The Pride of Palomar Part 3

"You forget, Farrel, that I'm a regular-army man, and we poor devils get accustomed to being uprooted. I've learned not to build castles in Spain, and I never believe I'm going to get a leave until the old man hands me the order. Even then, I'm always fearful of an order recalling it."

"You're missing a lot of happiness, sir. Why, I really believe I've had more fun out of the antic.i.p.ation of my home-coming than I may get out of the realization. I've planned every detail for months, and, if anything slips, I'm liable to sit right down and bawl like a kid."

"Let's listen to your plan of operations, Farrel," the captain suggested.

"I'll never have one myself, in all probability, but I'm child enough to want to listen to yours."

"Well, in the first place, I haven't communicated with my father since landing here. He doesn't know I'm back in California, and I do not want him to know until I drop in on him."

"And your mother, Farrel?"'

"Died when I was a little chap. No brothers or sisters. Well, if I had written him or wired him when I first arrived, he would have had a week of the most d.a.m.nable suspense, because, owing to the uncertainty of the exact date of our demobilization, I could not have informed him of the exact time of my arrival home. Consequently, he'd have had old Carolina, our cook, dis.h.i.+ng up nightly fearful quant.i.ties of the sort of grub I was raised on. And that would be wasteful. Also, he'd sit under the catalpa tree outside the western wall of the hacienda and never take his eyes off the highway from El Toro or the trail from Sespe. And every night after the sun had set and I'd failed to show up, he'd go to bed heavy-hearted.

Suspense is hard on an old man, sir."

"On young men, too. Go on."

"Well, I'll drop off the train to-morrow afternoon about four o'clock at a lonely little flag-station called Sespe. After the train leaves Sespe, it runs south-west for almost twenty miles to the coast, and turns south to El Toro. Nearly everybody enters the San Gregorio from El Toro, but, via the short-cut trail from Sespe, I can hike it home in three hours and arrive absolutely unannounced and unheralded.

"Now, as I pop up over the mile-high ridge back of Sespe, I'll be looking down on the San Gregorio while the last of the sunlight still lingers there. You see, sir, I'm only looking at an old picture I've always loved. Tucked away down in the heart of the valley, there is an old ruin of a mission--the Mission de la Madre Dolorosa--the Mother of Sorrows.

The light will be s.h.i.+ning on its dirty white walls and red-tiled roof, and I'll sit me down in the shade of a manzanita bush and wait, because that's my valley and I know what's coming.

"Exactly at six o'clock, I shall see a figure come out on the roof of the mission and stand in front of the old gallows-frame on which hang eight chimes that were carried in on mules from the City of Mexico when Junipero Serra planted the cross of Catholicism at San Diego, in 1769.

That distant figure will be Brother Flavio, of the Franciscan Order, and the old boy is going to ramp up and down in front of those chimes with a hammer and give me a concert. He'll bang out 'Adeste Fideles' and 'Gloria in Excelsis.' That's a cinch, because he's a creature of habit.

Occasionally he plays 'Lead, Kindly Light' and 'Ave Maria'!"

Farrel paused, a faint smile of amus.e.m.e.nt fringing his handsome mouth.

He rolled and lighted a cigarette and continued:

"My father wrote me that old Brother Flavio, after a terrible battle with his own conscience and at the risk of being hove out of the valley by his indignant superior, Father Dominic, was practising 'Hail, The Conquering Hero Comes!' against the day of my home-coming. I wrote father to tell Brother Flavio to cut that out and subst.i.tute 'In the Good Old Summertime' if he wanted to make a hit with me. Awfully good old hunks, Brother Flavio! He knows I like those old chimes, and, when I'm home, he most certainly bangs them so the melody will carry clear up to the Palomar."

The captain was gazing with increasing amazement upon his former first sergeant. After eighteen months, he had discovered a man he had not known heretofore."

"And after the 'Angelus'--what?" he demanded.

Farrel's smug little smile of complacency had broadened.

"Well, sir, when Brother Flavio pegs out, I'll get up and run down to the Mission, where Father Dominic, Father Andreas, Brother Flavio, Brother Anthony, and Brother Benedict will all extend a welcome and muss me up, and we'll all talk at once and get nowhere with the conversation for the first five minutes. Brother Anthony is just a little bit--ah--nutty, but harmless. He'll want to know how many men I've killed, and I'll tell him two hundred and nineteen. He has a leaning toward odd numbers, as tending more toward exact.i.tude. Right away, he'll go into the chapel and pray for their souls, and while he's at this pious exercise, Father Dominic will dig up a bottle of old wine that's too good for a nut like Brother Anthony, and we'll sit on a bench in the mission garden in the shade of the largest bougainvillea in the world and tuck away the wine.

Between tucks, Father Dominic will inquire casually into the state of my soul, and the information thus elicited will scandalize the old saint.

The only way I can square myself is to go into the chapel with them and give thanks for my escape from the Bolsheviki.

"By that time, it will be a quarter of seven and dark, so Father Dominic will crank up a prehistoric little automobile my father gave him in order that he might spread himself over San Marcos County on Sundays and say two ma.s.ses. I have a notion that the task of keeping that old car in running order has upset Brother Anthony's mental balance. He used to be a blacksmith's helper in El Toro in his youth, and therefore is supposed to be a mechanic in his old age."

"Then the old padre drives you home, eh?" the captain suggested.

"He does. Providentially, it is now the cool of the evening. The San Gregorio is warm enough, for all practical purposes, even on a day in April, and, knowing this, I am grateful to myself for timing my arrival after the heat of the day. Father Dominic is grateful also. The old man wears thin sandals, and on hot days he suffers continuous martyrdom from the heat of that little motor. He is always begging Satan to fly away with that hot-foot accelerator.

"Well, arrived home, I greet my father alone in the patio. Father Dominic, meanwhile, sits outside in his flivver and permits the motor to roar, just to let my father know he's there, although not for money enough to restore his mission would he b.u.t.t in on us at that moment.

"Well, my father will not be able to hear a word I say until Padre Dominic shuts off his motor; so my father will yell at him and ask him what the devil he's doing out there and to come in, and be quick about it, or he'll throw his share of the dinner to the hogs. We always dine at seven; so we'll be in time for dinner. But before we go in to dinner, my dad will ring the bell in the compound, and the help will report.

Amid loud cries of wonder and delight, I shall be welcomed by a mess of mixed breeds of a.s.sorted s.e.xes, and old Pablo, the majordomo, will be ordered to pa.s.s out some wine to celebrate my arrival. It's against the law to give wine to an Indian, but then, as my father always remarks on such occasions: 'To h.e.l.l with the law! They're my Indians, and there are d.a.m.ned 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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 h.e.l.l-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 inst.i.tution, 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."

"How old is your father, Farrel?"

"Seventy-eight."

"And he rides a horse!"

"He does worse than that." Farrel laughed. "He rides a horse that would police you, sir. On his seventieth birthday, at a rodeo, he won first prize for roping and hog-tying a steer."

"I'd like to meet that father of yours, Farrel."

"You'd like him. Any time you want to spend a furlough on the Palomar, we'll make you mighty welcome. Better come in the fall for the quail-shooting." He glanced at his wrist-watch and sighed. "Well, I suppose I'd do well to be toddling along. Is the captain going to remain in the service?"

The captain nodded.

"My people are h.e.l.l-benders on conforming to custom, also," he added.

"We've all been field-artillerymen.

"I believe I thanked you for a favor you did me once, but to prove I meant what I said, I'm going to send you a horse, sir. He is a chestnut with silver points, five years old, sixteen hands high, sound as a Liberty Bond, and bred in the purple. He is beautifully reined, game, full of ginger, but gentle and sensible. He'll weigh ten hundred in condition, and he's as active as a cat. You can win with him at any horse-show and at the head of a battery. _Dios_! He is every inch a _caballero_!"

"Sergeant, you're much too kind. Really--"

"The things we have been through together, sir--all that we have been to each other--never can happen again. You will add greatly to my happiness if you will accept this animal as a souvenir of our very pleasant a.s.sociation."

"Oh, son, this is too much! You're giving me your own private mount.

You love him. He loves you. Doubtless he'll know you the minute you enter the pasture."

Farrel's fine white teeth, flashed in a brilliant smile, "I do not desire to have the captain mounted on an inferior horse. We have many other good horses on the Palomar. This one's name is Panchito; I will express him to you some day this week."