“If you’d only sell him to me, Don Mike,” she pleaded.  “I’ll give you a ruinous price for him.”

“He is not for sale, Miss Kay.”

“But you were going to give him away to your late battery commander!”

He held up his right hand with the red scar on the back of it, but made no further reply.

“Why will you not sell him to me?” she pleaded.  “I want him so.”

“I love him,” he answered at that, “and I could only part with him—­for love.  Some day, I may give him to somebody worth while, but for the present I think I shall be selfish and continue to own him.  He’s a big, powerful animal, and if he can carry weight in a long race, he’s fast enough to make me some money.”

“Let me ride him in the try-out,” she pleaded.  “I weigh just a hundred and twenty.”

“Very well.  To-morrow I’ll hitch up a work-team, and disk the heart out of our old race-track—­ Oh, yes; we have such a thing”—­in reply to her lifted brows.  “My grandfather Mike induced my great-grandfather Noriaga to build it way back in the ’Forties.  The Indians and vaqueros used to run scrub races in those days—­in fact, it was their main pastime.”

“Where is this old race-track?”

“Down in the valley.  A fringe of oaks hides it.  It’s grass-grown and it hasn’t been used in twenty-five years, except when the Indians in this part of the country foregather in the valley occasionally and pull off some scrub races.”

“How soon can we put it in commission?” she demanded eagerly,

“I’ll disk it to-morrow.  The ground is soft now, after this recent rain.  Then I’ll harrow it well and run a culti-packer over it—­well, by the end of the week it ought to be a fairly fast track.”

“Goody!  We’ll go in to El Toro to-morrow and I’ll wire to San Francisco for a stop-watch.  May I sprint Panchito a little across that meadow?”

“Wait a moment, Miss Kay.  We shall have something to sprint after in a few minutes, I think.”  As the hounds gave tongue in a path of willows they had been investigating far to the right, Don Mike pulled up his horse and listened.  “Hot trail,” he informed her.  “They’ll all be babbling in a moment.”

He was right.

“If it’s a coyote, he’ll sneak up the wash of the river,” he informed the girl, “but if it’s a cat, he’ll cut through that open space to tree in the oaks beyond—­Ha!  There goes a mountain-lion.  After him!”

His alert pony went from a halt to a gallop, following a long, lithe tawny animal that loped easily into view, coming from the distant willow thicket.  In an instant, Kay was beside him.

“Head him off,” he commanded curtly.  “This ruin of Pablo’s is done in a quarter-mile dash, but Panchito can outrun that cat without trying.  Don’t be afraid of him.  They’re cowardly brutes.  Get between him and the oaks and turn him back to me.  Ride him down!  He’ll dodge out of your way.”