nte Basin way before we
get back. Besides, I have a great curiosity to inspect the dam you're
building and the artesian wells you're drilling over in that country."

"Confound you, Farrel! You realized the possibilities of that basin,
then?"

"Years ago. The basin comes to a bottle-neck between two high hills;
all you have to do is dam that narrow gorge, and when the Rio San
Gregorio is up and brimming in freshet time, you'll have a lake
a hundred feet deep, a mile wide, and five miles long before you
know it. Did you ever consider the possibility of leading a ditch
from the lake thus formed along the shoulder of El Palomar, that
forty-five-hundred-foot peak for which the ranch is named, and giving
it a sixty-five-per-cent. nine-hundred-foot drop to a snug little
power-station at the base of the mountain. You could develop thirty or
forty thousand horse-power very easily and sell it easier; after your
water had passed through the penstock and delivered its power, you
could run it off through a lateral to the main ditch down the San
Gregorio and sell it to your Japanese farmers for irrigation."

"By Jupiter, I believe you would have done something with this ranch if
you had had the backing, Farrel!"

"Never speculated very hard on securing the backing," Don Mike
admitted, with a frank grin. "We always lived each day as if it were
the last, you know. But over in Siberia, far removed from all my
easy-going associations, both inherited and acquired, I commenced
dreaming of possibilities in the Agua Caliente basin."

"Well then, since you insist, let's go over there and have your
curiosity satiated," Parker agreed, with the best grace possible.

[Illustration: Here amidst the golden romance of the old mission, the
girl suddenly understood Don Mike.]

While the Parkers returned to the hacienda to change into their
riding-clothes, Miguel Farrel strolled over to the corral where Pablo
Artelan, wearing upon his leathery countenance the closest imitation of
a smile that had ever lighted that dark expanse, joined him and, with
Farrel, leaned over the corral fence and gazed at the horses within.
For a long time, neither spoke; then, while his glance still appraised
the horses, Don Mike stiffened a thumb and drove it with considerable
force into Pablo's ancient ribs. Carolina, engaged in hanging out the
Parker wash in the yard of her _casa_, observed Don Mike bestow this
infrequent accolade of approbation and affect