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Updated: June 18, 2025
Breezes sweeping through the pines of Monterey brought no murmur from the south and east of the thunder crash of cannon on the unfought fields of Mexico. No drowsy vaquero sentinel, watching the outposts of Monterey, could catch a sound of the rumbling wheels and tramping feet of that vast western immigration soon to tread wearily the old overland and the great southern route.
There remained but Brand Williams the foreman, Collie, and the sturdy, hard-riding Miguel, a young Spanish vaquero who was devoted to but two things in life, his splendid pinto pony, and the Moonstone Ranch. The others had been lured to the new oil-fields up north to the excitement of Goldfield, or to Mexico City, where even more excitement promised.
He was dressed as a vaquero, but with his companions' like exaggeration of detail; yet, while his spurs were enormous, and his sombrero unusually expansive, he still clung to his high shirt-collars and accurately tied check cravat. "Well?" he said, approaching them. "Well?" said Crosby. "Well?" repeated Brace. After this national salutation, the three Americans regarded each other silently.
"What was bringing him to the hacienda, then for that is upon the route? He must have some object in coming this way." "O yes! he came to ask Don Augustin to take him into his service as a vaquero." "It is evident," said the Spaniard, in a tone of mockery, "that you have gained his full confidence and know all about him." "I flatter myself, my perspicacity "
On went the bull, and after him the eager and excited horsemen. Another dragoon soon tried his "pluck," and also failed; and then a vaquero, and another horseman, and another, with like success each failure being hailed by a groan from the crowd.
Behind him came Lupito, the young vaquero who had taken Pancho's place on the hacienda, with his new wife, and following them, if you had been there, you might have seen Pedro's wife and baby, and Rafael and José and Doña Josefa, and Pablo and the Twins with Juan and Ignacio and a crowd of other children and grown people whose names I cannot tell you because I do not know them all.
Elena produced the pencil and paper she had managed to purloin from her father's table, and kneeling beside her faithful vaquero, wrote a note on his back. It took her a long time to coin that simple epistle, for she never had written a love-letter before. But Pedro knelt like a rock, although his old knees ached.
Passionate as had been his denial of all this, it was as nothing compared to his denunciation of Stewart. "Senor Stewart, he keel my Vaquero!" shouted Don Carlos, as, sweating and spent, he concluded his arraignment of the cowboy. "Him you must arrest! Senor Stewart a bad man! He keel my vaquero!" "Do you hear thet?" yelled Hawe.
The animal, soon ascertaining that he cannot release himself from the rope, submits to be pulled along to the place of execution. Arriving here, the vaquero winds the lasso round the legs of the doomed beast, and throws him to the ground, where he lies perfectly helpless and motionless.
"That is true enough," replied Benito, "but the wolf never howls so near the tiger, till after the tiger has taken his prey and is busy devouring it. Then his howl is a humble prayer for the other to leave him something. "This is strange," continued the vaquero, as the prairie wolf was heard to utter another long whine. "Hark! another! yes another prairie wolf and on the opposite side too!"
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