He would gradually produce a herd of
pure-bred Herefords, but in the meantime he would have to buy
"feeders," grow them out on the Palomar range and sell them at a
profit. During the present high price of beef cattle, he dared not
gamble on borrowed capital, else with a slump in prices he might be
destroyed. It would be a year or two, at least, before he might accept
that risk; indeed, the knowledge of this condition had induced him to
lease the San Gregorio for one year to the Basque sheep man, Andre
Loustalot. If, in the interim, he should succeed in saving the ranch,
he knew that a rest of one year would enable the range to recover from
the damage inflicted upon it by the sheep.
In his desolation there came to him presently a wave of the strong
religious faith that was his sole unencumbered heritage. Once again he
was a trustful little boy. He slid out of the great bed of his
ancestors and knelt on the old rag mat beside it; he poured out an
appeal for help from One who, he had been told--who, he truly
believed--marked the sparrow's fall. Don Mike was far from being the
orthodox person one ordinarily visualizes in a Spanish-Irish Catholic,
but he was deeply religious, his religious impulse taking quite
naturally a much more practical form and one most pleasing to himself
and his neighbors, in that it impelled him to be brave and kind and
hopeful, a gentleman in all that the word implies.
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