If a person tracks our favorite river northwest for a couple hundred miles, he realizes it has a twin sister or brother river, and near the confluence of the north and south siblings is the territory of the original Settle ranch. Over a period of 150 years the definition of "Settle ranch" has changed from time to time via certain land transactions, and the chief produce has varied between sheep and cattle, but there was the headquarters of the enterprise founded in the 1870s by Martin Settle and his uncle, Dr. Henry Clark.

In 1919 Martin's star-crossed eldest, Edward, succeeded his father,...