Despite his smile, her woman’s intuition told her that something more poignant than the threatened Japanese invasion of the San Gregorio valley had cast a shadow over his sunny soul.  She concluded it must have been 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 was not for him.  Indeed, the threatened invasion of the San Gregorio by Japanese rendered imperative an immediate decision to that effect.  He was the first of an ancient lineage who had even dreamed of progress; he had progressed, and he could never, by any possibility, afford to retrograde.