each and gradually added to my herd.

I got along well until next spring when the beef eating population began to steal my fat cattle, and seemed determined I should get no richer.

The country was over-stocked with desperate and lawless renegades in Los Angeles and from one to four dead men was about the number picked up in the streets each morning.

They were of low class, and there was no investigation, simply a burial at public expense.
The permanent Spanish population seemed honest and benevolent, but there were many bad ones from Chili, Sonora, Mexico, Texas, Utah and Europe, who seemed always on an errand of mischief a murder, thieving or robbery.
Three or four suspicious looking men came on horseback and made their camp near the Mission under an oak tree, where they staid sometime.

They always left someone in camp while the others went away every day on their horses, and acted so strangely that the report soon became current that they were stealing horses and running them off to some safe place in the mountains till a quantity could be accumulated to take to the mines to sell.