all sailors, he had equestrian ambitions."

"Great snakes! It must have been a sizable place."

"It was. The original Mexican grant was twenty leagues square."

"I take it, then, that the estate has dwindled in size."

"Oh, yes, certainly. My great-grandfather Noriaga, Michael Joseph I, and
Michael Joseph II shot craps with it, and bet it on horse-races, and gave
it away for wedding-doweries, and, in general, did their little best to
put the Farrel posterity out in the mesquite with the last of the Mission
Indians."

"How much of this principality have you left?"

"I do not know. When I enlisted, we had a hundred thousand acres of the
finest valley and rolling grazing-land in California and the hacienda
that was built in 1782. But I've been gone two years, and haven't heard
from home for five months."

"Mortgaged?"

"Of course. The Farrels never worked while money could be raised at ten
per cent. Neither did the Noriagas. You might as well attempt to yoke
an elk and teach him how to haul a cart."

"Oh, nonsense, Farrel! You're the hardest-working man I have ever known."

Farrel smiled boyishly.

"That was in Siberia, and I had to hustle to keep warm. But I know I'll
not be home six months before that delicious _manana_ spirit will settle
over me again, like mildew on old boots."

The captain shook his head.

"Any man who can see so clearly the economic faults of his race and
nevertheless sympathize with them is not one to be lulled to the ruin
that has overtaken practically all of the old native California families.
That strain of Celt and Gael in you will triumph over the easy-going
Latin."

"Well, perhaps. And two years in the army has helped tremendously to
eradicate an inherited tendency toward procrastination."

"I shall like to think that I had something to do with that," the officer
answered. "What are your plans?"

"Well, sir, this hungry world must be fed by the United States for the
next ten years, and I have an idea that the Rancho Palomar can pull
itself out of the hole with beef cattle. My father has always raised
short-legged, long-horned scrubs, descendants of the old Mexican breeds,
and there is no money in that sort of stock. If I can induce him to turn
the ranch over to me, I'll try to raise sufficient money to buy a couple
of car-loads of pure-bred Hereford bulls and grade up that scrub stock;
in four or five years I'll have steers that will weigh eighteen hundred
to