It was near the close of an October day that I began to be disagreeably conscious of the Sacramento Valley. I had been riding since sunrise, and my course through the depressing monotony of the long level landscape affected me more like a dull, dyspeptic dream than a business journey, performed under that sincerest of natural phenomena,—a California sky. The recurring stretches of brown and baked fields, the gaping fissures in the dusty trail, the hard outline of the distant hills, and the herds of slowly moving cattle, seemed like features of some glittering stereoscopic picture that never changed. Active exercise might have removed this feeling, but my horse by some subtle instinct had long since given up all ambitious effort, and had lapsed into a dogged trot.
It was autumn, but not the season suggested to the Atlantic reader under that title. The sharply defined boundaries of the wet and dry seasons were prefigured in the clear outlines of the distant hills. In the dry atmosphere the decay of vegetation was too rapid for the slow hectic which overtakes an Eastern landscape, or else Nature was too practical for such thin disguises. She merely turned the Hippocratic face to the spectator, with the old diagnosis of death in her sharp, contracted features.
In the contemplation of such a prospect there was little to excite any but a morbid fancy. There were no clouds in the flinty blue heavens, and the setting of the sun was accompanied with as little ostentation as was consistent with the dryly practical atmosphere. Darkness soon followed, with a rising wind, which increased as the shadows deepened on the plain. The fringe of alder by the watercourse began to loom up as I urged my horse forward. A half-hour’s active spurring brought me to a corral, and a little beyond a house, so low and broad, it seemed at first sight to be half buried in the earth.
My second impression was that it had grown out of the soil like some monstrous vegetable, its dreary proportions were so in keeping with the vast prospect. There were no recesses along its roughly boarded walls for vagrant and unprofitable shadows to lurk in the daily sunshine. No projection for the wind by night to grow musical over, to wail, whistle, or whisper to; only a long wooden shelf containing a chilly-looking tin basin and a bar of soap. Its uncurtained windows were red with the sinking sun, as though bloodshot and inflamed from a too long unlidded existence. The tracks of cattle led to its front door, firmly closed against the rattling wind.
To avoid being confounded with this familiar element, I walked to the rear of the house, which was connected with a smaller building by a slight platform. A grizzled, hard-faced old man was standing there, and met my salutation with a look of inquiry, and, without speaking, led the way to the principal room. As I entered, four young men who were reclining by the fire slightly altered their attitudes of perfect repose, but beyond that betrayed neither curiosity nor interest. A hound started from a dark corner with a growl, but was immediately kicked by the old man into obscurity and silenced again. I can’t tell why, but I instantly received the impression that for a long time the group by the fire had not uttered a word or moved a muscle. Taking a seat, I briefly stated my business. Was a United States surveyor. Had come on account of the Espiritu Santo rancho. Wanted to correct the exterior boundaries of township lines, so as to connect with the near exteriors of private grants. There had been some intervention to the old survey by a Mr. Tryan, who had preempted adjacent—“Settled land warrants,” interrupted the old man. “Ah, yes! land warrants,—and then this was Mr. Tryan?”
I had spoken mechanically, for I was preoccupied in connecting other public lines with private surveys, as I looked in his face. It was certainly a hard face, and reminded me of the singular effect of that mining operation known as “ground sluicing;” the harder lines of underlying character were exposed, and what were once plastic curves and soft outlines were obliterated by some powerful agency.
There was a dryness in his voice not unlike the prevailing atmosphere of the valley, as he launched into an ex parte statement of the contest, with a fluency which, like the wind without, showed frequent and unrestrained expression. He told me—what I had already learned—that the boundary line of the old Spanish grant was a creek, described in the loose phraseology of the deseno as beginning in the valda or skirt of the hill, its precise location long the subject of litigation. I listened and answered with little interest, for my mind was still distracted by the wind which swept violently by the house, as well as by his odd face, which was again reflected in the resemblance that the silent group by the fire bore toward him. He was still talking, and the wind was yet blowing, when my confused attention was aroused by a remark addressed to the recumbent figures.
“Now, then, which on ye’ll see the stranger up the creek to Altascar’s to-morrow?”
There was a general movement of opposition in the group, but no decided answer.
“Kin you go, Kerg?”
“Who’s to look up stock in Strarberry per-ar-ie?”
This seemed to imply a negative, and the old man turned to another hopeful, who was pulling the fur from a mangy bearskin on which he was lying, with an expression as though it were somebody’s hair.
“Well, Tom, wot’s to hinder you from goin’?”
“Mam’s goin’ to Brown’s store at sun-up, and I s’pose I’ve got to pack her and the baby again.”
I think the expression of scorn this unfortunate youth exhibited for the filial duty into which he had been evidently beguiled was one of the finest things I had ever seen.
“Wise?”
Wise deigned no verbal reply, but figuratively thrust a worn and patched boot into the discourse. The old man flushed quickly.
“I told ye to get Brown to give you a pair the last time you war down the river.”
“Said he wouldn’t without an order. Said it was like pulling gum-teeth to get the money from you even then.”
There was a grim smile at this local hit at the old man’s parsimony, and Wise, who was clearly the privileged wit of the family, sank back in honorable retirement.
“Well, Joe, ef your boots are new, and you aren’t pestered with wimmin and children, p’r’aps you’ll go,” said Tryan, with a nervous twitching, intended for a smile, about a mouth not remarkably mirthful.
Tom lifted a pair of bushy eyebrows and said shortly,—
“Got no saddle.”
“Wot’s gone of your saddle?”
“Kerg, there!” indicating his brother with a look such as Cain might have worn at the sacrifice.
“You lie!” returned Kerg cheerfully.
Tryan sprang to his feet, seizing the chair, flourishing it around his head and gazing furiously in the hard young faces which fearlessly met his own. But it was only for a moment; his arm soon dropped by his side, and a look of hopeless fatality crossed his face. He allowed me to take the chair from his hand, and I was trying to pacify him by the assurance that I required no guide, when the irrepressible Wise again lifted his voice—
“Theer’s George comin’! Why don’t ye ask him? He’ll go and introduce you to Don Fernandy’s darter, too, ef you ain’t pertickler.”
The laugh which followed this joke, which evidently had some domestic allusion (the general tendency of rural pleasantry), was followed by a light step on the platform, and the young man entered. Seeing a stranger present, he stopped and colored, made a shy salute and colored again, and then, drawing a box from the corner, sat down, his hands clasped tightly together and his very handsome bright blue eyes turned frankly on mine.
Perhaps I was in a condition to receive the romantic impression he made upon me, and I took it upon myself to ask his company as guide, and he cheerfully assented. But some domestic duty called him presently away.
The fire gleamed brightly on the hearth, and, no longer resisting the prevailing influence, I silently watched the spirting flame, listening to the wind which continually shook the tenement. Besides the one chair, which had acquired a new importance in my eyes, I presently discovered a crazy table in one corner, with an inkbottle and pen, the latter in that greasy state of decomposition peculiar to country taverns and farmhouses. A goodly array of rifles and double-barreled guns stocked the corner; half a dozen saddles and blankets lay near, with a mild flavor of the horse about them. Some deer and bear skins completed the inventory. As I sat there, with the silent group around me, the shadowy gloom within and the dominant wind without, I found it difficult to believe I had ever known a different existence. My profession had often led me to wilder scenes, but rarely among those whose unrestrained habits and easy unconsciousness made me feel so lonely and uncomfortable. I shrank closer to myself, not without grave doubts—which I think occur naturally to people in like situations—that this was the general rule of humanity, and I was a solitary and somewhat gratuitous exception.
It was a relief when a laconic announcement of supper by a weak-eyed girl caused a general movement in the family. We walked across the dark platform, which led to another low-ceiled room. Its entire length was occupied by a table, at the further end of which a weak-eyed woman was already taking her repast as she at the same time gave nourishment to a weak-eyed baby. As the formalities of introduction had been dispensed with, and as she took no notice of me, I was enabled to slip into a seat without discomposing or interrupting her. Tryan extemporized a grace, and the attention of the family became absorbed in bacon, potatoes, and dried apples.
The meal was a sincere one. Gentle gurglings at the upper end of the table often betrayed the presence of the “wellspring of pleasure.” The conversation generally referred to the labors of the day, and comparing notes as to the whereabouts of missing stock. Yet the supper was such a vast improvement upon the previous intellectual feast, that when a chance allusion of mine to the business of my visit brought out the elder Tryan, the interest grew quite exciting. I remember he inveighed bitterly against the system of ranch-holding by the “Greasers,” as he was pleased to term the native Californians. As the same ideas have been sometimes advanced under more pretentious circumstances, they may be worthy of record.
“Look at ’em holdin’ the finest grazin’ land that ever lay outer doors? Whar’s the papers for it? Was it grants? Mighty fine grants,—most of ’em made arter the ’Merrikans got possession. More fools the ’Merrikans for lettin’ ’em hold ’em. Wat paid for ’em? ’Merrikan blood and money.
“Didn’t they oughter have suthin’ out of their native country? Wot for? Did they ever improve? Got a lot of yaller-skinned diggers, not so sensible as niggers, to look arter stock, and they a-sittin’ home and smokin’. With their gold and silver candlesticks, and missions, and crucifixens, priests and graven idols, and sich? Them sort things wuren’t allowed in Mizzoori.”
At the mention of improvements I involuntarily lifted my eyes, and met the half-laughing, half-embarrassed look of George. The act did not escape detection, and I had at once the satisfaction of seeing that the rest of the family had formed an offensive alliance against us.
“It was agin nater and agin God,” added Tryan. “God never intended gold in the rocks to be made into heathen candlesticks and crucifixens. That’s why he sent ’Merrikans here. Nater never intended such a climate for lazy lopers. She never gi’n six months’ sunshine to be slept and smoked away.”
How long he continued, and with what further illustration, I could not say, for I took an early opportunity to escape to the sitting-room. I was soon followed by George, who called me to an open door leading to a smaller room, and pointed to a bed.
“You’d better sleep there to-night,” he said; “you’ll be more comfortable, and I’ll call you early.”
I thanked him, and would have asked him several questions which were then troubling me, but he shyly slipped to the door and vanished.
A shadow seemed to fall on the room when he had gone. The “boys” returned, one by one, and shuffled to their old places. A larger log was thrown on the fire, and the huge chimney glowed like a furnace, but it did not seem to melt or subdue a single line of the hard faces that it lit. Half an hour later, the furs which had served as chairs by day undertook the nightly office of mattresses, and each received its owner’s full-length figure. Mr. Tryan had not returned, and I missed George. I sat there until, wakeful and nervous, I saw the fire fall and shadows mount the wall. There was no sound but the rushing of the wind and the snoring of the sleepers. At last, feeling the place insupportable, I seized my hat, and, opening the door, ran out briskly into the night.
The acceleration of my torpid pulse in the keen fight with the wind, whose violence was almost equal to that of a tornado, and the familiar faces of the bright stars above me, I felt as a blessed relief. I ran, not knowing whither, and when I halted, the square outline of the house was lost in the alder-bushes. An uninterrupted plain stretched before me, like a vast sea beaten flat by the force of the gale. As I kept on I noticed a slight elevation toward the horizon, and presently my progress was impeded by the ascent of an Indian mound. It struck me forcibly as resembling an island in the sea. Its height gave me a better view of the expanding plain. But even here I found no rest. The ridiculous interpretation Tryan had given the climate was somehow sung in my ears and echoed in my throbbing pulse as, guided by the stars, I sought the house again.
But I felt fresher and more natural as I stepped upon the platform. The door of the lower building was open, and the old man was sitting beside the table, thumbing the leaves of a Bible with a look in his face as though he were hunting up prophecies against the “Greaser.” I turned to enter, but my attention was attracted by a blanketed figure lying beside the house on the platform. The broad chest heaving with healthy slumber, and the open, honest face were familiar. It was George, who had given up his bed to the stranger among his people. I was about to wake him, but he lay so peaceful and quiet, I felt awed and hushed. And I went to bed with a pleasant impression of his handsome face and tranquil figure soothing me to sleep.
I was awakened the next morning from a sense of lulled repose and grateful silence by the cheery voice of George, who stood beside my bed ostentatiously twirling a riata, as if to recall the duties of the day to my sleep-bewildered eyes. I looked around me. The wind had been magically laid, and the sun shone warmly through the windows. A dash of cold water, with an extra chill on, from the tin basin, helped to brighten me. It was still early, but the family had already breakfasted and dispersed, and a wagon winding far in the distance showed that the unfortunate Tom had already “packed” his relatives away. I felt more cheerful,—there are few troubles Youth cannot distance with the start of a good night’s rest. After a substantial breakfast, prepared by George, in a few moments we were mounted and dashing down the plain.
We followed the line of alder that defined the creek, now dry and baked with summer’s heat, but which in winter, George told me, overflowed its banks. I still retain a vivid impression of that morning’s ride; the far-off mountains, like silhouettes, against the steel-blue sky; the crisp, dry air, and the expanding track before me, animated often by the well-knit figure of George Tryan, musical with jingling spurs and picturesque with flying riata. He rode a powerful native roan, wild-eyed, untiring in stride, and unbroken in nature. Alas! the curves of beauty were concealed by the cumbrous machillas of the Spanish saddle, which levels all equine distinctions. The single rein lay loosely on the cruel bit that can gripe and, if need be, crush the jaw it controls.
Again the illimitable freedom of the valley rises before me as we again bear down into sunlit space. Can this be Chu-Chu, staid and respectable filly of American pedigree,—Chu-Chu, forgetful of plank-roads and cobble stones, wild with excitement, twinkling her small white feet beneath me? George laughs out of a cloud of dust, “Give her her head; don’t you see she likes it?” and Chu-Chu seems to like it, and, whether bitten by native tarantula into native barbarism or emulous of the roan, “blood” asserts itself, and in a moment the peaceful servitude of years is beaten out in the music of her clattering hoofs. The creek widens to a deep gully. We dive into it and up on the opposite side, carrying a moving cloud of impalpable powder with us. Cattle are scattered over the plain, grazing quietly or banded together in vast restless herds. George makes a wide, indefinite sweep with the riata, as if to include them all in his vaquero’s loop, and says, “Ours!”
“About how many, George?”
“Don’t know.”
“How many?”
“Well, p’r’aps three thousand head,” says George, reflecting. “We don’t know; takes five men to look ’em up and keep run.”
“What are they worth?”
“About thirty dollars a head.”
I make a rapid calculation, and look my astonishment at the laughing George. Perhaps a recollection of the domestic economy of the Tryan household is expressed in that look, for George averts his eye and says apologetically,—
“I’ve tried to get the old man to sell and build, but you know he says it ain’t no use to settle down just yet. We must keep movin’. In fact, he built the shanty for that purpose, lest titles should fall through, and we’d have to get up and move stakes farther down,” Suddenly his quick eye detects some unusual sight in a herd we are passing, and with an exclamation he puts his roan into the centre of the mass. I follow, or rather Chu-Chu darts after the roan, and in a few moments we are in the midst of apparently inextricable horns and hoofs. “Toro!” shouts George, with vaquero enthusiasm, and the band opens a way for the swinging riata. I can feel their steaming breaths, and their spume is cast on Chu-Chu’s quivering flank.
Wild, devilish-looking beasts are they; not such shapes as Jove might have chosen to woo a goddess, nor such as peacefully range the downs of Devon, but lean and hungry Cassius-like bovines, economically got up to meet the exigencies of a six-months’ rainless climate, and accustomed to wrestle with the distracting wind and the blinding dust.
“That’s not our brand,” says George; “they’re strange stock,” and he points to what my scientific eye recognizes as the astrological sign of Venus deeply seared in the brown flanks of the bull he is chasing. But the herd are closing round us with low mutterings, and George has again recourse to the authoritative “Toro,” and with swinging riata divides the “bossy bucklers” on either side. When we are free, and breathing somewhat more easily, I venture to ask George if they ever attack any one.
“Never horsemen,—sometimes footmen. Not through rage, you know, but curiosity. They think a man and his horse are one, and if they meet a chap afoot, they run him down and trample him under hoof, in the pursuit of knowledge. But,” adds George, “here’s the lower bench of the foothills, and here’s Altascar’s corral, and that white building you see yonder is the casa.”
A whitewashed wall inclosed a court containing another adobe building, baked with the solar beams of many summers. Leaving our horses in the charge of a few peons in the courtyard, who were basking lazily in the sun, we entered a low doorway, where a deep shadow and an agreeable coolness fell upon us, as sudden and grateful as a plunge in cool water, from its contrast with the external glare and heat. In the centre of a low-ceiled apartment sat an old man with a black silk handkerchief tied about his head, the few gray hairs that escaped from its folds relieving his gamboge-colored face. The odor of cigarritos was as incense added to the cathedral gloom of the building.
As Senor Altascar rose with well-bred gravity to receive us, George advanced with such a heightened color, and such a blending of tenderness and respect in his manner, that I was touched to the heart by so much devotion in the careless youth. In fact, my eyes were still dazzled by the effect of the outer sunshine, and at first I did not see the white teeth and black eyes of Pepita, who slipped into the corridor as we entered.
It was no pleasant matter to disclose particulars of business which would deprive the old senor of the greater part of that land we had just ridden over, and I did it with great embarrassment. But he listened calmly,—not a muscle of his dark face stirring,—and the smoke curling placidly from his lips showed his regular respiration. When I had finished, he offered quietly to accompany us to the line of demarcation. George had meanwhile disappeared, but a suspicious conversation in broken Spanish and English in the corridor betrayed his vicinity. When he returned again, a little absent-minded, the old man, by far the coolest and most self-possessed of the party, extinguished his black silk cap beneath that stiff, uncomely sombrero which all native Californians affect. A serapa thrown over his shoulders hinted that he was waiting. Horses are always ready saddled in Spanish ranchos, and in half an hour from the time of our arrival we were again loping in the staring sunlight. But not as cheerfully as before. George and myself were weighed down by restraint, and Altascar was gravely quiet. To break the silence, and by way of a consolatory essay, I hinted to him that there might be further intervention or appeal, but the proffered oil and wine were returned with a careless shrug of the shoulders and a sententious “Que bueno? Your courts are always just.”
The Indian mound of the previous night’s discovery was a bearing monument of the new line, and there we halted. We were surprised to find the old man Tryan waiting us. For the first time during our interview the old Spaniard seemed moved, and the blood rose in his yellow cheek. I was anxious to close the scene, and pointed out the corner boundaries as clearly as my recollection served.
“The deputies will be here to-morrow to run the lines from this initial point, and there will be no further trouble, I believe, gentlemen.”
Senor Altascar had dismounted and was gathering a few tufts of dried grass in his hands. George and I exchanged glances. He presently arose from his stooping posture, and advancing to within a few paces of Joseph Tryan, said in a voice broken with passion,—
“And I, Fernando Jesus Maria Altascar, put you in possession of my land in the fashion of my country.”
He threw a sod to each of the cardinal points.
“I don’t know your courts, your judges, or your corregidores. Take the llano!—and take this with it. May the drought seize your cattle till their tongues hang down as long as those of your lying lawyers! May it be the curse and torment of your old age, as you and yours have made it of mine!”
We stepped between the principal actors in this scene, which only the passion of Altascar made tragical, but Tryan, with a humility but ill concealing his triumph, interrupted,—
“Let him curse on. He’ll find ’em coming home to him sooner than the cattle he has lost through his sloth and pride. The Lord is on the side of the just, as well as agin all slanderers and revilers.”
Altascar but half guessed the meaning of the Missourian, yet sufficiently to drive from his mind all but the extravagant power of his native invective.
“Stealer of the sacrament! Open not!—open not, I say, your lying Judas lips to me! Ah! half-breed, with the soul of a coyote!—Car-r-r-ramba!” With his passion reverberating among the consonants like distant thunder, he laid his hand upon the mane of his horse as though it had been the gray locks of his adversary, swung himself into the saddle, and galloped away.
George turned to me.
“Will you go back with us to-night?”
I thought of the cheerless walls, the silent figures by the fire, and the roaring wind, and hesitated.
“Well, then, good-by.”
“Good-by, George.”
Another wring of the hands, and we parted. I had not ridden far, when I turned and looked back. The wind had risen early that afternoon, and was already sweeping across the plain. A cloud of dust traveled before it, and a picturesque figure occasionally emerging therefrom was my last indistinct impression of George Tryan.
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