“Yes, poor boy,” old Don Miguel agreed; “he will miss more than the quail-shooting when he returns—­if he should return.  They sent him to Siberia to fight the Bolsheviki.”

“What sort of country is this where Don Mike slays our enemy?” Pablo queried.

“It is always winter there, Pablo.  It is inhabited by a wild race of men with much whiskers.”

“Ah, our poor Don Mike!  And he a child of the sun!”

“He but does his duty,” old Don Miguel replied proudly.  “He adds to the fame of an illustrious family, noted throughout the centuries for the gallantry of its warriors.”

“A small comfort, Don Miguel, if our Don Mike comes not again to those that love him.”

“Pray for him,” the old Don suggested piously.

Fell a silence.  Then,

“Don Miguel, yonder comes one over the trail from El Toro.”

Don Miguel gazed across the valley to the crest of the hills.  There, against the sky-line, a solitary horseman showed.  Pablo cupped his hands over his eyes and gazed long and steadily.

“It is Tony Moreno,” he said, while the man was still a mile distant.  “I know that scuffling cripple of a horse he rides.”

Don Miguel seated himself On the bench beside Pablo and awaited the arrival of the horseman.  As he drew nearer, the Don saw that Pablo was right.

“Now, what news does that vagabond bear?” he muttered.  “Assuredly he brings a telegram; otherwise the devil himself could not induce that lazy wastrel to ride twenty miles.”

“Of a truth you are right, Don Miguel.  Tony Moreno is the only man in El Toro who is forever out of a job, and the agent of the telegraph company calls upon him always to deliver messages of importance.”

With the Don, he awaited, with vague apprehension, the arrival of Tony Moreno.  As the latter pulled his sweating horse up before them, they rose and gazed upon him questioningly.  Tony Moreno, on his part, doffed his shabby sombrero with his right hand and murmured courteously,

“Buenas tardes, Don Miguel.”

Pablo he ignored.  With his left hand, he caught a yellow envelope as it fell from under the hat.

“Good-afternoon, Moreno.”  Don Miguel returned his salutation with a gravity he felt incumbent upon one of his station to assume when addressing a social inferior.  “You bring me a telegram?” He spoke in English, for the sole purpose of indicating to the messenger that the gulf between them could not be spanned by the bridge of their mother tongue.  He suspected Tony Moreno very strongly of having stolen a yearling from him many years ago.

Tony Moreno remembered his manners, and dismounted before handing Don Miguel the telegram.

“The delivery charges?” Don Miguel queried courteously.

“Nothing, Don Miguel.”  Moreno’s voice was strangely subdued.  “It is a pleasure to serve you, senor.”