“No, sir.  The original Mike insisted upon wearing regular trousers and hats.  He had all of the prejudices of his race, and regarded folks who did things differently from him as inferior people.  He was a lieutenant on a British sloop-of-war that was wrecked on the coast of San Marcos County in the early ’Forties.  All hands were drowned, with the exception of my grandfather, who was a very contrary man.  He swam ashore and strolled up to the hacienda of the Rancho Palomar, arriving just before luncheon.  What with a twenty-mile hike in the sun, he was dry by the time he arrived, and in his uniform, although somewhat bedraggled, he looked gay enough to make a hit with my great-grandfather Noriaga, who invited him to luncheon and begged him to stay a while.  Michael Joseph liked the place; so he stayed.  You see, there were thousands of horses on the ranch and, like all sailors, he had equestrian ambitions.”

“Great snakes!  It must have been a sizable place.”

“It was.  The original Mexican grant was twenty leagues square.”

“I take it, then, that the estate has dwindled in size.”

“Oh, yes, certainly.  My great-grandfather Noriaga, Michael Joseph I, and Michael Joseph II shot craps with it, and bet it on horse-races, and gave it away for wedding-doweries, and, in general, did their little best to put the Farrel posterity out in the mesquite with the last of the Mission Indians.”

“How much of this principality have you left?”

“I do not know.  When I enlisted, we had a hundred thousand acres of the finest valley and rolling grazing-land in California and the hacienda that was built in 1782.  But I’ve been gone two years, and haven’t heard from home for five months.”

“Mortgaged?”

“Of course.  The Farrels never worked while money could be raised at ten per cent.  Neither did the Noriagas.  You might as well attempt to yoke an elk and teach him how to haul a cart.”

“Oh, nonsense, Farrel!  You’re the hardest-working man I have ever known.”

Farrel smiled boyishly.

“That was in Siberia, and I had to hustle to keep warm.  But I know I’ll not be home six months before that delicious manana spirit will settle over me again, like mildew on old boots.”

The captain shook his head.

“Any man who can see so clearly the economic faults of his race and nevertheless sympathize with them is not one to be lulled to the ruin that has overtaken practically all of the old native California families.  That strain of Celt and Gael in you will triumph over the easy-going Latin.”

“Well, perhaps.  And two years in the army has helped tremendously to eradicate an inherited tendency toward procrastination.”

“I shall like to think that I had something to do with that,” the officer answered.  “What are your plans?”