the news of the death of his childhood chum, the beloved Don
Mike.

"What a wonderful fellow Don Mike must have been!" she mused. "White
men sing his praises, and Indians and mixed breeds cry them. No wonder
this ex-soldier plans to outbid me for Panchito. He attaches a
sentimental value to the horse because of his love for poor Don Mike.
I wonder if I ought to bid against him under the circumstances. Poor
dear! He wants his buddy's horse so badly. He's really very nice--so
old-fashioned and sincere. And he's dreadfully good-looking."

"Nature was overgenerous with that young lady," Farrel decided, as he
made his way up to the smoking-car. "As a usual thing, she seldom
dispenses brains with beauty--and this girl has both. I wonder who she
can be? Well, she's too late for Panchito. She may have any other
horse on the ranch, but--"

He glanced down at the angry red scar on the back of his right hand and
remembered. What a charger was Panchito for a battery commander!

IV

Farrel remained in the smoking-car throughout the rest of his journey,
for he feared the possibility of a renewal of acquaintance with his
quondam companion of the dining-car should he return to the
observation-platform. He did not wish to meet her as a discharged
soldier, homeward bound--the sort of stray dog every man, woman, and
child feels free to enter into conversation with and question regarding
his battles, wounds, and post-office address. When he met that girl
again, he wanted to meet her as Don Miguel Jose Farrel, of Palomar. He
was not so unintelligent as to fail to realize that in his own country
he was a personage, and he had sufficient self-esteem to desire her to
realize it also. He had a feeling that, should they meet frequently in
the future, they would become very good friends. Also, he looked
forward with quiet amusement to the explanations that would ensue when
the supposedly dead should return to life.

During their brief conversation, she had given him much food for
thought--so much, in fact, that presently he forgot about her entirely.
His mind was occupied with the problem that confronts practically all
discharged soldiers--that of readjustment, not to the life of pre-war
days, but to one newer, better, more ambitious, and efficient. Farrel
realized that a continuation of his _dolce-far-niente_ life on the
Rancho Palomar under the careless, generous, and rather shiftless
administration of his father