woman sees the peril of her pets, and attempts to catch up the black-and-tan also in her arms; but the rieta comes spinning through the air, and the fatal noose is around his neck before her hand has touched him. In the effort to grasp him as he is jerked away she drops the spaniel also, and in the fraction of a second the mounted vaquero whirls the rieta around his head and sends it straight as an arrow at the little fellow, lassoes him at the first attempt, and lands him half way into the middle of the street with the recoil of the rieta, as a boy would land a perch or chub, at the end of his line, on the bank of a stream. There is a wild outcry on the part of the woman, an indignant appeal for help to the unsympathetic bystanders, a tearful and angry dispute with the smiling driver of the van, and finally the excited woman pays over ten dollars in coin,—five dollars for each pet,—receives a mild caution not to let them be caught a second time without the license-tag on their collars, and moves hurriedly away, breathing maledictions long and loud upon the devoted heads of the poundkeeper and all his assistants and the makers of the infamous laws, which thus tear the heartstrings out of a poor woman and rob her of her hard-earned dollars.
A wilder excitement, something more peculiarly Californian, and as such more keenly enjoyed by the excitement-loving San Franciscans, follows close upon the last. Shouts of warning, the fall of goods piled up in front of Kearney Street stores and shops, the banging of doors, and the rattle of many
