"Regarding that stranger who camped last night in the valley, Don Miguel. Would it not be well to look into his case?"

Don Mike nodded. "We will ride up the valley, Pablo, as if we seek cattle; if we find this fellow we will ask him to explain."

"That is well," the old Indian agreed, and dropped back to his respectful position in his master's rear. As they topped the ridge that formed the northern b.u.t.tress of the San Gregorio, Pablo rode to the left and started down the hill through a draw covered with a thick growth of laurel, purple lilac, a few madone trees and an occasional oak. He knew that a big, five-point buck had its habitat here and it was Pablo's desire to jump this buck out and thus afford his master a glimpse of the trophy that awaited him later in the year.

From the valley below a rifle cracked. Pablo slid out of his saddle with the ease of a youth and lay flat on the ground beside the trail.

But no bullet whined up the draw or struck near him, wherefore he knew that he was not the object of an attack; yet there was wild pounding of his heart when the rifle spoke again and again.

The thud of hoofs smote his ear sharply, so close was he to the ground.

Slowly Pablo raised his head. Over the hog's back which separated the draw in which Pablo lay concealed from the draw down which Don Miguel had ridden, the gray horse came galloping--riderless--and Pablo saw the stock of the rifle projecting from the scabbard. The runaway plunged into the draw some fifteen yards in front of Pablo, found a cow-trail leading down it and disappeared into the valley.

Pablo's heart swelled with agony. "It has happened!" he murmured.

"Ah, Mother of G.o.d! It has happened!"

Two more shots in rapid succession sounded from the valley. "He makes certain of his kill," thought Pablo. After a while he addressed the off front foot of the black mare. "I will do likewise."

He started crawling on his belly up out of the draw to the crest of the hog's back. He had an impression, amounting almost to a certainty, that the a.s.sa.s.sin in the valley had not seen him riding down the draw, otherwise he would not have opened fire on Don Miguel. He would have bided his time and chosen an occasion when there would be no witnesses.

For an hour he waited, watching, grieving, weeping a little. From the draw where Don Miguel lay no sound came forth. Pablo tried hard to erase from his mind a vision of what he would find when, his primal duty of vengeance, swift and complete, accomplished, he should go down into that draw. His tear-dimmed, bloodshot eyes searched the valley--ah, what was that? A cow, a deer or a man? Surely something had moved in the brush at the edge of the river wash.

Pablo rubbed the moisture from his eyes and looked again. A man was crossing the wash on foot and he carried a rifle. A few feet out in the wash he paused, irresolute, turned back, and knelt in the sand.

"Oh, blessed Mother of G.o.d!" Pablo almost sobbed, joyously. "I will burn six candles in thy honor and keep flowers on thy altar at the Mission for a year!"

Again the man stood up and started across the wash. He no longer had his rifle. "It is as I thought," Pablo soliloquized. "He has buried the rifle in the sand."

Pablo watched the man start resolutely across the three-mile stretch of flat ground between the river and the hills to the south. Don Nicolas Sandoval had remarked that the stranger had come in over the hills to the south. Very well! Believing himself undetected, he would depart in the same direction. The Rancho Palomar stretched ten miles to the south and it would be a strange coincidence if, in that stretch of rolling, brushy country, a human being should cross his path.

The majordomo quickly crawled back into the draw where the black mare patiently awaited him. Leading her, he started cautiously down, taking advantage of every tuft of cover until, arrived at the foot of the draw, he discovered that some oaks effectually screened his quarry from sight. Reasoning quite correctly that the same oaks as effectually screened him from his quarry, Pablo mounted and galloped straight across country for his man.

He rode easily, for he was saving the mare's speed for a purpose. The fugitive, casting a guilty look to the rear, saw him coming and paused, irresolute, but observing no evidences of precipitate haste, continued his retreat, which (Pablo observed, grimly) was casual now, as if he desired to avert suspicion.

Pablo pulled the mare down to a trot, to a walk. He could afford to take his time and it was not part of his plan to bungle his work by undue baste. The fugitive was crossing through a patch of lilac and Pablo desired to overhaul him in a wide open s.p.a.ce beyond, so he urged the mare to a trot again and jogged by on a parallel course, a hundred yards distant.

"_Buena dias, senor_," he called, affably, and waved his hand at the stranger, who waved back.

On went the old majordomo, across the clear s.p.a.ce and into the oaks beyond. The fugitive, his suspicions now completely lulled, followed and when he was quite in the center of this chosen ground, Pablo emerged from the shelter of the oaks and bore down upon him. The mare was at a fast lope and Pablo's rawhide riata was uncoiled now; the loop swung in slow, fateful circles--

There could be no mistaking his purpose. With a cry that was curiously animal-like, the man ran for the nearest brush. Twenty feet from him, Pablo made his cast and shrieked exultantly as the loop settled over his prey. A jerk and it was fast around the fellow's mid-riff; a half hitch around the pommel, a touch of a huge Mexican spur to the flank of the fleet little black thoroughbred and Pablo Artelan was headed for home! He picked his way carefully in order that he might not snag in the bushes that which he dragged behind him, and he leaned forward in the saddle to equalize the weight of the THING that b.u.mped and leaped and slid along the ground behind him. There had been screams at first, mingled with Pablo's exultant shouts of victory, but by the time the river was reached there was no sound but a sc.r.a.ping, slithering one--the sound of the vengeance of Pablo Artelan.

When he reached the wagon road he brought the mare to a walk. He did not look back, for he knew his power; the sc.r.a.ping, slithering sound was music to his ears; it was all the a.s.surance he desired. As calmly as, during the spring round-up, he dragged a calf up to the branding fire, he dragged his victim up into the front yard of the Rancho Palomar and paused before the patio gate.

"Ho! Senor Parker!" he shouted. "Come forth. I have something for the _senor_. Queeck, _Senor_!"

The gate opened and John Parker stepped out. "h.e.l.lo, Pablo! What's all the row about?"

Pablo turned in his saddle and pointed. "_Mira_! Look!" he croaked.

"Good G.o.d!" Parker cried. "What is that?"

"Once he use' for be one j.a.p. One good friend of you, I theenk, Senor Parker. He like for save you much trouble, I theenk, so he keel my Don Mike--an' for that I have--ah, but you see! An' now, senor, eet is all right for take the Rancho Palomar! Take eet, take eet! Ees n.o.body for care now--n.o.body! Eef eet don' be for you daughter I don't let you have eet. No, sir, I keel it you so queeck--but my Don Mike hes never forget hes one great _caballero_--so Pablo Artelan mus' not forget, too--you sleep in theese hacienda, you eat the food--ah, senor, I am so 'shame' for you--and my Don Mike--hees dead--hees dead--"

He slid suddenly off the black mare and lay unconscious in the dust beside her.

CHAPTER XXIV

Once again a tragic scene had been enacted under the shade of the catalpa tree before the Farrel hacienda. The shock of a terrible, unexpected trend of events heralded by the arrival of Pablo Artelan and his victim had, seemingly, paralyzed John Parker mentally and physically. He felt again a curious cold, weak, empty feeling in his breast. It was the concomitant of defeat; he had felt it twice before when he had been overwhelmed and mangled by the wolves of Wall Street.

He was almost nauseated. Not at sight of the dusty, b.l.o.o.d.y, shapeless bundle that lay at the end of Pablo's riata, but with the realization that, indirectly, he had been responsible for all of this.

Pablo's shrill, agonized denunciation had fallen upon deaf ears, once the old majordomo had conveyed to Parker the information of Don Mike's death.

"The rope--take it off!" he protested to the unconscious Pablo. "It's cutting him in two. He looks like a link of sausage! Ugh! A j.a.p!

Horrible! I'm smeared--I can't explain--n.o.body in this country will believe me--Pablo will kill me--"

He sat down on the bench under the catalpa tree, covered his face with his hands and closed his eyes. When he ventured again to look up, he observed that Pablo, in falling from his horse, had caught one huge Mexican spur on the cantle of his saddle and was suspended by the heel, grotesquely, like a dead fowl. The black mare, a trained roping horse, stood patiently, her feet braced a little, still keeping a strain on the riata.

Parker roused himself. With his pocket knife he cut the spur strap, eased the majordomo to the ground, carried him to the bench and stretched him out thereon. Then, grasping the mare by the bridle, he led her around the adobe wall; he shuddered inwardly as he heard the steady, slithering sound behind her.

"Got to get that Thing out of the way," he mumbled. The great barn door was open; from within he could hear his chauffeur whistling. So he urged the mare to a trot and got past the barn without having been observed. An ancient straw stack stood in the rear of the barn and in the shadow of this he halted, removed the riata from the pommel, dragged the body close to the stack, and with a pitchfork he hastily covered it with old, weather-beaten straw. All of this he accomplished without any purpose more definite than a great desire to hide from his wife and from his daughter this offense which Pablo had thrust upon him.

He led the black mare into the barn and tied her. Then he returned to Pablo.

The old Indian was sitting up. At sight of Parker he commenced to curse bitterly, in Spanish and English, this invader who had brought woe upon the house of Farrel. But John Parker was a white man.

"Shut up, you saddle-colored old idol," he roared, and shook Pablo until the latter's teeth rattled together. "If the mischief is done it can't be helped--and it was none of my making. Pull yourself together and tell me where this killing occurred. We've got to get Don Miguel's body."

For answer Pablo snarled and tried to stab him, so Parker, recalling a fragment of the athletic lore of his youth, got a wristlock on the old man and took the dirk away from him. "Now then," he commanded, as he b.u.mped Pablo's head against the adobe wall, "you behave yourself and help me find Don Miguel and bring him in."

Pablo's fury suddenly left him; again he was the servant, respectful, deferential to his master's guest. "Forgive me, _senor_," he muttered, "I have been crazy in the head."

"Not so crazy that you didn't do a good job on that j.a.p murderer. Come now, old chap. Buck up! We can't go after him in my automobile. Have you some sort of wagon?"

"_Si, senor_."

"Then come inside a moment. We both need a drink. We're shaking like a pair of dotards."

He picked up Pablo's dirk and give it back to the old man. Pablo acknowledged this courtesy with a bow and followed to Parker's room, where the latter poured two gla.s.ses of whisky. Silently they drank.

"Gracias, _senor_. I go hitch up one team," Pablo promised, and disappeared at once.

For about ten minutes Parker remained in his room, thinking. His wife and Kay had started, afoot, to visit the Mission shortly after Don Mike and Pablo had left the ranch that morning, and for this Parker was duly grateful to Providence. He shuddered to think what the effect upon them would have been had they been present when Pablo made his spectacular entrance; he rejoiced at an opportunity to get himself in hand against the return of Kay and her mother to the ranch house.

"That wretched Okada!" he groaned. "He concluded that the simplest and easiest way to an immediate consummation of our interrupted deal would be the removal of young Farrel. So he hired one of his countrymen to do the job, believing or at least hoping, that suspicion would naturally be aroused against that Basque, Loustalot, who is known to have an old feud with the Farrels. Kate is right. I've trained with white men all my life; the moment I started to train with pigmented mongrels and Orientals I had to do with a new psychology, with mongrelized moral codes--ah, G.o.d, that splendid, manly fellow killed by the insatiable l.u.s.t of an alien race for this land of his they covet!

G.o.d forgive me! And poor Kay--"