“Did I understand you to say to the Don that you will not maintain your claim, if the attorney general dismisses our appeal?” asked Gasbang.
“I don't know what you understood, or what you did not understand. What I said was that if the Don's title is decided to be right and legal, I shall not contest it. Why should I, if the land is his? I came here to take up government land, believing his title was rejected. He says it is not.”
“He lies; it was rejected,” Gasbang said.
“That is why we appealed,” Mathews added.
“Very well; we will wait. For my part, I think that if his title was rejected he will find it hard to get it back,” said Darrell.
The fact of his going on with his building ought to have been sufficient proof to the other settlers that he had cast his lot with them. But it was not. They feared that at any time he might pay the Don for his land, and cease to be one of them; cease to be a “squatter.” These doubts, these fears, were the perennial theme of endless discussion with the settlers of Alamar.
With date of February 14, 1872, the Honorable Legislature of California passed a law “To protect agriculture, and to prevent the trespassing of animals upon private property in the County of Los Angeles, and the County of San Diego, and parts of Monterey County.”
In the very first section it recited, that “every owner or occupant of land, whether it is enclosed or not,” could take up cattle found in said land, etc., etc. It was not stated to be necessary that the occupant should have a good title. All that was required seemed to be that he should claim to be an occupant of land, no matter who was the owner.
Before this law came out, Don Mariano had already had a great deal of trouble with the squatters, who kept killing his cattle by the hundred head at times. After this law passed, he had the additional annoyance of having to pay money for the release of cattle taken up by occupants who would not fence their ten-acre crops. Thus, the alternative was, that if cattle were not taken up, he was sure to find them shot dead by some invisible hand. He had hoped that the Legislature would pass a law saying that “unless occupants of land put fences around their fields, they would not be authorized to take up cattle.” But, instead of this, the above-mentioned law was enacted.
This was, of course, ruinous to Don Mariano, as well as to all owners of cattle ranchos where settlers had seen fit to locate homesteads. Now any one man, by planting one acre of grain to attract cattle to it, could make useless thousands of acres around it of excellent grazing, because it became necessary to drive cattle away from the vicinity of these unfenced fields.