were old and familiar to his sight, for many times in many years he had sat thus waiting, since Daphne was a little thing being put to bed.

It was a threadbare room, worn and old and never renovated; with a few pieces of much used furniture, and many shabby, faded books. A fireplace and mantel centred one side. It was a neat room withal. Even such scattered affairs as pipes, matches, magazines, and riding gear did not give an impression of things out of place.