It had been a very successful raid for such a short one. There was not a ranchhouse down the San Gabriel valley that was not a smoking ruin, and the ranchmen, their wives and children, had been done to death in all manner of grotesque ways. It was really a fine raid, one to brag about to the old men who had not gone out that spring because the first freshet had come at the full of the moon, an omen not to be lightly disregarded.