Book Description

"Some fifty odd years ago a skinny, gangling kid on a hipshot, hump-backed mare rode into the southern San Joaquin Valley, looking for a job." Thus begins the final volume in a trilogy that has been dedicated to the saga of a vanished--the vaquero of California's Central Valley, who reached his apogee at a time when the greatest cattle empires in North America were passing out of existence. Speaking Spanish, the inheritor of traditional skills that had come down to him via the conquistadors from the Arabian horsemen, the Vaquero was the forerunner and mentor of the American buckaroo--to whom in turn he transmitted his lingo and equine expertise. Arnold (Chief") Rojas picked up the ore, anecdotes and legends he has transcribed into three marvelously authentic books from the survivors of that lost empire and era--when there was not glamor in riding fences, or carrying a gun-from men named Catarino Reece, 'Nacho Montes and Harry Gillem. First as a boy of nine who carried water and did odd jobs, and later as a top hand for the Tejon Ranch, Miller and Lux, and the Kern County Land Company, Arnold Rojas kept his ears open and managed to capture the essence of thousands of long evenings in many a San Joaquin bunkhouse and lonely line shack--in a prose as terse and flavored as the speech of the vaqueros themselves.--From jacket flap