Part 31 (2/2)

”Sh.o.r.e not, Slim,” agreed one of the group, promptly annexing the artillery. ”What is it?”

”Kill that ---- ---- ---- Beck,” said Slim, owlishly. ”I can do it; and I can do it with my bare hands, b' G.o.d!”

He walked st.u.r.dily enough in the direction of the General Store across the dusty square. No one paid any further attention to his movements.

The man who had picked up the gun belt buckled it around his own waist.

Bill refilled the ever-thirsty radiator, peered at his gasoline gauge, leisurely turned down a few grease cups. Ten minutes pa.s.sed. We were about ready to start.

Back across the square drifted a strange figure. With difficulty we recognized it as the erstwhile Slim. He had no hat. His hair stuck out in all directions. One eye was puffing shut, blood oozed from a cut in his forehead and dripped from his damaged nose. One s.h.i.+rt sleeve had been half torn from its parent at the shoulder. But, most curious of all, Slim's face was evenly marked by a perpendicular series of long, red scratches as though he had been dragged from stem to stern along a particularly abrasive gravel walk. Slim seemed quite calm.

His approach was made in a somewhat strained silence. At length there spoke a dry, sardonic voice.

”Well,” said it, ”did you kill Beck?”

”Naw!” replied Slim's remains disgustedly, ”the son of a gun wouldn't fight!”

We reached my friend's ranch just about dusk. He met me at the yard gate.

”Well!” he said, heartily. ”I'm glad you're here! Not much like the old days, is it?”

I agreed with him.

”Journey out is dull and uninteresting now. But compared to the way we used to do it, it is a cinch. Just sit still and roll along.”

I disagreed with him--mentally.

”The old order has changed,” said he.

”Yes,” I agreed, ”now it's one yard of calico.”

THE RANCH

CHAPTER I

THE NEW AND THE OLD

The old ranching days of California are to all intents and purposes past and gone. To be sure there remain many large tracts supporting a single group of ranch buildings, and over which the cattle wander ”on a thousand hills.” There are even a few, a very few--like the ranch of which I am going to write--that are still undivided, still game haunted, still hospitable, still delightful. But in spite of these apparent exceptions, my first statement must stand. About the large tracts swarm real estate men, eager for the chance to subdivide into small farms--and the small farmers pour in from the East at the rate of a thousand a month. No matter how sternly the old land-lords set their faces against the new order of things, the new order of things will prevail; for sooner or late old land-lords must die, and the heirs have not in them the spirit of the ancient tradition. This is, of course, best for the country and for progress; but something pa.s.ses, and is no more. So the Chino ranch and more recently Lucky Baldwin's broad acres have yielded.

And even in the case of those that still remain intact, whose wide hills and plains graze thousands of head of cattle; whose pastures breed their own cowhorses; whose cowmen, wearing still with a twist of pride the all-but-vanished regalia of their all-but-vanished calling, refuse to drop back to the humdrum status of ”farm hands on a cow ranch”; even here has entered a single element powerful enough to change the old to something new. The new may be better--it is certainly more convenient--and perhaps when all is said and done we would not want to go back to the old. But the old is gone. One single modern inst.i.tution has been sufficient to render it completely of the past. That inst.i.tution is the automobile.

In the old days--and they are but yesterdays, after all--the ranch was perforce an isolated community. The journey to town was not to be lightly undertaken; indeed, as far as might be, it was obviated altogether. Blacksmithing, carpentry, shoe cobbling, repairing, barbering, and even mild doctoring were all to be done on the premises.

Nearly every item of food was raised at home, including vegetables, fruit, meat, eggs, fowl, b.u.t.ter, and honey. Above all, the inhabitants of that ranch settled down comfortably into the realization that their only available community was that immediately about them; and so they both made and were influenced by the individual atmosphere of the place.

In the latter years they have all purchased touring cars, and now they run to town casually, on almost any excuse. They make shopping lists as does the city dweller; they go back for things forgotten; and they return to the ranch as one returns to his home on the side streets of a great city. In place of the old wonderful and impressive expeditions to visit in state the nearest neighbour (twelve miles distant), they drop over of an afternoon for a ten-minutes' chat. The ranch is no longer an environment in which one finds the whole activity of his existence, but a dwelling place from which one goes forth.

<script>