The beetle ranch is lovely: slate tile, a Viking range, knotty oak paneling and a wood stove with a preening taxidermy turkey on the wall above it. The porch is lined with rocking chairs that face out to a massive walnut tree and, beyond it, the pastures and thickets of southern Oklahoma's Lower Canadian Hills. Clover fields glow in the afternoon sun. A phoebe hollers from her nest; a scissortail flits between fence and field.