e land."

"Pa's thrown out at first base!" Mrs. Parker shrilled. "Poor old pa!"

Don Mike's somber black eyes flashed with mirth. "I understand now why
you leased the hacienda and why that twelve-thousand-dollar board bill
hurt," he murmured. He turned to Kay and her mother. "Why the poor
unfortunate man is forced to remain at the Rancho Palomar in order to
protect his bet." His thick black brows lifted piously. "Don't cheer,
boys," he cried tragically; "the poor devil is going fast now! Is
there anybody present who remembers a prayer or who can sing a hymn?"

Kay's adorable face twitched as she suppressed a chuckle at her
father's expense, but now that Parker was being assailed by all three,
his loyal wife decided to protect him.

"Well, Johnny's a shrewd gambler after all," she declared. "If you do
not redeem the ranch, he will get odds of two and a half to one on his
million-dollar bet and clean up in a year. With water on the lands of
the San Gregorio, Okada's people will pay five hundred dollars an acre
cash for the fifty thousand acres."

"I grant you that, Mrs. Parker, but in the meantime he will have
increased tremendously the value of all of my land in the San Gregorio
valley, and what is to prevent me, nine months from now, from floating
a new loan rather handily, by reason of that increased valuation,
paying off Mr. Parker's mortgage and garnering for myself that two and
a half million dollars' profit you speak of?"

"I fear you will have to excuse us from relishing the prospect of that
joke, Don Mike," Kay murmured.

"Work on that irrigation project will cease on Saturday evening, Mr.
Farrel," Parker assured his host.

Nevertheless, Farrel observed that his manner belied his words;
obviously he was ill at ease. For a moment, the glances of the two men
met; swift though that visual contact was, each read in the other's
glance an unfaltering decision. There would be no surrender.

The gay mood into which Mrs. Parker's humorous sallies had thrown
Farrel relaxed; there came back to him the memory of some graves in the
valley, and his dark, strong face was somber again. Of a sudden,
despite his victory of the morning, he felt old for all his
twenty-eight years--old and sad and embittered, lonely, futile and
helpless.

The girl, watching him closely, saw the light die out in his face, saw
the shadows come, as when a thunder-cloud passes between the sun and a
smiling valley. His chin droppe