The flat, square stone and log cabin of unusually large size
stood upon a little hill half a mile out of the village. A
home as well as a fort, it had been the first structure
erected in that region, and the process of building had more
than once been interrupted by Indian attacks. The Apaches
had for some time, however, confined their fierce raids to
points south of the White Mountain range. Auchincloss's
house looked down upon barns and sheds and corrals of all
sizes and shapes, and hundreds of acres of well-cultivated
soil. Fields of oats waved gray and yellow in the afternoon
sun; an immense green pasture was divided by a
willow-bordered brook, and here were droves of horses, and
out on the rolling bare flats were straggling herds of
cattle.

The whole ranch showed many years of toil and the
perseverance of man. The brook irrigated the verdant valley
between the ranch and the village. Water for the house,
however, came down from the high, wooded slope of the
mountain, and had been brought there by a simple expedient.
Pine logs of uniform size had been laid end to end, with a
deep trough cut in them, and they made a shining line down
the slope, across the valley, and up the little hill to the
Auchincloss home. Near the house the hollowed halves of logs
had been bound together, making a crude pipe. Water ran
uphill in this case, one of the facts that made the ranch
famous, as it had always been a wonder and delight to the
small boys of Pine. The two good women who managed
Auchincloss's large household were often shocked by the
strange things that floated into their kitchen with the