A fat, sleek, prosperous male, clad in expensive garments, and wearing a derby hat and too much jewellery, became somehow personified in this tirade.  I was led to picture him a residuary legatee who had never done a stroke of work in his life, and believed that no one else ever did except from a sportive perversity.  I was made to hear him tell her that she, Mrs. Lysander John Pettengill, was leading the ideal life on her country place; and, by Jove! he often thought of doing the same thing himself—­get a nice little spot in this beautiful country, with some green meadows, and have bands of large handsome cattle strolling about in the sunlight, so he could forget the world and its strife in the same idyllic peace she must be finding.  Or if he didn’t tell her this, then he was sure to have a worthless son or nephew that her ranch would be just the place for; and, of course, she would be glad to take him on and make something of him—­that is, so the lady now regrettably put it, as he had shown he wasn’t worth a damn for anything else, why couldn’t she make a cattleman of him?

“Yes, sir; that’s what I get from these here visitors that are enchanted by the view.  Either they think my ranch is a reform school for poor chinless Chester, that got led away by bad companions and can’t say no, or they think, like you said, that it’s just a toy for the idle rich.  Show ’em a shoe factory or a steel works and they can understand it’s a business proposition; but a ranch—­Shucks!  They think I’ve done my day’s work when I ride out on a gentle horse and look pleased at the landscape.”

Again were we diverted.  A dozen alien beeves fed upon the Arrowhead preserves.  Did I see that wattle brand—­the jug-handle split?  That was the Timmins brand—­old Safety First Timmins.  There must be a break in his fence at the upper end of the field.  Made it himself likely.  Wouldn’t she give the old penny-pincher hell if she had him here?  She would, indeed!  Continuous muttering of a rugged character for half a mile of jog trot.

Then again: 

“Cousin Egbert got all fussed up in his mind about the name and always called her Postle-nut.  He don’t seem to have a brain for such things.  But she didn’t mind.  I give her credit for that.  She was fifty if she was a day, but very, very blond; laboratory stuff, of course.  You’d of called her a superblonde, I guess.  And haggard and wrinkled in the face; but she took good care of that, too—­artist’s materials.

“You know old Pete—­that Indian you see cutting up wood back on the place.  Pete took a long look at her and named her the Painted Desert.  You always hear say an Indian hasn’t got any sense of humour.  I don’t know; Pete was sure being either a humourist or a poet.  However, this here lady handed me a new one about my business.  She thought it was merely an outdoor sport.  I never could get that out of her head.  Even when she left she says she knows it’s ripping good sport, but it’s such a terrific drain on one’s income, and I must be quite mad about ranching to keep it up.  I said, yes; I got quite mad about it sometimes, and let it go at that.  What was the use?”