law! They're my Indians, and there are
damned few of them left.'

"Padre Dominic, my father, and I will, in all probability, get just a
little bit jingled at dinner. After dinner, we'll sit on the porch
flanking the patio and smoke cigars, and I'll smell the lemon verbena and
heliotrope and other old-fashioned flowers modern gardeners have
forgotten how to grow. About midnight, Father Dominic's brain will have
cleared, and he will be fit to be trusted with his accursed automobile;
so he will snort home in the moonlight, and my father will then carefully
lock the patio gate with a nine-inch key. Not that anybody ever steals
anything in our country, except a cow once in a while--and cows never
range in our patio--but just because we're hell-benders for conforming to
custom. When I was a boy, Pablo Artelan, our majordomo, always slept
athwart that gate, like an old watchdog. I give you my word I've climbed
that patio wall a hundred times and dropped down on Pablo's stomach
without wakening him. And, for a quarter of a century, to my personal
knowledge, that patio gate has supported itself on a hinge and a half.
Oh, we're a wonderful institution, we Farrels!"

"What did you say this Pablo was?"

"He used to be a majordomo. That is, he was the foreman of the ranch
when we needed a foreman. We haven't needed Pablo for a long time, but
it doesn't cost much to keep him on the pay-roll, except when his
relatives come to visit him and stay a couple of weeks."

"And your father feeds them?"

"Certainly. Also, he houses them. It can't be helped. It's an old
custom."

"How long has Pablo been a pensioner?"

"From birth. He's mostly Indian, and all the work he ever did never hurt
him. But, then, he was never paid very much. He was born on the ranch
and has never been more than twenty miles from it. And his wife is our
cook. She has relatives, too."

The captain burst out laughing.

"But surely this Pablo has some use," he suggested.

"Well he feeds the dogs, and in order to season his _frijoles_ with the
salt of honest labor, he saddles my father's horse and leads him round to
the house every morning. Throughout the remainder of the day, he sits
outside the wall and, by following the sun, he manages to remain in the
shade. He watches the road to proclaim the arrival of visitors, smokes
cigarettes, and delivers caustic criticisms on the younger generation
when he can get anybody to listen to him."

"Ho