Spanish King's bells, already glowing ruddy in the sunset.
Farther on, he could make out Annixter's ranch house, marked by
the skeleton-like tower of the artesian well, and, a little
farther to the east, the huddled, tiled roofs of Guadalajara.
Far to the west and north, he saw Bonneville very plain, and the
dome of the courthouse, a purple silhouette against the glare of
the sky. Other points detached themselves, swimming in a golden
mist, projecting blue shadows far before them; the mammoth live-
oak by Hooven's, towering superb and magnificent; the line of
eucalyptus trees, behind which he knew was the Los Muertos ranch
house--his home; the watering-tank, the great iron-hooped tower
of wood that stood at the joining of the Lower Road and the
County Road; the long wind-break of poplar trees and the white
walls of Caraher's saloon on the County Road.

But all this seemed to be only foreground, a mere array of
accessories--a mass of irrelevant details. Beyond Annixter's,
beyond Guadalajara, beyond the Lower Road, beyond Broderson
Creek, on to the south and west, infinite, illimitable,
stretching out there under the sheen of the sunset forever and
forever, flat, vast, unbroken, a huge scroll, unrolling between
the horizons, spread the great stretches of the ranch of Los
Muertos, bare of crops, shaved close in the recent harvest. Near
at hand were hills, but on that far southern horizon only the
curve of the great earth itself checked the view. Adjoining Los
Muertos, and widening to the west, opened the Broderson ranch.
The Osterman ranch to the northwest carried on the great sweep of
landscape; ranch after ranch. Then, as the imagination itself
expanded under the stimulus of that measureless range of vision,
even those great ranches resolved themselves into mere