by past-and-gone smiles. His ranch was a little two-room box house in a grove of hackberry trees in the lonesomest part of the sheep country. His household consisted of a Kiowa Indian man cook, four hounds, a pet sheep, and a half-tamed coyote chained to a fence-post. He owned 3,000 sheep, which he ran on two sections of leased land and many thousands of acres neither leased nor owned. Three or four times a year some one who spoke his language would ride up to his gate and exchange a few bald ideas with him. Those were red-letter days to old man Ellison. Then in what illuminated, embossed, and gorgeously decorated capitals must have been written the day on which a troubadour—a troubadour who, according to the encyclopedia, should have flourished between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries—drew rein at the gates of his baronial castle!
Old man Ellison’s smiles came back and filled his wrinkles when he saw Sam. He hurried out of the house in his shuffling, limping way to greet him.
“Hello, Mr. Ellison,” called Sam cheerfully. “Thought I’d drop over and see you a while. Notice you’ve had fine rains on your range. They sat to make good grazing for your spring lambs.”
“Well, well, well,” said old man Ellison. “I’m mighty glad to see you, Sam. I never thought you’d take the trouble to ride over to as out-of-the-way an old ranch as this. But you’re mighty welcome. ’Light.
