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"He had the promise of a Farrel that a great misfortune would overtake him if he ever get foot on the Rancho Palomar. And he knows the tribe of Farrel." "But how did you secure possession of that check, Don Mike?"
"Farrel has gone to El Toro to attach my bank-account and my sheep," the Basque explained in a whisper, leaning low over the gray's neck. "His father had an old judgment against me. When I thought young Farrel dead, I dared do business in my own name understand? Now, if he collects, you've lost the Rancho Palomar help me, for God's sake, Parker!" Parker's hand fell away from the reins.
To Farrel, therefore, these sheep were awarded, and in some occult manner Don Nicolás Sandoval selected them from the flock; then, acting under instructions from Farrel, he sold the sheep back to Loustalot at something like a dollar a head under the market value and leased to the amazed Basque for one year the grazing privilege on the Rancho Palomar.
Palomar stretched his long, lazy looking form, with his rounded back and indented outline, from east to west. His distance from us made him look like a line of low, outlying hills, instead of the sturdy old mountain that he is. All of these mountains bore most exquisite purple hues.
"The track is ready for it now, Kay, and Pablo tells me Panchito's half-brother is now a most dutiful member of society and can get there in a hurry when he's sent for. But he's only a half thoroughbred. Shall we start training to-morrow?" "Oh, goody. By all means." The long and patient methods of education to which a green race-horse is subjected were unknown on the Rancho Palomar.
"There is no doubt about it," Pablo soliloquized, "it is better to be the head of a mouse than the tail of a lion!" The following day Don Mike, Pablo and the latter's male relatives, who had so mysteriously appeared on the premises, were early ahorse, driving to El Toro the three hundred-odd head of cattle of all ages and sizes rounded up on the Palomar.
In a shower of weeds and gravel the pinto slid on his hind quarters down over the cut-bank where the grading operations had bitten into the hillside, and landed with a grunt among the teams and scrapers. "Bill Conway! Front and center!" yelled the master of Palomar. "Here! What's the row?" a man shouted, and, from a temporary shack office a hundred yards away, a man stepped out.
That flock of sheep should be worth about one hundred thousand dollars by the time I have to leave the Palomar, and I know I'm going to collect at least fifty thousand dollars in cash in addition." He drew from his vest pocket a check for that sum, signed by André Loustalot and drawn in favor of John Parker, Trustee. "How did you come by that check?" Kay demanded.
He smiled sadly as he noted his civilian clothes laid out on the bed. However, he would not wear them to-night. A little later, while he was hanging them in the clothes-press, a propitiatory cough sounded at the door. Turning, he beheld the strangest sight ever seen on the Rancho Palomar a butler, bearing a tray covered with a napkin. "Good-evening," quoth Don Miguel civilly.
Don Miguel regarded him not, and when Pablo's babbling became incoherent, the aged master of Palomar controlled his twitching hands sufficiently to roll and light a cigarette. Then he reread the telegram. Yes; it was true.
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