The Pride of Palomar Part 9

"You are quite right," she replied, with an arch smile. "I could not possibly accept a gift from a stranger. Neither could I buy a horse from a stranger--no; not even at the ridiculous price of five cents."

"Perhaps if I introduced myself--have I your permission to be that bold?"

"Well," she replied, still with that bright, friendly, understanding smile, "that might make a difference."

"I do not deserve such consideration. Consequently, for your gentle forbearance, you shall be accorded a unique privilege--that of meeting a dead soldier. I am Miguel Jose Farrel, better known as 'Don Mike,'

of the Rancho Palomar, and I own Panchito. To quote the language of Mark Twain, 'the report of my death has been grossly exaggerated,' as is the case of several thousand other soldiers in this man's army." He chuckled as he saw a look of amazement replace the sweet smile. "And you are Miss--" he queried.

She did not answer. She could only stare at him, and in that look he thought he noted signs of perturbation. While he had talked, the train had slid to a momentary halt for the flag-station, and while he waited now for her name, the train began creeping out of Sespe.

"All right," he laughed. "You can tell me your name when we meet again. I must run for it. Good-by." He hurried through the screen door to the platform, stepped over the bra.s.s railing, and clung there a moment, looking back into the car at her before dropping lightly to the ground between the tracks.

"Now what the devil is the meaning of that?" he mused, as he stood there watching the train. "There were tears in her eyes."

He crossed the tracks, climbed a fence, and after traversing a small piece of bottom-land, entered a trail through the chaparral, and started his upward climb to the crest of the range that hid the San Gregorio. Suddenly he paused.

Had the girl's unfamiliarity with Spanish names caused her to confuse Palomar with Palomares? And why was Panchito to be sold at auction?

Was it like his father to sacrifice his son's horse to any fellow with the money to buy him? No! No! Rather would he sell his own mount and retain Panchito for the sake of the son he mourned as dead. The Palomares end of the San Gregorio was too infertile to interest an experienced agriculturist like Okada; there wasn't sufficient acreage to make a colonization-scheme worth while. On the contrary, fifty thousand acres of the Rancho Palomar lay in the heart of the valley and immediately contiguous to the flood-waters at the head of the ghost-river for which the valley was named.

Don Mike, of Palomar, leaned against the bole of a scrub-oak and closed his eyes in sudden pain. Presently, he roused himself and went his way with uncertain step, for, from time to time, tears blinded him. And the last of the sunlight had faded from the San Gregorio before he topped the crest of its western boundary; the melody of Brother Flavio's angelus had ceased an hour previous, and over the mountains to the east a full moon stood in a cloudless sky, flooding the silent valley with its silver light, and p.r.i.c.king out in bold relief the gray-white walls of the Mission de la Madre Dolorosa, crumbling souvenir of a day that was done.

He ran down the long hill, and came presently to the mission. In the gra.s.s beside the white road, he searched for his straw suitcase, his gas-mask, and the helmet, but failing to find them, he concluded the girl had neglected to remind her father's chauffeur to throw them off in front of the mission, as promised. So he pa.s.sed along the front of the ancient pile and let himself in through a wooden door in the high adobe wall that surrounded the churchyard immediately adjacent to the mission. With the a.s.surance of one who treads familiar ground, he strode rapidly up a weed-grown path to a spot where a tall black-granite monument proclaimed that here rested the clay of one superior to his peon and Indian neighbors. And this was so, for the shaft marked the grave of the original Michael Joseph Farrel, the adventurer the sea had cast up on the sh.o.r.e of San Marcos County.

Immediately to the left of this monument, Don Mike saw a grave that had not been there when he left the Palomar. At the head of it stood a tile taken from the ruin of the mission roof, and on this brown tile some one had printed in rude lettering with white paint:

Fallecio Don Miguel Jose Noriaga Farrel Nacio, Junio 3, 1841 Muerto, 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.

V

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 pa.s.sionless, 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 j.a.panese 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 j.a.panese 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 a.s.surance 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 pet.i.tion 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 n.o.body 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."