36 Life in the Open 



pastime. One day we had invited a party from Los 

 Angeles to meet us midway between the two cities. 

 The keeper of the hounds threw open the corral, which 

 was on the arroyo road, and the pack took a trail at 

 that spot and, in full cry, started for the arroyo. The 

 bank here was one hundred feet up and down. I be- 

 lieve the pack went over it, and we slid down a small 

 path and followed. Once I heard the echo of a bay 

 several miles to the south ; later in the day I heard it 

 somewhere to the west, and two days later a letter came 

 from a rancher up the San Fernando Valley, twenty 

 miles away, to the effect that the Valley Hunt hounds 

 had just passed ; did we want them ? 



The days with these hounds in the deep arroyo, or 

 in the open, in the floral winters, despite their occasional 

 vagaries, are among the pleasant memories of the earlier 

 California days, and there are still Newfoundland dogs, 

 wildcats, lynxs, hounds, and, above all, winters when the 

 palm leaves rustle in the soft wind, and petal snowflakes 

 drop from the orange, lemon, and lime. 



