The Pride of Palomar | Page 5

lieutenants had already been demobilized),
marched to the pay-tables. As they emerged from the paymaster's shack,
they scattered singly, in little groups, back to the demobilization-shacks.
Presently, bearing straw suitcases, "tin" helmets, and gas-masks (these
latter articles presented to them by a paternal government as souvenirs
of their service), they drifted out through the Presidio gate, where the
world swallowed them.
Although he had been the first man in the battery to receive his
discharge, Farrel was the last man to leave the Presidio. He waited until
the captain, having distributed the discharges, came out of the
pay-office and repaired again to his deserted orderly-room; whereupon
the former first sergeant followed him.

"I hesitate to obtrude, sir," he announced, as he entered the room, "but
whether the captain likes it or not, he'll have to say good-by to me. I
have attended to everything I can think of, sir; so, unless the captain
has some further use for me, I shall be jogging along."
"Farrel," the captain declared, "if I had ever had a doubt as to why I
made you top cutter of B battery, that last remark of yours would have
dissipated it. Please do not be in a hurry. Sit down and mourn with me
for a little while."
"Well, I'll sit down with you, sir, but I'll be hanged if I'll be mournful.
I'm too happy in the knowledge that I'm going home."
"Where is your home, sergeant?"
"In San Marcos County, in the southern part of the state. After two
years of Siberia and four days of this San Francisco fog, I'm fed up on
low temperatures, and, by the holy poker, I want to go home. It isn't
much of a home--just a quaint, old, crumbling adobe ruin, but it's home,
and it's mine. Yes, sir; I'm going home and sleep in the bed my
great-greatgrandfather was born in."
"If I had a bed that old, I'd fumigate it," the captain declared. Like all
regular army officers, he was a very devil of a fellow for sanitation.
"Do you worship your ancestors, Farrel?"
"Well, come to think of it, I have rather a reverence for 'the ashes of my
fathers and the temples of my gods.'"
"So have the Chinese. Among Americans, however, I thought all that
sort of thing was confined to the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers."
"If I had an ancestor who had been a Pilgrim Father," Farrel declared,
"I'd locate his grave and build a garbage-incinerator on it."
"What's your grouch against the Pilgrim Fathers?"
"They let their religion get on top of them, and they took all the joy out

of life. My Catalonian ancestors, on the other hand, while taking their
religion seriously, never permitted it to interfere with a fiesta. They
were what might be called 'regular fellows.'"
"Your Catalonian ancestors? Why, I thought you were black Irish,
Farrel?"
"The first of my line that I know anything about was a lieutenant in the
force that marched overland from Mexico to California under command
of Don Gaspar de Portola. Don Gaspar was accompanied by Fray
Junipero Serra. They carried a sword and a cross respectively, and
arrived in San Diego on July first, 1769. So, you see, I'm a real
Californian."
"You mean Spanish-Californian."
"Well, hardly in the sense that most people use that term, sir. We have
never intermarried with Mexican or Indian, and until my grandfather
Farrel arrived at the ranch and refused to go away until my
grandmother Noriaga went with him, we were pure-bred Spanish
blonds. My grandmother had red hair, brown eyes, and a skin as white
as an old bleached-linen napkin. Grandfather Farrel is the fellow to
whom I am indebted for my saddle-colored complexion."
"Siberia has bleached you considerably. I should say you're an ordinary
brunet now."
Farrel removed his overseas cap and ran long fingers through his hair.
"If I had a strain of Indian in me, sir," he explained, "my hair would be
straight, thick, coarse, and blue-black. You will observe that it is wavy,
a medium crop, of average fineness, and jet black."
The captain laughed at his frankness.
"Very well, Farrel; I'll admit you're clean-strain white. But tell me:
How much of you is Latin and how much Farrel?"

It was Farrel's turn to chuckle now.
"Seriously, I cannot answer that question. My grandmother, as I have
stated, was pure-bred Castilian or Catalonian, for I suppose they mixed.
The original Michael Joseph Farrel (I am the third of the name) was
Tipperary Irish, and could trace his ancestry back to the fairies--to hear
him tell it. But one can never be quite certain how much Spanish there
is in an Irishman from the west, so I have always started with the
premise that the result of that marriage--my father--was