The Squatter and the Don / A Novel Descriptive of Contemporary Occurrences in California

by María Amparo Ruiz de Burton

“At all events, there is this much to be said, that if papa will insist upon wanting to be a squatter, and favor squatters, he will find that not one of his family approves it. No, not even the children.”

“I know it; Jane and Lucy feel very badly about it.”

“And so does Everett; Webster don't like it either. We all feel very badly to see papa so wrong, and the worst of it is, how it all might affect our darling Clarence, who is so sweet and so good to all of us—yes, to everybody. I do hope he will marry Mercedes. I know she loves him dearly. I am so afraid that papa will quarrel with the Don, and Clarence and Mercedes be separated. It would be awful.”

If sweet Alice had said all she held in her dear heart, and which might be affected by the course that her father would pursue between the settlers and the Don, she would have revealed other anxieties besides those she felt on Clarence's account. The thought that Victoriano, too, might be estranged from her, had made that dear heart of hers very heavy with forebodings. Gentle and loving though she was, she could not help feeling exasperated to foresee how miserable she and Clarence, and Mercedes and Victoriano might all be, all on account of this squatter quarrel, which might so easily be avoided if those people were not so perverse, and her father upholding them, which was perversity, also.

Thus ran Alice's thoughts as she helped her mother to trim the fuschias and train them up the posts of the porch, beside the honeysuckle and roses, which already formed an arbor over the front steps. Occasionally she would look up the valley; it was time that Victoriano should be riding out with Gabriel or his father, superintending the gathering of their cattle, to be sent to the Sierra.

Strange as it may appear, now that the Government, by the dismissal of the appeal, acknowledged that Don Mariano's title was good, now, when by this decision, the settlers should have made up their minds to leave the premises or purchase their homesteads from the owner of the land, now their disgraceful destruction of dumb animals was renewed with obvious virulence, and every night the firing of rifles and shot-guns was heard all over the rancho. Don Mariano saw that this devastation was a malicious revenge, which he could not avert, so he began to collect his stock to take them all to the mountains. About that time he received the letter in which Clarence proposed to buy all of his cattle, advising him to restock the rancho afterwards, when cleared of all trespassers. He liked the proposition, and immediately gave orders to drive all the cattle to his sister's rancho as they were got together; there to be put in a valley and kept in a sort of depot, as they were gathered and brought in bands of any number, to wait until Clarence returned. But as afterwards Don Mariano feared that by the time Clarence came back, there would be no cattle left to sell, he now hastened their gathering and decided to send them off as soon as possible. Patiently, and without a word of complaint, Don Mariano and his two sons would ride out every day to superintend personally the collecting of the cattle and sending them off to his sister's rancho to the valley, where the rendezvous or depot had been established. Victoriano named this valley the “rodeo triste,” insisting that the cattle knew it was a “rodeo triste,” and walked to it sadly, guessing that they were to be exiled and butchered. “Just like ourselves, the poor natives,” he said, “tossed from one cruelty to another still worse, and then crushed out.” “Rodeo triste” was a very appropriate name, considering the fact of its being different from the gay and boisterous gatherings of other years, when “the boys” of the surrounding ranchos all assembled at Alamar to separate their cattle and have a grand time marking and branding the calves; twisting the tails of stubborn ones by way of a logical demonstration, a convincing argument conveyed in that persuasive form, which was to a calf always unanswerable and irresistible. Then the day's work and fun would wind up with a hilarious barbecue. But this was all in the past, which had been happy, and was now a fading tableau.

Alice, watching from behind the honeysuckle, saw Don Mariano, his two sons and three vaqueros ride down the valley. There they separated, each followed by a vaquero, going in different directions.

But Alice was not the only one watching the riders going out to gather stray cattle. Though with very different sentiments from those which agitated her loving heart, the entire population of the rancho had been attentive, though unseen, spectators of the Don's proceedings. In the evenings the neighbors would come to relate to Darrell how many head of cattle and horses they had seen pass by their farms, and renew their comments thereon.

Thus six weeks passed. The remittitur from the Supreme Court to the United States District Court at San Francisco came. This caused a ripple of excitement among the settlers. Then a bigger one—a perfect tidal wave—was expected with the surveyors that would come to make the survey of the rancho; and when this should be finished, then the grandest and last effort must be made by the settlers to prevent the approval of it. Thus, at least, they would have more litigation, and while the case was in the courts, they would still be on the rancho raising crops, and paying no taxes and no rent, as they knew perfectly well that the Don would never sue them for “rents and profits.”

Everett had gone to town for the mail that day; letters from Clarence were expected. The neighbors knew it, for by dint of asking questions they had learned to time the arrival of his letters, and would drop in quite accidentally, but unerringly, and in an off-hand manner ask if there was “any news from Mr. Clarence?” The Don, with his two sons and three vaqueros, had gone out in search of his cattle, as usual, just as if no remittitur had come. The settlers thought this was a most excellent subject to ventilate with their neighbor, Darrell; they came in goodly numbers, “to revolve the matter, and talk it over in a neighborly way,” Mr. Hughes had said, with his perennial smile.