The Pride of Palomar | Page 3

boy," old Don Miguel agreed; "he will miss more than the
quail-shooting when he returns--if he should return. They sent him to
Siberia to fight the Bolsheviki."
"What sort of country is this where Don Mike slays our enemy?" Pablo
queried.
"It is always winter there, Pablo. It is inhabited by a wild race of men
with much whiskers."
"Ah, our poor Don Mike! And he a child of the sun!"
"He but does his duty," old Don Miguel replied proudly. "He adds to
the fame of an illustrious family, noted throughout the centuries for the
gallantry of its warriors."
"A small comfort, Don Miguel, if our Don Mike comes not again to
those that love him."
"Pray for him," the old Don suggested piously.
Fell a silence. Then,
"Don Miguel, yonder comes one over the trail from El Toro."
Don Miguel gazed across the valley to the crest of the hills. There,
against the sky-line, a solitary horseman showed. Pablo cupped his
hands over his eyes and gazed long and steadily.
"It is Tony Moreno," he said, while the man was still a mile distant. "I
know that scuffling cripple of a horse he rides."

Don Miguel seated himself On the bench beside Pablo and awaited the
arrival of the horseman. As he drew nearer, the Don saw that Pablo was
right.
"Now, what news does that vagabond bear?" he muttered. "Assuredly
he brings a telegram; otherwise the devil himself could not induce that
lazy wastrel to ride twenty miles."
"Of a truth you are right, Don Miguel. Tony Moreno is the only man in
El Toro who is forever out of a job, and the agent of the telegraph
company calls upon him always to deliver messages of importance."
With the Don, he awaited, with vague apprehension, the arrival of Tony
Moreno. As the latter pulled his sweating horse up before them, they
rose and gazed upon him questioningly. Tony Moreno, on his part,
doffed his shabby sombrero with his right hand and murmured
courteously,
"Buenas tardes, Don Miguel."
Pablo he ignored. With his left hand, he caught a yellow envelope as it
fell from under the hat.
"Good-afternoon, Moreno." Don Miguel returned his salutation with a
gravity he felt incumbent upon one of his station to assume when
addressing a social inferior. "You bring me a telegram?" He spoke in
English, for the sole purpose of indicating to the messenger that the
gulf between them could not be spanned by the bridge of their mother
tongue. He suspected Tony Moreno very strongly of having stolen a
yearling from him many years ago.
Tony Moreno remembered his manners, and dismounted before
handing Don Miguel the telegram.
"The delivery charges?" Don Miguel queried courteously.
"Nothing, Don Miguel." Moreno's voice was strangely subdued. "It is a
pleasure to serve you, _señor_."

"You are very kind." And Don Miguel thrust the telegram, unopened,
into his pocket. "However," he continued, "it will please me, Moreno, if
you accept this slight token of my appreciation." And he handed the
messenger a five-dollar bill. The don was a proud man, and disliked
being under obligation to the Tony Morenos of this world. Tony
protested, but the don stood his ground, silently insistent, and, in the
end, the other pouched the bill, and rode away. Don Miguel seated
himself once more beside his retainer and drew forth the telegram.
"It must be evil news," he murmured, with the shade of a tremor in his
musical voice; "otherwise, that fellow could not have felt so much pity
for me that it moved him to decline a gratuity."
"Read, Don Miguel!" Pablo croaked. "Read!"
Don Miguel read. Then he carefully folded the telegram and replaced it
in the envelope; as deliberately, he returned the envelope to his pocket.
Suddenly his hands gripped the bench, and he trembled violently.
"Don Mike is dead?" old Pablo queried softly. He possessed all the
acute intuition of a primitive people.
Don Miguel did not reply; so presently Pablo turned his head and gazed
up into the master's face. Then he knew--his fingers trembled slightly
as he returned to work on the hondo, and, for a long time, no sound
broke the silence save the song of an oriole in the catalpa tree.
Suddenly, the sound for which old Pablo had waited so long burst forth
from the sage-clad hillside. It was a cock quail calling, and, to the
majordomo, it seemed to say: "Don Mike! Come home! Don Mike!
Come home!"
"Ah, little truant, who has told you that you are safe?" Pablo cried in
agony. "For Don Mike shall not come home--no, no--never any more!"
His Indian stoicism broke at last; he clasped his hands and fell to his
knees beside the bench, sobbing aloud.

Don Miguel regarded him not, and when Pablo's