profiteering, and it seemed to him that the sheriff of San Marcos
County was too great a simpleton to do anything about it. So my father
stood for the office as an independent candidate and was elected on a
platform which read, 'No steers' taken off this ranch without
permission in writing from the owner.' Within six months, dad had half
a dozen of our prominent citizens in San Quentin Penitentiary; then he
resigned the office to his chief deputy, Don Nicolás Sandoval, who has
held it ever since.

"Now, during that political campaign, which was a warm and bitter one,
André Loustalot permitted himself the privilege of libeling my father.
He declared in a public address to a gathering of voters in the San
Carpojo valley that my father was a crook, the real leader of the
rustlers, and merely seeking the office of sheriff in order to protect
the cow-thieves. When the campaign ended, my father swore to a warrant
charging Loustalot with criminal libel and sued him for one hundred
thousand dollars damages. A San Marcos County jury awarded my father a
judgment in the sum prayed for. Loustalot appealed the case to the
Supreme Court, but inasmuch as there wasn't the slightest doubt of his
guilt, the higher court affirmed the decision of the Superior Court.

"Loustalot was a poor man in those days. He was foreman of a sheep
outfit, with an interest in the increase of the flock, and inasmuch as
these Basques seldom reduce their deals to writing, the sheriff could
never satisfy himself that Loustalot had any assets in the shape of
sheep. At any rate, the Basque and his employer and all of his Basque
friends denied that Loustalot had any assets.

"For twenty-five years, my father has, whenever the statute of
limitations threatened to kill this judgment, revived it by having