The Maestro felt a vague blush welling up from the innermost recesses of his being.
"I'm going to get that kid," he muttered, darkly, "if I have to wait till—the coming of Common Sense to the Manila office! By gum, he's the Struggle for Attendance personified!"
He sat down on the bank and waited. This did not prove interesting. The animals of the ditch creaked on; the carabao bubbled up the water with his deep content; above, the abandoned kite went through strange acrobatics and wailed as if in pain. The Maestro dipped his hand into the water; it was lukewarm. "No hope of a freeze out," he murmured, pensively.
Behind, the pony began to pull at the reins.
"Yes, little horse, I'm tired, too. Well," he said, apologetically, "I hate to get energetic, but there are circumstances which——"
The end of his sentence was lost, for he had whisked out the big Colt, dissuader of ladrones, that hung on his belt, and was firing. The six shots went off like a bunch of firecrackers, but far from at random, for a regular circle boiled up around the dozing carabao. The disturbed animal snorted, and again a discreet "cluck-cluck" rose in the sudden, astounded silence.
"This," said the Maestro, as he calmly introduced fresh cartridges into the chambers of his smoking weapon, "is what might be called an application of Western solutions to Eastern difficulties."
Again he brought his revolver down, but he raised it without shooting and replaced it in its holster. From beneath the carabao's rotund belly, below the surface, an indistinct form shot out; cleaving the water like a polliwog, it glided for the bank, and then a black, round head emerged at the feet of the Maestro.
"All right, bub; we'll go to school now," said the latter, nodding to the dripping figure as it rose before him.
He lifted the sullen brownie and straddled him forward of the saddle, then proceeded to mount himself, when the Capture began to display marked agitation. He squirmed and twisted, turned his head back and up, and finally a grunt escaped him.