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all these reliable men who disappear?” Diego mused aloud.
    The two boys pondered this mystery as they drifted off to sleep.

6
“A PARTADO ”
    B ERNARDO WOULDN’T RIDE A mule this day. Before dawn he and Diego rode out of the hacienda on experienced cow ponies. Behind them they trailed their remuda , a picked string of extra mounts.
    The fortune of the pueblo was on the hoof. Every hidalgo, padre, and neophyte depended on cattle. Hides, tallow, and meat were the only wealth Angeleños had. Everything from the distant world was bought with stacks of cured hides, bags of beef-fat tallow, barrels of salted meat. Blacksmith, potter, baker, carpenter—every life in the pueblo was somehow tied to cattle.
    In the next week, the boys and men of Los Angeles would live in the saddle. Three or four times a day, eachwould return to a moving camp and step down from an exhausted horse. Each would shift a big-horned working saddle to a fresh mount, then return to the herd and dust and hard riding.
    By mid-morning the de la Vega vaqueros had made their first sweeps of foothills, steep ravines, and wooded bluffs on the northern edge of the rancho. They combed out cattle and calves—along with white-tailed deer and some ill-tempered wild pigs.
    The boys stayed near Scar and the crew of Juan Three-fingers as they rode in and out of dense scrub brush, up and down canyon slopes.
    To town riders the vaquero outfit might look merely colorful. But townsmen didn’t ride through brush like this. The vaquero’s short rawhide chaps and leather leggings slid through thorn and branches that would have taken the skin off an unprotected rider. Even so, the caballeros were often hung up in vines. They cut themselves free with the straight-bladed knives tucked in their leggings.
    It was noisy work. Whooping and calling, chucking and whistling, they drove the cattle south toward the open country. When they emerged from a canyon with half a dozen or twenty head of cattle, another crew would drive them toward larger herds farther south.The first crew would move to the next section of rancho to coax de la Vega stock into the open.
    The boys had worked up a streambed and were trying to move one stubborn beast.
    â€œHow can anything be as stupid as a cow?” Diego demanded.
    Bernardo shook his head: No, nothing is as stupid. He whistled and slapped with the coil of his reata—his lasso—against his chaps: Get moving!
    â€œOut of there!” Diego shouted, but the frightened creature was backed into a corner of rock and trees with branches above.
    Bernardo made a loop and a good toss with his reata. But it caught on the branches. Nothing to do but get down from their ponies and push the stupid cow out, probably getting a foot stomped for their trouble.
    Juan Three-fingers rode up and leaned down to look at the situation. “A stubborn one, I see,” he called amiably. He reached behind the cantle of his saddle and uncoiled a black whip. Bernardo and Diego backed their ponies out of the way. Juan tossed the whip out behind him, where it lay like a sleeping blacksnake. Then his wrist twitched forward.
    Pop! The tongue of the whip cracked just behind the cow’s flank like a pistol shot, and the cow shot from thecorner like a cannonball. Juan smiled after it. “Stubborn? I’m more stubborn.”
    He nudged his pony with his knees and rode away, coiling his whip.
    â€œSaints and cats and little fishes,” Diego said to Bernardo. “That’s something we’ve got to learn!”
    The cattle were just naturally stubborn. If they were herded in one direction, they wanted to go in the other direction. On foot the situation would have been hopeless. Only the ponies made it possible.
    â€œCow ponies are just a little smarter than cattle. Only a little,” Scar had told them, indicating a tiny amount with his gloved fingers, “but it’s enough.”
    Enough made for some fancy