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Just now an association of automobile tourists has been formed to create a boulevard route through from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast, but at the time of this story no attention had been given the roads of the far West and only the paths of the rancheros from town to town served as guides.
All this stock was managed by half a dozen men, called Rancheros. Four of them were Mexicans; the others were our old friends, Dick Lewis and Bob Kelly. So skillful were these men in their business, that a herd of cattle, which, in the hands of any one else, would have proved utterly unmanageable, was driven about by them with perfect ease.
Her folks were rancheros, near Pachuca, where I worked in the mines. I'm from Texas, myself. They weren't like these peons about here they were good people. They never wanted Margarita to marry me." He laughed a little. "But she did, and the old folks never let up on her. They're both dead now.
A few days after, Stockton issued a proclamation to the effect that the flag of the United States was flying over every town in the territory of California; and Alcalde Colton announced that the rancheros were more than satisfied with the change of government.
The great gates were closed at sundown, and some attempt was made at keeping a regular watch or guard during the night. At first the sentinels were tolerably vigilant, but the lazy rancheros soon wearied of their unaccustomed duties, and before long the detail of a guard was omitted, and affairs subsided into their accustomed quiet.
The courtly proprietor of San Fernando and the other patriarchal rancheros with whom he occasionally exchanged visits across the wilderness knew hospitality and inherited gentle manners, sending to Europe for silks and laces to give their daughters; but their eyes had not looked upon Granada, and their ears had never listened to William Tell.
All through these brown wastes one sees no shelter for the herds, no harvests of grain or hay, and wonders not a little how animal life as well the flocks of antelope, elk, and deer in the mountains, as the cattle and horses of the rancheros is preserved through the deep snows of the Northern winter.
When they returned, they found a new face among the Rancheros that of Pierre Costello, a man for whom Frank at once conceived a violent dislike. Pierre was a full-blooded Mexican, dark-browed, morose, and sinister-looking, and he had a pair of small, black eyes that were never still, but constantly roving about, as if on the lookout for something.
Other merchants had also made extensive sales. Large quantities of goods were daily sent forward to the mines, as the Indians, heretofore so poor and degraded, have suddenly become consumers of the luxuries of life. I before mentioned that the greater part of the farmers and rancheros had abandoned their fields to go to the mines.
"First catch your pig then butcher it," said another, meaningly. "The Spaniards have the best of it thus far. Hull's shouting frantically for reinforcements. Well, he won't get me. I think the rancheros have their side as well as we. If this stiff-necked commander would listen to reason." "He hasn't heard the other side," the first speaker resumed.
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