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Updated: May 25, 2025
To-day the snowy herons have all but vanished from the remotest glades of the South; and my friend Finley, on the trail of the Western plume-hunters, searched in vain for a single pair of the exquisite birds in the vast tule lakes of Oregon, where, only a few weeks before his trip, thousands of pairs had nested.
They meant nothing to Gringo, for he had never smelt wild geese, had scarcely seen them, but the trail he was hunting went on. He swiftly followed till the tule ahead rustled gently, and the scent was body scent. A ponderous rush, a single blow and the goose-hunt was ended ere well begun, and Faco's sheep became the brother's heritage.
As the volume of melody swelled, the canaries waked, and the finches and the linnets in the veranda roof. The tiles of this roof were laid on bundles of tule reeds, in which the linnets delighted to build their nests. The roof was alive with them, scores and scores, nay hundreds, tame as chickens; their tiny shrill twitter was like the tuning of myriads of violins.
That afternoon we went down to Tule Lake and buried three dead bodies, being of the Brotherton family, the father and two sons, and the next day we buried four more, after which I left this squad and returned to my ranch to get my two hired men away, which took me three days.
This hunter was, some months before I had fallen in with him, making the best of his way down the valley of the Tule Lakes from the interior, with a heavy pack of furs on his back, his never-erring rifle in his hand, and his two dogs by his side. He was joined at the northermost end of the valley by the merchant I had spoken of, who was armed only with sword and pistols.
A few days later Jack came to my house and said: "Agent no come to-morrow, I go Tule Lake, take all Injuns. Plenty fish Tule Lake, easy catch them." To this I did not reply.
"Is it a large town?" Alessandro sighed. "Dear Senorita, it is not a town; it is only a little village not more than twenty houses in all, and some of those are built only of tule. There is a chapel, and a graveyard. We built an adobe wall around the graveyard last year. That my father said we would do, before we built the fence round the village."
As soon as the settlers could fort up for mutual protection, the entire forces of regulars and volunteers were concentrated at Van Bremer's ranch west of the lava beds under General Wheaton and at Land's ranch on the east side of Tule Lake and directly north of the stronghold. Such was the disposition of the forces when I arrived at headquarters at Van Bremer's ranch.
Could a stranger have been placed blindfold in one of them, and then allowed to look about him, the flat roofs and light appearance of most of the houses would have forced him to declare that he had entered a tropical town of the far east. Many of the buildings were of musquit pickets, set upright in the ground, lashed together with strips of hide, and thatched with the tule before mentioned.
Alessandro could not remember the words, only that after them he set his teeth, and dropping the bridle, laid his head down between Benito's ears, and whispered to him; and Benito never stopped, but galloped on all that day, till he came into Temecula; and there Alessandro saw the roofless houses, and the wagons being loaded, and the people running about, the women and children wailing; and then they showed him the place where his father lay on the ground, under the tule, and jumping off Benito he let him go, and that was the last he ever saw of him.
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