98 Life and Sport on the Pacific Slope 



" You are king, are you ? " said the Boss. " Take 

 that!" 



He had the monarch by the ears, and at " that " 

 he raised the royal head, and pounded the floor with 

 it, till the foreman entreated him to stop, for the 

 flooring, he said, was rotten. Then the ex-King was 

 handcuffed, and securely tied to a bed. Next day, 

 the boss and the foreman led him to the ranch 

 fence, and explained to him that if he had any con- 

 sideration for his own health, he must never, never, 

 never come back again. And I am quite sure he 

 never did. 



I can tell another story that ends less happily, 

 and which illustrates a peculiar phase of ranch life. 

 Around nearly all the old Spanish grants, the 

 ranches proper of Southern California, lies Govern- 

 ment land, valued by Uncle Sam at one dollar and 

 a quarter an acre. A great deal of this land is 

 worthless save for grazing purposes, and it often 

 happens that the possession of a fine spring or a 

 small creek gives the owner undisputed title to 

 many hundreds of acres not worth taking up on 

 account of a scarcity of water. But when it was 

 proved that some of these hitherto neglected lands 

 were the natural home of certain grapes and fruits, 

 men were eager to file homesteads — as the phrase 

 runs — upon them, and the squatters who had had 

 the use of them for many years naturally felt 

 aggrieved. In some cases they had fenced in 

 these hills, to which they had no legal title what- 

 ever. Not far from us was an old squatter who 

 had grown rich upon Uncle Sam's lands. He had, 

 I think, some three hundred and twenty acres of 



