CHAPTER X: THE RUSTLERS
Three miles to eastward of the Dos Hermanos ranch runs the Black Angel Trail. Far to northward it has its beginning. It cuts the state from top to bottom, like a jaggèd swordstroke. Up above the Peixoto Range it starts; and it runs almost due south across the Mexican border.
Nearly a century ago this trail was blazed. Of old it was the chief artery between the north counties and Mexico. The state roads and the railways have long since taken its place; and have diverted from it the bulk of traffic. Bumps and dips and narrow cuts between canyonsides render it impassable to motor car or to other modern vehicle.
But in spite of all this, the grass does not grow over-thick in the Black Angel Trail. No longer a main highway, it is a mighty convenient byway. Burro trains still traverse it. So do cattle drovers and shepherds. So do less reputable forms of traffic. It has great advantages over the thronged and town-fringed state roads, for the driving of livestock as well as for the transporting of goods which are best moved with no undue publicity. Sojourners of the Black Angel Trail have a way of minding their own business. The law seldom patrols the backwater route or takes cognizance of it.
Along this trail, from southward, one day in earliest spring, fared a bee caravan, five wagons strong. Each wagon carried full complement of hives.
The only noteworthy detail of the procession was that it numbered several more grown men than can usually find time to accompany such a caravan. The chief work of the bee route can be done by women and boys; leaving most of the men of the family or community to attend to the crops at home.
Every year, these bee caravans are loaded with hives, as soon as the fruit blossoms in the southernmost corner of the state have been despoiled of their honey-making possibilities. Northward move the caravans; following the various blossom seasons; and camping in likely spots along the way, to let their bees ravage whatever blooms happen to be most plentiful at that place and at that time.
There is a regularly marked-out rotation of blossom-ripening, in one section of the state after the other. And this rotation the beekeepers follow; thus gathering the choicest honey everywhere and all season long.
The five-wagon caravan halted and pitched camp in a sheltered arroyo, a few miles from the borders of the Dos Hermanos ranch. It was the first year a bee outfit had done such a thing. But then it was the first year the new almond orchard of the Goldring ranch, a mile to east of the arroyo, had put forth any profusion of blossoms. Thus there was nothing remarkable about the occurrence.