CHAPTER VI. EVELYN'S FIRST DAY ON THE NEW RANCH. Evelyn extended a cordial invitation to Mrs. Jones and her two daughters to drive over to the ranch-house some day and spend the day with her, and the mother gladly accepted the invitation. The girls were two healthy-looking lasses, both blondes with rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes. Terry kept the old man busy telling him of the improvements that they were contemplating making on the ranch and of the residence that they would build down by the big mineral spring. "Great rattlers!" the old man exclaimed. "You're sho gwine to spend a lot of money, ain't you?" "Yes, we've got to in order to get a good start. If you know of any ranchmen within a hundred miles of us who want to sell a hundred or two beef cattle just tell us where to find him and we'll go after the cattle." "Waal, I don't believe I know of any just now who want to sell any cattle other then to the market, but I reckon you can find plenty of them along the line of the railroad." "How many cattle do you want to buy?" he asked. "About one thousand," was the reply. "Land! but you'll have a big lot of 'em." "Oh, we could keep ten thousand on the ranch and keep them fat, too, for the grass down here is very rich." "Yes, too rich for the farmers. We raise grass on our farms all summer. We raise a heap of corn and cotton." "Yes, we will raise corn, too, next year, for the use of our horses and hogs, but not for the cattle." "Gwine to raise pork, eh?" "Yes, pork will sell in the market just as readily as beef will, and we are going to raise our own supplies for our cowboys and for family use. We have forty thousand acres on the range, which is room enough to feed several hundred people, as well as the cattle on the range and ducks, pigs and chicken. I believe that our dairyman is making some of the finest butter ever seen in this part of the South. It is sweet and rich and as yellow as gold. Generally one can't get a glass of milk or a pound of butter on any ranch, because the ranchmen don't take the trouble to make it. Everything pays that is raised on a ranch, and the greater the variety the more pay." "That's so," said the old man, shaking the ashes from his corncob pipe; "but I reckon you'll have considerable trouble with coyotes and cattle thieves." "Yes, we expect to have a little trouble with them, but we have a way of dealing with cattle thieves which we have found to be very corrective. Every cowboy on our ranch has a Winchester rifle, and a lead pill from one of them makes a cattle thief sick. Then, too, a rope is something very distasteful to that breed of mankind, and as for coyotes, we will enclose that part of the ranch where we are keeping the pigs and ducks and chickens with a high wire-net fence, which no coyote can scale." "Mister, wire fences cost a heap of money." "Very true; but they will pay for themselves in one season."