FallecióDon Miguel José Noriaga FarrelNacio, Junio 3, 1841Muerto, Deciembre 29, 1919.
FallecióDon Miguel José Noriaga FarrelNacio, Junio 3, 1841Muerto, Deciembre 29, 1919.
FallecióDon Miguel José Noriaga FarrelNacio, Junio 3, 1841Muerto, Deciembre 29, 1919.
The last scion of that ancient house knelt in the mold of his father's grave and made the sign of the cross.
The tears which Don Mike Farrel had descried in the eyes of his acquaintance on the train were, as he came to realize when he climbed the steep cattle-trail from Sespe, the tribute of a gentle heart moved to quick and uncontrollable sympathy. Following their conversation in the dining-car, the girl—her name was Kay Parker—had continued her luncheon, her mind busy with thoughts of this strange home-bound ex-soldier who had so signally challenged her attention. "There's breeding back of that man," the girl mused. "He's only a rancher's son from the San Gregorio; where did he acquire his drawing-room manners?"
She decided, presently, that they were not drawing-room manners. They were too easy and graceful and natural to have been acquired. He must have been born with them. There was something old-fashioned about him—as if part of him dwelt in the past century. He appeared to be quite certain of himself, yet there was not even a hint of ego in his cosmos. His eyes were wonderful—and passionless, like a boy's. Yes; there was a great deal of the little boy about him, for all his years, his wounds, and his adventures. Kay thought him charming, yet he did not appear to be aware of his charm, and this fact increased her attraction to him. It pleased her that he had preferred to discuss the Japanese menace rather than his own exploits, and had been human enough to fly in a rage when told of her father's plans with the potato baron. Nevertheless, he had himself under control, for he had smothered his rage as quickly as he had permitted it to flare up.
"Curious man!" the girl concluded. "However—he's a man, and when we meet again, I'm going to investigate thoroughly and see what else he has in his head."
Upon further reflection, she reminded herself that he hadn't disclosed, in anything he had said, the fact that his head contained thoughts or information of more than ordinary value. He had merely created that impression. Even his discussion of the Japanese problem had been cursory, and, as she mentally back-tracked on their conversation, the only striking remark of his which she recalled was his whimsical assurance that he knew why young turkeys are hard to raise in the fall. She smiled to herself.
"Well, Kay, did you find him pleasant company?"
She looked up and discovered her father slipping into the chair so lately vacated by the object of her thoughts.
"'Lo, pop! You mean the ex-soldier?" He nodded. "Queerest man I've ever met. But he is pleasant company."
"I thought so. Tell me, daughter: What you were smiling about just now."
"He said he knew why young turkeys are hard to raise in the fall."
"Why are they?"
"I don't know, dear. He didn't tell me. Can you?"
"The problem is quite beyond me, Kay." He unfolded his napkin. "Splendid-looking young chap, that! Struck me he ought to have more in his head than frivolous talk about the difficulty of rearing young turkeys."
"I think he has a great deal more in his head than that. In fact, I do not understand why he should have mentioned young turkeys at all, because he's a cattleman. And he comes from the San Gregorio valley."
"Indeed! What's his name?"
"He didn't tell me. But he knows all about the ranch you took over from the Gonzales estate."
"But I didn't foreclose on that. It was the Farrel estate."
"He called it something else—the Palomares rancho, I think."
"Gonzales owns the Palomares rancho, but the Palomar rancho belonged to old Don Miguel Farrel."
"Was he the father of the boy they call 'Don Mike'—he who was killed in Siberia?"'
"The same."
"Why did you have to foreclose on his ranch, father?"
"Well, the interest had been unpaid for two years, and the old man was getting pretty feeble; so, after the boy was killed, I realized that was the end of the Farrel dynasty and that the mortgage would never be paid. Consequently, in self-protection, I foreclosed. Of course, under the law, Don Miguel had a year's grace in which to redeem the property, and during that year I couldn't take possession without first proving that he was committing waste upon it. However, the old man died of a broken heart a few months after receiving news of his son's death, and, in the protection of my interest, I was forced to petition the court to grant me permission to enter into possession. It was my duty to protect the equity of the heirs, if any."
"Are there any heirs?"
"None that we have been able to discover."
The girl thoughtfully traced a pattern on the tablecloth with the tine of her fork.
"How will it be possible for you to acquire that horse, Panchito, for me, dearest?" she queried presently.
"I have a deficiency judgment against the Rancho Palomar," he explained. "Consequently, upon the expiration of the redemption period of one year, I shall levy an attachment against the Farrel estate. All the property will be sold at public auction by the sheriff to satisfy my deficiency judgment, and I shall, of course, bid in this horse."
"I have decided I do not want him, father," she informed him half sadly. "The ex-soldier is an old boyhood chum of the younger Farrel who was killed, and he wants the horse."
He glanced at her with an expression of shrewd suspicion.
"As you desire, honey," he replied.
"But I want you to see to it that nobody else outbids him for the horse," she continued, earnestly. "If some one should run the price up beyond the limits of his purse, of course I want you to outbid that some one, but what I do not desire you to do is to run the price up on him yourself. He wants the horse out of sentiment, and it isn't nice to force a wounded ex-service-man to pay a high price for his sentiment."
"Oh, I understand now," her father assured her. "Very well, little daughter; I have my orders and will obey them."
"Precious old darling!" she whispered, gratefully, and pursed her adorable lips to indicate to him that he might consider himself kissed. His stern eyes softened in a glance of father-love supreme.
"Whose little girl are you?" he whispered, and, to that ancient query of parenthood, she gave the reply of childhood:
"Daddy's."
"Just for that, I'll offer the soldier a tremendous profit on Panchito. We'll see what his sentiment is worth."
"Bet you a new hat, angel-face, you haven't money enough to buy him," Kay challenged.
"Considering the cost of your hats, I'd be giving you rather long odds, Kay. You say this young man comes from the San Gregorio valley?"
"So he informed me."
"Well, there isn't a young man in the San Gregorio who doesn't need a couple of thousand dollars far worse than he needs a horse. I'll take your bet, Peaches. Of course you mentioned to him the fact that you wanted this horse?"
"Yes. And he said I couldn't have him—that he was going to acquire him."
"Perhaps he was merely jesting with you."
"No; he meant it."
"I believe," he said, smiling, "that it is most unusual of young men to show such selfish disregard of your expressed desires."
"Flatterer! I like him all the more for it. He's a man with some backbone."
"So I noticed. He wears the ribbon of the Congressional Medal of Honor. Evidently he is given to exceeding the speed-limit. Did he tell you how he won that pale-blue ribbon with the little white stars sprinkled on it?"
"He did not. Such men never discuss those things."
"Well, they raise fighting men in the San Gregorio, at any rate," her father continued. "Two Medal-of-Honor men came out of it. Old Don Miguel Farrel's boy was awarded one posthumously. I was in El Toro the day the commanding general of the Western Department came down from San Francisco and pinned the medal on old Don Miguel's breast. The old fellow rode in on his son's horse, and when the little ceremony was over, he mounted and rode back to the ranch alone. Not a tear, not a quiver. He looked as regal as the American eagle—and as proud. Looking at that old don, one could readily imagine the sort of son he had bred. The only trouble with the Farrels," he added, critically, "was that they and work never got acquainted. If these old Californians would consent to imbibe a few lessons in industry and economy from their Japanese neighbors, their wonderful state would be supporting thirty million people a hundred years from now."
"I wonder how many of that mythical thirty millions would be Japs?" she queried, innocently.
"That is a problem with which we will not have to concern ourselves, Kay, because we shall not be here."
"Some day, popsy-wops, that soldier will drop in at our ranch and lock horns with you on the Japanese question."
"When he does," Parker replied, good-naturedly, "I shall make a star-spangled monkey out of him. I'm loaded for these Californians. I've investigated their arguments, and they will not hold water, I tell you. I'll knock out the contentions of your unknown knight like tenpins in a bowling-alley. See if I don't."
"He's nobody's fool, dad."
"Quite so. He knows why young turkeys are hard to raise in the fall?"
She bent upon him a radiant smile of the utmost good humor.
"Score one for the unknown knight," she bantered. "That is more than we know. And turkey was sixty cents a pound last Thanksgiving! Curious information from our view-point, perhaps, but profitable."
He chuckled over his salad.
"You're hopelessly won to the opposition," he declared. "Leave your check for me, and I'll pay it. And if your unknown knight returns to the observation-car, ask him about those confounded turkeys."
But the unknown knight had not returned to the observation-car until the long train was sliding into Sespe, and Kay had no time to satisfy her thirst for information anent young turkeys. With unexpected garrulity, he had introduced himself; with the receipt of this information, she had been rendered speechless, first with surprise, and then with distress as her alert mind swiftly encompassed the pitiful awakening that was coming to this joyous home-comer. Before she could master her emotions, he was disappearing over the brass rail at the end of the observation-car; even as he waved her a debonair farewell, she caught the look of surprise and puzzlement in his black eyes. Wherefore, she knew the quick tears had betrayed her.
"Oh, you poor fellow!" she whispered to herself, as she dabbed at her eyes with a wisp of a lace handkerchief. "What a tragedy!"
What a tragedy, indeed!
She had never been in the San Gregorio, and to-day was to mark her first visit to the Rancho Palomar, although her father and mother and the servants had been occupying the Farrel hacienda for the past two months. Of the beauty of that valley, of the charm of that ancient seat, she had heard much from her parents; if they could be so enthusiastic about it in two short months, how tremendously attached to it must be this cheerful Don Mike, who had been born and raised there, who was familiar with every foot of it, and doubtless cherished every tradition connected with it. He had imagination, and in imaginative people wounds drive deep and are hard to heal; he loved this land of his, not with the passive loyalty of the average American citizen, but with the strange, passionate intensity of the native Californian for his state. She had met many Californians, and, in this one particular, they had all been alike. No matter how far they had wandered from the Golden West, no matter how long or how pleasant had been their exile, they yearned, with a great yearning, for that intangible something that all Californians feel but can never explain—which is found nowhere save in this land of romance and plenty, of hearty good will, of life lived without too great effort, and wherein the desire to play gives birth to that large and kindly tolerance that is the unfailing sweetener of all human association.
And Don Mike was hurrying home to a grave in the valley, to a home no longer his, to the shock of finding strangers ensconced in the seat of his prideful ancestors, to the prospect of seeing the rich acres that should have been his giving sustenance to an alien race, while he must turn to a brutal world for his daily bread earned by the sweat of his brow.
Curiously enough, in that moment, without having given very much thought to the subject, she decided that she must help him bear it. In a vague way, she felt that she must see him and talk with him before he should come in contact with her father and mother. She wanted to explain matters, hoping that he would understand that she, at least, was one of the interlopers who were not hostile to him.
For she did, indeed, feel like an interloper now. But, at the same time, she realized, despite her small knowledge of the law, that, until the expiration of the redemption period, the equity of Don Mike in the property was unassailable. With that unpleasant sense of having intruded came the realization that to-night the Parker family would occupy the position of uninvited and unwelcome guests. It was not a comfortable thought.
Fortunately, the potato baron and her father were up in the smoker; hence, by the time the train paused at El Toro, Kay had composed herself sufficiently to face her father again without betraying to him any hint of the mental disturbance of the past forty minutes. She directed the porter in the disposition of Don Mike's scant impedimenta, and watched to see that the Parker chauffeur carried it from the station platform over to the waiting automobile. As he was lashing their hand-baggage on the running-board, she said,
"William, how long will it take you to get out to the ranch?"
"Twenty miles, miss, over a narrow dirt road, and some of it winds among hills. I ought to do it handily in an hour without taking any chances."
"Take a few chances," she ordered, in a voice meant for his ear alone. "I'm in a hurry."
"Forty-five minutes, miss," he answered, in the same confidential tone.
Kay sat in the front seat with William, while her father and Okada occupied the tonneau. Within a few minutes, they were clear of the town and rolling swiftly across a three-mile-wide mesa. Then they entered a long, narrow cañon, which they traversed for several miles, climbed a six-per-cent. grade to the crest of a ridge, rolled down into another cañon, climbed another ridge, and from the summit gazed down on the San Gregorio in all the glory of her new April gown. Kay gasped with the shock of such loveliness, and laid a detaining hand on the chauffeur's arm. Instantly he stopped the car.
"I always get a kick out of the view from here, miss," he informed her. "Can you beat it? You can't!"
The girl sat with parted lips.
"This—this is the California he loves," she thought.
She closed her eyes to keep back the tears, and the car rolled gently down the grade into the valley. From the tonneau she could catch snatches of the conversation between her father and the potato baron; they were discussing the agricultural possibilities of the valley, and she realized, with a little twinge of outrage, that its wonderful pastoral beauty had been quite lost on them.
As they swept past the mission, Kay deliberately refrained from ordering William to toss Don Mike's baggage off in front of the old pile, for she knew now whither the latter was bound. She would save him that added burden. Three miles from the mission, the road swung up a gentle grade between two long rows of ancient and neglected palms. The dead, withered fronds of a decade still clung to the corrugated trunks. In the adjoining oaks vast flocks of crows perched and cawed raucously. This avenue of palms presently debouched onto a little mesa, oak-studded and covered with lush grass, which gave it a pretty, parklike effect. In the center of this mesa stood the hacienda of the Rancho Palomar.
Like all adobe dwellings of its class, it was not now, nor had it ever been, architecturally beautiful. It was low, with a plain hip-roof covered with ancient red tiles, many of which were missing. When the house had first been built, it had been treated to a coat of excellent plaster over the adobe, and this plaster had never been renewed. With the attrition of time and the elements, it had worn away in spots, through which the brown adobe bricks showed, like the bones in a decaying corpse. The main building faced down the valley; from each end out, an ell extended to form a patio in the rear, while a seven-foot adobe wall, topped with short tile, connected with the ell and formed a parallelogram.
"The old ruin doesn't look very impressive from the front, Kay," her father explained, as he helped her out of the car, "but that wall hides an old-fashioned garden that will delight you. A porch runs all round the inside of the house, and every door opens on the patio. That long adobe barracks over yonder used to house the help. In the old days, a small army of peons was maintained here. The small adobe house back there in the trees houses the majordomo—that old rascal, Pablo."
"He is still here, dad?"
"Yes—and as belligerent as old billy-owl. He pretends to look after the stock. I ordered him off the ranch last week; but do you think he'd go? Not much. He went inside his shack, sorted out a rifle, came outside, sat down, and fondled the weapon all day long. Ever since then he has carried it, mounted or afoot. So I haven't bothered him. He's a bad old Indian, and when I secure final title to the ranch, I'll have the sheriff of the county come out and remove him."
"But how does he live, dear?"
"How does any Indian live? He killed a steer last week, jerked half of it, and sold the other half for some beans and flour. It wasn't his steer and it wasn't mine. It belonged to the Farrel estate, and, since there is nobody to lodge a complaint against him, I suppose he'll kill another steer when his rations run low. This way, daughter. Right through the hole in the wall."
They passed through a big inset gate in the adobe wall, into the patio. At once the scent of lemon and orange blossoms, mingled with the more delicate aroma of flowers, assailed them. Kay stood, entranced, gazing upon the hodgepodge of color; she had the feeling of having stepped out of one world into another.
Her father stood watching her.
"Wonderful old place, isn't it, Kay?" he suggested. "The garden has been neglected, but I'm going to clean it out."
"Do not touch it," she commanded, almost sharply. "I want it the way it is."
"You little tyrant!" he replied good-naturedly. "You run me ragged and make me like it."
From a rocker on the porch at the eastern end of the patio Kay's mother rose and called to them, and the girl darted away to greet her. Mrs. Parker folded the girl to a somewhat ample bosom and kissed her lovingly on her ripe red lips; to her husband she presented a cheek that showed to advantage the artistry of a member of that tribe of genii who strive so valiantly to hold in check the ravages of age. At fifty, Kay's mother was still a handsome woman; her carriage, her dress, and a certain repressed vivacity indicated that she had mastered the art of growing old gracefully.
"Well, kitten," she said, a trifle louder and shriller than one seemed to expect of her, "are you going to remain with us a little while, or will next week see you scampering away again?"
"I'll stay all summer, fuss-budget. I'm going to paint the San Gregorio while it's on exhibition, and then this old house and the garden. Oh, mother dear, I'm in love with it! It's wonderful!"
The potato baron had followed Parker and his daughter into the patio, and stood now, showing all of his teeth in an amiable smile. Parker suddenly remembered his guest.
"My dear," he addressed his wife, "I have brought a guest with me. This is Mr. Okada, of whom I wrote you."
Okada bowed low—as low as the rules of Japanese etiquette prescribe, which is to say that he bent himself almost double. At the same time, he lifted his hat. Then he bowed again twice, and, with a pleasing smile proffered his hand. Mrs. Parker took it and shook it with hearty good will.
"You are very welcome, Mr. Okada," she shrilled. "Murray," she added, turning to the butler, who was approaching with Okada's suitcase, "show the gentleman to the room with the big bed in it. Dinner will be ready at six, Mr. Okada. Please do not bother to dress for dinner. We're quite informal here."
"Sank you very much," he replied, with an unpleasant whistling intake of breath; with another profound bow to the ladies, he turned and followed Murray to his room.
"Well, John," Mrs. Parker demanded, as the Japanese disappeared, "your little playmate's quite like a mechanical toy. For heaven's sake, where did you pal up with him?"
"That's the potato baron of the San Joaquin valley, Kate," he informed her. "I'm trying to interest him in a colonization scheme for his countrymen. A thousand Japs in the San Gregorio can raise enough garden-truck to feed the city of Los Angeles—and they will pay a whooping price for good land with water on it. So I brought him along for a preliminary survey of the deal."
"He's very polite, but I imagine he's not very brilliant company," his wife averred frankly. "When you wired me you were bringing a guest, I did hope you'd bring some jolly young jackanapes to arouse Kay and me."
She sighed and settled back in her comfortable rocking-chair, while Kay, guided by a maid, proceeded to her room. A recent job of calcimining had transformed the room from a dirty grayish, white to a soft shade of pink; the old-fashioned furniture had been "done over," and glowed dully in the fading light. Kay threw open the small square-hinged window, gazed through the iron bars sunk in the thick walls, and she found herself looking down the valley, more beautiful than ever now in the rapidly fading light.
"I'll have to wait outside for him," she thought. "It will be dark when he gets here."
She washed and changed into a dainty little dinner dress, after which she went on a tour of exploration of the hacienda. Her first port of call was the kitchen.
"Nishi," she informed the cook, "a gentleman will arrive shortly after the family has finished dinner. Keep his dinner in the oven. Murray will serve it to him in his room, I think."
She passed out through the kitchen, and found herself in the rear of the hacienda. A hundred yards distant, she saw Pablo Artelan squatting on his heels beside the portal of his humble residence, his back against the wall. She crossed over to him, smiling as she came.
"How do you do, Pablo?" she said. "Have you forgotten me? I'm the girl to whom you were kind enough to give a ride on Panchito one day in El Toro."
The glowering glance of suspicion and resentment faded slowly from old Pablo's swarthy countenance. He scrambled to his feet and swept the ground with his old straw sombrero,
"I am at the service of theseñorita," he replied, gravely.
"Thank you, Pablo. I just wanted to tell you that you need not carry that rifle any more. I shall see to it that you are not removed from the ranch."
He stared at her with stolid interest.
"Muchas gracias, señorita," he mumbled. Then, remembering she did not understand Spanish, he resumed in English: "I am an old man, mees. Since my two boss he's die, pretty soon Pablo die, too. For what use eet is for live now I don' tell you. Those ol' man who speak me leave theese rancho—he is your father, no?"
"Yes, Pablo. And he isn't such a terrible man, once you get acquainted with him."
"I don' like," Pablo muttered frankly. "He have eye like lookin'-glass. Mebbeso for you, mees, eet is different, but for Pablo Artelan———" he shrugged. "Eef Don Mike is here, nobody can talk to me like dose ol' man, your father, he speak to me." And he wagged his head sorrowfully.
Kay came close to him.
"Listen, Pablo: I have a secret for you. You, must not tell anybody. Don Mike is not dead."
He raised his old head with languid interest and nodded comprehension.
"My wife, Carolina, she tell me same thing all time. She say: 'Pablo mio, somebody make beeg mistake. Don Mike come home pretty queeck, you see. Nobody can keel Don Mike. Nobody have that mean the deesposition for keel the boy.' But I don' theenk Don Mike come back to El Palomar."
"Carolina is right, Pablo. Somebody did make a big mistake. He was wounded in the hand, but not killed. I saw him to-day, Pablo, on the train."
"You see Don Mike? You see heem with the eye?"
"Yes. And he spoke to me with the tongue. He will arrive here in an hour."
Pablo was on his knees before her, groping for her hand. Finding it, he carried it to his lips. Then, leaping to his feet with an alacrity that belied his years, he yelled:
"Carolina! Come queeck,Pronto!Aquí, Carolina."
"Si, Pablo mio."
Carolina appeared in the doorway and was literally deluged with a stream of Spanish. She stood there, hands clasped on her tremendous bosom, staring unbelievingly at the bearer of these tidings of great joy, the while tears cascaded down her flat, homely face. With a snap of his fingers, Pablo dismissed her; then he darted into the house and emerged with his rifle. A cockerel, with the carelessness of youth, had selected for his roost the limb of an adjacent oak and was still gazing about him instead of secreting his head under his wing, as cockerels should at sunset. Pablo neatly shot his head off, seized the fluttering carcass, and started plucking out the feathers with neatness and despatch.
"Don Mike, he's likegallina con arroz espagñol," he explained. "What you, call chick-een with rice Spanish," he interpreted. "Eet mus' not be that Don Mike come home and Carolina have not cook for heem the grub he like.Carramba!"
"But he cannot possibly eat a chicken before—I mean, it's too soon. Don Mike will not eat that chicken before the animal-heat is out of it."
"You don' know Don Mike, mees. Wen dat boy he's hongry, he don' speak so many questions."
"But I've told our cook to save dinner for him."'
"Your cook!Señorita, I don' like make fun for you, but I guess you don' know my wife Carolina, she have been cook for Don Miguel and Don Mike since long time before he's beeg like little kitten. Don Mike, he don' understand those gringo grub."
"Listen, Pablo: There is no time to cook Don Mike a Spanish dinner. He must eat gringo grub to-night. Tell me, Pablo: Which room did Don Mike sleep in when he was home?"
"The room in front the house—the beeg room with the beeg black bed. Carolina!" He threw the half-plucked chicken at the old cook, wiped his hands on his overalls, and started for the hacienda. "I go for make the bed for Don Mike," he explained, and started running.
Kay followed breathlessly, but he reached the patio before her, scuttled along the porch with surprising speed, and darted into the room. Immediately the girl heard his voice raised angrily.
"Hullo! What you been do in my boss's room?Madre de Dios! You theenk I let one Chinaman—no, one Jap—sleep in the bed of Don Victoriano Noriaga. No!Vamos!"
There was a slight scuffle, and the potato baron came hurtling through the door, propelled on the boot of the aged but exceedingly vigorous Pablo. Evidently the Jap had been taken by surprise. He rolled off the porch into a flower-bed, recovered himself, and flew at Pablo with the ferocity of a bulldog. To the credit of his race, be it said that it does not subscribe to the philosophy of turning the other cheek.
But Pablo was a peon. From somewhere on his person, he produced a dirk and slashed vigorously. Okada evaded the blow, and gave ground.
"Quidado!" Pablo roared, and charged; whereupon the potato baron, evidently impressed with the wisdom of the ancient adage that discretion is the better part of valor, fled before him. Pablo followed, opened the patio gate, and, with his long dirk, motioned the Jap to disappear through it. "The hired man, he don' sleep in the bed of thegente," he declared. "The barn is too good for one Jap.Santa Maria! For why I don' keel you, I don' know."
"Pablo!"
The majordomo turned.
"Yes, mees lady."
"Mr. Okada is our guest. I command you to leave him alone. Mr. Okada, I apologize to you for Pablo's impetuosity. He is not a servant of ours, but a retainer of the former owner. Pablo, will you please attend to your own business?" Kay was angry now, and Pablo realized it.
"Don Mike's beesiness, she is my beesiness, too, señorita," he growled.
"Yes; I zink so," Okada declared. "I zink I go 'nother room."
"Murray will prepare one for you, Mr. Okada. I'm so sorry this has happened. Indeed I am!"
Pablo hooted.
"You sorry, mees? Wait until my Don Mike he's come home and find thees fellow in hees house."
He closed the gate, returned to the room, and made a critical inspection of the apartment. Kay could see him wagging his grizzled head approvingly as she came to the door and looked in.
"Where those fellowEl Mono, he put my boss's clothes?" Pablo demanded.
"'El Mono?' Whom do you mean, Pablo?"
"El Mono—the monkey. He wear long tail to the coat; all the time he look like mebbeso somebody in the house she's goin' die pretty queeck."
"Oh, you mean Murray, the butler."
Pablo was too ludicrous, and Kay sat down on the edge of the porch and laughed until she wept. Then, as Pablo still stood truculently in the doorway, waiting an answer to his query, she called to Murray, who had rushed to the aid of the potato baron, and asked him if he had found any clothing in the room, and, if so, what he had done with it.
"I spotted and pressed them all, Miss Kay, and hung them in the clothes-press of the room next door."
"I go get," growled Pablo, and did so; whereupon the artful Murray took advantage of his absence to dart over to the royal chamber and remove the potato baron's effects.
"I don't like that blackamoor, Miss Kay,"El Monoconfided to the girl. "I feel assured he is a desperate vagabond to whom murder and pillage are mere pastimes. Please order him out of the garden. He pays no attention to me whatsoever."
"Leave him severely alone," Kay advised. "I will find a way to handle him."
Pablo returned presently, with two suits of clothing, a soft white-linen shirt, a black necktie, a pair of low-cut brown shoes, and a pair of brown socks. These articles he laid out on the bed. Then he made another trip to the other room, and returned bearing an armful of framed portraits of the entire Noriaga and Farrel dynasty, which he proceeded to hang in a row on the wall at the foot of the bed. Lastly, he removed a rather fancy spread from the bed and substituted therefor an ancient silk crazy-quilt that had been made by Don Mike's grandmother. Things were now as they used to be, and Pablo was satisfied.
When he came out, Kay had gone in to dinner; so he returned to his owncasaand squatted against the wall, with his glance fixed upon the point in the palm avenue where it dipped over the edge of the mesa.
At seven o'clock, dinner being over, Kay excused herself to the family and Mr. Okada, passed out through the patio gate, and sought a bench which she had noticed under a catalpa tree outside the wall. From this seat, she, like Pablo, could observe anybody coming up the palm-lined avenue. A young moon was rising over the hills, and by its light Kay knew she could detect Don Mike while he was yet some distance from the house.
At seven-thirty, he had not appeared, and she grew impatient and strolled round to the other side of the hacienda. Before Pablo'scasa, she saw the red end of a cigarette; so she knew that Pablo also watched.
"Imustsee him first," she decided. "Pablo's heart is right toward Don Mike, but resentful toward us. I do not want him to pass that resentment on to his master."
She turned back round the hacienda again, crossed down over the lip of the mesa at right angles to the avenue, and picked her way through the oaks. When she was satisfied that Pablo could not see her, she made her way back to the avenue, emerging at the point where it connected with the wagon-road down the valley. Just off the avenue, a live-oak had fallen, and Kay sat down on the trunk of it to watch and wait.
Presently she saw him coming, and her heart fluttered in fear at the meeting. She, who had for months marked the brisk tread of military men, sensed now the drag, the slow cadence of his approach; wherefore she realized that he knew! In the knowledge that she would not have to break the news to him, a sense of comfort stole over her.
As he came closer, she saw that he walked with his chin on his breast; when he reached the gate at the end of the avenue, he did not see it and bumped into it. "Dios mio!" she heard him mutter. "Dios! Dios! Dios!" The last word ended in tragic crescendo; he leaned on the gate, and there, in the white silence, the last of the Farrels stood gazing up the avenue as if he feared to enter.
Kay sat on the oak trunk, staring at him, fascinated by the tragic tableau.
Suddenly, from the hacienda, a hound gave tongue—a long, bell-like baying, with a timbre in it that never creeps into a hound's voice until he has struck a warm scent. Another hound took up the cry—and still another. Don Mike started.
"That's Nip!" Kay heard him murmur, as the first hound sounded. "Now, Mollie! Come now, Nailer! Where's Hunter? Hunter's dead! You've scented me!"
Across the mesa, the pack came bellowing, scattering the wet leaves among the oaks as they took the short cut to the returning master. Into the avenue they swept; the leader leaped for the top of the gate, poised there an instant, and fell over into Don Mike's arms. The others followed, overwhelming him. They licked his hands; they soiled him with their reaching paws, the while their cries of welcome testified to their delight. Presently, one grew jealous of the other in the mad scramble for his caressing hand, and Nip bit Mollie, who retaliated by biting Nailer, who promptly bit Nip, thus completing the vicious circle. In an instant, they were battling each other.
"Stop it!" Don Mike commanded. "Break!"
They "broke" at his command, and, forgetting their animosities, began running in circles, in a hopeless effort to express their happiness. Suddenly, as if by common impulse, they appeared to remember a neglected duty, and fled noisily whence they had come.
"Ah, only my dogs to welcome me!" Kay heard Don Mike murmur. And then the stubborn tears came and blinded him, so he did not see her white figure step out into the avenue and come swiftly toward him. The first he knew of her presence was when her hand touched his glistening black head bent on his arms over the top rail of the gate.
"No, no, Don Mike," he heard a sweet voice protesting; "somebody else cares, too. We wouldn't be human if we didn't. Please—please try not to feel so badly about it."
He raised his haggard face.
"Ah, yes—you!" he cried. "You—you've been waiting here—for me?"
"Yes. I wanted to tell you—to explain before you got to the house. We didn't know, you see—and the notice was so terribly short; but we'll go in the morning. I've saved dinner for you, Don Mike—and your old room is ready for you. Oh, you don't know how sorry I am for you, you poor man!"
He hid his face again.
"Don't—please!" he cried, in a choked voice. "I can't stand sympathy—to-night—from you!"
She laid a hand on his shoulder.
"Come, come; you must buck up, old soldier," she assured him. "You'll have to meet Pablo and Carolina very soon."
"I'm so alone and desperate," he muttered, through clenched teeth. "You can't—realize what this means—to me. My father was an old man—he had—accomplished his years—and I weep for him, because I loved—him. But oh, my home—this—dear land——"
He choked, and, in that moment, she forgot that this man was a stranger to her. She only knew that he had been stricken, that he was helpless, that he lacked the greatest boon of the desolate—a breast upon which he might weep. Gently she lifted the black head and drew it down on her shoulder; her arm went round his neck and patted his cheek, and his full heart was emptied.
There was so much of the little boy about him!
The fierce gust of emotion which swept Don Mike Farrel was of brief duration. He was too sane, too courageous to permit his grief to overwhelm him completely; he had the usual masculine horror of an exhibition of weakness, and although the girl's sweet sympathy and genuine womanly tenderness had caught him unawares, he was, nevertheless, not insensible of the incongruity of a grown man weeping like a child on the shoulder of a young woman—and a strange young woman at that. With a supreme effort of will, he regained control of himself as swiftly as he had lost it, and began fumbling for a handkerchief.
"Here," she murmured; "use mine." She reached up and, with her dainty wisp of handkerchief, wiped his wet cheeks exactly as if he had been a child.
He caught the hand that wielded the handkerchief and kissed it gratefully, reverently.
"God bless your dear, kind heart!" he murmured. "I had thought nobody could possibly care—that much. So few people—have any interest in the—unhappiness of others." He essayed a twisted smile. "I'm not usually this weak," he continued, apologetically. "I never knew until to-night that I could be such a lubberly big baby, but, then, I wasn't set for this blow. This afternoon, life executed an about face for me—and the dogs got me started after I'd promised myself———" He choked again on the last word.
She patted his shoulder in comradely fashion.
"Buck up, Don Mike!" she pleaded. "Tears from such men as you are signs of strength, not weakness. And remember—life has a habit of obeying commanding men. It may execute another about face for you."
"I've lost everything that made life livable," he protested.
"Ah! No, no! You must not say that. Think of that cheerful warrior who, in defeat, remarked, 'All is lost save honor.'" And she touched the pale-blue star-sprinkled ribbon on his left breast.
He smiled again, the twisted smile.
"That doesn't amount to a row of pins in civil life." Something of that sense of bitter disillusionment, of blasted idealism, which is the immediate aftermath of war, had crept into his voice. "The only thrill I ever got out of its possession was in the service. My colonel was never content merely with returning my salute. He always uncovered to me. That ribbon will have little weight with your father, I fear, when I ask him to set aside the foreclosure, grant me a new mortgage, and give me a fighting chance to retain the thing I love." And his outflung arm indicated the silent, moonlit valley.
"Perhaps," she replied, soberly. "He is a businessman. Nevertheless, it might not be a bad idea if you were to defer the crossing of your bridges until you come to them." She unlatched the gate and swung it open for him to pass through.
He hesitated.
"I didn't intend to enter the house to-night," he explained. "I merely wanted to see Pablo and have a talk with him. My sudden appearance on the scene might, perhaps, prove very embarrassing to your family."
"I dare say. But that cannot be helped. Your right of entrance and occupancy cannot be questioned. Until the period of redemption expires, I think nobody will dispute your authority as master here."
"I had forgotten that phase of the situation. Thank you." He passed through the gate and closed it for her. Then he stepped to the side of the road, wet his handkerchief in a pool of clean rain-water, and mopped his eyes. "I'll have to abandon the luxury of tears," he declared, grimly. "They make one's eyes burn. By the way, I do not know your name."
"I am Kay Parker."
"'Kay' for what?"
"Kathleen."
He nodded approvingly.
"You neglected to leave my dunnage at the mission; Miss Parker."
"After you told me who you were, I realized you would sleep at the ranch to-night, so I kept your things in the car. They are in your old room now."
"Thank you for an additional act of kindness and thoughtfulness." He adjusted his overseas cap, snugged his blouse down over his hips, flipped from it the wet sand deposited there by the paws of the hound-pack, and said, "Let's go."
Where the avenue debouched into the ranch-yard, Pablo and Carolina awaited them. The old majordomo was wrapped in aboriginal dignity. His Indian blood bade him greet Don Mike as casually as if the latter had merely been sojourning in El Toro the past two years, but the faint strain of Spanish in him dictated a different course as Don Mike stepped briskly up to him with outstretched hand and greeted him affectionately in Spanish. Off came the weather-stained old sombrero, flung to the ground beside him, as Pablo dropped on his knees, seized his master's hand, and bowed his head over it.
"Don Miguel," he said, "my life is yours."
"I know it, you blessed old scalawag!" Don Mike replied in English, and ruffled the grizzled old head before passing on to the expectant Carolina, who folded him tightly in her arms and wept soundlessly when he kissed her leathery cheek. While he was murmuring words of comfort to her, Pablo got up on his feet and recovered his hat.
"You see," he said to Kay, in a confidential tone, "Don Miguel José Maria Federico Noriaga Farrel loves us. Never no woman those boy kees since hees mother die twenty year before. So Carolina have the great honor like me. Yes!"
"Oh, but you haven't seen him kiss his sweetheart," Kay bantered the old man—and then blushed, in the guilty knowledge that her badinage had really been inspired by a sudden desire to learn whether Don Mike had a sweetheart or not. Pablo promptly and profanely disillusioned her.
"Those boy, he don' have some sweethearts, mees lady. He's pretty parteecular." He paused a moment and looked her in the face meaningly. "Those girls in thees country—pah! Hee's pretty parteecular, those boy."
His childish arrogance and consuming pride in his master stirred the girl's sense of humor.
"I think your Don Mike istooparticular," she whispered. "Personally, I wouldn't marry him on a bet."
His slightly bloodshot eyes flickered with rage. "You never get a chance," he assured her. "Those boy is of thegente. An' we don' call heem 'Don Mike' now. Before, yes; but now he is 'Don Miguel,' like hees father. Same, too, like hees gran'father."
Throughout this colloquy, Carolina had been busy exculpating herself from possible blame due to her failure to have prepared for the prodigal the sort of food she knew he preferred.
Farrel had quite a task pacifying her. At length he succeeded in gently dismissing both servants, and followed Kay toward the patio.
The girl entered first, and discovered that her family and their guest were not on the veranda, whereat she turned and gave her hand to Farrel.
"The butler will bring you some dinner to your room. We breakfast at eight-thirty. Good-night."
"Thank you," he replied. "I shall be deeper in your debt if you will explain to your father and mother my apparent lack of courtesy in failing to call upon them this evening."
He held her hand for a moment. Then he bowed, gracefully and with studied courtesy, cap in hand, and waited until she had turned to leave him before he, in turn, betook himself to his room.