COLONEL RICHARD PEYTON stepped to the edge of his veranda and looked up into the early morning through the branches of his over-arching live oak trees. He was very proud of those trees, for they were taller and more wide spread and branchy than any other live oaks in Arguello County; and that is saying a good deal. In fact so impressive were they that the Colonel had named the five or six acres they occupied Cathedral Oaks, thus placing them apart in all minds from the Rancho de la Corona del Monte, which was the Colonel's real property. Every morning thus the Colonel stepped early to his veranda's edge and looked up. And every morning something mysterious of the new day came down and met his spirit; whether it was a sound, as the low soft cooing of mourning doves; or a scent, as of something released by the dampness of fog or dew or the winter rains; or a sight, as of the slant of golden or sliver light, or a solemn belated owl, or the sailing of slow clouds down the wind. These things he absorbed, and they grew into his subconsciousness, and thus became part of him, so that at last he rose to a mild scorn of all who did not likewise arise betimes.
"By Godfrey, Allie!" he would cry to his plump, bright-eyed, alert little wife, as he strode around the breakfast table to kiss her ceremonially. "I cannot understand these slug-abeds! They miss the best of the day!"
And then he would seat himself across the table and beam about. The dining room thereupon resumed its natural size; for as long as the Colonel was afoot it became much smaller than even its actual and modest dimensions. The Colonel was not over six feet, and he was slender; but he had presence. Everything except the Cathedral Oaks and the Sierra del Sur seemed rather undersized when he was around—and, they only just fitted. As a matter of fact the ranch house, when analyzed right down and stripped of its vines and its coco-matting and its big pink seashells and its wonderful haircloth mahogany and its doilies and stuffed birds and steel engravings and traditions and such matters, would have turned out to be merely a rather small one-storied board-and-batten structure with a wide veranda running all the way around it, set comfortably amid the huge live oaks. It took a very clear-headed man to do this analysis. I know of two only; and they made their discovery with considerable surprise.
But this particular morning of one spring of the eighties was an especial occasion. The Colonel did not, as was his usual custom, take a look at his oaks and his green half moon of lawn with its border of plumbago and geraniums and other bright flowers, glance down the perspective of his avenue of palms that led to the distant Camino Real, breathe deeply of the sparkling morning air, and so return to his table. On this one day were the most important matters afoot. It was Allie's birthday, and on that anniversary the Rancho de la Corona del Monte—hereafter, except on ceremonial occasions, let us call it, like the rest of the country, Corona del Monte for short—turned itself inside out and had the biggest barbecue picnic of the year. So the Colonel put on his low-crowned, wide-brimmed Stetson and took his way around the corner of the house.
The Colonel, as has been said, was tall and slender. Beneath his Stetson his clean-shaven face with its hawknose and kindly eyes looked remarkably young and vigorous. Yet on closer inspection you could not have missed the network of fine quizzical lines that seamed his countenance; nor the delightful winter-apple quality in the colour of his lean ruddy cheeks; nor the calm, lofty dignified set of the mouth as in the portraits of Washington, Franklin, and their compeers, which means not so much loftiness of soul as lack of teeth. No, the Colonel was getting on. You never would have suspected it from the movements of his long figure in its black frock coat. The Colonel never suspected it at all. No one had told him, not even life itself.
He moved around to the back of the house, humming something quite tuneless under his breath. On his way he did a number of little things of which he was not fully aware. He plucked successively leaves of the bay, the camphor tree, and sweet geranium, rolled them in the palms of his hands and inhaled their aroma; he took off the cover of the olla—the earthen evaporation jar hanging from a tree—and inspected its supply of cool drinking water; he pulled up a number of weeds from the brilliant flower borders and concealed them carefully beneath the shrubbery; a flaming humming bird poised buzzing in front of his face—he held motionless until the little creature had darted away. None of these things could he have repeated to you. A modern psychologist would have told you they were products of his subliminal. Manuelo, ranch foreman, at present superintending the preparations for the barbecue, would have shrugged his shoulders and said:
"Eet is the señor. He ees like that."
Same thing.
But near the kitchen door the Colonel awakened from this sauntering, buzzing happy dreaming. In the course of his progress hung the substitute of that day and place for the modern icebox—a framework covered with layers of burlap over which water constantly sprayed. The evaporation lowered the temperature. This contraption possessed, of course, a door; and the Colonel's hand reached for it, as his hand had reached for the fragrant herbages or the cover of the olla. And then the alarm bell of his mind rang violently. The Colonel withdrew his hand as from a red hot iron, and looked about him with a comically guilty air. None too soon. Almost on the instant the back porch screen door opened behind him.
"Good morning, Sing Toy," said the Colonel.
"You wan' blekfus?" demanded Sing Toy.
"Presently. Pretty soon," said the Colonel, managing a dignified retreat. He did not hasten his steps; yet one psychically endowed would have said he hastened. The expression of the calm, bland white-clad Chinaman on the doorstep was as blank as still water; yet the sensitive would have distinguished accusation and reproof. Sing Toy had a queue, as did all the Chinamen of those days. It was almost as expressive in some ways as a dog's tail. The rest of Sing Toy remained as immovable as a bronze Buddha, but the tip of his queue wriggled ever so slightly, and in some subtle manner disapproval of all who investigated his domain overcast the day.
Thus roused the Colonel stepped out more briskly. He passed the large stables and their neatly whitewashed corral fences with hardly more than a glance, opened two big swing gates and proceeded with brisk steps between a double row of small houses toward another group of live oaks beyond it and atop a small, flat hill.
But he was not to be permitted to pass unchecked. A bevy of very small brown children swooped down on him noisily, came to a dead halt and an equally dead silence a few paces from him and stared, round-eyed and expectant. They were very handsome children, somewhat grimy, with sketchy garments and bare feet. The Colonel thrust his hands behind the coat-tails of his frock coat and contemplated them gravely. They stared back without either embarrassment or impertinence.
"Buenos dias, niños," observed the Colonel at last.
"Buenas dias, Don Ricardo!" returned the little group in chorus.
From this point you are to consider the Colonel as speaking in the soft and beautiful language of California, with a deepening and mellowing of his natural manner. The Colonel continued to survey them for some moments, his blue eyes twinkling, the fine network of lines deepening. The children stared back.
"I will wish you good day," said the Colonel at last, moving as though to pass.
The great soft Spanish eyes about him clouded with dismay, the red full lips drooped at the corners, but the polite chorus came bravely back:
"God be with you, señor."
The Colonel laughed aloud, thrust his hand in his coat-tail pocket, and brought it forth filled with little hard peppermint lozenges. These he distributed, one to each, receiving a succession of staid "muchas gracias, señor." He continued his walk. The children, sucking ecstatically at the fiery sweetmeat, fell gravely in behind. Some lank black-and-tan hounds stretched at full length in the dust rapped vigorously with thick tails—thus raising a smudge—; arose and shook themselves—thus raising another; and trailed along, too.
Half way up the gentle slope that led to the second grove of live oaks the Colonel was met by a very lean, dark saturnine man with long, drooping moustaches and deep, vertical muscle-lines running across his countenance. He too wore the low-crowned Stetson with the addition of a woven, horsehair band. As to the rest of his costume, he affected the modern rather than the traditional, although he was evidently pure Spanish. That is to say, he wore a vest but no coat, and tucked his striped trousers into soft-legged, high-heeled boots. His shirt sleeves, however, were bound by very frilly pink elastic bands with huge rosettes; his waist was encircled by a leather belt studded with conchas of silver; at his heels clanked loose spurs of great size, inlaid with silver, jingling with little clappers at the rowels, strapped with broad carved leather, ornamented at the buttons with silver conchas fully two inches across. A picturesque enough figure to satisfy any small boy, even though he carried no traditional "gun," nor wore traditional chaparejos—"chaps." This was Manuelo, major domo, after the Colonel the most important figure on del Monte.
He swept his hat from his head; the Colonel raised his Stetson. Formal and stately greetings were exchanged according to the formulae in use among the Spanish. They fell in step and continued up the hill.
"All is in order, señor?" the Colonel asked.
"All is in order, señor," assured Manuelo. "It was a matter of anxiety that young Juan had not returned with the pepper sauce promised us by the Doña Paredis. There is no pepper sauce like that of the Doña Paredis."
"That is true, señor," observed the Colonel.
"But happily he has returned at dawn. Why inquire? Here is the pepper sauce of the Doña Paredis delivered—Bright eyes or bright wine, señor; who knows?"
"And to leave either at dawn," said the Colonel, "is both penance and testimony of a soul devoted to duty in spite of all."
"Or a late remembrance that he must meet Manuelo," added that worthy, a little grimly. "But here are matters for your inspection, Don Ricardo."
Beneath the wide spreading branches of the live oak tree had been built row after row of long board tables flanked by benches. These were evidently of long past date, for their lumber was browned and weather stained. But already they were partly concealed by pyramids of fruit cunningly heaped, by batteries of cutlery and tin plates and cups, by long loaves of bread, by tin pans full of walnuts and almonds, by bottles and glasses of condiments and jellies. A number of young girls and older children were darting here and there with armfuls of flowers which they arranged artfully still further to hide the brown planks—brodea, the great white Matilija poppies, Mariposa lilies, branches of mountain lilac, and above all great quantities of glowing golden-orange California poppies, like morsels of sunset entrapped. A very fat Californian woman sat on one of the benches and directed these activities. She had smooth, shining black hair, and a smooth, shining brown countenance, and beautiful black eyes from which unexpectedly youth peered.
"The tables are beautiful, señora," said the Colonel.
"Ay de mi," sighed the fat woman. "These children—they know not the old arrangements of flowers. When I was a young girl——"
"The caballeros gave you little time for flowers, señora, that I'll wager. It must be so, for never have I seen the tables better than to-day."
Señora Manuelo raised her fan from her lap to her face. The change was startling. The lower grosser part of her countenance was covered. Only were visible the slumberous youthful eyes, the smooth brow, the shining black parted hair. Returned for a magic moment was all the beauty of her youth. The Colonel bowed in farewell, shaking his head slightly.
"No, never time for flowers, señora; for men are not blind."
Two of the tables at the end were covered with white table-cloths, and furnished out with china and glassware and silver. This was for the Colonel's personal guests as distinguished from the ranch retainers and those of his neighbours. Here two pretty girls were engaged, selecting from some wash tubs of roses. They were very pretty in a soft young rounded fashion, with the lustrous, dreamy eyes and shining hair of their race. Not yet had they begun to ape the complexities of the American toilette. Their rather full, curved young figures were clad in plain white starched muslin, and their hair was parted smoothly and confined in the back by high fan-shaped combs. Each had thrust one of the roses intended for the decorations over her left ear. I regret to say also that each had plastered on an inordinate quantity of white powder; but that was the custom. At the Colonel's approach with Manuelo they ceased their ativities and stood side by side.
"The table is most beautiful," said the Colonel.
"Si, señor," they bobbed together, breathlessly.
"You have plenty of roses?"
"Si, señor."
"Do you enjoy yourselves at the merienda?"
"Si, señor."
The Colonel surveyed them quizzically. They were very correct, very respectful, very much in earnest to do the right thing before the master of the Rancho. His hand sought his coat-tail pocket.
"Did you ever see anything like that before?" he demanded, holding up one of his peppermint lozenges.
They looked at each other, and their hands groped for each other seeking encouragement at so embarrassing a question.
"Señorita Ynez Calderon, and you, Señorita Dolores Ygnacio," said the Colonel, "you are a pair of solemn frauds. You treat me, me, as though I were the holy father and the blessed San Antonio and a total stranger, all in one. And last year," he turned to the saturnine Manuelo, "last year, mind you, they stood before me barefoot, in camisa only, and begged me for these!" Again he held up the peppermint.
The girls dissolved toward one another in horrified protest.
"Oh, Señor! Oh, Don Ricardo! Not last year! Many years ago! We are doñas grown these five years!"
The Colonel bore down on them, bowed low, and bending forward in his most courtly fashion stopped their protests by thrusting between their lips one apiece of the celebrated peppermints. Then he bowed again gravely and turned away, leaving them giggling, their dignity all gone.
The two men now approached the heart and centre of all this activity. Behind three tables of a construction more substantial than those just visited was enclosed a large open space. Here several fires were burning. Over some of these fires kettles had been suspended. Others had been built under grills or grates, and were being plied with oak and willow fuel in order to establish beds of coals. The pits had been heated, and even now contained the bull's head, the huge joints, and the mutton of the main barbecue. All this was presided over by a very sleek, stout good-looking Californian, who was perspiring freely even thus early, and who wore a look of busyness, responsibility, and care evidently out of his usual character. He seemed to have two official assistants—young swarthy chaps: at least, two young men of the many present seemed to be doing something. One was whetting a finishing edge to a pile of long, thin butcher knives. The other was mixing something in a bowl. Of the rest a few squatted about on their heels, staring rather vacantly and in general at the preparations; a few more seemed engrossed in some sort of game about a blanket; but most were, though idle, very much interested in what was passing—especially girls. Two of them had guitars on which they strummed as a sort of sweet and plaintive undertone to their conversation. Every few moments they, or two or three of the others, or even all the group together, would catch a few bars of the lilt and sing it forth full voiced—a few bars only, so that it seemed almost as though a passing breeze had lifted and let fall melody. To one side, on rough trestles, rested two aromatic barrels. A single old one-eyed man sat on a camp stool by them. Two laughing youths, their hands on each other's shoulders, stood before him.
"Not one drop, José, most worthy José, when we tell you that our throats are dry from the telling of your praises? And see, we have ridden across the arroyo trail since last evening. It is a long ride, as you well know. Ours is not a case like all of these others. If Don Ricardo were to know of us he would instantly command us refreshments."
"He can easily know of it. Tell him yourself. Here he comes," growled José, with considerable relish.
The two youths took one glance of consternation over their shoulders and fairly ran right and left like scattered quail, pursued by delighted laughter from all those who had heard.
After a word with the grim old guardian of the wine, the Colonel passed to the open-air kitchen. The young men instantly arose to their feet, offered and received a stately greeting, and as instantly slid back into their strenuous occupations.
"How is the meat, Benito?" the Colonel asked the cook. "Does it meet with your approval? Will it be worthy of our guests and of your skill?"
Benito's smooth, brown moon-face took on an expression of ludicrously painful consideration.
"The beef, Don Ricardo," he replied, "is the best we have had since the year when the blessed Virgin sent the October rains. Especially is that true of the roasting beef; which is, of course, as it should be. But the mutton——" he turned half away in an eloquent movement, as though abandoning the whole question in despair.
"The mutton is as good as the beef," struck in Manuelo. "I myself gave orders for it to come from the hills on Los Quitos. I myself saw it both before and after killing. The mutton is good."
"It is undoubtedly as the Señor says," replied Benito politely, conveying quite the opposite opinion.
"We have good mutton at Los Quitos," said the Colonel, "and both Mariano and Manuelo should know how to select. What is the matter with this, Benito?"
"The mutton is good, I do not deny, Señor. It is in prime condition, it is tender. But the mutton of the Island is better. There is a flavour, very faint to be sure, but which one can distinguish—it would have been better to have brought the Island sheep, as always, instead of going afield to this Los Quitos——"
"Fortunately we have Benito with his knowledge of the old days to make up the difference, " said the Colonel. "This rascal Benito," he addressed the saturnine Manuelo, "would be relieved of all trouble. He could make a delicious carne of a burro."
The Colonel's little convoy had by now succumbed to various temptations and had scattered. Only remained to him Manuelo and two solemn hounds. The former he dismissed. The latter accompanied him on his return journey.
At the edge of the live oak grove he stopped for a moment and looked abroad, removing his Stetson to allow the wandering breeze to play across his high, narrow forehead and to lift his rather long, silky white hair. Beyond the village of his retainers, beyond the wide low barns and sheds and the whitewashed corrals, beyond the green of the Cathedral Oaks, spread the broad acres of the Rancho. Hill after low hill they rolled, oak dotted like a park, green with the grasses of an abundant year or washed bravely with the brilliant colour of flower-masses as though a gigantic brush had been swept across the slopes. At last they climbed into foothills, and then into the milky slate of mountain ramparts against the sun. But the Colonel knew that they climbed those ramparts and descended part way the other side—thirty thousand of them, these acres. In the opposite direction, across the flat of the valley, across the King's Highway, across the waving of a broad tule marsh, was yet another low rim of hills, also oak-dotted like a park. And over their crest the Colonel could make out a flash which was the sea. Beneath the oaks it was safe to vision the cattle slowly gathering for shade—the Colonel's cattle: and he could only have guessed at the number of them. Up in those sagebrush hills shining gray, up in the chaparral, of the rampart mountains, sheep were moving slowly like something molten that flows—the Colonel's sheep.
As the Colonel stood his eye rested on only two evidences of human occupation other than his own. Against the base of a hill five miles away—or ten—one could not tell, the air was so diamond clear—amid the green of trees gleamed white buildings. These were of the Rancho de las Flores belonging to the Colonel's friend and neighbour, Don Vincente Cazadero. At one time the Rancho de la Corona del Monte had also belonged to Don Vincente, indeed the two properties had been part of the same original grant, but there had been various perplexing matters of borrowings, and extravagance and mortgages and some disputed titles and squatters and a whole host of vexatious stinging little matters. It seemed on the whole simpler to get rid of them at a bite. The bite was Del Monte. Las Flores still comprised forty thousand acres; and Don Vincente and the Colonel had become in the course of thirty years wonderful cronies. So that was all right. The second evidence of human occupation was nearer at hand, in fact a scant half-mile distant. It was a brown little house, and it lay half hidden in the entrance to a cañon. Nothing much but the roof could be distinguished. This was the property of a man named Brainerd and, with its hundred and sixty acres, had once belonged to Del Monte. The Colonel had sold it, right from the heart of his own property, and it was the only bit of original Del Monte not still in his hands. The story is too long to tell here. But Brainerd was a gentleman, and a "lunger," and a widower, and the father of a little girl, and down on his luck, and proud enough to struggle for appearances, and intelligent, and a number of similar matters. To clinch matters he had read and could moderately quote Moby Dick. This seemed at the time of his coming the only available land. Indeed, with the sea on one side, the Sur mountains on the other, the rich walnut and orange farms occupying the third, and Del Monte and Las Flores on the fourth, the little town of Arguello might be said to be pretty well surrounded. To be sure, there were the sagebrush foothills of the Sur, but they were dry, desert, fit only for sheep and quail. Take it all around, a man of moderate means, ordered to live in Arguello valley if he would live at all, would be puzzled to find a little ranch unless he went far out. Then the Colonel happened along. Somehow Brainerd found himself in the little brown house.
But if the Colonel had cared to turn around he could have seen the houses of Arguello only a mile away, with the white Mission on the hill, and again the gleam of the sea, where the coast swept back almost at right angles to form the harbour.
The Colonel did not turn around, however. He stood there straight and slim in his long frock coat, with his fine, lean, kindly old face raised to the sun. and the breeze, and his white hair stirring softly. The sky was very blue, and in its deeps swung buzzards in wide, stately circles. The air was warm and fragrant, and on it floated the clear liquid songs of the meadow larks and the quick buzzy notes of the quail. The sun's warmth fell softly like an essence in suspension, and the Colonel seemed to himself to be soaking it into his physical being as though it were indeed an ethereal, permeating substance. And the Colonel in his simple old heart found it good and thanked his God.
But now on a sudden he waked as though he had been called, and with an appearance of almost guilty haste he strode down the hill. The two hounds, who had been patiently awaiting his pleasure, yawned, stretched and followed after. The Colonel walked briskly around the house to the front door. To the handle of the bell-pull hung a turkey-feather duster as though left by a careless housemaid. It was there a-purpose, however, as it was there on all the bell-pulls in Southern California; and the Colonel put it to its appointed use on his boots.
He crossed the little hallway in two strides and entered the dining room.
His wife Allie sat already at table behind a silver coffee service beneath which burned an alcohol lamp. She was a small, plump, merry looking woman, with black hair in which appeared no thread of white. Her dress was of heavy fine black silk, relieved with white lace. Its cut was very plain and old-fashioned, but possessed a chic of its own that placed Allie definitely above the class of commonplace, small plump women. Her air was of brisk, amused tolerance, with a background of fine competence. Though she did not wear a bunch of keys at her girdle, one felt that it would have been symbolically appropriate for her to have done so. She raised her face for the Colonel's gallant kiss.
"You are very late this morning, Richard," she remarked.
"There was much to attend to. You remember this is a very important day."
The Colonel sat across the table, but immediately arose to set aside a cut-glass bowl of magnificent red roses that had filled the centre of the table.
"I would rather see you, dear, than the most beautiful roses in the world," he answered Allie's murmured protest.
He attacked the sliced oranges before him. A door opened noiselessly to admit the soft-footed Chinaman, bearing a laden tray. He stood waiting. The Colonel dallied with his fruit, telling Allie interestedly his morning adventure, pausing often with his spoon between plate and mouth.
"You eat fluit," broke in the Chinaman finally. "You stop talkee talkee, eat blekfus."
"Well, I declare, Sing Toy!" cried the Colonel.
But Sing Toy, secure in the righteousness of his attitude, budged not one inch from it.
"Belly late," he pointed out without excitement. "You walkee walkee, no catch blekfus, you catch headache. I know." He spoke from the profound empirical wisdom of years of service, in this family; and therefore he spoke in confidence. The Colonel collapsed and meekly devoured his orange. Sing Toy changed the plates and served the food. His calm eye swept the dining room masterfully.
"You change your nightgown," he told Allie, and left the room.
"I swear that Chinaman will drive me beyond bounds!" cried the Colonel.
"He merely meant the laundry boy was going to begin the week's wash to-day," chuckled Allie, placidly. "I am only thankful that he did not say it before our guests. You know perfectly well, Richard, what a faithful dear old thing he is."
"I suppose so," muttered the Colonel, "still——"
Sing Toy thrust his pig-tailed head through the door.
"Hot day, "he announced. "Cunnel go catch thin coat. That one too thick. I fix um on bed. You go puttum on."
In the meantime the mounting sun was beginning to burn away the layer of high fog that had overhung the town. Each night, at this time of year, this blanket crept in from the sea and gathered out of nothing in the coolness of dawn. To one in the town it exactly resembled heavy rain clouds. Indeed, it was always difficult to persuade the tourist that his umbrella and mackintosh were unnecessary, that with absolute certainty it could be stated that those threatening, lowering clouds contained not one drop of rain. To one who had arisen early enough to have ridden up the Sur, it would have looked like a tumbled, shining silver sea through which thrust the peaks of higher hills. From either point of view it appeared a solid and permanent bit of weather that would take some tune and doing to alter.
Nevertheless, about nine o'clock a weird brilliance appeared all at once to permeate the air. The heavy, inert dead clouds seemed suddenly infused with life. A glimpse of overhead blue was hinted and instantly obliterated. A phantom half-suggestion of a mountain peak in full sunshine showed for a moment through a gauze of white misty light. Then between two minutes simultaneously, all over the cup of the heavens, the dark clouds thinned to a veil. The veil was rent in two, twenty, a hundred places. It dissolved. A few shreds, drifting down a new freshness that arose from the sea, alone remained and they melted to nothing before one's eyes. Magically the blue sky was clear, and the sun was sending down its showers of golden warmth. The semi-circle of mountains rose hard and clear in the sparkling air; the sea twinkled with a thousand eyes; the surf lay white along the yellow shore. And none more foolish than the distrustful tourist compelled to convey past concealed contempts his umbrella and his mackintosh.
The town of Arguello began then, as it does now, in a wharf; a long wharf that reached a half mile to find its deep water. It ended indeterminately in open country after two miles. Its one long main street was unpaved, unimproved. All its sidewalks were of wood; and there were no sidewalks except in the "centres of commerce, wealth, and fashion." The buildings in its business part were mostly one-story wooden affairs that pretended to be two-story by means of false fronts. There were, however, a number of pleasing variations, such as a four-storied brick structure with a tower and a loud-belled clock, called the Clock Building. The bank occupied part of its ground floor. All the big men had their offices upstairs; and on its upper floor was located the County Library. There were also a number of wide, deep overgrown old-fashioned gardens with square cupolaed houses—places whose owners had refused to succumb to commercial expansion. Also remained a number of adobe structures with red-tiled roofs, houses that had been there since the earliest Spanish days. Some of these were still occupied by native Spanish California families; but most of the few still remaining on Main Street had become Chinese laundries. Near the head of Main Street, and a block apart, were two hotels. One, called the San Antonio, was three-storied, of brick, sat directly on the street, and had a wooden awning that extended over the sidewalk. The other, called the Fremont, was a huge rambling affair of wooden construction, with broad verandas. It occupied the centre of an extensive garden of palms, rubber, magnolia, and eucalyptus trees, and a great profusion of flowers of both common and rare species. Vines had covered it and shaded it and glorified it with roses, with passion flower, with wistaria, with honeysuckle and many other sweet or brilliant blooms. A half dozen Chinamen were continuously engaged in watering and tending its lawns and gardens. Visitors from the East who had been there more than two weeks knew of a great many especial features to show the newer comers. Such as the black rose; or the LaMarque, whose stem was six inches in diameter; or the cork tree; or the camphor or bay trees, whose leaves you crushed and smelled. And of course they must eat a ripe olive off the tree:—and go around with a very puckered mouth the rest of the morning! You swept into these grounds on a curving, hospitably wide gravelled road and hitched your horse to a heavy rail made of iron pipe.
There were many of these rails, and they were always more or less occupied. Unless one happened to be a very recent and temporary tourist indeed, he never thought of walking even the shortest distances. Horses were extraordinarily cheap, either to buy or hire. All over the town horses, either under saddle or hitched to buggies, phaetons, or surries, dozed under the feathery pepper trees. If one wanted to go two blocks, he used a horse for that purpose. The length of Main Street was lined with them. Most people owned two or three and alternated them in the somnolent job of awaiting their master's pleasure. As a corollary to this state of affairs the saddler's shops were large, and fascinating with the smell of leather, the sight of carved, silver-mounted saddles, of braided rawhide bridles with long morrales, of inlaid spurs and horsehair work, of riatas, of horse-hair cinchas, of fancy cuartas and the like. There were also monstrous frame stables each accommodating hundreds of animals, with corrals and horse troughs and generally a lot of lolloping dogs stretched in the sunny dust, and Mexicans who smoked brown paper cigarettes. From these each morning a long procession set forth. One man would drive a phaeton and lead a half dozen saddle horses attached to the horns of each other's saddles; another would ride and lead another half dozen. In all directions they scattered out through the town, leaving them by ones and twos here and there at the iron pipe hitching rails. When all but one had been delivered, the Mexican boy rode back to the stable, sitting his saddle loosely with the inimitable grace of the "cowboy seat." At noon it was necessary to go after the vehicles. The saddle horses, however, returned of themselves. The only requirement was to tie the reins to the horns so the animals could not stop to graze, to throw the stirrips across the saddles and to slap the beasts on the rump: they returned staidly or friskily home. At noon and toward six o'clock the streets would be full of these riderless animals. The scheme was eminently labour-saving and picturesque; but was later prohibited by law.
From the door of the bank in the Clock Building a man issued, briskly drawing on his gloves. He was followed by a bareheaded clerk who continued talking to him while he unhitched his horse and buggy. The man was rather short and slight, with a large round head, a very ruddy complexion, an old-fashioned white moustache and goatee, and rather bulging blue eyes. He was dressed carefully, though informally. His Panama hat, loose light tweeds and dark tie were eminently conservative and respectable. But in his small, cloth-topped exquisitely fitted patent leather boots one thought to catch his secret pride, his one harmless little vanity. Indeed, even as he finished his conversation with the clerk, he mechanically produced a large silk handkerchief and with it flecked imaginary dust from one foot, then the other. His name was Oliver Mills, and he was the president of the bank he was now quitting in the middle of a busy morning.
"Well, Simpson," he concluded. "You tell him that. And if he isn't satisfied, he will have to come and see me to-morrow. I wouldn't miss showing at the Colonel's jamboree for a dozen of him. In fact, to-day ought by rights to be a bank holiday, so everyone could go."
He gathered up the reins and clucked to his horse. The animal set himself in motion with a great deal of histrionic up and down and not much straightahead. It was rather a shiny and fancy horse, however, with a light tan harness and a wonderful netted fly cover that caparisoned him like a war horse of old even to his ears, and with dangling tassels that danced like jumping-jacks to his every motion. Mr. Mills, however, was apparently in no haste. He held the reins loosely in his lap, over which he had drawn a thin linen robe, and did not reach for the silver-banded whip in the socket. Up the length of Main Street he drove, bowing right and left to his numerous acquaintance, and casting an appreciative and appraising eye on signs of improvement. These would not have astonished a modern hustler, but they satisfied Mr. Mills that his town was moving on and prosperous. He liked the friendly greetings, he was glad to see a wooden sidewalk going down, he enjoyed the feel of the sun pouring on his back.
At the Fremont he turned in and drove up alongside the very wide, shady veranda, whose floor was only just above the level of the ground. A man seated in one of the capacious wooden rocking chairs heaved himself to his feet and came forward. He was of the build known as stocky, and was clad in a well-cut blue serge. His large head was grown closely with a cap of very black and rather coarse curls. His forehead was low and broad, his eyebrows black and beetling, his eyes humorous, his moustache black, his cheeks red and slightly veined with purple. Altogether a dashing, handsome, black and red, slightly coarse man, with undoubtedly a fund of high spirits and obvious wit. And his eyes and forehead showed ability.
"Good morning, Mr. Mills," he cried in a loud hearty voice. "How are you? Fine morning, isn't it?"
"Of course," replied the banker, a little vaguely.
The other man chuckled.
"'Of course'," he repeated. "I suppose you mean to say all your mornings are fine, eh?"
"At this time of year; yes. How are you feeling?"
"As if the doctor who ordered me out here was a damn liar. Never felt better in my life. If you hadn't said you would be along I would have taken a walk over to the mountains and back to get an appetite for lunch. Not that I need one; I'm as hungry as a wolf."
"Would you, really," said Mills, quizzically. "Before lunch! You are certainly no invalid, Mr. Boyd. Quite an athlete, I should say."
"Why that's no walk," exclaimed Boyd, defensively.
"It's six miles to those mountains."
Boyd checked an exclamation and examined the other closely.
"Looks as though he meant it," he commented, as though to himself. "Can't figure his ulterior motive. Why, you poor chump!" he cried. "What do you take me for? If I can't walk there and back in an hour, I'll eat a hat!"
"The air is very clear," said Mills quietly. "I should admire to see you try. However, get your hat and your boy and we'll be getting on."
"Well, if that's six miles it must be about a mile and a half to the hatrack, so don't expect me back soon," was Boyd's parting rejoinder as he started for the office door.
In a few moments he returned, accompanied by a slender lad of about twenty. The boy was like the next step in the evolution of his father's type: taller, more lightly built, not quite so obviously curly and black and red. His hair, instead of being shiny crow black, was of a very dark brown; instead of kinking into tight ringlets, lay in loose waves. His forehead was bold and frank, as were his eyes. He walked with spring and pride, and his expression was alert and joyous and out-springing in spirit. It was obvious that the elder Boyd was extremely proud of him. Nevertheless, he made the introduction exceedingly casual, almost off hand, and at once climbed into the buggy.
"I'm very glad to meet you, Kenneth," said Mr. Mills. "There's a little seat in the back, if you can make out how it goes. That's it." He cramped the wheel carefully, and drove out of the hotel grounds. On Main Street he turned to the left, and so headed for the open country.
"I am glad to hear our climate is proving beneficial," remarked M& Mills, after they had made the turn successfully. "And I hope you may remain with us a long time."
"I'm all right," returned Boyd, "except that I'm beginning to be troubled a little with insomnia."
"Insomnia," repeated the banker. "You astonish me! The soporific quality of our air has been rather a matter of pride with us. I never knew of anybody who did not go to bed and sleep soundly all night long in Arguello!"
"Oh, I sleep all right nights—and afternoons," drawled Boyd, "but I'm getting a little wakeful mornings."
Mills looked doubtful for a moment, then at the sound of a snort from Kenneth in the back seat, he smiled faintly.
"Ah, that is a jest," he stated.
"Yes, it was a jest," agreed Boyd, soberly.
A very wide, squat streetcar came swaying down the uneven track in the centre of the street. It was driven by a Mexican boy in a wide hat who was perched precariously on the rail of the front platform. Hitched to it by long rope traces pattered two mules so diminutive that they looked no bigger than dogs.
"I started for the beach in that contraption yesterday," remarked Boyd, "I was the only man aboard, but there were a half dozen women. Each of those women had some shopping to do. The car waited while they went into the stores and bought things. I got tired after a while, and got out and walked. Can you beat that?"
"Oh yes, that is quite the custom," was Mills's comment, "You see, the car only makes four round trips a day."
"I see," returned Boyd, in rather a crushed voice.
They drove in silence for some moments. The open country succeeded the last scattered houses of the town. The oak-parked hills rolled away to right and left, unfretted by fences. Ground squirrels scurried to their holes; little owls bobbed from the tops of low earth mounds; a road runner flopped rangily into the dust of the road and rocked away in challenge ahead of the horse. Under the oak trees stood the cattle, already fed full. The starred carpet of alfileria had been fitted to the hills, and in the folds and up the slopes scarves of bright colour—lupin, poppy, nieve, poor man's gold had been flung. Quail and meadowlark, oriole and vireo, led a chorus of birds. In tiny pond-patches of tule and cattail, mudhens and ducks talked busily in low voices. The yellow sunlight flooded the land like an amber wine.
"You certainly have a wonderful country to look at, and wonderful weather. What's the matter with it?"
"Matter with it?" repeated Mills. "Nothing. What do you mean?"
"Well, look around you. There isn't a house to be seen. If this country was as good as it looks you ought to have a farm house for every two hundred acres."
"Oh, I see. Well, this that you are looking at is all one big ranch—the Corona del Monte. Belongs to Colonel Peyton, where we are going."
"How far does he extend?"
"Up the valley? About five miles."
"What's beyond?"
"Las Flores—belongs to a Spanish family, the Cazaderos. They owned practically the whole of the valley under the old grant. The present ranch is not a quarter of their original holdings."
"Sell out?"
"The usual thing with these old families. They are very generous and very extravagant, and they have no idea of the value of money. All they know is that they go to the bank and get what they need. There must come an end to it: you know that. There comes a time when the bank must foreclose, for its own protection."
"Then your land loans often require foreclosure?"
"You would be interested to look over the old tax lists. I'll take you down to the Court House sometime to see them, if you want. At first there were perhaps a dozen names, all Spanish. Then alongside each of those Spanish names came one or more American names. And the assessments against the Spanish grew smaller. You can pretty well trace the history of the county on those tax books. You ought to look them over."
"I should like to do so," asserted Boyd. "But under these conditions the bank must be in the ranching business pretty extensively."
"It is, and we don't like it; but we do as little management as we can help, and sell cheaply."
"Then," corrected Boyd, "the banks are in the real estate business."
"We are that: up to the neck. But," he pointed out, "do not forget that is about the only way we'd ever open up the back country. The native won't sell a foot of his land. The only way to get it from him is by foreclosure."
"Do these big holders, like Peyton or this Spaniard, do any farming?"
"Peyton has a walnut orchard and some fruit in the bottomland, and of course some barley and alfalfa. All that is right near the home station. But most of it is cattle, of course; and sheep in the mountains."
"And the Spaniard?"
"They have always a little stuff for home use around the ranch houses. But none of those people ever do much but cattle."
"Land not good for much else, I suppose," suggested Boyd, with malice aforethought.
"Not good?" Mills fired up. "Let me tell you that this bottomland is the finest farming soil in the world. It will raise anything that can be raised anywhere in any climate. Why, sir, we have the finest products you ever saw in either the temperate or tropical zones. There is no use my trying to tell you about it. Drive down the valley to the south of the town and look about you."
"I should like to do so," said Boyd again.
They topped a little rise and looked ahead over the long flat across which the road led into the distance of other hills. Crawling white clouds of dust marked the progress of many other vehicles. These turned at a point about midway in the valley to enter an avenue between a double row of tall fan palms.
"The Colonel's guests are arriving," observed Mills.
The palm avenue, rustling mysteriously in the wind and flanked on either side by English walnut trees, ran straight as a string for nearly a mile to end in a slight curve around the low wide knoll on which grew the Cathedral Oaks. Just before this ascent, however, they were turned aside by a very polite Mexican into a sort of paddock enclosure where were provided an astonishing number of hitching posts and rails. Already nearly a hundred animals were there securely anchored. The rigs varied from ramshackle buggies white with dust to smart surreys or buckboards. In the centre was even a high four-seated trap. The four horses stood tied to the wheels. They were good looking animals and possessed the (then) astounding peculiarity of reached manes and banged tails.
"Who's that outfit belong to?" asked Boyd, his attention attracted by the smartness of detail of all this.
An expression of disapproval clouded the banker's prominent eyes.
"Young fellow named Corbell," he replied shortly. "Wild young fool. Owns a ranch out beyond here."
They left the paddock and made their way up the knoll and across the lawn to the ranch house.
The Colonel and Mrs. Peyton stood at the foot of the three veranda steps receiving their guests. Many of the latter were strolling about beneath the trees and on the lawn; others were wandering in groups down the slope and across the way to the picnic grove. The women looked very cool and fresh in light coloured dresses. Among those who lingered as by right on the lawns were the élite of Arguello, and they bore themselves accordingly. The men were very bluff and sententious but with a roving eye on the punchbowls. The women wore huge excrescences called bustles and little hat-bonnets on the front of their heads and they walked with elegance. To the elders all this imparted an air of great dignity and virtue; but some of the younger, fresh-faced dashing creatures managed to make of these rather awful appurtenances weapons for conquest. They flirted the bustles from one side to the other; or they looked out from under square banged hair beneath the little hats, and great was the slaughter.
The stream past the Colonel and his wife swelled and slackened, but never ceased. As Boyd moved on after his conventional greeting, he heard the Colonel mention the name Corbell, and turned in curiosity to see the owner of the four-in-hand. He looked upon a rather short, dapper individual with a long, lean brown face, snapping black eyes, and a little moustache waxed to straight needle points. This man was exquisitely dressed in rough clothes of Norfolk cut—in that time and place!—a soft silk shirt and collar, a pastel necktie. He wore no jewelry but a large signet ring. His concession to the West was his hat, which was probably the widest, highest, and utmost turned out of the factory. With him seemed to be somewhat of a group of young men; of whom, however, Boyd noticed particularly only one. Indeed, that one could hardly escape notice. He stood well over six feet and bulged with enormous frame and muscles. His complexion was very blond, so that the ruddiness of his open-air skin showed in fierce and pleasing contrast to his bleached moustache and eyebrows. To make it all more emphatic he wore garments of small black and white checks. It would have been impossible to compute how many thousands of these little squares there were spread abroad over his great round chest and thick arms alone.
"Lord, there's a strong-looking chap. How'd you like to tackle him, Ken?" commented Mr. Boyd, as they drew apart.
"He's powerful big. He looks strong."
"He is strong," broke in a stranger who had overheard. "I saw him once crawl under a felled tree and raise it on the broad of his back."
"Who is he?"
"Rancher. Owns the next place to Corbell—that little dude there. Named Hunter, Bill Hunter. They call him Big Bill. Somebody once said he looked pneumatic."
"Why?"
"Looks sort of as if he had been blowed up with an air pump."
"That, also, is a jest," stated Boyd.
Kenneth laughed joyously.
"I wonder if he'd collapse if you stuck a pin in him?"
"I reckon something would collapse," agreed the stranger drily. "You from the East, I take it. Out for long?"
"Yes. I don't know. Depends on father," said Kenneth, indicating Mr. Boyd, who had by now strolled away with the banker.
"Old man sick, eh?"
"He's here for his health," admitted Kenneth.
The stranger, who was long and lank and solemn, produced a match, carefully whittled it to a point and thrust it in his mouth. He did this simple act with such a purposeful air of deliberation that Kenneth found himself watching with interest and in silence.