“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.  And all these years they have lived like feudal barons on their principal, living for to-day, reckless of to-morrow.  Theirs has been the history of practically all of the old California families.  I am convinced it would be no kindness to Don Miguel to give him another chance now; his Spanish blood would lull him to ease and forgetfulness; he would tell himself he would pay the mortgage manana.  By giving him another chance, I would merely remove his incentive to hustle and make good.”

“But it seems so cruel, John, to take such a practical view of the situation.  He cannot understand your point of view and he will regard you as another Shylock.”

“Doubtless,” he replied; “nevertheless, if we are ever forced to regard him as a prospective son-in-law, it will be comforting to know that even if he lost, he made me extend myself.  He is a man and a gentleman, and I like him.  He won me in the first minute of our acquaintance.  That is why I decided to stand pat and see what he would do.”  Parker leaned over and laid his hand on that of his wife.  “I will not play the bully’s part, Kate,” he promised her.  “If he is worth a chance he will get it, but I am not a human Christmas tree.  He will have to earn it.”  After a silence of several seconds he added, “Please God he will whip me yet.  His head is bloody but unbowed.  It would be terrible to spoil him.”

XX

Miguel Farrel pulled up his pinto on the brow of a hill which, along the Atlantic seaboard, would have received credit for being a mountain, and gazed down into the Agua Caliente basin.  Half a mile to his right, the slope dipped into a little saddle and then climbed abruptly to the shoulder of El Palomar, the highest peak in San Marcos County.  The saddle was less than a hundred yards wide, and through the middle of it a deep arroyo had been eroded by the Rio San Gregorio tumbling down from the hills during the rainy season.  This was the only outlet to the Agua Caliente basin, and Don Mike saw at a glance that Parker’s engineers had discovered this, for squarely in the outlet a dozen two-horse teams were working, scraping out the foundation for the huge concrete dam for which Parker had contracted.  Up the side of El Palomar peak, something that resembled a great black snake had been stretched, and Farrel nodded approvingly as he observed it.

“Good idea, that, to lay a half-mile of twelve-inch steel pipe up to that limestone deposit,” he remarked to Parker, who had reined his horse beside Don Mike’s.  “Only way to run your crushed rock down to the concrete mixer at the dam-site.  You’ll save a heap of money on delivering the rock, at any rate.  Who’s your contractor, Mr. Parker?”