"What does it mean?" she demanded, imperiously.
"Oh, it's a very ordinary little sentiment, Miss Kay. The Spanish cavalier, having settled himself under his lady's window, thrums a preliminary chord or two, just to let her and the family know he's not working on the sly; then he says in effect: 'I think of thee, my little Tessie, when the moonlight is shining on the world; your bright eyes have me going for fair, kid, and due to a queer pain in my interior, I know I'm in love.'"
"You outrageous Celt!"
He chuckled. "A Spaniard takes his love very seriously. He's got to be sad and despairing about it, even when he knows very well the girl is saying to herself: 'For heaven's sake, when will this windy bird get down to brass tacks and pop the question?' He droops like a stale eschscholtzia, only, unlike that flower he hasn't sense enough to shut up for the night!"
Her beaming face turned toward him was ample reward for his casual display of Celtic wit, his knowledge of botany. And suddenly she saw his first real smile—a flash of beautiful white teeth and a wrinkling of the skin around the merry eyes. It came and went like a flicker of lightning; the somber man was an insouciant lad again.
A quarter of a mile across the valley they found the torn and mutilated carcass of a heifer, with a day-old calf grieving beside her.
"This is the work of our defunct friend, the panther," Farrel explained. "He had made his kill on this little heifer and eaten heartily. It occurred to me while we were chasing him that he was logey. Well—when Mike's away the cats will play."
He reached down, grasped the calf by the forelegs and drew the forlorn little animal up before him on the saddle. As it stretched out quietly across his thighs, following a half-hearted struggle to escape, Kay saw Don Mike give the orphan his left index finger to suck.
"Not much sustenance in it, is there, old timer?" he addressed the calf. "Coyotes would have had you tonight if I hadn't passed by."
"What a tiny calf," Kay observed, riding close to pat the sleek head.