finders-keepers" rule. There was a dead-line for hats beyond which no
gentleman would venture, for, after a hat had once blown beyond the
town limits it was no longer a maverick and subject to branding, but
on the other hand was the absolute, undeniable and legal property of
Donna Corblay.

So much for the hats. As for the ranch itself, it wasn't, properly
speaking, a ranch at all. It was a low, four-room adobe house with a
lean-to kitchen built of boards. It had a dirt roof and iron-barred
windows and in the rear there was a long rectangular patio with a
fountain and a flower garden. In fact, the ranch was more of a fortress
than a dwelling-place and was surrounded by an adobe wall which
enclosed about an acre of the Mojave desert. Originally it had been the
habitation of a visionary who wandered into San Pasqual, established
the ranch and sunk an artesian well. With irrigation the rich alluvial
soil of the desert will grow anything, and the original owner planned
to raise garden-truck and cater to the local trade. He prospered, but
being of that vast majority of humankind to whom prosperity proves a
sort of mental hobble, he made up his mind one day to go prospecting.
So he wrote out a notice, advertising the property for sale, and tacked
it to a telegraph pole in front of the eating-house.

Alas for the frailty and suspicion of human nature! The self-centered
and self-satisfied citizens of San Pasqual had condemned the vegetable
venture from the start. It had been too radical a departure from the
desert order of things, and the fact that a mere stranger had conceived
the idea sufficed to damn the enterprise even with those who gloried in
the convenience of fresh vegetables; while the fact that the vegetable
culturist was now about to leave branded the experiment a failure and
was productive of a chorus of "I told you so's." The announcement of