auffeur, after which he invited himself to luncheon.
Apparently his raid of the night previous rested lightly on his
conscience, and Parker's failure to quarrel with him lifted him
immediately out of any fogs of apprehension that may have clouded his
sunny soul.

"Hello, Conway," Parker greeted him, as the old contractor came into
the dining room and hung his battered old hat on a wall peg. "Did you
bring back my spark plugs?"

"Did better'n that," Conway retorted. "The porcelain on one plug was
cracked and sooner or later you were bound to have trouble with it. So
I bought you a new one."

"Do any good for yourself in El Toro this morning?"

"Nope. Managed to put over a couple of deals that will help the boy
out a little, though. Attached your bank account and your bank stock.
I would have plastered your two automobiles, but that tender-hearted
Miguel declared that was carrying a grudge too far. By the way, where
is our genial young host?"

"Horse bucked him off this morning. He lit on a rock and ripped a
furrow in his sinful young head. So he's sleeping off a headache."

"Oh, is he badly hurt?" Kay cried anxiously.

"Not fatally," Parker replied with a faintly knowing smile. "But he's
weak and dizzy and he's lost a lot of blood; every time he winks for
the next month his head will ache, however."

"Which horse policed him?" Bill Conway queried casually.

"The gray one--his father's old horse."

"Hum-m-m!" murmured Conway and pursued the subject no further, nor did
he evince the slightest interest in the answers which Parker framed
glibly to meet the insistent demand for information from his wife and
daughter. The meal concluded, he excused himself and sought Pablo, of
whom he demanded and received a meticulous account of the "accident" to
Miguel Farrel. For Bill Conway knew that the gray horse never bucked
and that Miguel Farrel was a hard man to throw.

"Guess I'll have to sit in at this game," he decided, and forthwith
climbed into his rattletrap automobile and returned to El Toro.

During the drive in he surrendered his mind to a contemplation of all
of the aspects of the case, and arrived at the following conclusions:

Item. Don Nicolas Sandoval had seen the assassin walking in from the
south about sunset the day previous. If the fellow had walked all the
way across country from La Questa valley he must have started about two
P.M.

Item. The Potato Baron had left the Farrel hacienda