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BUNCH GRASS
A CHRONICLE OF LIFE ON A CATTLE RANCH
BY HORACE ANNESLEY VACHELL
1913
TO MY BROTHER
ARTHUR HONYWOOD VACHELL
I DEDICATE
THIS BOOK
FOREWORD
The author of _Bunch Grass_ ventures to hope that this book willnot be altogether regarded as mere flotsam and jetsam of English andAmerican magazines. The stories, it will be found, have a certaincontinuity, and may challenge interest as apart from incident becausean attempt has been made to reproduce atmosphere, the atmosphere of acountry that has changed almost beyond recognition in three decades.The author went to a wild California cow-country just thirty yearsago, and remained there seventeen years, during which period the landfrom such pastoral uses as cattle and sheep-raising became subdividedinto innumerable small holdings. He beheld a new country in themaking, and the passing of the pioneer who settled vital differenceswith a pistol. During those years some noted outlaws ranged at largein the county here spoken of as San Lorenzo. The Dalton gang of trainrobbers lived and died (some with their boots on) not far from thevillage entitled Paradise. Stage coaches were robbed frequently. Everylarge rancher suffered much at the hands of cattle and horse thieves.The writer has talked to Frank James, the most famous of Westerndesperados; he has enjoyed the acquaintance of Judge Lynch, who hangedtwo men from a bridge within half-a-mile of the ranch-house; heremembers the Chinese Riots; he has witnessed many a fight between thehungry squatter and the old settler with no title to the leagues overwhich his herds roamed, and so, in a modest way, he may claim to be ahistorian, not forgetting that the original signification of the wordwas a narrator of fables founded upon facts.
Apologies are tendered for the dialect to be found in these pages.There is no Californian dialect. At the time of the discovery of gold,the state was flooded with men from all parts of the world, anddialects became inextricably mixed. Not even Bret Harte was able toreproduce the talk of children whose fathers may have come fromKentucky or Massachusetts, and their mothers from Louisiana.
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