Pickethouse

His greatest hope was that this was not a full-scale attack, merely a skirmish at the pickethouse, like the one the night before.

In the afternoon they passed through the ruins of an old ranch on that stony mesa where there were crippled fenceposts propped among the rocks that carried remnants of a wire not seen in that country for years. An ancient pickethouse. The wreckage of an old wooden windmill fallen among the rocks.