'"
"You outrageous Celt!"
He chuckled. "A Spaniard takes his love very seriously. He's got to
be sad and despairing about it, even when he knows very well the girl
is saying to herself: 'For heaven's sake, when will this windy bird get
down to brass tacks and pop the question?' He droops like a stale
eschscholtzia, only, unlike that flower he hasn't sense enough to shut
up for the night!"
Her beaming face turned toward him was ample reward for his casual
display of Celtic wit, his knowledge of botany. And suddenly she saw
his first real smile--a flash of beautiful white teeth and a wrinkling
of the skin around the merry eyes. It came and went like a flicker of
lightning; the somber man was an insouciant lad again.
A quarter of a mile across the valley they found the torn and mutilated
carcass of a heifer, with a day-old calf grieving beside her.
"This is the work of our defunct friend, the panther," Farrel
explained. "He had made his kill on this little heifer and eaten
heartily. It occurred to me while we were chasing him that he was
logey. Well--when Mike's away the cats will play."
He reached down, grasped the calf by the forelegs and drew the forlorn
little animal up before him on the saddle. As it stretched out quietly
across his thighs, following a half-hearted struggle to escape, Kay saw
Don Mike give the orphan his left index finger to suck.
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