THE HOME RANCH ^ 



swelling the chorus. There are some would-be singers whose intention is 

 better than their execution. Blackbirds of several kinds are plenty round 

 the house and stables, walking about with a knowing air, like so many 

 dwarf crows ; and now and then a flock of yellow-heads will mix for a 

 few days with their purple or rusty-colored brethren. The males of these 

 yellow-headed grakles are really handsome, their orange and yellow 

 heads contrasting finely with the black of the rest of their plumage ; but 

 their voices are discordant to a degree. When a flock has done feeding 

 it will often light in straggling order among the trees in front of the 

 veranda, and then the males will begin to sing, or rather to utter the most 

 extraordinary collection of broken sounds creakings, gurglings, hisses, 

 twitters, and every now and then a liquid note or two. It is like an 

 accentuated representation of the noise made by a flock of common black- 

 birds. At nightfall the poor-wills begin to utter their boding call from the 

 wooded ravines back in the hills; not "whip-poor-will," as in the East, but 

 with two syllables only. They often come round the ranch house. Late 

 one evening I had been sitting motionless on the veranda, looking out 

 across the water and watching the green and brown of the hill-tops 

 change to purple and umber and then fade off into shadowy gray as the 

 somber darkness deepened. Suddenly a poor-will lit on the floor beside 

 me and stayed some little time ; now and then uttering its mournful cries, 

 then ceasing for a few moments as it flitted round after insects, and again 

 returning to the same place to begin anew. The little owls, too, call to 

 each other with tremulous, quavering voices throughout the livelong 

 night, as they sit in the creaking trees that overhang the roof. Now and 

 then we hear the wilder voices of the wilderness, from animals that in the 

 hours of darkness do not fear the neighborhood of man : the coyotes 

 wail like dismal ventriloquists, or the silence may be broken by the 

 strident challenge of a lynx, or by the snorting and stamping of a deer 

 that has come to the edge of the open. 



In the hot noontide hours of midsummer the broad ranch veranda, 

 always in the shade, is almost the only spot where a man can be com- 

 fortable ; but here he can sit for hours at a time, leaning back in his rock- 

 ing-chair, as he reads or smokes, or with half- closed, dreamy eyes gazes 

 across the shallow, nearly dry river-bed to the wooded bottoms opposite, 

 and to the plateaus lying back of them. Against the sheer white faces of 

 the cliffs, that come down without a break, the dark green tree-tops stand 

 out in bold relief. In the hot, lifeless air all objects that are not near by 

 seem to sway and waver. There are few sounds to break the stillness. 

 From the upper branches of the cottonwood trees overhead, whose shim- 



