"Some few years, and you no getting that strong, wild stock some more," he observed. "Miguel and Rafael want English stallions and such other breeds. They will have English stock and American customs. The saints keep Dona Luisa from hearing them all. I mean no discourtesy, senor, but she is an old woman now, and left her home because she would not live in your government. She comes back for duty and the marriage; but the old never change, senor, and she is hating it till she die." The American cast his eyes northward where the heights of San Jacinto stood guard over the beautiful valley. Willows marked the course of Trabuco Creek and San Juan River, and on the plateau between them gleamed the ruined dome of the old mission, a remnant of beauty such as the ranging American meets with in Latin lands, seldom in his own, and admires, and wonders if it was worth while, and drifts away again, but never quite forgets. Yellow-white it gleamed like an opal in a setting of velvety ranges under turquoise skies. About its walls were the clustered adobes of the Mexicans, like children creeping close to the feet of the one mother; and beyond that the illimitable ranges of mesa and valley, of live-oak groves and knee-deep meadows, of countless springs and canyons of mystery, whence gold was washed in the freshets; and over all, eloquent, insistent, appealing, the note of the meadow-lark cutting clearly through the hoof-beats of the herd and the calls of the vaqueros. "I think I should hate it, too," he said at last. "They lived like kings and made their own laws in those days. After being a queen of all this, it would be hard to be subject to new forms." "That is it, senor, she never get used to like the American flag. That why she want always that Don Rafael marry South, a good Catholic, and a senorita of Mexico. She only living for that, they say. Now when it is done she die in peace." "And Rafael, how will he manage his American deals when--" Don Antonio shrugged his shoulders doubtfully. "Who knows? I glad I living my young life in other days. The fences have make ruin of the country in the north; after a while it is down here all the same. All cut up in little gardens. Who knows?" The American restrained a smile as he thought of the sixty-five miles they had ridden across, and only one little German colony where fence or hedges were in evidence. For the rest all was fenced on the east by the mountains and on the west by the sea. On the north the Santa Barbara range would perhaps serve as a barricade, and south even the Mexican line raised no obstacle to roving herds. "The fences will not come in our day, and it is all now to be a pleasure ground for your gay Don Rafael." "Not so much of a pleasure ground as it looks, senor," observed Don Antonio dryly. "The same curse works still. It is good he marries a convent girl; it takes the prayers of Dona Luisa, and a saint besides, to clear these ranges of Barto Nordico, el Capitan."