74 OBSERVATIONS OF A RANCHWOMAN 



airs drifting out of those high clouds men 

 tossed the wheat above their heads, and let 

 Nature do their winnowing. Later, in the 

 autumn days, women may yet be found to 

 sit without their doors, and grind the corn 

 betwixt the upper and the nether millstone. 

 It is even said that there are portions of the 

 Territory in which the Mexican hitches his 

 pony to a pointed stick and turns the kind 

 earth, which here rewards him beyond his 

 due measure, according to the manner of his 

 progenitors. 



But there are some things which a man 

 learns in three hundred years or so, and, as 

 has already been shown, levelling land is 

 one. Irrigating is another. In these arts 

 the Mexican is an adept ; not only that, but 

 in irrigation he finds much joy. After level- 

 ling his land, a man has, indeed, to hoe small 

 canals from his main ditches in order to 

 conduct the water, and there come times 

 when his bare brown feet have to skip 

 through the flood at a lively rate ; but there 

 are always long delicious intervals in which 

 he can lean sleepily upon his hoe and gaze 

 upon the flowing tide, and smoke cigarettes of 



