The Pride of Palomar Part 26

Farrel," she continued, "while you were away, I had a very bright idea.

You are much too few in the family for such a large house, and it occurred to me that you might care to lease the Palomar hacienda to us for a year. I'm so weary of hotels and equally weary of a town house, with its social obligations and the insolence of servants--particularly cooks. John needs a year here, and we would so like to remain if it could be arranged. Your cook, Carolina, is not the sort that leaves one's employ in the middle of a dinner-party."

"Would five hundred dollars a month for the house and the use of Carolina and three saddle-horses interest you, Mr. Farrel? From our conversation of this morning, I judge you have abandoned hope of redeeming the property, and during the year of the redemption period, six thousand dollars might--ah--er--"

"Well, it would be better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick,"

Don Miguel replied genially. "I need the money; so I accept--but with certain reservations. I like Carolina's cooking, too; I have a couple of hundred head of cattle to look after, and I'd like to reserve one room, my place at this table, and my position as master of Palomar. Of course, I'm not so optimistic as to think you folks would accept of my hospitality for a year, so I suggest that you become what our British cousins call 'paying guests,' albeit I had never expected to fall low enough to make such a dastardly proposition. Really, it abases me.

It's never been done before in this house."

"I declare you're the most comfortable young man to have around that I have ever known. Isn't he, Kay?" Mrs. Parker declared.

"I think you're very kind," the girl a.s.sured him. "And I think it will be very delightful to be paying guests to such a host, Don Mike Farrel."

"Then it's settled," Parker announced, much relieved.

"And let us here highly resolve that we shall always be good friends and dwell together in peace," Kay suggested.

"I made that resolve when you met me at the gate last night, Miss Parker. Hark! Methinks I hear a young riot. Well, we cannot possibly have any interest in it, and, besides, we're talking business now. Mr.

Parker, there isn't the slightest hope of my earning sufficient money to pay the mortgage you hold against this ranch of mine, so I have resolved to gamble for it whenever and wherever I can. You have agreed to pay me six thousand dollars, in return for which I guarantee to feed you and your family and servants well, and house you comfortably and furnish three saddle-horses, with saddles and bridles, for a period of one year. Understand?"

"Understood."

Don Miguel Farrel took two dice out of his pocket and cuddled them in his palm.

"I'll roll you the bones, one flop, twelve thousand dollars or nothing, sir," he challenged.

"But if I win--"

"You want to know if I am in a position to support you all for one year if I lose? I am. There are cattle enough on the ranch to guarantee that."

"Well, while these little adventures are interesting, Mr. Farrel, the fact is I've always made it a rule not to gamble."

"Listen to the hypocrite!" his wife almost shouted. "Gambled every day of his life for twenty-five years on the New York Stock Exchange, and now he has the effrontery to make a statement like that! John Parker, roll them bones!"

"Not to-day," he protested. "This isn't my lucky day."

"Well, it's mine," the good soul retorted. "Miguel--you'll pardon my calling you by your first name: Miguel, but since I was bound to do so sooner or later, we'll start now--Miguel, I'm in charge of the domestic affairs of the Parker family, and I've never known a time when this poor tired old business man didn't honor my debts. Roll 'em, Mike, and test your luck."

"Mother!" Kay murmured reproachfully.

"Nonsense, dear! Miguel is the most natural gentleman, the first _regular_ young man I've met in years. I'm for him, and I want him to know it. Are you for me, Miguel?"

"All the way!" Don Mike cried happily,

"There!" the curious woman declared triumphantly. "I knew we were going to be good friends. What do I see before me? As I live, a pair of box cars."

"Mother, where _did_ you learn such slang?" her daughter pleaded.

"From the men your non-gambling father used to bring home to play poker and shoot c.r.a.ps," she almost shouted. "Well, let us see if I can roll two sixes and tie the score. I can! What's more, I do! Miguel, are these dice college-bred? Ah! Old Lady Parker rolls a wretched little pair of bull's-eyes!"

Don Miguel took the dice and rolled--a pair of deuces.

"I'm going to make big money operating a boarding-house," he informed the lady.

"'Landlord, fill the flowing bowl until it doth flow over,'" she sang gaily. "John, you owe Miguel twelve thousand dollars, payable at the rate of one thousand dollars a month for twelve months. Have your lawyer in El Toro draw the lease this afternoon."

Parker glanced at her with a broad hint of belligerence in his keen gray eyes.

"My dear," he rasped, "I wish you would take me seriously once in a while. For twenty-five years I've tried to keep step with you, and I've failed. One of these bright days I'm going to strike."

"I recall three occasions when you went on strike, John, and refused to accept my orders," the mischievous woman retorted sweetly. "At the conclusion of the strike, you couldn't go back to work. Miguel, three separate times that man has declined to cease money-making long enough to play, although I begged him with tears in my eyes. And I'm not the crying kind, either. And every time he disobeyed, he blew up. Miguel, he came home to me as hysterical as a high-school girl, wept on my shoulder, said he'd kill himself if he couldn't get more sleep, and then surrendered and permitted me to take him away for six months.

Strange to relate, his business got along very nicely without him. Am I not right, Kay?"

"You are, mother dear. Dad reminds me of a horse at a livery-stable fire. You rescue him from the flames, but the instant you let go his halter-shank, he dashes into the burning barn." She winked ever so slightly at Farrel. "Thanks to you, Don Mike," she a.s.sured him, "father's claws are clipped for one year; thanks to you, again, we now have a nice, quiet place to incarcerate him."

Farrel could see that John Parker, while outwardly appearing to enjoy this combined attack against him, was secretly furious. And Don Mike knew why. His pride as a business man was being cruelly lacerated; he had foolishly crawled out on the end of a limb, and now there was a probability, although a remote one, that Miguel Farrel would saw off the limb before he could crawl back.

"Perhaps, Mr. Farrel," he replied, with a heroic attempt at jocularity, "you will understand now that it was not altogether a cold hard heart that prompted me to decline your request for a renewal of the mortgage this morning. I couldn't afford to. I had agreed to gamble one million dollars that you were thoroughly and effectually dead--I couldn't see one chance in a million where this ranch would get away from me."

"Well, do not permit yourself to become down-hearted, Mr. Parker," Don Mike a.s.sured him whimsically. "I cannot see one chance in a million where you are going to lose it."

"Thank you for the heartening effect of those words, Mr. Farrel."

"I think I understand the reason underlying all this speed, Mr. Parker.

You and Okada feared that next year the people of this state will so amend their faulty anti-alien land law of 1913 that it will be impossible for any Oriental to own or lease California land then. So you proceeded with your improvements during the redemption period, confident that the ranch would never be redeemed, in order that you might be free to deal with Okada before the new law went into effect.

Okada would not deal with you until he was a.s.sured the water could be gotten on the land."

"Pa's thrown out at first base!" Mrs. Parker shrilled. "Poor old pa!"

Don Mike's somber black eyes flashed with mirth. "I understand now why you leased the hacienda and why that twelve-thousand-dollar board bill hurt," he murmured. He turned to Kay and her mother. "Why the poor unfortunate man is forced to remain at the Rancho Palomar in order to protect his bet." His thick black brows lifted piously. "Don't cheer, boys," he cried tragically; "the poor devil is going fast now! Is there anybody present who remembers a prayer or who can sing a hymn?"

Kay's adorable face twitched as she suppressed a chuckle at her father's expense, but now that Parker was being a.s.sailed by all three, his loyal wife decided to protect him.

"Well, Johnny's a shrewd gambler after all," she declared. "If you do not redeem the ranch, he will get odds of two and a half to one on his million-dollar bet and clean up in a year. With water on the lands of the San Gregorio, Okada's people will pay five hundred dollars an acre cash for the fifty thousand acres."

"I grant you that, Mrs. Parker, but in the meantime he will have increased tremendously the value of all of my land in the San Gregorio valley, and what is to prevent me, nine months from now, from floating a new loan rather handily, by reason of that increased valuation, paying off Mr. Parker's mortgage and garnering for myself that two and a half million dollars' profit you speak of?"

"I fear you will have to excuse us from relishing the prospect of that joke, Don Mike," Kay murmured.

"Work on that irrigation project will cease on Sat.u.r.day evening, Mr.

Farrel," Parker a.s.sured his host.

Nevertheless, Farrel observed that his manner belied his words; obviously he was ill at ease. For a moment, the glances of the two men met; swift though that visual contact was, each read in the other's glance an unfaltering decision. There would be no surrender.

The gay mood into which Mrs. Parker's humorous sallies had thrown Farrel relaxed; there came back to him the memory of some graves in the valley, and his dark, strong face was somber again. Of a sudden, despite his victory of the morning, he felt old for all his twenty-eight years--old and sad and embittered, lonely, futile and helpless.

The girl, watching him closely, saw the light die out in his face, saw the shadows come, as when a thunder-cloud pa.s.ses between the sun and a smiling valley. His chin dropped a little on his breast, and for perhaps ten seconds he was silent; by the far-away gleam in his eyes, Kay knew he was seeing visions, and that they were not happy ones.

Instinctively her hand crept round the corner of the table and touched his arm lightly. Her action was the result of impulse; almost as soon as she had touched him, she withdrew her hand in confusion.