would freely admit the validity of these reasons; but the admission was made with a countenance whose indignation and sorrow indicated that the greater causes were yet unnamed.  With eyes speaking emotions which words could not express, they would point to sections of wheatfields minus the grain-bearing heads—­to hides and hoofs of cattle unslaughtered by themselves—­to mothers of promising calves, whose tender bleatings answered not the maternal call—­to the places which had once known fine horses, but had been untenanted since certain Pikes had gone across, the mountains for game.  They would accuse no man wrongfully, but in a country where all farmers had wheat and cattle and horses, and where prowling Indians and Mexicans were not, how could these disappearances occur?

But to people owning no property in the neighborhood—­to tourists and artists—­the Pike settlement at the Bend was as interesting and ugly as a skye-terrier.  The architecture of the village was of original style, and no duplicate existed.  Of the half-dozen residences, one was composed exclusively of sod; another of bark; yet another of poles, roofed with a wagon-cover, and plastered on the outside with mud; the fourth was of slabs, nicely split from logs which had drifted into the Bend; the fifth was of hide stretched over a frame strictly gothic from foundation to ridgepole; while the sixth, burrowed into the hillside, displayed only the barrel which formed its chimney.

A more aristocratic community did not exist on the Pacific Coast.  Visit the Pikes when you would, you could never see any one working.  Of churches, school-houses, stores and other plebeian institutions, there were none; and no Pike demeaned himself by entering trade, or soiled his hands by agriculture.

Yet unto this peaceful, contented neighborhood there found his way a visitor who had been everywhere in the world without once being made welcome.  He came to the house built of slabs, and threatened the wife of Sam Trotwine, owner of the house; and Sam, after sunning himself uneasily for a day or two, mounted a pony, and rode off for a doctor to drive the intruder away.

When he returned he found all the men in the camp seated on a log in front of his own door, and then he knew he must prepare for the worst—­only one of the great influences of the world could force every Pike from his own door at exactly the same time.  There they sat, yellow-faced, bearded, long-backed and bent, each looking like the other, find all like Sam; and, as he dismounted, they all looked at him.

“How is she?” said Sam, tying his horse and the doctor’s, while the latter went in.

“Well,” said the oldest man, with deliberation, “the wimmin’s all thar ef that’s any sign.”

Each man on the log inclined his head slightly but positively to the left, thus manifesting belief that Sam had been correctly and sufficiently answered.  Sam himself seemed to regard his information in about the same manner.