There was the high gate that marked the road into the ranch. Will got out and swung the gate so they could drive through. The ranch house, looking more barren and flimsy than she had remembered reared up from the ground without a shrub around it. Some of the spindling cottonwood trees had died this summer. The curtain in the front window was torn.

"You can see the mountains from here, anyway," Will said with a kind of heavy jocularity. Back of the ranch there was an indistinct blue line that marked the mountains, to be sure, but even that looked faded from the sun. The mountains might be part of the Rockies but they weren't half the comfort a line of good green trees would be. She had never been one for looking at mountains.

Mrs. Miller, whose husband was Will's head man, came to the door to meet them, wiping her hands on a dirty apron. Will seemed embarrassed and went off to find Ed, leaving Bella there to make difficult talk with this gaunt, stringy woman.

"My, it's hot! I've been over the stove canning chickens," the woman offered. She talked in a loud voice but as though she were glad to talk, almost like Mina Gates when she had a piece of news to tell. "Hawks is gettin' 'em something fierce," she explained.

"You go right ahead. I'll just walk around," Bella suggested.

"Oh, I don't mind sitting a spell. You haven't been out but once this year, have you?"

"No," Bella answered. "I've been pretty busy."

At last the woman went back to the kitchen to get supper, saying so heartily as she went, "My, it'll be nice to get a meal for company for a change," that Bella felt lacking that she hadn't been more entertaining company.

The house was terrible. She couldn't imagine herself living here.

She fled out to the long narrow porch.

Now at five-thirty the sun had lost its glare. The hard outlines of the ruts in the road, the rails of the corral fence, the piece of farm machinery deserted in the dooryard were less blatant. Now the color of the mountains had deepened, turned to lavender. The worn, shabby look of the earth had changed to green, almost the shade of new sage plants. The heat was no less suffocating, but there was a smell of clover or alfalfa or perhaps only sage in the dust. Bella sniffed. She could look without squinting. But it was lonely even if it wasn't so ugly. And the loneliness would be stronger with dusk. It made her afraid.

Then she saw Will, riding slowly along on horseback, coming over the rise of ground back of the house. She could tell it was Will by his hat and the droop of his shoulders. He looked younger on a horse. She had forgotten that he rode much out here. She watched him coming nearer. He was bigger some way against his land than coming up the walk on Elm Street. The sight of him drew her queerly, as it had used to when she was young. He swung off the horse more easily than he got out of the car and came up on the porch. He took off his hat and rubbed his hand back across his hair.

"I believe it's a bit cooler," he said.

"I believe it is," Bella agreed. "It's not bad when the sun gets down a little." The loneliness of the wide earth fading into the mountains had disappeared with Will there or changed to something else.

Will laid his hand on her shoulder a moment before they went in to supper in the ranch house.

-from "Rancher's Wife" by Mildred Walker