"I wonder," Kay spoke up demurely, "which ancestor from which side of the family tree put that idea in his head, father?"
Don Mike pretended not to have heard her. He turned kindly to John Parker and laid a friendly hand upon the latter's arm.
"I think Bill Conway will drift by about ten o'clock or ten-thirty, Mr. Parker. I know he will not cause you any more inconvenience than he finds absolutely necessary, sir. He's tricky, but he isn't mean."
Parker did not reply. He did not know whether to laugh or fly into a rage, to offer Don Mike his hand or his fist. The latter must have guessed Parker's feelings, for he favored his guests with a Latin shrug and a deprecatory little smile, begged to be excused and departed for the barn. A quarter of an hour later Kay saw him and Pablo ride out of the yard and over the hills toward the west; she observed that Farrel was riding his father's horse, wherefore she knew that he had left Panchito behind for her.
Farrel found Don Nicolás Sandoval, the sheriff, by riding straight to a column of smoke he saw rising from a grove of oaks on a flat hilltop.
"What do you mean by camping out here, Don Nicolás?" Farrel demanded as he rode up. "Since when has it become the fashion to await a formal invitation to the hospitality of the Rancho Palomar?"
"I started to ride down to the hacienda at sunset last night," Don Nicolás replied, "but a man on foot and carrying a rifle and a blanket came over the hills to the south. I watched him through my binoculars. He came down into the wash of the San Gregorio—and I did not see him come out. So I knew he was camped for the night in the willow thickets of the river bed; that he was a stranger in the country, else he would have gone up to your hacienda for the night; that his visit spelled danger to you, else why did he carry a rifle?
"I went supperless, watching from the hillside to see if this stranger would light a fire in the valley."
"He did not?" Farrel queried.
"Had he made a camp-fire, my boy, I would have accorded myself the pleasure of an informal visit, incidentally ascertaining who he was and what he wanted. I am very suspicious of strangers who make cold camps in the San Gregorio. At daylight this morning I rode down the wash and searched for his camp. I found where he had slept in the grass—also this," and he drew from his pocket a single rifle cartridge. "Thirty-two-forty caliber, Miguel," he continued, "with a soft-nose bullet. I do not know of one in this county who shoots such a heavy rifle. In the old days we used the .44 caliber, but nowadays, we prefer nothing heavier than a .30 and many use a .35 caliber for deer."