The Pride of Palomar Part 5

"I find it pleasanter sitting together. By the way, may I ask the ident.i.ty of the Nipponese person, with your father?"

"How do you know he is my father?" she parried.

"I do not know. I merely thought he looked quite worthy of the honor."

"While away with the rough, bad soldiers, you did not forget how to make graceful speeches," she complimented him. "The object of your pardonable curiosity is a Mr. Okada, the potato baron of California.

He was formerly prime minister to the potato king of the San Joaquin, but revolted and became a pretender to the throne. While the king lives, however, Okada is merely a baron, although in a few years he will probably control the potato market absolutely."

He thumped the table lightly with his maimed hand.

"I knew he was just a coolie dressed up."

She reached for an olive.

"Go as far as you like, native son. He's no friend of mine."

"Well, in that case, I'll spare his life," he countered boldly. "And I've always wanted to kill a j.a.panese potato baron. Do you not think it would be patriotic of me to immolate myself and reduce the cost of spuds?"

"I never eat them. They're very fattening. Now, if you really wish to be a humanitarian, why not search out the j.a.panese garlic king?"

"I dare not. His demise would place me in bad odor."

She laughed merrily. Evidently she was finding him amusing company.

She looked him over appraisingly and queried bluntly,

"Were you educated abroad?"

"I was not. I'm a product of a one-room schoolhouse perched on a bare hill down in San Marcos County."

"But you speak like a college man."

"I am. I'm a graduate of the University of California Agricultural College, at Davis. I'm a sharp on pure-bred beef cattle, pure-bred swine, and irrigation. I know why hens decline to lay when eggs are worth eighty cents a dozen, and why young turkeys are so blamed hard to raise in the fall. My grandfather and my father were educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and were sharps on Latin and Greek, but I never figured the dead languages as much of an aid to a man doomed from birth to view cows from the hurricane-deck of a horse."

"But you have such a funny little clipped accent."

He opened his great black eyes in feigned astonishment.

"Oh, didn't you know?" he whispered.

"Know what?"

"Unfortunate young woman!" he murmured to his water-gla.s.s. "No wonder she sits in public with that pudgy son of a chrysanthemum, when she isn't even able to recognize a greaser at a glance. Oh, Lord!"

"You're not a greaser," she challenged.

"No?" he bantered. "You ought to see me squatting under an avocado tree, singing the 'Spanish Cavalier' to a guitar accompaniment.

Listen: I'll prove it without the accompaniment." And he hummed softly:

"The Spanish cavalier, Went out to rope a steer, Along with his paper cigar-o, '_Car-ramba_!' says he.

'_Manana_ you will be _Mucho bueno carne par mio_!'"

Her brown eyes danced.

"That doesn't prove anything except that you're an incorrigible Celt.

When you stooped down to kiss the stone at Blarney Castle, you lost your balance and fell in the well. And you've dripped blarney ever since."

"Oh, not that bad, really! I'm a very serious person ordinarily. That little forget-me-not of language is a heritage of my childhood. Mother taught me to pray in Spanish, and I learned that language first.

Later, my grandfather taught me to swear in English with an Irish accent, and I've been fearfully balled up ever since. It's very inconvenient."

"Be serious, soldier, or I shall not cut your meat for you at dinner."

"Excuse me. I forgot I was addressing a hot-cake queen. But please do not threaten me, because I'm out of the army just twenty-four hours, and I'm independent and I may resent it. I can order spoon-victuals, you know."

"You aren't really Spanish?"

"Not really. Mostly. I'd fight a wild bull this minute for a single red-chilli pepper. I eat them raw."

"And you're going home to your ranch now?"

"_Si_. And I'll not take advantage of any stop-over privileges on the way, either. Remember the fellow in the song who kept on proclaiming that he had to go back--that he must go back--that he would go back--to that dear old Chicago town? Well, that poor exile had only just commenced to think that he ought to begin feeling the urge to go home.

And when you consider that the unfortunate man hailed from Chicago, while I--" He blew a kiss out the window and hummed:

"I love you, California.

You're the greatest state of all--"

"Oh dear! You native sons are all alike. Congenital advertisers, every one."

"Well, isn't it beautiful? Isn't it wonderful?" He was serious now.

"One-half of your state is worthless mountain country--"

"He-country--and beautiful!" he interrupted.

"The other half is desert."

"Ever see the Mojave in the late afternoon from the top of the Tejon Pa.s.s?" he challenged. "The wild, barbaric beauty of it? And with water it would be a garden-spot."

"Of course your valleys are wonderful."

"_Gracias, senorita_."

"But the bare brown hills in summer-time--and the ghost-rivers of the South! I do not think they are beautiful."

"They grow on one," he a.s.sured her earnestly. "You wait and see. I wish you could ride over the hills back of Sespe with me this afternoon, and see the San Gregorio valley in her new spring gown. Ah, how my heart yearns for the San Gregorio!"

To her amazement, she detected a mistiness in his eyes, and her generous heart warmed to him.

"How profoundly happy you are!" she commented.