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Updated: August 10, 2024
Valois watches secretly the Spanish quarters of all the mountain towns and the great ranchos. The Louisianian knows that every gambling-shop and dance-house is a centre of spies and marauders. The throngs of unnoticed Mexicans, in a land where every traveller is an armed horseman, enable these robber fiends to mingle with the innocent.
"But tell me, señores, is there any venta or place of entertainment where I can get a night's lodging, and dress the wounds which these dogs have given me?" "There is no venta or public place to which we can take you," replied Andrew; "but as for a night's lodging, and dressing your wounds, that you can have at our ranchos.
Her husband stood by her, and she indicated Elena by a motion of her fan. "Is she not beautiful to-night, our little one?" she asked proudly. "See how pink her cheeks are! Her eyes shine like stars. She is the handsomest of all our children, viejo." "Yes," he said, something like tenderness in his cold blue eyes, "there is no prettier girl on twenty ranchos.
Horses are always ready saddled in Spanish ranchos, and in half an hour from the time of our arrival we were again "loping" in the staring sunlight. But not as cheerfully as before. George and myself were weighed down by restraint, and Altascar was gravely quiet.
Simple and artless in her manners, yet possessing the early maturity of her race, she set her guests at ease and entertained them with stories of life on the great ranchos, while her mother was busy with household duties. "It was ten days before Don José Argüello returned from Monterey and in the meantime no business could be transacted.
After a happy day in the woods came "the late return at twilight, when the younger children were all asleep in the slow carreta and the Indians were singing hymns as they drove the linen-laden horses down the dusky ravines." As at the missions, soon the ranchos, little was raised for sale save hides and tallow from the cattle.
"They are after John Power and Pio Lenares and their lieutenants. After that awful murder in the mountains the other day, the men of San Luis and the ranchos swore they would hunt them out, and this morning they traced them to Los Quervos. I suppose they have made a barricade in the willows, and the Vigilantes are trying to fire them out." "Heart of Saint Peter! Thou little brat!
To the young people upon the ranchos the arrival of a trading vessel was a great event.
At length, he paused upon the crest of a hill overlooking the ranchos, and cast his eye below him to the southward. Then, suddenly flinging up his arms, he uttered a great cry. There it was. The Wheat! The Wheat! In the night it had come up. It was there, everywhere, from margin to margin of the horizon. The earth, long empty, teemed with green life.
We met and passed many young Indian women, riding by two or three together on the same horse: they, as well as many of the young men, were strikingly handsome, their fine ruddy complexions being the picture of health. Besides the toldos, there were three ranchos; one inhabited by the Commandant, and the two others by Spaniards with small shops. We were here able to buy some biscuit.
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