Upon arriving in San Diego Don Mike unloaded Panchito at the Santa Fe depot. Gone now were the leg bandages and the beautiful blanket with which Danny Leighton had furnished Panchito at starting. These things proclaimed the race-horse, and that was not part of Don Mike's plan. He led the animal to a vacant lot a few blocks from the depot and, leaving him there in charge of Pablo, went up town to the Mexican consulate and procured passports into Baja California for himself and Allesandro. From the consulate he went to a local stock-yard and purchased a miserable, flea-bitten, dejected saddle mule, together with a dilapidated old stock saddle with a crupper, and a well-worn horse-hair hackamore. Returning to the depot, he procured his old Saratoga trunk from the station master and removed from it the beautiful black-leather, hand-carved, silver-mounted stock saddle he had won at a _rodeo_ some years previous; a pair of huge, heavy, solid silver Mexican spurs, with tan carved-leathern straps, and a finely plaited hand-made rawhide bridle, _sans_ throat-latch and brow-band and supporting a long, cruel, solid silver Spanish bit, with silver chain chin-strap and heavily embossed. In this gear he arrayed Panchito, and then mounted him. Allesandro mounted the flea-bitten mule, the old Saratoga trunk was turned over to Pablo, and with a fervent "_Adios_, Don Miguel. Go with God!" from the old majordomo, Don Mike and his little companion rode south through the city toward the international boundary. They crossed at Tecarte next day and in the somnolent little border town Don Mike made sundry purchases and proceeded south on the road toward Ensenada. Meanwhile, John Parker, his wife and daughter and Danny Leighton had motored to San Diego and taken rooms at a hotel there. Each day they attended the races at Tia Juana, and as often as they appeared there they looked long and anxiously for Don Miguel Jose Federico Noriaga Farrel. But in vain. Three days before Thanksgiving the entries for the Thanksgiving handicap were announced, and when Danny Leighton read them in the morning paper he at once sought his employer. "That fellow Farrel has spoiled everything," he complained furiously. "He's entered Panchito in the Thanksgiving Handicap at a mile and a sixteenth, for a ten thousand dollar purse. There he is!" Parker read the list and sighed. "Well, Panchito is his horse, Danny. He has a right to enter him if he pleases--hello! Katie! Kay! Here's news for you. Listen!" He read aloud: DON QUIXOTE AND SANCHO PANZA, JR. ARRIVE AT TIA JUANA--THEY ENTER PANCHITO IN THE THANKSGIVING HANDICAP _By the Rail Bird_