Excerpt: The Way of the Fleas

Preface

In old California in the time of the Spanish Missions, a well-traveled road ran from San Diego in the south to Sonoma in the north. It was called El Camino Real or the King's Highway. The trail connected twenty-four Franciscan missions; each religious outpost set one day's ride away from the next. Only missionaries, priests and their servants, Spanish officers, soldiers and dignitaries, and those others granted special dispensation from the Governor of Mexico, could travel the route.

Another road ran somewhat parallel to the royal highway. This path was for peasants, Indians, neophytes (Catholic Indians), shepherds, merchants and foreigners. But the road also served highwaymen, mostly, along with rogues, rapists, brigands, thieves, pickpockets, fugitives, rascals, assassins, idiots, heathens, reprobates, ruffians, ne'er-do-wells, drunkards, outcasts, deserters, fools, brutes, barbarians, knaves, savages and wild men, cutthroats, idolaters, bandits and banditos, scalawags, vagabonds, convicts, muggers, robbers, more ruffians, thugs, murderers, sinners and Lutherans.

This road is called Alameda de las Pulgas - the Way of the Fleas.