d a little on his breast, and for
perhaps ten seconds he was silent; by the far-away gleam in his eyes,
Kay knew he was seeing visions, and that they were not happy ones.

Instinctively her hand crept round the corner of the table and touched
his arm lightly. Her action was the result of impulse; almost as soon
as she had touched him, she withdrew her hand in confusion.

But her mother had noticed the movement, and a swift glance toward her
husband drew from him the briefest of nods, the most imperceptible of
shrugs.

"Come, Johnny dear," she urged, and her voice had lost its accustomed
shrillness now; "let us go forth and see what has happened to the
Little Old Man of the Spuds."

He followed her outside obediently, and arm in arm they walked around
the patio toward the rear gate.

"Hello!" he murmured suddenly, and, with a firm hand under her chin, he
tilted her handsome face upward. There were tears in her eyes. "What
now?" he demanded tenderly. "How come, old girl?"

"Nothing, John, I'm just an old fool--laughing when I'm not weeping and
weeping when I ought to be laughing."

XVIII

Don Mike's assumption that Pablo would seek balm for his injured
feelings at the expense of the potato baron was one born of a very
intimate knowledge of the mental processes of Pablo and those of his
breed. And Pablo, on that fateful day, did not disappoint his master's
expectations. Old he was, and stiff and creaky of joint, but what he
lacked in physical prowess he possessed in guile. Forbidden to follow
his natural inclination, which was to stab the potato baron frequently
and fatally with a businesslike dirk which was never absent from his
person except when he slept, Pablo had recourse to another artifice of
his peculiar calling--to wit, the rawhide riata.

As Okada emerged from the dining-room into the patio, Pablo entered
from the rear gate, riata in hand; as the Japanese crossed the garden
to his room in the opposite wing of the hacienda, Pablo made a deft
little cast and dropped his loop neatly over the potato baron's body,
pinioning the latter's arms securely to his sides. Keeping a stiff
strain on the riata, Pablo drew his victim swiftly toward the porch,
round an upright of which he had taken a hitch; in a surprisingly brief
period, despite the Jap's frantic efforts to release himself, Pablo had
his man lashed firmly to the porch column, whereupon he proceeded to
flog his prisoner with a heavy quirt