The Pride of Palomar Part 12

"_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 c.o.c.kerel, 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 c.o.c.kerels should at sunset. Pablo neatly shot his head off, seized the fluttering carca.s.s, and started plucking out the feathers with neatness and despatch.

"Don Mike, he's like _gallina con arroz espagnol_," 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! _Senorita_, 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 j.a.p--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 j.a.p 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 j.a.p to disappear through it. "The hired man, he don' sleep in the bed of the _gente_," he declared. "The barn is too good for one j.a.p.

_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, senorita," 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 fellow _El 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 Mono_ confided to the girl. "I feel a.s.sured 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 subst.i.tuted 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 own _casa_ and squatted against the wall, with his glance fixed upon the point in the palm avenue where it dipped over the edge of the mesa.

VII

At seven o'clock, dinner being over, Kay excused herself to the family and Mr. Okada, pa.s.sed 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's _casa_, she saw the red end of a cigarette; so she knew that Pablo also watched.

"I _must_ see him first," she decided. "Pablo's heart is right toward Don Mike, but resentful toward us. I do not want him to pa.s.s 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 b.u.mped 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.