“I grant you that, Mrs. Parker, but in the meantime he will have increased tremendously the value of all of my land in the San Gregorio valley, and what is to prevent me, nine months from now, from floating a new loan rather handily, by reason of that increased valuation, paying off Mr. Parker’s mortgage and garnering for myself that two and a half million dollars’ profit you speak of?”

“I fear you will have to excuse us from relishing the prospect of that joke, Don Mike,” Kay murmured.

“Work on that irrigation project will cease on Saturday evening, Mr. Farrel,” Parker assured his host.

Nevertheless, Farrel observed that his manner belied his words; obviously he was ill at ease.  For a moment, the glances of the two men met; swift though that visual contact was, each read in the other’s glance an unfaltering decision.  There would be no surrender.

The gay mood into which Mrs. Parker’s humorous sallies had thrown Farrel relaxed; there came back to him the memory of some graves in the valley, and his dark, strong face was somber again.  Of a sudden, despite his victory of the morning, he felt old for all his twenty-eight years—­old and sad and embittered, lonely, futile and helpless.

The girl, watching him closely, saw the light die out in his face, saw the shadows come, as when a thunder-cloud passes between the sun and a smiling valley.  His chin dropped a little on his breast, and for perhaps ten seconds he was silent; by the far-away gleam in his eyes, Kay knew he was seeing visions, and that they were not happy ones.

Instinctively her hand crept round the corner of the table and touched his arm lightly.  Her action was the result of impulse; almost as soon as she had touched him, she withdrew her hand in confusion.

But her mother had noticed the movement, and a swift glance toward her husband drew from him the briefest of nods, the most imperceptible of shrugs.

“Come, Johnny dear,” she urged, and her voice had lost its accustomed shrillness now; “let us go forth and see what has happened to the Little Old Man of the Spuds.”

He followed her outside obediently, and arm in arm they walked around the patio toward the rear gate.

“Hello!” he murmured suddenly, and, with a firm hand under her chin, he tilted her handsome face upward.  There were tears in her eyes.  “What now?” he demanded tenderly.  “How come, old girl?”

“Nothing, John, I’m just an old fool—­laughing when I’m not weeping and weeping when I ought to be laughing.”

XVIII

Don Mike’s assumption that Pablo would seek balm for his injured feelings at the expense of the potato baron was one born of a very intimate knowledge of the mental processes of Pablo and those of his breed.  And Pablo, on that fateful day, did not disappoint his master’s expectations.  Old he was, and stiff and creaky of joint, but what he lacked in physical prowess he possessed in guile.  Forbidden to follow his natural inclination, which was to stab the potato baron frequently and fatally with a businesslike dirk which was never absent from his person except when he slept, Pablo had recourse to another artifice of his peculiar calling—­to wit, the rawhide riata.