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From the ranch we rode for the encinal ridges and sandy lands to the southeast, where the fallow-weed still throve in rank profusion, and where our heaviest steers were liable to range. By riding far from the watering points we encountered the older cattle, and within an hour after leaving the ranch I was showing some of the largest beeves on Las Palomas. How that beef buyer did ride!
To the question if he was in the ranch at present, fortune favored me, as Fidel and nearly all the regular vaqueros were cutting timbers in the encinal that day with which to build new corrals at one of the outlying tanks. As he would not return before dark, and I knew the padre was due at Santa Maria that evening, my description of him made Don Blas a mere pigmy in comparison.
Some settled on the Frio River, though the majority crossed the Nueces, many going as far south as the Rio Grande. The country was as large as the men were daring, and there was elbow room for all and to spare. Lance Lovelace located a ranch a few miles south of the Nueces River, and, from the cooing of the doves in the encinal, named it Las Palomas.
The main room of the house was about ten by ten, with mud walls five feet high, a pitched roof of some sort of grass with several holes in it. In the center of the room was a fireplace three feet high and four square, with several steaming glazed pots over a fire of encinal fagots.
Keep an eye open for javalina signs; they used to be plentiful through here when there was good mast. Now, scatter out in pairs, and if you can knock down a gobbler or two we'll have a turkey bake to-night." Dan Happersett knew the camping spot, so I went with him, and together we took a big circle through the encinal, keeping alert for game signs.
And they all might have been seen wending their way away. " `Bud, says Luke to me, `I want you to fix up a little and go up to San Antone with me. " `Let me get on my Mexican spurs, says I, `and I'm your company. "One of the sisters or so seems to have stayed at the ranch with Mrs. Summers and the kid. We rides to Encinal and catches the International, and hits San Antone in the morning.
There had been a heavy mast that year, and in the encinal ridges to the east wild turkeys were reported plentiful. Accordingly we set out the next afternoon for a camp hunt in some oak cross timbers which grew on the eastern border of our ranch lands. Taking two pack mules and Tiburcio as cook, a party of eight of us rode away, expecting to remain overnight.
It was a wonderful moonlight night. The deep redwood porch of the Mannersley parsonage, under the shadow of a great oak the largest in the Encinal was diapered in black and silver. As the women stepped upon the porch their shadows were silhouetted against the door. Miss Mannersley paused for an instant, and turned to give a last look at the beauty of the night as Jocasta entered.
How much wiser we should have been to have consulted the trees! they show so plainly that they have fought all their lives against a strong sea-wind, bending low, and twisting themselves about, trying to get away from it. We find that where we live is not Alameda proper, but is called the Encinal District, encinal being the Spanish for oak.
The white element on the ranch worked almost unceasingly, stirring the Mexicans to the greatest effort. The middle of June passed without a drop of rain, but on the morning of the twentieth, after working all night, as Pasquale Arispe and I were drawing water from a well on the border of the encinal I felt a breeze spring up, that started the windmill.
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