Some By Ways of California

l nightfall, when we were still far from San Fernando. That may seem a long time to take for a jaunt of little more than fifty miles, but marketing in Orange, and -doing several necessary errands in Los Angeles, as well as taking nearly two hours to drive through the city, used up a good part of the day; and sundown overtook us in the middle of an immense field of wheat, ready and waiting to be cut, through which the road passed. Coming at last to a group of buildings, which turned out to be the headquarters of the men who were harvesting the grain, we stopped to enquire our way to San Fernando. The man we asked, evidently an overseer, was a surly fellow, and replied shortly, to our dismay, that we were five miles from the town. After a moment, we asked if he would permit us towater our horses at the trough inside the fence. The man's only answer was to turn on his heel and walk off to the house near-by. He must have taken us for tramps?we looked like them, I suppose, but tramps usually do not travel with a two- horse team. Rebuffed and provoked at the proceedings, we drove away and, as soon as we were out of sight of the settlement, turned off the road and drove into the wheat field on our right, and made our camp for the night there, hidden among the tall stalks of the grain. Fearing to be caught in our trespassing, we made a small fire which we kept going just long enough to fry some eggs and make coffee. Jose was more afraid than I, and strongly objected to my li...