The Pride of Palomar | Page 7

replied, to the other's unspoken query. "It's
been so foggy since we landed in San Francisco I've had a hard job
making my way round the Presidio. But if I take the eight-o'clock train

tomorrow morning, I'll run out of the fog-belt in forty-five minutes and
be in the sunshine for the remainder of the journey. Yes, by
Jupiter--and for the remainder of my life!"
"You want to feast your eyes on the countryside, eh?"
"I do. It's April, and I want to see the Salinas valley with its oaks; I
want to see the bench-lands with the grape-vines just budding; I want to
see some bald-faced cows clinging to the Santa Barbara hillsides, and I
want to meet some fellow on the train who speaks the language of my
tribe."
"Farrel, you're all Irish. You're romantic and poetical, and you feel the
call of kind to kind. That's distinctly a Celtic trait."
"_Quién sabe_? But I have a great yearning to speak Spanish with
somebody. It's my mother tongue."
"There must be another reason," the captain bantered him. "Sure there
isn't a girl somewhere along the right of way and you are fearful, if you
take the night-train, that the porter may fail to waken you in time to
wave to her as you go by her station?"
Farrel shook his head.
"There's another reason, but that isn't it. Captain, haven't you been
visualizing every little detail of your home-coming?"
"You forget, Farrel, that I'm a regular-army man, and we poor devils
get accustomed to being uprooted. I've learned not to build castles in
Spain, and I never believe I'm going to get a leave until the old man
hands me the order. Even then, I'm always fearful of an order recalling
it."
"You're missing a lot of happiness, sir. Why, I really believe I've had
more fun out of the anticipation of my home-coming than I may get out
of the realization. I've planned every detail for months, and, if anything
slips, I'm liable to sit right down and bawl like a kid."

"Let's listen to your plan of operations, Farrel," the captain suggested.
"I'll never have one myself, in all probability, but I'm child enough to
want to listen to yours."
"Well, in the first place, I haven't communicated with my father since
landing here. He doesn't know I'm back in California, and I do not want
him to know until I drop in on him."
"And your mother, Farrel?"'
"Died when I was a little chap. No brothers or sisters. Well, if I had
written him or wired him when I first arrived, he would have had a
week of the most damnable suspense, because, owing to the uncertainty
of the exact date of our demobilization, I could not have informed him
of the exact time of my arrival home. Consequently, he'd have had old
Carolina, our cook, dishing up nightly fearful quantities of the sort of
grub I was raised on. And that would be wasteful. Also, he'd sit under
the catalpa tree outside the western wall of the hacienda and never take
his eyes off the highway from El Toro or the trail from Sespe. And
every night after the sun had set and I'd failed to show up, he'd go to
bed heavy-hearted. Suspense is hard on an old man, sir."
"On young men, too. Go on."
"Well, I'll drop off the train to-morrow afternoon about four o'clock at a
lonely little flag-station called Sespe. After the train leaves Sespe, it
runs south-west for almost twenty miles to the coast, and turns south to
El Toro. Nearly everybody enters the San Gregorio from El Toro, but,
via the short-cut trail from Sespe, I can hike it home in three hours and
arrive absolutely unannounced and unheralded.
"Now, as I pop up over the mile-high ridge back of Sespe, I'll be
looking down on the San Gregorio while the last of the sunlight still
lingers there. You see, sir, I'm only looking at an old picture I've always
loved. Tucked away down in the heart of the valley, there is an old ruin
of a mission--the Mission de la Madre Dolorosa--the Mother of
Sorrows. The light will be shining on its dirty white walls and red-tiled
roof, and I'll sit me down in the shade of a manzanita bush and wait,

because that's my valley and I know what's coming.
"Exactly at six o'clock, I shall see a figure come out on the roof of the
mission and stand in front of the old gallows-frame on which hang
eight chimes that were carried in on mules from the City of Mexico
when Junipero Serra planted the cross of Catholicism at San Diego, in
1769. That distant figure will be Brother Flavio, of the Franciscan
Order, and the