ter at a more pretentious
place set in a natural opening. There a low, rambling, white ranch-house
beneath trees was segregated by a picket fence enclosing blossoms like a
basket. At a greater or lesser distance were corrals of all sizes
arranged in a complicated pattern. They resembled a huge puzzle. The
barns were large; a forge stood under an open shed indescribably
littered with scrap iron and fragments of all sorts; saddles hung
suspended by the horn or one stirrup; bright milk pails sunned bottom-up
on fence posts; a dozen horses cropped in a small enclosed pasture or
dozed beneath one or another of the magnificent and spreading live-oak
trees. Children of all sizes and states of repair clambered to the fence
tops or gazed solemnly between the rails. Sometimes women stood in the
doorways to nod cheerfully at the travellers. They seemed to Bob a
comely, healthy-looking lot, competent and good-natured. Beyond an
occasional small field and an invariable kitchen garden there appeared
to be no evidences of cultivation. Around the edges of the natural
opening stretched immediately the open jungle of the chaparral or the
park-like forests of oaks.

"These are the typical mountain people of California," said Welton.
"It's only taken us a few hours to come up this far, but we've struck
among a different breed of cats. They're born, live and die in the
hills, and they might as well be a thousand miles away as forty or
fifty. As soon as the snow is out, they hike for the big mountains."

"What do they do?" inquired Bob.

"Cattle," replied Welton. "Nothing else."

"I haven't seen any men."

"No, and you won't, except the old ones. They've taken their cattle back
to the summer ranges in the high mountains. By and by the women and kids
will go into the summer camps with the horses."

On a steep and narrow grade they encountered a girl of twenty riding a
spirited pinto. She bestrode a cowboy's stock saddle on which was coiled
the usual rope, wore a broad felt hat, and smiled at the two men quite
frankly in spite of the fact that she wore no habit and had been
compelled to arrange her light calico skirts as best she could. The
pinto threw his head and snorted, dancing sideways at sight of the
buckboard. So occupied was he with the strange vehicle that he paid
scant attention to the edge of the road. Bob saw that the passage along
the narrow outside strip was going to be precarious. He prepared to
descend, but at that momen