Now there are three major topics on the Ranch:  namely, ducks, quail, and ponies.  In addition to these are five of minor interest:  the mail, cattle, jackrabbits, coons, and wildcats.

I was already familiar with the valley quail, for I had hunted him since I was a small boy with the first sixteen-gauge gun ever brought to the coast.  I knew him for a very speedy bird, much faster than our bob white, dwelling in the rounded sagebrush hills, travelling in flocks of from twenty to several thousand, exceedingly given to rapid leg work.  We had to climb hard after him, and shoot like lightning from insecure footing.  His idiosyncrasies were as strongly impressed on me as the fact that human beings walk upright.  Here, however, I had to revise my ideas.

We drove down the avenue of palms, pursued by four or five yapping dachshunds, and so out into a long, narrow lane between pasture fences.  Herds of ponies, fuzzy in their long winter coats, came gently to look at us.  The sun was high now, so the fur of their backs lay flat.  Later, in the chill of evening, the hair would stand out like the nap of velvet, thus providing for additional warmth by the extra air space between the outside of the coat and the skin.  It must be very handy to carry this invisible overcoat, ready for the moment’s need.  Here, too, were cattle standing about.  On many of them I recognized the familiar J-I brand of many of my Arizona experiences.  Arizona bred and raised them; California fattened them for market.  We met a cowboy jingling by at his fox trot; then came to the country road.

Along this we drove for some miles.  The country was perfectly flat, but variegated by patches of greasewood, of sagebrush, of Egyptian-corn fields, and occasionally by a long, narrow fringe of trees.  Here, too, were many examples of that phenomenon so vigorously doubted by most Easterners:  the long rows of trees grown from original cotton wood or poplar fence posts.  In the distance always were the mountains.  Overhead the sky was very blue.  A number of buzzards circled.

After a time we turned off the road and into a country covered over with tumbleweed, a fine umber red growth six or eight inches high, and scattered sagebrush.  Inlets, bays, and estuaries of bare ground ran everywhere.  The Captain stood up to drive, watching for the game to cross these bare places.

I stood up, too.  It is no idle feat to ride the Invigorator thus over hummocky ground.  It lurched and bumped and dropped into and out of trouble; and in correspondence I alternately rose up and sat down again, hard.  The Captain rode the storm without difficulty.  He was accustomed to the Invigorator; and, too, he had the reins to hang on by.

“There they go!” said he, suddenly, bringing the team to a halt.

I looked ahead.  Across a ten-foot barren ran the quail, their crests cocked forward, their trim figures held close as a sprinter goes, rank after rank, their heads high in the alert manner of quail.