Ranch

“ Already she was miserably homesick for the ranch. She remembered the days she had spent in the little dairy-house, happy in her work, making butter and cheese; skimming the great pans of milk, scouring the copper vessels and vats, plunging her arms, elbow deep, into the white curds; coming and going in that atmosphere of freshness, cleanliness, and sunlight, gay, singing, supremely happy just because the sun shone. ”

“ Her father's ranch lay forty miles from San Lorenzo, high up in the foothills--a sterile tract of scrub--oak and cedar, of manzanita and chaparral, with here and there good grazing ground, and lower down, where the creek ran, a hundred acres of arable land. Behind the house bubbled a big spring which irrigated the orchard and garden.
Teamsters, hauling grain from the Carisa Plains to the San Lorenzo landing, a distance of nearly a hundred miles, would beguile themselves thinking of the apples which old man Ransom would be sure to offer, and the first big drink from the cold spring. ”

“ We passed an occasional lonely farm known as a "milk ranch," or "chicken ranch." There are no farms in California: no matter how small the tract is, it is always a ranch.
In the strong, warm sunshine chance objects on the bare slopes cast intense, purplish shadows. That of a distant tree is as dark as if a pit had been dug under it. That of a bird, flying low, is followed as distinctly as the bird itself. ”

“ There, some two hundred yards distant, upon a patch of open ground partially encircled by dense, willow-scrub, lay a ghostly-shadowed cluster of ranch buildings. The living habitation itself stood upon a slightly raised knoll, hard upon the river-bank. To their nostrils the night air brought the strong, not unpleasant scent of cattle, drifting up from the numerous recumbent bovine forms which dotted the ground all around the ranch. ”

“ From them branched veins supplying the fields with the water that gave them life—the water without which the land was waste and barren; but with which it bore marvellously with the stored fertility of fallow centuries. Away at one end of the ranch, sheltered to north and west by low hills, was the ranch house itself, surrounded by young orchards, the stables, the corrals, the granaries, the cattle sheds, tool and implement houses. ”

“ Life in constant contact with her friends and the breadth of their many interests was in such striking contrast to existence on a ranch, with the nearest neighbor thirty miles in the offing, and with never a look from year to year over the rugged hills that formed the horizon. ”

“ The old ranching days of California are to all intents and purposes past and gone. To be sure there remain many large tracts supporting a single group of ranch buildings, and over which the cattle wander "on a thousand hills." There are even a few, a very few—like the ranch of which I am going to write—that are still undivided, still game haunted, still hospitable, still delightful. ”

“ This discovery simply served to strengthen all the more the theory that the ranch was the site of the missing loot, and again these two sleuths set diligently to work to find it, making an exhaustive hunt of the premises, exploring the barn from mudsill to rafter, prying into every nook and corner of the house, wielding the pick and shovel in the garden, the corrals, the field, questing with the ardor of bloodhounds each spot or locality where a man would be tempted to conceal a stolen fortune. ”

“ In the summer this ranch is covered with green, and little yellow and pink flowers carpet the range for miles. It is at its best then, and is as varied and beautiful in its changes as the ocean.
The ranches that stretch along and away from the Rio Grande River are very different from this; they are owned by Mexicans, and every one on the ranch is a Mexican; the country is desolate here, and dead and dying cattle are everywhere.
No ranch-owner, whether he has fifty thousand or five hundred head of cattle, will ever attempt to help one that may be ailing or dying. ”

“ Urbanity was most contagious. Owen and I made deep bows to the herders, we almost bowed to the sheep in an over-mastering desire to equal the politeness of Ramon, Fidel, Francisco or Tranquilino. What names! The atmosphere of the ranch became so poetic and romantic I should not have been surprised to see Owen adopt long hair and a flowing tie. After a day spent in visiting the sheep camps I returned in an ecstatic mood. ”

“ If I could only reach the ranch and secure my own horse, I felt that no power on earth could chain me to the scenes of my humiliation.
The horses decided me to return. Resaddling at an unknown hour, I rode for the ranch. The animals were refreshed and made good time. As I rode along I tried to convince myself that I could slip into the ranch, secure my own saddle horse, and meet no one except the Mexicans. There was a possibility that Deweese might still be in camp at the new reservoir, and I was hopeful that my employer might not yet be returned from the hunt on the Frio. ”

“ They were two Arapahoes, a Blackfoot, and a Delaware, and they followed the ravine and soon came in sight of the little [Pg 275] mountain pasture, dotted with cedar bushes and sparsely covered with grass, which sloped gently down the mountain side. In the fading twilight the so-called ranch stood vaguely outlined, the nature of its log and adobe walls indiscernible, its mill and the still house looming vaguely over the main building against the darker background of the slope. ”

“ By dint of great exertion we managed to reach the ranch the next evening, where we lay over a day and rigged up a second wagon, purposely for calves. It was the intention to send the stock cattle to my new ranch on the Clear Fork, and releasing all but four men, the idle help about the home ranch were substituted. In moving cattle from one range to another, it should always be done with the coming of grass, as it gives them a full summer to locate and become attached to their new range. ”

“ HOUSING. It was the ranch, and its accompanying necessities in connection with the cattle industry, that carried the marvelous horsemanship of California to its highest degree of skill and perfection. ”

“ The Springs are on a great ranch which covers thousands of acres and supports hundreds of cattle. To reach them one drives over long stretches of plain, partly rich grass, where cattle feed, partly somewhat barren country.
Leaving the Hot Springs, we drove again across the vast sandy stretches and the rich green plains of the Warner Ranch, coming from there through picturesque and somewhat broken country to the [Pg 72] little Pala Mission. Before reaching the Mission one comes along a mountain road cut like a shelf into the hill and very high above the valley. ”

“ I should permit my hair to grow "as God planted it"; I should chasten my bitter tongue and heart; I should cultivate my neighbors, and I should not set myself up against my fellow men. Hm! Sounds very fine, my Scotch friend, but what do you know of what I have been through? How can you know that I am frozen inside?
My ranch—and I would rather write of my ranch [Pg 86] than dig into my personal thoughts and emotions—if there are any left in me—my ranch lies midway between the good grain lands on one side and the hill country, the cattle lands, on the other. I suppose I am part of Yankee Valley. ”

“ Ranch life is often full of thrilling incidents and adventures. The cowboy in his travels about the country looking after cattle, hunting wild game or, in turn, being hunted by yet wilder Indians, finds plenty of novelty and excitement to break any fancied monotony which might be considered as belonging to ranch life. In a number of visits to the range country during the past twenty years, the writer has had an opportunity to observe life on a ranch, and experience some of its exciting adventures. ”

“ A house, it would seem, is almost the least important part of a ranch; one can camp, with frying pan and blankets, in the shade of a bush or the shelter of canvas. But to do anything upon a ranch, one must have many things—burnable things, for the most part, as Manley was to learn by experience when he left Val at the hotel and rode out, the next day, to Cold Spring Coulee. ”

“ Only my ranch is ever so much bigger than his pastures, even all of them put together. And there are very few fences around any of my fields, so the cattle or horses might easily stray off, or be taken.
"Because of that I have to hire men—cowboys they are called—to watch my cattle and horses, to see that they do not run away and that no white men or Indians come and run away with them. ”

“ In about ten days we reached the ranch near Eureka; it was set in five thousand acres of prairie, a big frame dwelling, that would hold twenty men; but it wasn't nearly so well-built as the great, brick stable, the pride of Reece's eye, which would house forty horses and provide half a dozen with good loose boxes besides, in the best English style. ”

“ Bailey and Bell, ranch foremen, and as dauntless spirits as ever the Texas border nurtured; the ranch bookkeeper, a young man “short” on experiences and “long” on hope; Epitacio, an Indian hunter, since outlawed; William, the colored cook; four buckskin Mexican punchers; an old man who was useless for practical purposes, but who was said to be “funny” in Spanish; and two burro men. We were that day to go to the farthest outlying ranch, called the Casa Camadra, and then to stop for a short hunt and to give the punchers time to “gentle” some steers for work-cattle. ”

“ All this time we had been working steadily away from the ranch. Long zigzags and side trips carried us little forward, and a constant leftward tendency swung us always around, until we had completed a half circle of which the ranch itself was the centre. The irrigated fields had given place to open country of a semi-desert character grown high with patches of greasewood, sagebrush, thorn-bush; with wide patches of scattered bunch grass; and stretches of alkali waste. ”

“ While the registry of cattle brands in the local western newspaper always includes among its symbols some three-ply hook or decimal fraction or swastika design that stands for the ranch of an enterprising and successful woman, there is always a suggested possibility to the mind of the young girl that lends fervor to her efforts. It is not forbidden that she should excel and even have a ranch of her own. [Pg 111]
The author knows of an efficient woman who owned and ran for twenty-five years a ranch of fifty thousand acres in the midst of the southern Rockies. ”

“ The ranch comprises about 57,000 acres of land, and is the largest body of comparatively level land at even an elevation of 3500 feet in Southern California. It is an immense circular valley, rock ribbed and mountain bound. Out of it, through a narrow gorge to the southwest, flows the San Luis Rey River. The ranch is well watered. Much of it during the winter season is semi-bog or swamp land, and at all times affords wonderful grazing for stock. ”

“ We rode out the corral gate and directly into the open country. The animals chafed to be away; and when we loosened the reins, leaped forward in long bounds. Over the rough country they skimmed like swallows, their hoofs hardly seeming to touch the ground, the powerful muscles playing smoothly beneath us like engines. After a mile of this we pulled up, and set about the serious business of the day.
One after another we oversaw all the major activities of such a ranch; outside, I mean, of the ranch enclosure proper where were the fowls, the vegetable gardens, and the like. ”

“ But at last, one glad day, capricious Fate, relenting, led our brave scouts straight up the green and shining hills of Paradise into the country of the Pointed Firs, where in a little emerald basin they found the enchanted land. The place was large enough to be divided into two ranches, each provided with both tillable and wood land. ”

“ ON A CATTLE RANCH—AN UNRULY STEER.
With the work of a cow ranch or horse ranch there comes more excitement. Every man on such a ranch has a string of eight or ten horses for his own riding, and there is a great deal of exciting galloping and hot riding across the plains; and the work in a stampede at night, or in line-riding during the winter, or in breaking the fierce little horses to the saddle, is as exciting as it is hard and dangerous. ”

“ If he is at the home ranch in winter he spends the long evenings before an open hearth fire of blazing logs and by the light of the fire and the doubtful aid of a tallow dip lounges the hours away in reading and cogitation ”

“ They are no more ranchmen than the absentee landlord who lives in his London house is a gentleman farmer.
The largest ranch in the United States, and probably in the world, owned by one person, is in Texas, and belongs to Mrs. Richard King, the widow of Captain Richard King. It lies forty-five miles south of Corpus Christi. ”

“ From the ranch we rode for the encinal ridges and sandy lands to the southeast, where the fallow-weed still throve in rank profusion, and where our heaviest steers were liable to range. By riding far from the watering points we encountered the older cattle, and within an hour after leaving the ranch I was showing some of the largest beeves on Las Palomas. ”

“ Anybody can have it that wants it. I make 'em a present of it, with Dakota thrown in. You remember, Bobby, the last time I was at the ranch? All hands on deck at two bells in the morning watch, a twenty-mile sail on a bucking bronco, then back to the ranch, where we shipped a cargo of food that would sink a tramp, A gallon or so of soup in the hold, a saddle of venison, a broiled antelope, and six vegetables in the forward hatchway, with three kinds of pie in the bunkers. ”