omething more than a
simple virtue, then you should find, if you can, one of the old-time
haciendas that were the pride of early California.

Time was when the wild-eyed cattle which bore upon their fat-cushioned
haunches the seared crescent that proclaimed them the property of old
Don Andres Picardo (who owned, by grant of the king, all the upper
half of the valley of Santa Clara) were free to any who hungered. Time
was when a traveler might shoot a fat yearling and feast his fill,
unquestioned by the don or the don's dark-eyed vaqueros.

Don Andres Picardo was a large-hearted gentleman; and to deny any man
meat would bring to his cheeks a blush for his niggardliness. That was
in the beginning, when he reigned in peace over the peninsula. When
the vaqueros, jingling indignantly into the patio of his home, first
told of carcasses slaughtered wantonly and left to rot upon the range
with only the loin and perhaps a juicy haunch missing, their master
smiled deprecatingly and waved them back whence they came. There were
cattle in plenty. What mattered one steer, or even a fat cow, slain
wastefully? Were not thousands left?

But when tales reached him of cattle butchered by the hundred, and of
beef that was being sold for an atrocious price in San Francisco, the
old Spaniard was shocked into laying aside the traditions and placing
some check upon the unmannerly "gringos" who so abused his generosity.

He established a camp just within the northern boundary of his land;
and there he stationed his most efficient watch-dog, Manuel Sepulveda,
with two vaqueros whose business it was to stop the depredations.

Meat for all who asked for meat, paid they in gold or in
gratitude--that was their "patron's" order. But they must ask. And
the vaqueros rode diligently from bay to mountain slopes, and each day
their hatred of the Americanos grew deeper, as they watched over the
herds of their loved patron, that the gringos might not steal that
which they might, if they were not wolves, have for the asking.

The firelight in the tule-thatched hut of Manuel Sepulveda winked
facetiously at the black fog that peered in at the open door. A night
wind from the north crept up, parted the fog like a black curtain and
whispered something which set the flames a-dancing as they listened.
The fog swung back jealously to hear what it was, and the wind went
away to whisper its wonder-tale to the trees that rustled astonishment
and nodded afterward