CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.
THE LONE RANCHE.
A singular habitation was that into which Frank Hamersley, and after him Walt Wilder, had found their way.

Architecturally of the rudest description--a kind among Mexicans especially styled _jacal_, or more generally _rancho_, the latter designation Anglicised or Americanised into ranche.

The _rancho_, when of limited dimensions, is termed _ranchito_, and may be seen with walls of different materials, according to the district or country.

In the hot low lands (_tierras calientes_) it is usually built of bamboos, with a thatching of palm-leaf; higher up, on the table lands (_tierras templadas_) it is a structure of mud bricks unburnt (adobe's); while still higher, upon the slopes of the forest-clad sierras, it assumes the orthodox shape of a log cabin, though in many respects differing from that of the States.
The one which gave shelter to the fugitives differed from all these, having walls of split slabs, set stockade fashion, and thatched with a sedge of _tule_, taken from a little lake that lay near.

It had three rooms and a kitchen, with some sheds at the back--one a stable appropriated to the mustang mare, another to some mules, and a third occupied by two men of the class of "peons"-- the male domestics of the establishment.
All, with the house itself, structures of the rudest kind, unlike as possible to the dwelling-place of a lady, to say nought of an _angel_.
This thought occurs to Wilder as he enters under its roof.