run for some
distance, since he swore by several forbidden things that the chase
lasted for five miles--"And if you don't believe it, you can ride back
up the trail till you come to the dent I made with my toes when I
started in."

Other cattle came up and joined in the race, until Bill had quite a
following; and when he was gasping for breath and losing hope of seeing
another day, he came upon a live oak, whose branches started almost from
the roots and inclined upward so gently that even a fat man who has lost
his breath need not hesitate over the climbing.

"Thank the good Lord he don't cut all his trees after the same pattern,"
finished Bill fervently, "and that live oaks ain't built like redwoods.
If they was, you'd be wiping off my coat-buttons right now, trying to
identify my remains!"

Being polite young men, and having a sincere liking for Bill, they hid
certain exchanges of grins and glances under their hat-brims (Bill being
above them and the brims being wide) and did not by a single word
belittle the escape he had had from man-eating cows. Instead, Dade
coaxed him down from the tree and onto Surry, swearing solemnly that the
horse was quite as safe as the limb to which Bill showed a disposition
to cling. Bill was hard to persuade, but since Dade was a man who
inspired faith instinctively, the exchange was finally accomplished,
Bill still showing that strange, clinging disposition that made him grip
the saddle-horn as a drowning man is said to grasp at a straw.

So they got him to the house, the two riding Jack's peppery palimeno
with some difficulty; while Surry stepped softly that he might not
dislodge that burden in the saddle, whose body lurched insecurely and
made the horse feel at every step the ignorance of the man. They got him
and themselves to the house; and his presence there did its part towards
strengthening Don Andres' liking for gringos, while Bill himself gained
a broader outlook, a keener perception of the rights of the native-born
Californians.

Up in San Francisco there was a tendency to make light of those rights.
It was commonly accepted that the old land grants were outrageous, and
that the dons who prated of their rights were but land pirates who would
be justly compelled by the government to disgorge their holdings. Bill
had been in the habit of calling all Spaniards "greasers," just as the
average Spaniard spoke of all Americans as "gringos," or heathenish
foreigners.

But on