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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.
For two weeks he was busy harrowing, disking and rolling the old race-track; he repainted the weather-beaten poles and reshingled the judge's stand; he repaired the fence and installed an Australian starting-gate, dug a pit for the barbecue and brought forth, repaired and set up under the oaks close to the race-tracks, thirty long wooden tables at which, in an elder and more romantic day, the entire countryside, as guests of the Farrels and Noriagas, had gathered to feast.
When I enlisted, we had a hundred thousand acres of the finest valley and rolling grazing-land in California and the hacienda that was built in 1782. But I've been gone two years, and haven't heard from home for five months." "Mortgaged?" "Of course. The Farrels never worked while money could be raised at ten per cent. Neither did the Noriagas.
Just how far his ancestors had nibbled, the last of the Farrels was not fully informed, but he was young and optimistic, and believed that, with proper management and the application of modern ranching principles, he would succeed, by the time he was fifty, in saving this principality intact for those who might come after him, for it was not a part of his life plan to die childless now that the war was over and he out of it practically with a whole skin.
I give you my word I've climbed that patio wall a hundred times and dropped down on Pablo's stomach without wakening him. And, for a quarter of a century, to my personal knowledge, that patio gate has supported itself on a hinge and a half. Oh, we're a wonderful institution, we Farrels!" "What did you say this Pablo was?" "He used to be a majordomo.
I'm desperate, Mr. Conway " "Call me 'Bill, son," Conway interrupted gently. "You know what the Farrels have been up against always, Bill," Don Mike pleaded. "That easy-going Spanish blood! But, Bill, I'm a throw-back. By God, I am! Give me this chance this God-given chance and the fifty-per-cent, Celtic strain in me and the twenty-five-per-cent.
"My dear, the continuous giving of one more chance to the Farrels has proved their undoing. They first mortgaged part of the ranch in 1870; when the mortgage fell due, they executed a new note plus the accrued interest and mortgaged more of the ranch. Frequently they paid the interest and twice they paid half the principal, bidding for one more chance and getting it.
Ah, yes; it was good to have the child back on the rancho again. Carolina and Pablo had never heard that the ravens fed Elijah; they had never heard of Elijah. Nevertheless, if they had, they would not have envied him the friendship of those divinely directed birds, for the Farrels had always fed Pablo and Carolina and their numerous brood, now raised and scattered over the countryside.
"Where but in my home?" "Blood of the devil!" Pablo slapped his thigh and grinned in the knowledge that the last of the Farrels, having come home, had decided to waste no time in assuming his natural position as the master of the Rancho Palomar. "We have oranges," he began, enumerating each course of the forthcoming meal on his tobacco-stained fingers.
Summed up it meant, "Sure it's jist wondtherful ye warn't shot!" When we were alone, alone with Withero, Mary "wet" a pot of tea and warmed up a few farrels of fadges! and we commenced. Little was said, but feeling ran high. It was like a midnight mass.
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