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Those who lived in the scattered ranchos forsook their homes during the night, and betook themselves to the town and the larger haciendas for shelter. These last were shut up as soon as darkness approached, and regular sentries posted upon their azoteas, who kept watch until morning.
There were no settlements on these bays or rivers, and the few ranchos and Missions were remote and widely separated. Not only the neighborhood of our anchorage, but the entire region of the great bay, was a solitude.
Encouraged by this indifference, the Hounds naturally grew bolder and bolder. They considered they had terrorized the rest of the community, and they began to put on airs and swagger in the usual manner of bullies everywhere. On Sunday afternoon of July 15, they made a raid on some California ranchos across the bay, ostensibly as a picnic expedition, returning triumphant and very drunk.
On that assurance, señor, you may unburden your breast to me: you will find in mine no duplicity whatever. The gitanilla is my relation, and entirely under my control. If you desire her for a wife, myself and all other relations will be quite willing; and if for a mistress, we will not make any squeamish objections, provided you have money, for covetousness never departs from our ranchos."
"Bueno, I think I go for walk, and bime by I come to the ranchería, and while I am there I hear terreeblay thing from old Pepe. He say he hear for sure that the bad Indians who was no make Christian by the padres and living very wild in the mountains come killing all the white peoples on the ranchos.
He is discouraged with an isolated western empire producing nothing but hides and tallow. He shares the general opinion that no agriculture can succeed in this rainless summer land of California. Hardly a plough goes afield. On the half-neglected ranchos the owners of thousands of cattle have neither milk nor butter. Fruits and vegetables are unattainable.
'In early days, when Americans were coming in to Santa Barbara, there were many cattle-buyers among them; and there were large bands of robbers all over the country who were ready to pounce on these travellers on their way to the great cattle ranchos, kill them, and steal their money and clothes, as well as their horses and trappings.
But at Virgin Bay we were forced to go at it again under disadvantages; for the town had no surrounding circle of cultivation like that of Rivas, having been but recently redeemed from the forest by the Transit Company, and our only resource was a few distant ranchos scattered up and down the lake shore.
The house until within two weeks of the wedding was full of visitors, neighbors whose ranchos lay ten leagues away or nearer, and the people of the town; all of them come to offer congratulations, chatter on the corridor by day and dance in the sala by night. The court was never free of prancing horses pawing the ground for eighteen hours at a time under their heavy saddles.
They had been traveling for many days southward, through a wilderness inhabited only by wild beasts and Indians, without seeing a human being, except a few Indians, although they had passed a number of deserted ranchos on their way down the Sacramento Valley, until Thure and Bud rode into their midst.
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