They brought their own blankets and camped out. Their meals were prepared in a cook wagon.
Once at the Alamitos, a number of men had sleeping places in the hay in the old adobe barn, each holding his chosen bed most jealously from invasion. Half a dozen of us children, starting after breakfast on the day’s adventure, after taking slices from the raw ham stolen from the smoke-house and secreted in the hay, spied some clothes carefully hung on the wall above the mow, and the idea of stuffing the clothes into the semblance of a man was no sooner born than it was adopted. Our whole joy was in doing a life-like piece of work. Fan gave us a paper bag for the head, which we filled and covered with the hat. Little we knew how seriously a hot-tempered Mexican might object to being fooled. In the evening when the men came into the barn the owner of the particular hole in which our dummy was sleeping was furious at finding his place occupied. He ordered the stranger out. No move. He swore violently. Still no move. He kicked. And as he saw the man come apart and spill out hay instead of blood, his rage knew no bounds, his knife came out, and it was only by good luck that we children were not the cause of a murder that night. Uncle John made rather vigorous remarks to us about interfering with the workmen.
There were wool-barns at all three of the ranches that I knew, but I officiated at shearing most often at the Cerritos. Here the barn was out beyond the garden, facing away from the house, and toward a series of corrals of varying sizes. The front of it was like a
