"I don't like that blackamoor, Miss Kay," El Mono confided to the girl. "I feel assured he is a desperate vagabond to whom murder and pillage are mere pastimes. Please order him out of the garden. He pays no attention to me whatsoever."
"Leave him severely alone," Kay advised. "I will find a way to handle him."
Pablo returned presently, with two suits of clothing, a soft white-linen shirt, a black necktie, a pair of low-cut brown shoes, and a pair of brown socks. These articles he laid out on the bed. Then he made another trip to the other room, and returned bearing an armful of framed portraits of the entire Noriaga and Farrel dynasty, which he proceeded to hang in a row on the wall at the foot of the bed. Lastly, he removed a rather fancy spread from the bed and substituted therefor an ancient silk crazy-quilt that had been made by Don Mike's grandmother. Things were now as they used to be, and Pablo was satisfied.
When he came out, Kay had gone in to dinner; so he returned to his own casa and squatted against the wall, with his glance fixed upon the point in the palm avenue where it dipped over the edge of the mesa.
VII
At seven o'clock, dinner being over, Kay excused herself to the family and Mr. Okada, passed out through the patio gate, and sought a bench which she had noticed under a catalpa tree outside the wall. From this seat, she, like Pablo, could observe anybody coming up the palm-lined avenue. A young moon was rising over the hills, and by its light Kay knew she could detect Don Mike while he was yet some distance from the house.
At seven-thirty, he had not appeared, and she grew impatient and strolled round to the other side of the hacienda. Before Pablo's casa, she saw the red end of a cigarette; so she knew that Pablo also watched.
"I must see him first," she decided. "Pablo's heart is right toward Don Mike, but resentful toward us. I do not want him to pass that resentment on to his master."
She turned back round the hacienda again, crossed down over the lip of the mesa at right angles to the avenue, and picked her way through the oaks. When she was satisfied that Pablo could not see her, she made her way back to the avenue, emerging at the point where it connected with the wagon-road down the valley. Just off the avenue, a live-oak had fallen, and Kay sat down on the trunk of it to watch and wait.