There was the long, low ranch house facing the wide reach of the prairie. Behind it, and connected with it by a covered way, were the dining room and the cook room. Beyond that was the long bunk house where the men slept, flanked by another building for the Mexican servants. There were stables, sheds, a storehouse and saddle-room, and a blacksmith's shop. Below the house an oblong bit of fenced ground showed a riot of color--Genevieve's flower garden. Below that was a vegetable garden. There was a large corral for the cattle, and a smaller one, high and circular, for the horses. There were three or four green trees near the house--tall, thin cottonwoods that had grown up along the slender streams of waste water from the windmill. CHAPTER VII THE RANCH HOUSE "And here we are at the Six Star Ranch," cried Mr. Hartley, as he leaped from the carriage before the wide-open door of the ranch house. "Well, Mammy Lindy," he added, as the kindly, wrinkled old face of a colored woman appeared in the doorway, "I've corralled the whole bunch and brought them West with me!" A little stiffly the girls got down from their seats--all but Genevieve. She, in the space of a breath, seemingly, had leaped to the ground and run up on to the wide gallery where the negress, with adoring eyes, awaited her. "Laws, chil'e," Tilly, who was nearest, heard a tenderly crooning voice say, "but I am jes' pow'ful glad to see ye, honey!" "Mammy, you old darling!" cried Genevieve, giving the rotund, gayly-clad figure a bear-like hug. "You look just as good as you used to--and my, my! just see all this new finery to welcome me," she added, holding off her beaming-faced old nurse at arms' length. "I reckon you'll think something has come, Mammy Lindy, when we all get settled," she added laughingly, as she turned to present the old woman to Mrs. Kennedy and the girls. A little later, Tilly, in the wide, center hallway, was looking wonderingly about her. "Well, Genevieve Hartley, I didn't think you _could_ have room enough for us all," she declared; "but I'll give it up. I should think you might entertain the whole state of Texas in this house!" "We try to, sometimes," laughed Genevieve. "You know we Texans pride ourselves on always having room for everybody." "Well, I should think you did--and, only think, all on one floor, too!" Genevieve did not answer. She was looking around her with a thoughtful little frown between her eyebrows as if she saw something she did not quite understand. The girls were standing in the wide center hallway that ran straight through the house. On one side, through a wide archway, could be seen a large living-room with piano, bookshelves, comfortable chairs, a couch, and a good-sized table. Beyond that there was a narrow hall with two large rooms leading from it. From the other side of the center hall opened another narrow hall at right angles, from which led the six remaining rooms of the house.