“My, but you do whet my impatience,” said the lieutenant. “And I am about as anxious to be paying that afternoon call as I am to have my breakfast. I don’t know how you feel, Dick, but I’m as hungry as a lean coyote.” He paused a moment, then asked in a musing tone: “How far away is this wonderful La Siesta Rancho?”
“Oh, only about twenty miles.”
“Twenty miles! You speak of miles out here in the same way as we speak of city blocks back in New York. Surely it must be quite a farm.”
“Quite a farm? I should say! You musn’t confound our Californian ranchos with Eastern farms, old man. Why, this rancho of San Antonio covers over four hundred square miles of territory.”
“You astonish me.”
“La Siesta Rancho adjoins the great San Antonio possession and contains comparatively few acres, just under three thousand. But it surely is a beautiful little place, fixed up like a nobleman’s park in the old world. And then the ladies—”
“Aha, the ladies,” repeated Munson, doffing his hat in courtly fashion and smiling audaciously.
Dick touched the flank of his pony with his spur, and for a few miles they rode on at a quicker pace and in silence. Soon they were approaching the ranch buildings. On the outer edge was a little cottage, covered with vines and surrounded by fruit trees, the place which Dick Willoughby, the cattle foreman, had called “home” for the past five years.
After turning their horses into a corral, they passed by way of a broad verandah into a big room, roughly but comfortably furnished. Some logs were smouldering in the fireplace, and quickly started into a bright blaze when Dick kicked them together. The warmth was grateful, for while out of doors everything was now bathed in genial sunshine, here the morning air was still keen.
A Chinaman appeared from the back quarters, and smiled expectantly.