Rancher

“ Returning for a summer visit to their western cousin’s ranch, the two eastern lads learn, with delight, that they are to be allowed to become boy ranchers in earnest. The three lads decide to go into the venture together. ”

“ It was the custom of the ranchers to keep their cattle in the hills until they were nearly ready for market, then drive them down into Salt River Valley, turn them into the alfalfa-fields and let them fatten before shipment. ”

“ Its inhabitants are principally rancheros, who visit their ranches two or three times in a year to see to the marking and killing of their cattle, and then spend the remainder of the year in the town, enjoying life as much as possible. ”

“ The newer ranchers here have 342 planted their orchards and are sitting still for the ‘seven lean years’ till their orchards begin to bear, instead of getting busy with truck stuff, poultry and pigs to keep them going. ”

“ After five or six hours’ travelling through this country of marsh and of palm forest we reached the ranch for which we were heading. In the neighborhood stood giant fig-trees, singly or in groups, with dense, darkgreen foliage. Ponds, overgrown with water-plants, lay about; wet meadow, and drier pastureland, open or dotted with palms and varied with tree jungle, stretched for many miles on every hand. There are some thirty thousand head of cattle on the ranch, besides herds of horses and droves of swine, and a few flocks of sheep and goats. ”

“ The ranch rested upon the summit of a lenient slope. The ambient prairie, diversified by arroyos and murky patches of brush and pear, lay around us like a darkened bowl at the bottom of which we reposed as dregs. Like a turquoise cover the sky pinned us there. The miraculous air, heady with ozone and made memorably sweet by leagues of wild flowerets, gave tang and savour to the breath. In the sky was a great, round, mellow searchlight which we knew to be no moon, but the dark lantern of summer, who came to hunt northward the cowering spring. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Once a day the cattle, in twos and threes, in bands, in strings, could be seen winding leisurely down the deep-trodden and converging trails to the water troughs at the home ranch, there leisurely to drink, and then leisurely to drift away into the saffron and violet and amethyst distances of the desert. At ten other outlying ranches this daily scene was repeated. All these cattle belonged to the man, great by reason of his priority in the country, the balance of his even character, and the grim determination of his spirit. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Interminable plains, that occasionally roll into waves, stretch away to the horizon to right and left, dotted with skeletons of dead cattle and widely scattered herds of living ones. Here and there a cow-boy's shed, and here and there a ranch of the ordinary primitive type, and here and there a dug-out, are all the "features" of the long ride. An occasional emigrant waggon perhaps breaks the dull, dead monotony of the landscape, and in one place there is a solitary bush upon a mound. A hawk floats in the air above a prairie-dog village. ”

“ Besides, there’s plenty to be doing down at the home ranch. Over yonder, a few miles more, are the cattle, and some more of the boys. There’s about five hundred head. I used to have a larger herd, in the old Texan trail days, but there are few real ranches left now. They’re all stockmen and farmers. I’ve got some of the last long-horned steers in the county, now, out yonder, and when I settled here, they were all Texans. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In a good many parts of the West a ranch simply means a farm; but I shall not use it in this sense, since the advantages and disadvantages of a farmer's life, whether it be led in New Jersey or Iowa, have often been dwelt upon by men infinitely more competent than I am to pass judgment. Accordingly, when I speak of ranching I shall mean some form of stock-raising or sheep-farming as practised now in the wilder parts of the United States, where there is still plenty of land which, because of the lack of rainfall, is not very productive for agricultural purposes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But give me the prairie, smooth and level as far as the eye can reach! There's nothing like it in all the world! The open prairie, a cool, spring day like this, and a horse that will go till it's ready to fall dead—that is life! Who is it that lives over there?" she asked, pointing toward some ranch buildings, nestled in a low, green valley. [Pg 47]
"That's the Englishman's place," answered the soft-voiced twin.
"Sheep-man," explained Dave disgustedly. "See them sheds?"
"Oh, the new man by the name of Livingston. Do you boys know him?" asked the girl curiously. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Life on a ranch has the glamour of romance about it. The town-bred Englishman, dissatisfied with his lot, lets his fancy roam to the prairies of North America or the pampas of South America, and his imagination glows with the conjured picture of cowboy life—quaintly dressed, always well-mounted, and with nothing to do but ride over the plains rounding [Pg 104] up wandering cattle. As I have explained in an earlier chapter, many of the large estancias are not occupied by their owners; a manager with a salary is put in charge, and he usually has several young Englishmen as assistants. ”

“ I know a good deal of ranching in western North Dakota, eastern Montana and north-eastern Wyoming. My ranch is in the Bad Lands of the Little Missouri, a good cattle-country, with shelter, traversed by a river, into which run here and there perennial streams. It is a dry country, but not in any sense a desert. Year in and year out we found that it took about twenty-five acres to support a steer or cow. When less than that was allowed the ranch became overstocked, and loss was certain to follow. ”

“ I bought the ranch from an old settler who wanted to move farther west.'
"'It suits me,' says I. 'Quiet and retirement are good for a man sometimes. And I need a job. I can tend bar, salt mines, lecture, float stock, do a little middle-weight slugging, and play the piano.'
"'Can you herd sheep?' asks the little ranchman. ”

“ An occasional ranch comes in sight, and along the old county road a waggon or two goes crawling by, and then we reach Mona, a pretty little rustic spot, but the civilizing radiance of corn-fields gradually dies away, and the relentless sage-brush supervenes, with here and there a lucid interval of ploughed ground in the midst of the demented desert. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every week a man from the ranch made the rounds of the sheep camps, carrying mail, tobacco, and food,—brown sugar, coffee, flour, bacon, beans, potatoes, dried apples. On the morning when this was to happen I have watched the flickering light of the lantern travel back and forth over the ceiling of the room where I was supposed to be asleep, as the finishing touches were put on the load, and the horses were brought and hitched to the wagon before daylight, so that the long rounds could be made before night. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”