WHY THE GIBSON BOYS HID OUT 



BY ALLEN KELLY. 



i 



Author of "Bears I Have Met — and Others." 

 Illustrated by Roy Mart ell Mason 



IBSON'S ranch was a long-cherished desire when she "up and 



tongue of the Mo- died." Building operations stopped, the 



jave desert, a bay of sashless upper-story windows were 



that ocean of sand boarded inside, and Gibson and his 



indenting the foot- three boys camped rudely in the rooms 



hill coast line. The on the lower floor. 



reason for its exist- The house was set upon posts some 

 ence was a trickle four or five feet above the ground, for 

 of water in an "arroyo" at the head of no apparent reason other than to fur- 

 the bay. By throwing a slight earth nish an excuse for a front porch and 

 dam across the bottom of the arroyo, flight of steps. Fortuitously, the space 

 the trickle was converted into a water- beneath the house offered a shady re- 

 hole, and possession of the water-hole treat for pigs, chickens, hounds and 

 gave Gibson command of several square other small live stock. Except that 

 miles of half-barren range on the hills given by a fringe of dwarfed willows 

 constituting the desert frontier of the around the water-hole, there was no 

 Los Alamos Cattle Company's wide other shade on the Gibson ranch, or 

 domain. Gibson permitted none but within sight of the place in any direc- 

 his own cattle to drink at the water- tion. There were no buildings other 

 hole ; or, more accurately, perhaps, he than the house, unless a rough corral of 

 claimed as his all cattle that watered stockaded yucca logs might be consid- 

 there. ' ered a building. 



It was the tradition of the district, My first call at the Gibson place was 



told not wholly in jest, that when Gib- on a blazing day in September. I had 



son located a quarter section of desert been searching the edge of the desert 



adjoining the Los Alamos range he for a small band of antelope, said to 



started in the cattle business with one have been seen there, a remnant of the 



old steer and a rope, and "let Nature once numerous Mojave herd, and my 



take her course." A bunch of two or horse needed water, 



three hundred cattle wearing Gibson's As I rode up to the house, I saw 



"pig-pen" brand — a running iron vari- Gibson, a tall, gaunt, sandy man, sit- 



ation of the Alamos brand — spoke elo- ting on the floor of the porch, his back 



quently of the kindness of Nature to propped against a post and his knees 



the trustful Gibson. nearly up to his chin, calmly smoking a 



The Gibson ranch was a singularly corncob pipe. One of the boys sat on 



desolate-looking place. Backed against the steps, where he could command a 



a low hill of barren gravel, an unpainted view of the interior of the house 



house, two stories and a half high, with through the open doorway, and was so 



a steep pitched roof, stared out upon absorbed in something going on with- 



the desert through sashless windows, in that he paid no attention to my arri- 



like the sightless eyes of a blind man. val. 



Mrs. Gibson's ambition, nurtured in an The old man removed his pipe and 



Arkansas shack, was to live in a white moved it toward me in a gesture of 



house with green blinds, and Gibson greeting, while three or four hounds 



was "aiming," as he said, to gratify her sniffed lazily at the horse's legs and 



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