The Basque stood staring at him, inarticulate with fury; Don Mike faced his enemy with a bantering, prescient little smile.  Then, with a great sigh that was in reality a sob, Loustalot abandoned his primal impulse to hurl himself upon Farrel and attempt to throttle; instead, he ran back to the customers’ desk and started scribbling another check.  Thereupon, the impish Farrel removed the ink, and when Loustalot moved to another ink-well, Farrel’s hand closed over that.  Helpless and desperate, Loustalot suddenly began to weep; uttering peculiar mewing cries, he clutched at Farrel with the fury of a gorilla.  Don Mike merely dodged round the desk, and continued to dodge until out of the tail of his eye, he saw the sheriff enter the bank and stop at the cashier’s desk.  Loustalot, blinded with tears of rage, failed to see Don Nicolas; he had vision only for Don Mike, whom he was still pursuing round the customers’ desk.

The instant Don Nicolas served his writ of attachment, the cashier left his desk, walked round in back of the various tellers’ cages, and handed the writ to the paying teller; whereupon Farrel, pretending to be frightened, ran out of the bank.  Instantly, Loustalot wrote his check and rushed again to the paying-tellers window.

“Too late, Mr. Loustalot.  Your account has been attached,” that functionary informed him.

Meanwhile, Don Nicolas had joined his friend on the sidewalk.

“Here is his automobile, Don Nicolas,” Farrel said.  “I think we had better take it away from him.”

Don Nicolas climbed calmly into the driver’s seat, filled out a blank notice of attachment under that certain duly authorized writ which his old friend’s son had handed him, and waited until Loustalot came dejectedly down the bank steps to the side of the car; whereupon Don Nicolas served him with the fatal document, stepped on the starter, and departed for the county garage, where the car would be stored until sold at auction.

“Who let you out of my calaboose, Loustalot?” Don Mike queried amiably.

“That high-toned Jap friend of Parker’s,” the Basque replied, with malicious enjoyment.

“I’m glad it wasn’t Mr. Parker.  Well, you stayed there long enough to serve my purpose.  By the way, your sheep are trespassing again.”

“They aren’t my sheep.”

“Well, if you’ll read that document, you’ll see that all the sheep on the Rancho Palomar at this date are attached, whether they belong to you or not.  Now, a word of warning to you, Loustalot:  Do not come on the Rancho Palomar for any purpose whatsoever.  Understand ?”

Loustalot’s glance met his unflinchingly for fully ten seconds, and, in that glance, Kay thought she detected something tigerish.

“Home, William,” she ordered the driver, and they departed from El Toro, leaving Andre Loustalot standing on the sidewalk staring balefully after them.

They were half-way home before Don Mike came out of the reverie into which that glance of Loustalot’s had, apparently, plunged him.