Page:The Baron of Diamond Tail (1923).pdf/70

 angle than his first sight of it, this oasis in the gray plain beside the narrow river revealed wonders and surprises. The ranch-house itself was a commodious, long, low building of pine logs artfully joined at corners, a very buttress against the storms of that unsheltered land. It was built in the Spanish fashion, such as spread eastward from the old civilization of Santa Fe over the range country in those days, two wings running out from the main structure.

In this middle space between the wings of the building was the patio, or court, where the fountain played among the flowers, and trees brought from the distant mountains grew in grateful security. Water was supplied from a huge tank in the barnyard, where a battery of three windmills was already astir in the waking breeze, which blew as unfailingly as the northwest trades.

A row of tall, thick-boughed cedars stood just outside the wire fence in front of the house, a screen against the summer glare of the plain, a barrier between the dwelling and the northern blasts of winter. Within this line of protecting cedars a long, deep lawn spread bedewed and cool.' The great veranda, with broad, white-painted steps, was embowered in honeysuckle and wistaria. The wonder that this place could hold youth against the lure of the world dissolved out of Barrett's mind. It was a place to call one back from wandering, weary seeking, far following after futile dreams. It was home.

Probably not so isolated as it might appear when one looked from the porch into the limitless gray-green