She dashed the tears away and beamed up at him.  “You give Panchito to me!  You don’t mean it!”

“I do.  I told you I might give him away to somebody worth while.”

“You haven’t known me long enough to give me valuable presents, Miguel,” she demurred.  “You’re a dear to want to give him to me and I’m positively mad to own him, but Mother and Dad might think—­well, that is, they might not understand.  Of course we understand perfectly, but—­well—­you understand, don’t you, Miguel?”

“I understand that I cannot afford to have your father suspect that I am unmindful of—­certain conditions,” he answered her, and flushed with embarrassment.  “If you do not want Panchito as a gift I shall not insist—­”

“I think it would be a good idea for you to permit Dad to buy him for me.  He’s worth every cent of five thousand dollars—­”

“I’ll never sell him.  I told you this afternoon I love him.  I never sell a horse or a dog that I love or that loves me.  I shall have to take him back, Kay—­for the present.”

“I think that would be the better way, Miguel.”  She bent upon him an inscrutable smile but in the depths of her brown eyes he thought he detected laughter.

“You’ll buck up now?” he pleaded.

“I’m already bucked up.”

As they rode up to the great barn, Kay dismounted.  “Leave the old trifle at the door, Kay,” Farrel told her.  “Pablo will get him home.  Excuse me, please, while I take this calf over to Carolina.  She’ll make a man out of him.  She’s a wonder at inducing little mavericks like this fellow to drink milk from a bucket.”

He jogged away, while Panchito, satisfied that he had performed throughout the day like a perfect gentleman, bent his head and rubbed his forehead against Kay’s cheek, seeking some evidence of growing popularity with the girl.  To his profound satisfaction she scratched him under the jawbone and murmured audibly: 

“Never mind, old dear.  Some day you’ll be my Panchito.  He loves you and didn’t he say he could only give you away for love?”

CHAPTER XXII

Dinner that night was singularly free from conversation.  Nobody present felt inclined to be chatty.  John Parker was wondering what Miguel Farrel’s next move would be, and was formulating means to checkmate it; Kay, knowing what Don Mike’s next move would be and knowing further that she was about to checkmate it, was silent through a sense of guilt; Mrs. Parker’s eight miles in the saddle that afternoon had fatigued her to the point of dissipating her buoyant spirits, and Farrel had fallen into a mood of deep abstraction.

“Are we to listen to naught but the champing of food?” Mrs. Parker inquired presently.

“Hello!” her husband declared.  “So you’ve come up for air, eh, Katie?”

“Oh, I’m feeling far from chatty, John.  But the silence is oppressive.  Miguel, are you plotting against the whites?”