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During all this time the mother and sister of the cibolero lived in their lone rancho without any protection, and were, perhaps, less in dread of the Indians than any other family in the whole valley. This was to be attributed to several causes. First, their training, which had taught them to make light of dangers that terrified their less courageous neighbours.
It was so hot and dusty that we hated to resume our journey and tarried so long that we had to ride after nightfall before we reached the rancho of Los Cocos, where we lay in the corridor and all night long heard the grinding of sugar-cane at the mill close by.
My chief amusement was watching the Indian families as they came to buy little articles at the rancho where we stayed. It was supposed that General Rosas had about six hundred Indian allies. The men were a tall, fine race, yet it was afterwards easy to see in the Fuegian savage the same countenance rendered hideous by cold, want of food, and less civilisation.
He was not quite sure what he was going for. Yet that he, who had only a moment before fully determined to leave the rancho and her, was now going to her father to demand her hand as a contingency of his remaining did not strike him as so extravagant and unexpected a denouement as it was a difficult one. He was only concerned HOW, and in what way, he should approach him.
The boys dined well, and more than sufficiently, at El Rancho Vegas, then got in the jeep for a ride around town. Scotty loosened his belt with a groan. "For once," he admitted, "I overdid it. Did you ever see so much chow?" "Not outside of a supermarket," Rick agreed. He let his own belt out a notch or two.
It loosened, also, I fear, his quick, impulsive tongue. Oh, yes; he knew it. He had lived under this whip of air and sky for three years, alone in a Spanish rancho, with only the native peons around him, and scarcely speaking his own tongue even to his guardian.
The thoroughbreds reached out into that long, tireless running stride that brought their riders nearer and nearer to the Ortez rancho and the Mexican agent of the guerilla captain whose troops were so sadly in need of beef. On either side of a faint trail rose the dreary, angling grotesques of the cactus, and the dried and dead stalks of the soapweed.
The rancho was owned and occupied by an aged Californian, of commanding and respectable appearance; I could not but feel compassion for the venerable old man, whose sons were now all absent and engaged in the war, while he, at home and unsupported, was suffering the unavoidable inconveniences and calamities resulting from an army being quartered upon him.
Where the range lies too far away from any river, they drive the sheep in May into the mountains, where they have green grass all summer; and about Red Bluff I saw a curious sight cattle and horses wandering, singly or in small groups, of their own motion, to the mountains, and actually crossing the Sacramento without driving; and I was told that in the fall they would return, each to its master's rancho.
But here another circumstance added to his suspicions: there was a main road leading to Santa Inez, the next town, and the Rancho, and this Clarence had purposely taken in order to watch the Missourian; but there was also a cutoff directly to the Rancho, known only to the habitues of the Rancho.
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