The Killer

  CHAPTER I

  THE NEW AND THE OLD

  The old ranching days of California are to all intents and purposes pastand gone. To be sure there remain many large tracts supporting a singlegroup of ranch buildings, and over which the cattle wander "on athousand hills." There are even a few, a very few--like the ranch ofwhich I am going to write--that are still undivided, still game haunted,still hospitable, still delightful. But in spite of these apparentexceptions, my first statement must stand. About the large tracts swarmreal estate men, eager for the chance to subdivide into small farms--andthe small farmers pour in from the East at the rate of a thousand amonth. No matter how sternly the old land-lords set their faces againstthe new order of things, the new order of things will prevail; forsooner or late old land-lords must die, and the heirs have not in themthe spirit of the ancient tradition. This is, of course, best for thecountry and for progress; but something passes, and is no more. So theChino ranch and more recently Lucky Baldwin's broad acres have yielded.

  And even in the case of those that still remain intact, whose widehills and plains graze thousands of head of cattle; whose pastures breedtheir own cowhorses; whose cowmen, wearing still with a twist of pridethe all-but-vanished regalia of their all-but-vanished calling, refuseto drop back to the humdrum status of "farm hands on a cow ranch"; evenhere has entered a single element powerful enough to change the old tosomething new. The new may be better--it is certainly moreconvenient--and perhaps when all is said and done we would not want togo back to the old. But the old is gone. One single modern institutionhas been sufficient to render it completely of the past. Thatinstitution is the automobile.

  In the old days--and they are but yesterdays, after all--the ranch wasperforce an isolated community. The journey to town was not to belightly undertaken; indeed, as far as might be, it was obviatedaltogether. Blacksmithing, carpentry, shoe cobbling, repairing,barbering, and even mild doctoring were all to be done on the premises.Nearly every item of food was raised at home, including vegetables,fruit, meat, eggs, fowl, butter, and honey. Above all, the inhabitantsof that ranch settled down comfortably into the realization that theironly available community was that immediately about them; and so theyboth made and were influenced by the individual atmosphere of the place.

  In the latter years they have all purchased touring cars, and now theyrun to town casually, on almost any excuse. They make shopping lists asdoes the city dweller; they go back for things forgotten; and theyreturn to the ranch as one returns to his home on the side streets of agreat city. In place of the old wonderful and impressive expeditions tovisit in state the nearest neighbour (twelve miles distant), they dropover of an afternoon for a ten-minutes' chat. The ranch is no longer anenvironment in which one finds the whole activity of his existence, buta dwelling place from which one goes forth.

  I will admit that this is probably a distinct gain; but the fact isindubitable that, even in these cases where the ranch life has not beenmaterially changed otherwise, the automobile has brought about acondition entirely new. And as the automobile has fortunately come tostay, the old will never return. It is of the old, and its charm andleisure, that I wish to write.