Snaky octilla dotted the space; the crabbed yucca had not lost its ugliness.
Ferguson looked upon the world with unseeing eyes.

He had lived here long and the country had not changed.

It would never change.

Nothing ever changed here but the people.
But he himself had not changed.

Twenty-seven years in this country was a long time, for here life was not measured by age, but by experience.
Looking back over the years he could see that he was living to-day as he had lived last year, as he had lived during the last decade--a hard life, but having its compensations.
His coming to the Two Diamond ranch was merely another of those incidents that, during the past year, had broken the monotony of range life for him.