"We've been waiting for you, Miguel, to motor with us to El Toro," Kay
greeted him as he entered the patio.
"So sorry to have delayed you, Kay. I'm ready to start now, if you
are."
"Father and mother are coming also. Where have you been? I asked
Pablo, but he didn't know."
"I've been over to Bill Conway's camp to tell him to quit work on that
dam."
The girl paled slightly and a look of apprehension crept into her eyes.
"And--and--he's--ceasing operations?" she almost quavered.
"He is not. He defied me, confound him, and in the end I had to let
him have his way."
El Mono, the butler, interrupted them by appearing on the porch to
announce that William waited in the car without. Mrs. Parker presently
appeared, followed by her husband, and the four entered the waiting
car. Don Mike, satisfied that his old riding breeches and coat were
clean and presentable, had not bothered to change his clothes, an
evidence of the democracy of his _ranchero_ caste, which was not lost
upon his guests.
"I know another route to El Toro," he confided to the Parkers as the
car sped down the valley. "It's about twelve miles out of our way, but
it is an inspiring drive. The road runs along the side of the high
hills, with a parallel range of mountains to the east and the low
foothills and flat farming lands sloping gradually west to the Pacific
Ocean. At one point we can look down into La Questa Valley and it's
beautiful."
"Let us try that route, by all means," John Parker suggested. "I have
been curious to see La Questa Valley and observe the agricultural
methods of the Japanese farmers there."
"I am desirous of seeing it again for the same reason, sir," Farrel
replied. "Five years ago there wasn't a Jap in that valley and now I
understand it is a little Japan."
"I understand," Kay struck in demurely, "that La Questa Valley suffered
a slight loss in population a few weeks ago."
Both Farrel and her father favored her with brief, sharp, suspicious
glances. "Who was telling you?" the latter demanded.
"Señor Bill Conway."
"He ought to know better than to discuss the Japanese problem with
you," Farrel complained, and her father nodded vigorous assent. Kay
tilted her adorable nose at them.
"How delightful to have one's intelligence underrated by mere men," she
retorted.
"Did Bill Conway indicate the direction of the tide of emigration from
La Questa?" Farrel asked craftily, still unwilling to admit anything.
The girl smiled at him, then leaning closer she crooned for his ear
alone:
He's sleeping in the valley,
The valley,
The valley,
He's sleeping in the valley,
And the mocking bird is singing where he lies.
"Are you glad?" he blurted eagerly. She nodded and thrilled as she
noted the smug little smile of approval and complete understanding that
crept over his dark face like the shadow of clouds in the San Gregorio.
Mrs. Parker was riding in the front seat with the chauffeur and Kay sat
between her father and Don Mike in the tonneau. His hand dropped
carelessly on her lap now, as he made a pretense of pulling the auto
robe up around her; with quick stealth he caught her little finger and
pressed it hurriedly, then dropped it as if the contact had burned him;
whereat the girl realized that he was a man of few words, but--
"Dear old idiot," she thought. "If he ever falls in love he'll pay his
court like a schoolboy."
"By the way, sir," Farrel spoke suddenly, turning to John Parker, "I
would like very much to have your advice in the matter of an
investment. I will have about ninety thousand dollars on hand as soon
as I sell these cattle I've rounded up, and until I can add to this sum
sufficient to lift the mortgage you hold, it scarcely seems prudent to
permit my funds to repose in the First National Bank of El Toro without
drawing interest."
"We'll give you two and one-half per cent. on the account, Farrel."
"Not enough. I want it to earn six or seven per cent. and it occurred
to me that I might invest it in some good securities which I could
dispose of at a moment's notice, whenever I needed the money. The
possibility of a profit on the deal has even occurred to me."
Parker smiled humorously. "And you come to me for advice? Why, boy,
I'm your financial enemy."
"My dear Mr. Parker, I am unalterably opposed to you on the Japanese
colonization scheme and I shall do my best to rob you of the profit you
plan to make at my expense, but personally I find you a singularly
agreeable man. I know you will never resign a business advantage, but,
on the other hand, I think that if I ask you for advice as to a
profitable investment for my pitiful little fortune, you will not be
base enough to advise me to my financial detriment. I trust you. Am I
not banking with your bank?"
"Thank you, Farrel, for that vote of confidence. You possess a truly
sporting attitude in business affairs and I like you for it; I like any
man who can take his beating and smile. Yes, I am willing to advise an
investment. I know of a dozen splendid securities that I can
conscientiously recommend as a safe investment, although, in the event
of the inevitable settlement that must follow the war and our national
orgy of extravagance and high prices, I advise you frankly to wait
awhile before taking on any securities. You cannot afford to absorb
the inevitable shrinkage in the values of all commodities when the
show-down comes. However, there is a new issue of South Coast Power
Company first mortgage bonds that can be bought now to yield eight per
cent. and I should be very much inclined to take a chance on them,
Farrel. The debentures of the power corporations in this state are
about the best I know of."
"I think you are quite right, sir," Farrel agreed. "Eventually the
South Coast Company is bound to divide with the Pacific Company control
of the power business of the state. I dare say that in the fullness of
time the South Coast people will arrange a merger with the Central
California Power Company."
"Perhaps. The Central California Company is under-financed and not
particularly well managed, Farrel. I think it is, potentially, an
excellent property, but its bonds have been rather depressed for a long
time."
Farrel nodded his understanding. "Thank you for your advice, sir.
When I am ready will your bank be good enough to arrange the purchase
of the South Coast bonds for me?"
"Certainly. Happy to oblige you, Farrel. But do not be in too great a
hurry. You may lose more in the shrinkages of values if you buy now
than you would make in interest."
"I shall be guided by your advice, sir. You are very kind."
"By the way," Parker continued, with a deprecatory smile, "I haven't
entered suit against you in the matter of that foreclosure. I didn't
desire to annoy you while you were in hospital and you've been busy on
the range ever since. When can I induce you to submit to a
process-server?"
"This afternoon will suit me, Mr. Parker."
"I'll gladly wait awhile longer, if you can give me any tangible
assurance of your ability to meet the mortgage."
"I cannot do that to-day, sir, although I may be able to do so if you
will defer action for three days."
Parker nodded and the conversation languished. The car had climbed out
of the San Gregorio and was mounting swiftly along the route to La
Questa, affording to the Parkers a panorama of mountain, hill, valley
and sea so startling in its vastness and its rugged beauty that Don
Mike realized his guests had been silenced as much by awe as by their
desire to avoid a painful and unprofitable conversation.
Suddenly they swung wide around a turn and saw, two thousand feet below
them, La Questa Valley. The chauffeur parked the car on the outside of
the turn to give his passengers a long, unobstructed view.
"Looks like a green checker-board with tiny squares," Parker remarked
presently.
"Little Japanese farms."
"There must be a thousand of them, Farrel."
"That means not less than five thousand Japanese, Mr. Parker. It means
that literally a slice of Japan has been transplanted in La Questa
Valley, perhaps the fairest and most fruitful valley in the fairest and
most fruitful state in the fairest and most fruitful country God ever
made. And it is lost to white men!"
"Serves them right. Why didn't they retain their lands?"
"Why doesn't water run up hill? A few Japs came in and leased or
bought lands long before we Californians suspected a 'yellow peril.'
They paid good prices to inefficient white farmers who were glad to get
out at a price in excess of what any white man could afford to pay.
After we passed our land law in 1913, white men continued to buy the
lands for a corporation owned by Japanese with white dummy directors,
or a majority of the stock of the corporation ostensibly owned by white
men. Thousands of patriotic Californians have sold their farms to
Japanese without knowing it. The law provides that a Japanese cannot
lease land longer than three years, so when their leases expire they
conform to our foolish law by merely shifting the tenants from one farm
to another. Eventually so many Japs settled in the valley that that
white farmers, unable to secure white labor, unable to trust Japanese
labor, unable to endure Japanese neighbors or to enter into Japanese
social life weary of paying taxes to support schools for the education
of Japanese children, weary of daily contact with irritable, unreliable
and unassimilable aliens, sold or leased their farms in order to escape
into a white neighborhood. I presume, Mr. Parker, that nobody can
realize the impossibility of withstanding this yellow flood except
those who have been overwhelmed by it. We humanitarians of a later day
gaze with gentle sympathy upon the spectacle of a noble and primeval
race like the Iroquois tribe of Indians dying before the advance of our
Anglo-Saxon civilization, but with characteristic Anglo-Saxon
inconsistency and stupidity we are quite loth to feel sorry for
ourselves, doomed to death before the advance of a Mongolian
civilization unless we put a stop to it--forcibly and immediately!"
"Let us go down and see for ourselves," Mrs. Parker suggested.
Having reached the floor of the valley, at Farrel's suggestion they
drove up one side of it and down the other. Motor-truck after
motor-truck, laden with crated vegetables, passed them on the road,
each truck driven by a Japanese, some of them wearing the peculiar
bamboo hats of the Japanese coolie class.
The valley was given over to vegetable farming and the fields were
dotted with men, women and children, squatting on their heels between
the rows or bending over them in an attitude which they seemed able to
maintain indefinitely, but which would have broken the back of a white
man.
"I know a white apologist for the Japanese who in a million pamphlets
and from a thousand rostrums has cried that it is false that Japanese
women labor in the fields," Farrel told his guests. "You have seen a
thousand of them laboring in this valley. Hundreds of them carry
babies on their backs or set them to sleep on a gunnysack between the
rows of vegetables. There is a sixteen-year-old girl struggling with a
one-horse cultivator, while her sisters and her mother hold up their
end with five male Japs in the gentle art of hoeing potatoes."
"They live in wretched little houses," Kay ventured to remark.
"Anything that will shelter a horse or a chicken is a palace to a Jap,
Kay. The furnishings of their houses are few and crude. They rise in
the morning, eat, labor, eat, and retire to sleep against another day
of toil. They are all growing rich in this valley, but have you seen
one of these aliens building a decent home, or laying out a flower
garden? Do you see anything inspiring or elevating to our nation due
to the influence of such a race?"
"Yonder is a schoolhouse," Mrs. Parker suggested. "Let us visit it."
"The American flag floats over that little red school-house, at any
rate," Parker defended.
William halted the car in the schoolhouse yard and Farrel got out and
walked to the schoolhouse door. An American school-teacher, a girl of
perhaps twenty, came to the door and met him with an inquiring look.
"May we come in?" Farrel pleaded. "I have some Eastern people with me
and I wanted to show them the sort of Americans you are hired to teach."
She smiled ruefully. "I am just about to let them out for recess," she
replied. "Your friends may remain in their car and draw their own
conclusions."
"Thank you." Don Mike returned to the car. "They're coming out for
recess," he confided. "Future American citizens and citizenesses.
Count 'em."
Thirty-two little Japanese boys and girls, three Mexican or Indian
children and four of undoubted white parentage trooped out into the
yard and gathered around the car, gazing curiously. The school-teacher
bade them run away and play and, in her role of hostess, approached the
car. "I am Miss Owens," she announced, "and I teach this school
because I have to earn a living. It is scarcely a task over which one
can enthuse, although I must admit that Japanese children are not
unintelligent and their parents dress them nicely and keep them clean."
"I suppose, Miss Owens," Farrel prompted her, having introduced himself
and the Parkers, "that you have to contend with the native Japanese
schools."
She pointed to a brown house half a mile away. Over it flew the flag
of Japan. "They learn ancestor worship and how to kow-tow to the
Emperor's picture down there, after they have attended school here,"
she volunteered. "Poor little tots! Their heads must ache with the
amount of instruction they receive. After they have learned here that
Columbus discovered America on October 12th, 1492, they proceed to that
Japanese school and are taught that the Mikado is a divinity and a
direct descendant of the Sun God. And I suppose, also, they are taught
that it is a fine, clean, manly thing to pack little, green, or decayed
strawberries at the bottom of a crate with nice big ones on top--in
defiance of a state law. Our weights and measures law and a few others
are very onerous to our people in La Questa."
"Do you mean to tell me, Miss Owens," Parker asked, "that you despair
of educating these little Japanese children to be useful American
citizens?"
"I do. The Buddhist school over yonder is teaching them to be Japanese
citizens; under Japanese law all Japanese remain Japanese citizens at
heart, even if they do occasionally vote here. The discipline of my
school is very lax," she continued. "It would be, of course, in view
of the total lack of parental support. In that other school, however,
the discipline is excellent."
She continued to discourse with them, giving them an intimate picture
of life in this little Japan and interesting revelations upon the point
of view, family life and business ethics of the parents of her pupils,
until it was time to "take up" school again, when she reluctantly
returned to her poorly paid and unappreciated efforts.
"Well, of course, these people are impossible socially," John Parker
admitted magnanimously, "but they do know how to make things grow.
They are not afraid of hard work. Perhaps that is why they have
supplanted the white farmers."
"Indeed they do know how, Mr. Parker. And they can produce good crops
more cheaply than a white farmer. A Japanese with a wife and two
fairly well-grown daughters saves the wages of three hired men. Thus
he is enabled to work his ground more thoroughly. When he leases land
he tries to acquire rich land, which he robs of its fertility in three
years and then passes on to renew the outrage elsewhere. Where he owns
land, however, he increases fertility by proper fertilization."
"So you do not believe it possible for a white man to compete
economically with these people, Farrel?"
"Would you, if you were a white farmer, care to compete with the
Japanese farmers of this valley? Would you care to live in a rough
board shack, subsist largely on rice, labor from daylight to dark and
force your wife and daughter to labor with you in the fields? Would
you care to live in a kennel and never read a book or take an interest
in public affairs or thrill at a sunset or consider that you really
ought to contribute a dollar toward starving childhood in Europe?
Would you?"
"You paint a sorry picture, Farrel." Parker was evasive.
"I paint what I see before me," he answered doggedly. "This--in five
years. And if this be progress as we view progress--if this be
desirable industrial or agricultural evolution, then I'm out of tune
with my world and my times, and as soon as I am certain of it I'll blow
my brains out."
Parker chuckled at this outburst and Kay prodded him with her elbow--a
warning prod. The conversation languished immediately. Don Mike sat
staring out upon the little green farms and the little brown men and
women who toiled on them.
"Angry, Don Mike?" the girl asked presently. He bent upon her a glance
of infinite sadness.
"No, my dear girl, just feeling a little depressed. It's hard for a
man who loves his country so well that he would gladly die a thousand
dreadful deaths for it, to have to fight the disloyal thought that
perhaps, after all, it isn't really worth fighting for and dying for.
If we only had the courage and the foresight and the firmness of the
Australians and New Zealanders! Why, Kay, those sane people will not
even permit an Indian prince--a British subject, forsooth--to enter
their country except under bond and then for six months only. When the
six months have expired--_heraus mit em_! You couldn't find a Jap in
Australia, with a search warrant. But do you hear any Japanese threats
of war against Australia for this alleged insult to her national honor?
You do not. They save that bunkum for pussy-footing, peace-loving,
backward-looking, dollar-worshiping Americans. As a nation we do not
wish to be awakened from our complacency, and the old theory that a
prophet is without honor in his own country is a true one. So perhaps
it would be well if we discuss something else--luncheon, for instance.
Attention! Silence in the ranks! Here we are at the Hotel De Las
Rosas."
Having dined his guests, Farrel excused himself, strolled over to the
railroad station and arranged with the agent for cattle cars to be
spotted in on the siding close to town three days later. From the
station he repaired to the office of his father's old attorney, where
he was closeted some fifteen minutes, after which he returned to his
guests, awaiting his return on the wide hotel veranda.
"Have you completed your business?" Parker inquired.
"Yes, sir, I have. I have also completed some of yours. Coming away
from the office of my attorney, I noticed the office of your attorney
right across the hall, so I dropped in and accepted service of the
complaint in action for the foreclosure of your confounded old
mortgage. This time your suit is going to stick! Furthermore, as I
jogged down Main Street, I met Judge Morton, of the Superior Court, and
made him promise that if the suit should be filed this afternoon he
would take it up on his calendar to-morrow morning and render a
judgment in your favor."
"By George," Parker declared, apparently puzzled, "one gathers the
impression that you relish parting with your patrimony when you
actually speed the date of departure."
Mrs. Parker took Don Mike by the lapel of his coat. "You have a
secret," she charged.
He shook his head.
"You have," Kay challenged. "The intuition of two women cannot be
gainsaid."
Farrel took each lady by the arm and with high, mincing steps,
simulating the utmost caution in his advance, he led them a little way
down the veranda out of hearing of the husband and father.
"It isn't a secret," he whispered, "because a secret is something which
one has a strong desire to conceal. However, I do not in the least
mind telling you the cause of the O-be-joyful look that has aroused
your curiosity. Please lower your heads and incline your best ears
toward me. . . . There! I rejoice because I have the shaggy old wolf
of Wall Street, more familiarly known as John Parker, beaten at his
favorite indoor sport of high and lofty finance. 'Tis sad, but true.
The old boy's a gone fawn. _Le roi est mort_! _vive le roi_!"
Kay's eyes danced. "Really, Miguel?"
"Not really or actually, Kay, but--er--morally certain."
"Oh!" There was disappointment in her voice. Her mother was looking
at Don Mike sharply, shrewdly, but she said nothing, and Farrel had a
feeling that his big moment had fallen rather flat.
"How soon will John be called upon to bow his head and take the blow?"
Mrs. Parker finally asked. "Much as I sympathize with you, Miguel, I
dislike the thought of John hanging in suspense, as it were."
"Oh, I haven't quite made up my mind," he replied. "I could do it
within three days, I think, but why rush the execution? Three months
hence will be ample time. You see," he confided, "I like you all so
well that I plan to delay action for six months or a year, unless, of
course, you are anxious for an excuse to leave the ranch sooner. If
you really want to go as soon as possible, of course I'll get busy and
cook Señor Parker's goose, but--"
"You're incorrigible!" the lady declared. "Procrastinate, by all
means. It would be very lonely for you without us, I'm sure."
"Indeed, it would be. That portion of me which is Irish would picture
my old hacienda alive at night with ghosts and banshees."
Mrs. Parker was looking at him thoughtfully; seemingly she was not
listening. What she really was doing was saying to herself: "What
marvelous teeth he has and what an altogether debonair, captivating
young rascal he is, to be sure! I cannot understand why he doesn't
melt John's business heart. Can it be that under that gay, smiling,
lovable surface John sees something he doesn't quite like? I wonder."
As they entered the waiting automobile and started for home, Farrel,
who occupied the front seat with the chauffeur, turned and faced the
Parkers. "From this day forward," he promised them, "we are all going
to devote ourselves to the serious task of enjoying life to the utmost.
For my part, I am not going to talk business or Japanese immigration
any more. Are you all grateful?"
"We are," they cried in unison.
He thanked them with his mirthful eyes, faced around in his seat and,
staring straight ahead, was soon lost in day dreams. John Parker and
his wife exchanged glances, then both looked at their daughter, seated
between them. She, too, was building castles in Spain!
When they alighted from the car before the hacienda, Mrs. Parker
lingered until the patio gate had closed on her daughter and Farrel;
then she drew her husband down beside her on the bench under the
catalpa tree.
"John, Miguel Farrel says he has you beaten."
"I hope so, dear," he replied feelingly. "I know of but one way out
for that young man, and if he has discovered it so readily I'd be a
poor sport indeed not to enjoy his victory."
"You never really meant to take his ranch away from him, did you, John?"
"I did, Kate. I do. If I win, my victory will prove to my entire
satisfaction that Don Miguel José Federico Noriaga Farrel is a
throwback to the _Mañana_ family, and in that event, my dear, we will
not want him in ours. We ought to improve our blood-lines, not
deteriorate them."
"Yet you would have sold this valley to that creature Okada."
"Farrel has convinced me of my error there. I have been anti-Jap since
the day Farrel was thrown from his horse and almost killed--by a Jap."
"I'm sure Kay is in love with him, John."
"Propinquity," he grunted.
"Fiddlesticks! The man is perfectly charming."
"Perhaps. We'll decide that point later. Do you think Farrel is
interested in Kay?"
"I do not know, John," his better half declared hopelessly. "If he is,
he possesses the ability to conceal it admirably."
"I'll bet he's a good poker-player. He has you guessing, old girl, and
the man who does that is a _rara avis_. However, Katie dear, if I were
you I wouldn't worry about this--er--affair."
"John, I can't help it. Naturally, I'm curious to know the thoughts in
the back of that boy's head, but when he turns that smiling innocent
face toward me, all I can see is old-fashioned deference and amiability
and courtesy. I watch him when he's talking to Kay--when he cannot
possibly know I am snooping, and still, except for that frank
friendliness, his face is as communicative as this old adobe wall. A
few days ago he rode in from the range with a great cluster of wild
tiger-lilies--and he presented them to me. Any other young man would
have presented them to my daughter."
"I give it up, Kate, and suggest that we turn this mystery over to
Father Time. He'll solve it."
"But I don't want Kay to fall in love with Don Mike if he isn't going
to fall in love with her," she protested, in her earnestness raising
her voice, as was frequently her habit.
The patio gate latch clicked and Pablo Artelan stood in the aperture.
"_Señora_," he said gravely. "Ef I am you I don' worry very much about
those boy. Before hee's pretty parteecular. All those hightone'
_señorita_ in El Toro she give eet the sweet look to Don Miguel, jus'
the same like thees--" Here Pablo relaxed his old body, permitted
his head to loll sideways and his lower jaw to hang slackly, the while
his bloodshot eyes gazed amorously into the branches of the catalpa
tree. "But those boy he don' pay some attention. Hee's give beeg
smile to thees _señorita_, beeg smile to thees one, beeg smile to that
one, beeg smile for all the mama, but for the _querida_ I tell to you
Don Miguel hee's pretty parteecular. I theenk to myself--Carolina,
too--'Look here, Pablo. What he ees the matter weeth those boy? I
theenk mebbeso those boy she's goin' be old bach. What's the matter
here? When I am twenty-eight _años_ my oldes' boy already hee's bust
one bronco'." Here Pablo paused to scratch his head. "But now," he
resumed, "by the blood of those devil I know sometheeng!"
"What do you know, you squidgy-nosed old idol, you?" Parker demanded,
with difficulty repressing his laughter.
"I am ol' man," Pablo answered with just the correct shade of
deprecation, "but long time ago I have feel like my _corazon_--my
heart--goin' make barbecue in my belly. I am in love. I know. Nobody
can fool me. An' those boy, Don Miguel, I tell you, _señor_, hee's
crazy for love weeth the Señorita Kay."
Parker crooked his finger, and in obedience to the summons Pablo
approached the bench.
"How do you know all this, Pablo?"
Let us here pause and consider. In the summer of 1769 a dashing,
care-free Catalonian soldier in the company of Don Gaspar de Portola,
while swashbuckling his way around the lonely shores of San Diego Bay,
had encountered a comely young squaw. _Mira, señores_! Of the blood
that flowed in the veins of Pablo Artelan, thirty-one-thirty-seconds
was Indian, but the other one-thirty-second was composed of equal parts
of Latin romance and conceit.
Pablo's great moment had arrived. Lowly peon that he was, he knew
himself at this moment to be a most important personage; death would
have been preferable to the weakness of having failed to take advantage
of it.
"Why I know, Señor Parker?" Pablo laughed briefly, lightly,
mirthlessly, his cacchination carefully designed to convey the
impression that he considered the question extremely superfluous. With
exasperating deliberation he drew forth his little bag of tobacco and a
brown cigarette paper; he smiled as he dusted into the cigarette paper
the requisite amount of tobacco. With one hand he rolled the
cigarette; while wetting the flap with his garrulous tongue, he gazed
out upon the San Gregorio as one who looks beyond a lifted veil.
He answered his own question. "Well, _señor_--and you, _señora_! I
tell you. _Por nada_--forgeeve; please, I speak the Spanish--for
notheeng, those boy he poke weeth hee's thumb the rib of me."
"No?" cried John Parker, feigning profound amazement.
"_Es verdad_. Eet ees true, _señor_. Those boy hee's happy, no? Eh?"
"Apparently."
"You bet you my life. Well, las' night those boy hee's peench weeth
his thumb an' theese fingair--what you suppose?"
"I give it up, Pablo."
Pablo wiped away with a saddle-colored paw a benignant and paternal
smile. He wagged his head and scuffed his heel in the dirt. He
feasted his soul on the sensation that was his.
"Those boy hee's peench--" a dramatic pause. Then:
"Eef you tell to Don Miguel those things I tol' you--_Santa
Marias_--Hees cut my throat."
"We will respect your confidence, Pablo," Mrs. Parker hastened to
assure the traitor.
"All right. Then I tol' to you what those boy peench--weeth hees thumb
an' thees fingair. _Mira_. Like thees."
"Cut out the pantomime and disgorge the information, for the love of
heaven," Parker pleaded.
"He peench"--Pablo's voice rose to a pseudo-feminine screech--"the
cheek of"--he whirled upon Mrs. Parker and transfixed her with a
tobacco-stained index finger--"Señorita Parker, so help me, by Jimmy,
eef I tell you some lies I hope I die pretty queeck."
Both the Parkers stared at the old man blankly. He continued:
"He peench--queeck--like that. He don' know hee's goin' for
peench--hees all time queeck like that--he don' theenk. But after
those boy hee's peench the cheen of those girl, hee's got red in the
face like black-bird's weeng. 'Oh,' he say, 'I am sky-blue eedete-ot,'
an' he run away queeck before he forget heemself an' peench those girl
some more."
John Parker turned gravely to his wife. "Old hon," he murmured softly,
"Don Mike Farrel is a pinch-bug. He pinched Kay's chin during a mental
lapse; then he remembered he was still under my thumb and he cursed
himself for a sky-blue idiot."
"Oh, John, dear, I'm so glad." There were tears in Mrs. Parker's eyes.
"Aren't you, John?"
"No, I'm not," he replied savagely. "I think it's an outrage and I'd
speak to Farrel about it if it were not apparent nobody realizes more
keenly than does he the utter impossibility of permitting his fancy to
wander in that direction."
"John Parker, you're a hard-hearted man," she cried, and left him in
high dudgeon, to disappear into the garden. As the gate closed behind
her, John Parker drew forth his pocket book and abstracted from it a
hundred-dollar bill, which he handed to Pablo Artelan.
"We have had our little differences, Pablo," he informed that astounded
individual, "but we're gradually working around toward a true spirit of
brotherly love. In the language of the classic, Pablo, I'm here to
tell the cock-eyed world that you're one good Indian."
Pablo swept his old _sombrero_ to the ground, "_Gracias, _señor_, mille
gracias_," he murmured, and shuffled away with his prize.
Verily, the ways of this Gringo were many and mysterious. To-day one
hated him; to-morrow--
"There is no doubt about it," Pablo soliloquized, "it is better to be
the head of a mouse than the tail of a lion!"