Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 June 1875 — The Stock Ranch in Southern Callfornia. [ARTICLE]

The Stock Ranch in Southern Callfornia.

Representative of Southern California is the stock-ranch. Far down in the San Joaquin Valley where the cars (a bit of the nineteenth century injected into the eighteenth) bowl over the infinite dead wastes, singing with a clear, dry whir through the desert air—there is the land where yet the Lethe of Spanish life rolls its lazy waves. Across this seeming desert sluggishly creeps a stream coming out of somewhere and ending nowhere, for its ends are concealed in the all-enveloping murk. A' few willows and cottonwoods fringe its banks, and beneath them ruminate the Spanish cattle, with their long, shining horns; sleeklooking but leggy and high-headed brutes, with a disposition to inspect closely a pedestrian’s heels. On the mighty plains around there is not a spear of green herbage, nothing but the coarse burr-clover stems and leafage, now reduced even to ppwder. But the cattle thrust out their long tongues and gather up the farinaceous seeds, thriving thereon. On the river-bank stands the ranchhouse, a structure of the meanest description, perhaps a. “ dobie," long and windowless. It has been there sixteen years, yet there is not a panel of fence nor a single green leaf to shelter the inmates against the fervid heat. Hard by is a little inclosure, just spacious enough to contain three graves and a poor, struggling tree-of-paradise. It is little wonder that the son pistoled his stepfather and graduated from this accursed spot to San Quentin. Living in such a house at such a temperature, a man might even take the life of his mother-in-law. A little farther away there is a rick of alfileria hay, the natural product of some moister river meadow, and harvested for the supply of the vaqueros’ horses. Such “ hay” were best handled with a shoyel, as it consists largely of vegetable powder, though exceedingly nutritious. The surroundings are completed by the spacious circular corral of poles. Early in the morning, while it is cool, the Mexican and Indian vaqueros saddle their wiry little broncos, gather their riatas and cow-whips, leap into the saddle and scour away over the plains, disappearing from sight. Toward meridian the Chinese cook emerges from the cabin, his shaven pate shining in the sun and his pigtail gayly flapping, and with his telescope sweeps the horison. If the black specks far in the distance are moving homeward he goes in and hastens on the dinner. In half an hour the vaqueros gallop up with their ponies’ flanks smoking and bleeding from the cruel laceration of the spurs, loosen the sinches a little, and make their toilet with a comb which is kept hanging in the switch of an ox-tail. The casual stranger riding up is saluted with a quiet “buenas dia&, after which he draws up to the table, as expected to do, without ceremony. Everything eaten, to the gammoned pork and the cabbages, was brought down from San Francisco. After the meal the cigaritos are rolled and puffed awhile, then the hersdsmen sinch and are off again like a shot, while John, sly dog, brings out a lickerish morsel and discusses it alone. He is not eligible to sit at table with Greasers and Diggers, but he has his little revenge. Meantime, what are the vaqueros doing afar off? Perhaps amusing themselves by lassoing up the survey stakes, to keep “the cussed farmers” from settling in the vicinity, or to annoy the railroad surveyors. Perhaps they are purposely herding their enormous droves so as to trample down some poor man’s little grain patch, his solitary hope of the year for the maintenance of his ypfe and children. The cattle-lords do things that way in the “ cow counties.” Lumber is too costly to be thought of for fencing by any person not owning a fortune. The farmer watches his hard-earned crop as long as human nature can endure, but there comes a night when lie must sleep. In the morning it is a field of dust. And so at last, bullied, badgered, “ pastured out,” trampled out, run over, insulted, he appeals, perhaps, to the first and last law-maker of California, the six-shooter, and blood is spilled. Yet this infamous systein is upheld year after year by State legislation! And for what purpose? Simply that these brutal bullies, these domineering “ ox-born souls,” may monopolize the shambles of San Francisco with their mustang beef and cow&eel. If these bull-baiters reared viable animals, their infamous tyrannyVand stamping out of small farmers would he more tolerable. But, like everything acclimated in California, the Digger, the mustang, the mission grape, the club wheat (will it be so with the American?), tne cattle are “runts.” In a good year they are eatable, but in droughty times, after the horns and hide are subtracted, there is little remaining, and that were best fed to a menagerie. Day after day they have to travel out farther from the water to procure grass, day after day they grow weaker, until at length they are mere skeletons, and their instinct tells them infallibly they cannot accomplish the journey again and return. Then they may be seen staggering, feebly thrusting* and fighting about the pools, and mournfully rolling their hollow eyes around, until they go down in some untoward lurch, and yield themselves up to the ravens, if indeed those foul birds have not plucked out their eyes before they ceased to struggle. —tytetphen Powers, in Atlantic Monthly.