Abandoned straw stacks had settled and molded, cornfields had grown up to weeds, what few head of cattle still remained lolled near the artificial surface tanks, all but dried into mud holes.
It was a farm of this character that Gray's driver finally pointed out as the Briskow ranch.

The house, an unsightly story-and-a-half affair, stood at the back of what had once been a cultivated field, and the place was distinctive only in the fact that it gave evidence of a good water well, or a capacious reservoir, in the form of a vivid green garden patch and a few flourishing peach trees immediately behind the residence--welcome relief to the eye.
Nobody answered Gray's knock at the front door, so he walked around the house.

Over the garden fence, grown thick with brambles, he beheld two feminine figures, or rather two faded sunbonnets topping two pairs of shoulders, and as he drew nearer he saw that one woman was bent and slow moving, while the other was a huge creature, wide of hip and deep of bosom, whose bare arms, burnt to a rich golden brown, were like those of a blacksmith, and who wielded her heavy hoe as if it were a toy.

She was singing in a thin, nasal, uncultivated voice.
Evidently they were the Briskow "help," therefore Gray made his presence known and inquired for the master or mistress of the place.
The elder woman turned, exposing a shrewd, benevolent face, and after a moment of appraisal said, "I'm Miz' Briskow." "Indeed!" The visitor smiled his best and announced the nature of his errand.
"Lawsy me!" Mrs.Briskow planted her hoe in the soil and turned her back upon Gray.

"Allie! Yore pa has gone an' done it again.