1 68 Life and Sport on the Pacific Slope 



patriot offers the dole of board and lodging. One 

 man was known to many sheep-owners in South- 

 ern California as El Fraile (the friar). An ardent 

 Eoman Catholic, he had a prodigious memory glutted 

 with odds and ends of learning : all of it quite 

 unavailable for work-a-day uses. What El Fraile 

 did not know about the ante- and post-Nicene 

 Fathers was not worth knowing. He herded sheep 

 badly, although it was his duty to herd them well. 

 Yet he had a fine sense of humour ! One day he 

 was sent to town to buy groceries, and on his return 

 the other herders marked on his usually pleasant 

 face a most villainous and hang-dog expression. 

 Examined, he confessed with groans that the store- 

 keeper, a German Jew, had slapped his cheek. And 

 he had submitted tamely to the insult because with- 

 out provocation he had kicked the storekeeper's dog ! 

 So he had accepted his thwackings meekly as a pen- 

 ance. For a week he moped ; then he went again to 

 town and returned to the ranch in fine feather. He 

 had caught the storekeeper cheating a child, and had 

 thrashed him soundly with a stout pigskin belt. 

 The friar grew very peculiar as time went by, and 

 the vaqueros said that he had surely eaten of the 

 "loco" weed, and was now crazy. His greatest 

 and indeed his only pleasure was confessing his 

 sins. To reach the confessional, no obstacle was 

 too great to be surmounted. In winter, holding a 

 heavy stone in each hand, he would wade through 

 boiling torrents that the greasers pronounced im- 

 passable. In his haste to deliver his soul he would 

 outstrip the stage to Santa Barbara. His appear- 

 ance, you may be sure, was no less disordered than 



