Don Mike smiled and closed his eyes.  “I will go home,” he said presently, and Pablo and Parker lifted him between them and carried him down to the waiting wagon.  Half an hour later he was stretched on his bed at the hacienda, while Carolina washed his head with a solution of warm water and lysol.  John Parker, rejoiced beyond measure, stood beside him and watched this operation with an alert and sympathetic eye.

“That doesn’t look like a bullet wound,” he declared, after an examination of the rent in Don Mike’s scalp.  “Resembles the wound made by what reporters always refer to as ‘some blunt instrument.’  The scalp is split but the flesh around the wound is swollen as from a blow.  You have a nice lump on your head, Farrel.”

“Aches terribly,” Don Mike murmured.  “I had dismounted to tighten my cinch; going down hill the saddle had slid up on my horse’s withers.  I was tucking in the latigo.  When I woke up I was lying on my face, wedged tightly in that little dry ditch; I was ill and dazed and too weak to pull myself out; I was lying with my head down hill and I suppose I lost consciousness again, after awhile.  Pablo!”

“Si, senor.”

“You caught the man who shot me.  What did you do with him?”

“Oh, those fellow plenty good and dead, Don Miguel.”

“He dragged the body home at the end of his rope,” Parker explained.  “He thought you had been done for and he must have gone war mad.  I covered the body of the Jap with straw from that stack out by the barn.”

“Jap, eh?” Don Mike smiled.  Then, after a long silence.  “I suppose, Mr. Parker, you understand now—­”

“Yes, yes, Farrel.  Please do not rub it in.”

“Okada wants the San Gregorio rather badly, doesn’t he?  Couldn’t wait.  The enactment of that anti-alien land bill that will come up in the legislature next year—­do Mrs. Parker and your daughter know about this attempt to assassinate me?”

“No.”

“They must not know.  Plant that Jap somewhere and do it quickly.  Confound you, Pablo, you should have known better than to drag your kill home, like an old she-cat bringing in a gopher.  As for my head—­well, I was thrown from my horse and struck on a sharp rock.  The ladies would be frightened and worried if they thought somebody was gunning for me.  When Bill Conway shows up with your spark plugs I’d be obliged, Mr. Parker, if you’d run me in to El Toro.  I’ll have to have my head tailored a trifle, I think.”

With a weak wave of his hand he dismissed everybody, so Parker and Pablo adjourned to the stables to talk over the events of the morning.  Standing patiently at the corral gate they found the gray horse, waiting to be unsaddled—­a favor which Pablo proceeded at once to extend.

“Mira!” he called suddenly and directed Parser’s attention to the pommel of Don Mike’s fancy saddle, The rawhide covering on the shank of the pommel had been torn and scored and the steel beneath lay exposed.  “You see?” Pablo queried.  “You understan’, senor?”