“Bill Wilson sent word that you were making seven kinds of a fool of yourself—­Bill named a few of them—­and advised me to get you out of town.  I’ve more respect for Bill’s judgment than ever.  I took his advice as it stood—­and therefore, you’re headed for safer territory than you were awhile ago.  It ain’t heaven,” he added, “but it’s next thing to it.”

“I’m not hankering after heaven, right now,” averred Jack.  “Most any other place looks good to me; I’m not feeling a hit critical, Dade.  And if I didn’t say it before, old man, you’re worth a whole regiment to a fellow in a fix.”

CHAPTER V

HOSPITALITY

If you would enjoy that fine hospitality which gives gladly to strangers and to friends alike of its poverty or plenty, and for the giving asks nothing in return, you should seek the far frontiers; but if you would see hospitality glorified into something 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.