dwelt Don Francisco Escobar
in true pastoral and patriarchal manner; his stalwart sons and
daughters, with their sons and daughters in turn, in clustering _adobes_
around him: for neighbors, the allied family of Gonzales y Ortega.

A cheerful settlement, this of Los Banos, nestling at the foot of the
friendly rampart, sheltered alike from flood and wind. South and west
the close black Rim walled the horizon, the fantasy of Fray Cristobal
closed in the narrow east: but northward, beyond the low sand-hills and
the blue heat-haze, the high peaks of Organ, Guadalupe and Rainbow swam
across the sleepy air, far and soft and dim.

In their fields the _gente_ of Gonzales y Ortega and of Escobar raised
ample crops of alfalfa, wheat, corn, _frijoles_ and _chili_, with
orchard, vineyard and garden. Their cows, sheep and goats grazed the
foothills between river and Rim, watched by the young men or boys,
penned nightly in the great corrals in the old Spanish fashion; as if
the Moor still swooped and forayed. Their horses roamed the hills at
will, only a few being kept in the alfalfa pasture. They ground their
own grain, tanned their cow-hides at home. Mattress and pillow were wool
of their raising, their blankets and cloth their own weave. There were
granaries, a wine-press, a forge, a cumbrous stone mill, a great _adobe_
oven like a monstrous bee-hive.

Once a year their oxen drew the great high-sided wagons up the sandy
road to El Paso, and returned with the year's marketing--salt, axes,
iron and steel, powder and lead, bolts of white domestic or _manta_ for
sheets and shirtings, matches, tea, coffee, tobacco and sugar. Perhaps,
if the saints had been kind, there were a few ribbons, trinkets or
brightly colored prints of Joseph and Virgin and Child, St. John the
Beloved, The Annunciation, The Children and Christ; perhaps an American
rifle or a plow. But, for the most part, they held not with innovations;
plowed, sowed and reaped as their fathers did, threshing with oxen or
goats.

The women sewed by hand, cooked on fireplaces; or, better still, in the
open air under the trees, with few and simple utensils. The family ate
from whitest and cleanest of sheepskins spread on the floor. But, the
walls were snowy with whitewash, the earthen floors smooth and clean,
the coarse linen fresh and white. The scant furniture of the rooms--a
pine bed, a chair or two, a mirror, a brass candlestick (with home-made
candles), a cheap print on th