Pablo, too polite to argue with a guest, merely bowed and smiled deprecatingly.

“My boss, hee’s tell me put thees fellow in the calaboose.  If trouble come from thees—­well, Don Miguel have the fault, not Pablo Artelan.  If the senor please for let go the gray horse—­no?”

“Farrel has gone to El Toro to attach my bank-account and my sheep,” the Basque explained in a whisper, leaning low over the gray’s neck.  “His father had an old judgment against me.  When I thought young Farrel dead, I dared do business—­in my own name—­understand?  Now, if he collects, you’ve lost the Rancho Palomar—­help me, for God’s sake, Parker!”

Parker’s hand fell away from the reins.

“I have no sympathy for you, Loustalot,” he replied, coldly.  “If you have stolen this horse, you must pay the penalty.  I shall not help you.  This is no affair of mine.”  And he stepped aside and waved Loustalot back into Pablo’s possession, who thanked him politely and rode away round the hacienda wall.  Three minutes later, Loustalot, his hands unbound, was safe under lock and key in the settlement-room, and Pablo, rifle in lap, sat on a box outside the door and rolled a brown-paper cigarette.

Throughout the preceding colloquy, Mrs. Parker had said nothing.  When Pablo and his prisoner had disappeared, she asked her husband: 

“What did that man say to you?  He spoke in such a low tone I couldn’t hear him.”

Parker, without hesitation, related to her, in the presence of Okada, the astonishing news which Loustalot had given him.

“Good!” the lady declared, emphatically.  “I hope that delightful Don Mike collects every penny.”

“Very poor business, I zink,” Mr. Okada opined, thoughtfully.

“At any rate,” Parker observed, “our host isn’t letting the grass grow under his feet.  I wonder if he’ll attach Loustalot’s automobile.  It’s new, and worth about eight thousand dollars.  Well, we shall see what we shall see.”

“I zink I take little walk.  ’Scuse me, please,” said Okada, and bowed to Parker and his wife.  He gave both the impression that he had been an unwilling witness to an unhappy and distressing incident and wished to efface himself from the scene.  Mrs. Parker excused him with a brief and somewhat wintry smile, and the little Oriental started strolling down the palm-lined avenue.  No sooner had the gate closed behind them, however, than he hastened back to Loustalot’s car, and at the end of ten minutes of furious labor had succeeded in exchanging the deflated tire for one of the inflated spare tires at the rear of the car.  This matter attended to, he strolled over to the ranch blacksmith shop and searched through it until he found that which he sought—­a long, heavy pair of bolt-clippers such as stockmen use for dehorning young cattle.  Armed with this tool, he slipped quietly round to the rear of Pablo’s “calaboose,” and went to work noiselessly on the small iron-grilled window of the settlement-room.