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Updated: May 20, 2025
The store, a big, white wooden building like a barn, stood fifty yards from the ranch-house. Beyond it were the horse corrals; and still farther the wool sheds and the brush-topped shearing pens for the Rancho Cibolo raised both cattle and sheep. Behind the store, at a little distance, were the grass-thatched jacals of the Mexicans who bestowed their allegiance upon the Cibolo.
The drawer stuck, and he yanked at it savagely as a man will. It came out of the bureau, and bruised both his shins as a drawer will. An old, folded yellow letter without an envelope fell from somewhere probably from where it had lodged in one of the upper drawers. Ranse took it to the lamp and read it curiously. Then he took his hat and walked to one of the Mexican jacals.
The Mexicans, who had lately occupied them, were scuttling like rabbits toward their main force, and the Texan bullets made them jump higher and faster. Crockett, with a shout of triumph, flung down his torch. "Now, boys," he cried. "Here's the end of them jacals.
But it had always been the policy of Uncle Lance never to disturb the Mexican population; rather he encouraged them to remain in his service. Thus had sprung up around Las Palomas ranch a little Mexican community numbering about a dozen families, who lived in jacals close to the main ranch buildings. They were simple people, and rendered their new master a feudal loyalty.
Before this last contingent had had time to spruce up, Pasquale's eldest boy rode around all the jacals, ringing a small handbell to summon the population to the dedication. Outside of our home crowd, we had forty white guests, not including the two Booth children and the priests. As fast as the rangers were made presentable, the master and mistress introduced them to all the girls present.
The bullets from the jacals now swept the walls and the truth of Crockett's words became painfully evident. The Texan cannon fired upon the huts, but the balls went through the soft adobe and seemed to do no harm. It was like firing into a great sponge. Triumphant shouts came from the Mexicans.
In twenty minutes they heard the clatter of the horses' hoofs: in five minutes more the grey plugs dashed out of the thicket, whickering for oats and drawing the light wagon behind them like a toy. From the /jacals/ came a cry of: "El Amo! El Amo!" Four Mexican youths raced to unharness the greys. The cowpunchers gave a yell of greeting and delight.
The chaparral was destitute of foliage, and on the divides and higher mesas, had died. The native women stripped their jacals of every sacred picture, and hung them on the withered trees about their doors, where they hourly prayed to their patron saints. In the humblest homes on Las Palomas, candles burned both night and day to appease the frowning Deity.
No straw stacks were they, however, but houses, the only kind of homes known in southern California at that time. "It was the Indian settlement where Gesnip, Cleeta, and Payuchi lived, and of which their father, Cuchuma, was chief. The jacals, or wigwams, were made of long willow boughs, driven into the ground closely in a circle, the ends bent over and tied together with deer sinews.
To travel from Brownsville north along the international line one must, for several hundred miles, avail oneself of horses, mules, or motor-cars, since rail transportation is almost lacking. And on his way the traveler will traverse whole counties where the houses are jacals, where English is a foreign tongue, and where peons plow their fields with crooked sticks as did the ancient Egyptians.
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