It was pettishness and not timidity that ailed Jean Lovelace, for a pioneer woman like herself had of course no fear of horse-flesh.  But the team was acting in a manner to unnerve an ordinary woman.  With me clinging to the bits of the leaders, and a man each holding the wheelers, as they pawed the ground and surged about in their creaking harness, they were anything but gentle; but Miss Jean proudly took her seat; Tiburcio fingered the reins in placid contentment; there was a parting volley of admonitions from brother and sister—­the latter was telling us where we would find our white shirts—­when Uncle Lance signaled to us; and we sprang away from the team.  The ambulance gave a lurch, forward, as the mules started on a run, but Tiburcio dexterously threw them on to a heavy bed of sand, poured the whip into them as they labored through it; they crossed the sand bed, Glenn Gallup and Theodore Quayle, riding, at their heads, pointed the team into the road, and they were off.

The rest of us busied ourselves getting up saddle horses and dressing for the occasion.  In the latter we had no little trouble, for dress occasions like this were rare with us.  Miss Jean had been thoughtful enough to lay our clothes out, but there was a busy borrowing of collars and collar buttons, and a blacking of boots which made the sweat stand out on our foreheads in beads.  After we were dressed and ready to start, Uncle Lance could not be induced to depart from his usual custom, and wear his trousers outside his boots.  Then we had to pull the boots off and polish them clear up to the ears in order to make him presentable.  But we were in no particular hurry about starting, as we expected to out across the country and would overtake the ambulance at the mouth of the Arroyo Seco in time for the noonday lunch.  There were six in our party, consisting of Dan Happersett, Aaron Scales, John Cotton, June Deweese, Uncle Lance, and myself.  With the exception of Deweese, who was nearly twenty-five years old, the remainder of the boys on the ranch were young fellows, several of whom besides myself had not yet attained their majority.  On ranch work, in the absence of our employer, June was recognized as the segundo of Los Palomas, owing to his age and his long employment on the ranch.  He was a trustworthy man, and we younger lads entertained no envy towards him.

It was about nine o’clock when we mounted our horses and started.  We jollied along in a party, or separated into pairs in cross-country riding, covering about seven miles an hour.  “I remember,” said Uncle Lance, as we were riding in a group, “the first time I was ever at Shepherd’s Ferry.  We had been down the river on a cow hunt for about three weeks and had run out of bacon.  We had been eating beef, and venison, and antelope for a week until it didn’t taste right any longer, so I sent the outfit on ahead and rode down to the store in the hope of getting a piece of bacon.  Shepherd had just established the place at the time, and when I asked him if he had any bacon, he said he had, ’But is it good?’ I inquired, and before he could reply an eight-year-old boy of his stepped between us, and throwing back his tow head, looked up into my face and said:  ‘Mister, it’s a little the best I ever tasted.’”