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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of For the Soul of Rafael, by Marah Ellis Ryan
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: For the Soul of Rafael
+
+Author: Marah Ellis Ryan
+
+Release Date: June 14, 2012 [EBook #39995]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOR THE SOUL OF RAFAEL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, tallforasmurf and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
+
+This etext differs from the original as follows. A few typographical
+errors that did not affect the sense have been corrected. The character
+U with tilde is shown as [~U]. The oe ligature is shown as [oe]. The
+original has musical notation at many points, indicated thus:
+
+[Music (title, when given)]
+
+Where the music also has lyrics, they are formatted as poetry below the
+that line.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: FOR THE SOUL OF RAFAEL]
+
+[Illustration: "BECAUSE OF ONE LITTLE WHITE VAMPIRE."]
+
+
+
+
+               FOR THE SOUL OF RAFAEL
+
+                        BY
+
+                 MARAH ELLIS RYAN
+
+ AUTHOR OF "TOLD IN THE HILLS" "THE BONDWOMAN" ETC.
+
+
+     WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
+          TAKEN EXPRESSLY FOR THIS BOOK
+                        BY
+                 HAROLD A. TAYLOR
+
+               DECORATIVE DESIGNS BY
+               RALPH FLETCHER SEYMOUR
+
+                 ELEVENTH EDITION
+
+
+                      CHICAGO
+                A.C. McCLURG & CO.
+                       1920
+
+
+
+
+                     COPYRIGHT
+                A.C. MCCLURG & CO.
+                       1906
+
+         Entered at Stationers Hall, London
+
+ Photographs by HAROLD A. TAYLOR, by permission of
+             The Hallett-Taylor Company
+
+The Author is indebted to the Southwest Society of the
+       Archæological Institute of America for the
+         Spanish Music contained in this volume
+
+               Published May 12, 1906
+           Second Edition, Sept. 15, 1906
+            Third Edition, Oct. 1, 1906
+           Fourth Edition, Dec. 5, 1906
+            Fifth Edition, Dec. 15, 1906
+            Sixth Edition, Feb. 11, 1907
+              7th Edition, Aug. 31, 1907
+              8th Edition, Jan. 12, 1909
+              9th Edition, April 30, 1909
+             10th Edition, Oct. 15, 1910
+             11th Edition, Nov. 10, 1914
+
+ M.A. DONOHUE & CO., PRINTERS AND BINDERS, CHICAGO
+
+
+    Á MIS AMIGOS DE CALIFORNIA
+
+      _que siempre me han prestado su ayuda con_
+      _aquella bonded que les es caracteristica._
+
+              M.E.R.
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                  Page
+
+"BECAUSE OF ONE LITTLE WHITE VAMPIRE"        Frontispiece
+
+DOŅA ANGELA                                        32
+
+RAQUEL ESTEVAN                                     56
+
+KEITH BRYTON                                       62
+
+"NEVER ON ANY OTHER SHORE"                        128
+
+"YOU LIED TO ME--ALL OF YOU!"                     166
+
+"R[~U]ELAS ME FECIT: ME LLAMA SAN JUAN. 1796."    176
+
+"THEN I HEARD YOUR VOICE"                         240
+
+"HERE AMONG THE RUINS CONSECRATED"                260
+
+"THERE IS NO FORGETTING"                          278
+
+THE ALISO TREE                                    294
+
+AN INNER COURT                                    302
+
+THE SERENADE                                      312
+
+"AFTER THE VERY GAY SUPPER"                       316
+
+"THEIR HOSTESS HAD ARRIVED"                       320
+
+"AND--HE WAS AN ARTEAGA!"                         334
+
+"EACH WAY HE TURNED HE MET AN ALTAR OR A PRIEST"  352
+
+"ONE WORDLESS MINUTE"                             368
+
+"THINGS KNOWN AND NEVER TOLD"                     372
+
+
+[Music: _La Calandria_ (The Meadow Lark)]
+
+[Music: _Capitan de un Barco_.]
+
+    Capitan de un barco Me escribio un papel
+    Que si ne queria Casarme con el.
+
+
+
+
+                       FOR THE SOUL OF RAFAEL
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Over the valley of the Mission of the Tragedies, the grass was knee-deep
+in March that year. The horses galloping from the mesa trail down to
+Boca de la Playa (the mouth of the ocean) were fat and sleek and tricky
+as they ran neck and neck past the corral of the little plain, and
+splashed in glee through the San Juan River, where it ends its short run
+from the Sierras to the Pacific.
+
+Where the west trail hugged the hill, two men sat their broncos,
+watching that no strays break for the mesa above; and beyond the cross
+on Avila's hill, other vaqueros guarded El Camino Real (the road royal),
+lest in the whirl and dash of the round-up rebels might break for the
+open and a stampede undo all the riding since dawn of day.
+
+High above on the western cliff a giant head of cactus reared infernal
+arms and luminous bloom. One immense clump threw a shadow across the
+cliff road where it leaves the river plain and winds along the caņon to
+the mesa above the sea,--the road over which in the old days the Mission
+Indians bore hides to the ships and flung them from the cliffs to the
+waiting boats below.
+
+A man stood back of the cactus watching with tireless eyes the dividing
+of the herds and the quick work of the vaqueros as their excited
+mustangs raced for a stray or a rebel from the ranks. A dark serape was
+at his feet, the dust of the roads on his face, and when he removed his
+sombrero to light a cigarro in its shelter, there was disclosed a great
+shock of black hair worn unusually long, and matching in unkemptness the
+full beard covering his face almost to his black velvety eyes.
+
+They were the one youthful feature in an otherwise weather-worn visage,
+and at the sound of horse hoofs on the road, they opened wider,
+listening, alert, yet he did not turn to look whence the sounds came.
+Instead, he dropped silently to the serape, crushed the end of the
+cigarro against a cactus leaf, and waited, as still and as safe from
+detection as a lizard of the mesa in a sage thicket.
+
+He could see clearly the face of Don Antonio, the major-domo, and
+instinctively his right hand reached for his gun. Then he shrugged his
+shoulders at his own folly, and bent his head to listen. Don Antonio
+was speaking Americano to a man riding beside him, and the man behind
+the cactus frowned impatiently,--the villanous tongue was an added
+grievance. A few rebellious animals had made a dash for the cliff, and
+Don Antonio waved his sombrero and ranged his horse across the road. His
+companion did the same, and to give the vaqueros time to cross the river
+after them, the two stood guard in the shadow of the cactus, and rolled
+cigarros and smoked leisurely, while the horsemen, in jingling spurs and
+all the bravery of the Mexican riders' outfit, circled and lassoed the
+pick of the herd for the Apache work of the government in the desert
+lands.
+
+"It is quicker done than it was a year ago," the American remarked
+approvingly, "and the horses are in better condition. If you can let us
+have the five hundred from the La Paz ranges, there should be no trouble
+about making up the other five hundred from the San Mateo."
+
+"Not any, seņor," agreed Don Antonio, "I send a man down to have them
+round-up for next week. You no want that they begin sooner than that?"
+
+"To-morrow," returned the other with smiling decision.
+
+"To-morrow! Holy Maria and José! You will cut out the fiesta and the
+barbecue always given for the army men? Seņor Bryton, the Don Miguel and
+Don Rafael Arteaga will feel offend if you refuse their hospitality
+except for the little--little while, the horse herd is arranged for."
+
+"Sorry to offend the young men," observed the other. "But since Don
+Miguel is ranging in some other part of California, and your Don Rafael
+is in Mexico getting married or making love,--which is it?--I reckon
+they will not miss us much."
+
+"No, seņor, it is not to marry down there, only to make it all arrange.
+His mother, the Doņa Luisa, is there in Mexico since San Pascual; but
+Doņa Luisa will be more old and crippled than she is now, before she
+lets Don Rafael be marry outside her own Mission."
+
+"So they come back here for the ceremony?"
+
+"Sure! Doņa Luisa she marry Don Vicente, here in San Juan Capistrano. It
+is here he have the big trouble with the padre, and the padre put the
+curse on him that long time ago. It is here that he is brought back dead
+from San Pascual. And now when the sons have make much trouble, all are
+dead but two, and when Doņa Luisa, who was so proud, has only Indian
+grandchildren, she wants to marry Rafael to a seņorita who is half a
+nun, that the curse may be lifted. She think that girl do more to keep
+him from walking in Miguel's shoes than prayers to the saints can do;
+and it may be,--who knows? I hear you talking of the padre's curse to
+the Alcalde, so I know you hearing the story."
+
+"Um--something of church property south of here, wasn't it?" remarked
+the American. "Yes, I remember. There goes a mare that is a beauty for a
+mustang."
+
+"Some few years, and you no getting that strong, wild stock some more,"
+he observed. "Miguel and Rafael want English stallions and such other
+breeds. They will have English stock and American customs. The saints
+keep Doņa Luisa from hearing them all. I mean no discourtesy, seņor, but
+she is an old woman now, and left her home because she would not live in
+your government. She comes back for duty and the marriage; but the old
+never change, seņor, and she is hating it till she die."
+
+The American cast his eyes northward where the heights of San Jacinto
+stood guard over the beautiful valley. Willows marked the course of
+Trabuco Creek and San Juan River, and on the plateau between them
+gleamed the ruined dome of the old mission, a remnant of beauty such as
+the ranging American meets with in Latin lands, seldom in his own, and
+admires, and wonders if it was worth while, and drifts away again, but
+never quite forgets.
+
+Yellow-white it gleamed like an opal in a setting of velvety ranges
+under turquoise skies. About its walls were the clustered adobes of the
+Mexicans, like children creeping close to the feet of the one mother;
+and beyond that the illimitable ranges of mesa and valley, of live-oak
+groves and knee-deep meadows, of countless springs and caņons of
+mystery, whence gold was washed in the freshets; and over all, eloquent,
+insistent, appealing, the note of the meadow-lark cutting clearly
+through the hoof-beats of the herd and the calls of the vaqueros.
+
+"I think I should hate it, too," he said at last. "They lived like kings
+and made their own laws in those days. After being a queen of all this,
+it would be hard to be subject to new forms."
+
+"That is it, seņor, she never get used to like the American flag. That
+why she want always that Don Rafael marry South, a good Catholic, and a
+seņorita of Mexico. She only living for that, they say. Now when it is
+done she die in peace."
+
+"And Rafael, how will he manage his American deals when--"
+
+Don Antonio shrugged his shoulders doubtfully.
+
+"Who knows? I glad I living my young life in other days. The fences
+have make ruin of the country in the north; after a while it is down
+here all the same. All cut up in little gardens. Who knows?"
+
+The American restrained a smile as he thought of the sixty-five miles
+they had ridden across, and only one little German colony where fence or
+hedges were in evidence. For the rest all was fenced on the east by the
+mountains and on the west by the sea. On the north the Santa Barbara
+range would perhaps serve as a barricade, and south even the Mexican
+line raised no obstacle to roving herds.
+
+"The fences will not come in our day, and it is all now to be a pleasure
+ground for your gay Don Rafael."
+
+"Not so much of a pleasure ground as it looks, seņor," observed Don
+Antonio dryly. "The same curse works still. It is good he marries a
+convent girl; it takes the prayers of Doņa Luisa, and a saint besides,
+to clear these ranges of Barto Nordico, el Capitan."
+
+The man on the serape shrugged his shoulders and lifted his head,
+resting it on his hands to listen better.
+
+"Nordico? Oh, yes! the man with an eye for good horses."
+
+"If it were only an eye," grumbled Don Antonio, "but the devil seems to
+have a hundred hands, and his reata touches only the first stock on the
+Arteaga ranches."
+
+"Not only the Arteagas', I suppose?"
+
+"Oh, you not hearing that?" and the older man's tone expressed surprise.
+"It going with the curse, maybe, we not knowing. Old Don Vicente have
+the brother Ramon, but Vicente buy up all Ramon's land some way. Ramon
+goes crazy mad, _loco_, on that account. And then his son, Barto, he
+study for the priest, that is when the war comes, and he is only little
+yet. He running away from school to fight; but all he can do is to carry
+the letters, he is so little and can ride so like the devil. He never is
+content to the American flags, no more than Doņa Luisa, so he just
+keeping on to fight, and the government no getting him."
+
+"Do they try?" asked the American.
+
+"Do they--do they try? Since he joined Juan Flores, one dozen men in
+Capistrano have the sword cut or the bullet mark, who have gone to try
+for that reward. It is good money, but no one getting it. He is a
+devil."
+
+"But I don't understand. You make him out an Arteaga, yet he is called
+Nordico?"
+
+"Oh, he hating the Arteagas, so he taking his mother's name. He take the
+government mail sometimes, and he takes the Arteaga horses always, and
+no one ever finds him any place. While men follow his trail for the
+mountains, he is out in a boat on the sea. The saints send that he does
+not meet the marriage gifts of Don Rafael."
+
+The man behind the cactus fairly held his breath.
+
+"Whew! would he attack the Mission or the town?"
+
+"It would not be the first time," returned Antonio, "but it is of the
+bride-chests on the journey that I speak. Sixty miles of land they must
+cover from San Diego, and they cost more than a herd of horses."
+
+"Rafael can replace the gifts," observed the American, "so long as his
+bandit cousin does not kidnap the bride; but even that, I suppose, might
+be done in this land of lonely ranges."
+
+The man under the cactus nodded and showed his teeth in an appreciative
+smile. He had met good fortune for his long vigil; it was a day of luck,
+and he crossed himself.
+
+The vaqueros had circled the rebellious animals, and headed them back.
+
+"It is true, the horses are in better condition this year," conceded the
+major-domo as they watched the horses loping along the river side. "Do
+you send them all together, or by the five hundred, across the range,
+Seņor Bryton?"
+
+"By the five hundred, I think the lieutenant said," replied Bryton. "It
+is not easy to feed more in one bunch on the journey."
+
+The man behind the cactus arose stealthily and stretched his arms as the
+hoof-beats grew more faint.
+
+"Seņor Bryton--eh?" and he shrugged his shoulders contentedly. "The
+clever Bryton who put us off the track last year and took the stock by
+the north! This time he will not be so clever. Still, he gives a man
+ideas in the head,--may he have an easy death for that! Rafael's good
+friend who picks the good horses for the good government!"
+
+[Music: _La Viuda._]
+
+    Corre muchacho a la yglesia,
+    Dile al sacristan mayor,
+    Que repique las campanas, tan! tan!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+"Men make plans, and the devil makes other plans--and the devil's plan
+has always the luck with it."
+
+Don Antonio had expressed himself thus to the army men, who fumed and
+fretted at delays incident to the funeral ceremonies of Miguel Arteaga,
+for whom the Mission bells clanged in the gray of a morning, and the
+word went out that he lay trampled into the dust of the Santa Ana ranch.
+A thousand head of stampeding cattle had gone over him, and the younger
+brother--the handsome Rafael--was now the head of the Arteaga family.
+And with half the horses selected for the government, the work had
+stopped short. There was no head to anything now until Rafael arrived.
+In vain the army men swore, and went farther south to secure mounts
+for the regiment. They had to come back to San Juan, and then it was
+that Keith Bryton, with his knowledge of the people and of the country,
+came to their aid.
+
+He heard that the debonair Rafael had landed at San Pedro the day of the
+death, and had quietly lost himself from the dismal ceremonies awaiting
+him in his own province. Miguel could not be seen; what use was it to
+witness the howling mob of Indian retainers?
+
+Bryton, knowing something and surmising more of the situation, held the
+army men with some promise to "fix things," and secretly despatched a
+trusted vaquero with a letter to San Pedro, allowing the new heir for
+his return just the time necessary for the next ship to come into the
+harbor, and the extra day's drive from Los Angeles. In the meantime a
+personal letter giving orders to Don Antonio to hand over the stock as
+per contract was needed badly in San Juan, if Don Rafael ever cared
+again for government favors.
+
+The vaquero rode back in forty-eight hours with the order. The work of
+rounding-up began over again, and only Keith Bryton and Don Antonio knew
+how it had come about.
+
+Slowly affairs began to assume their usual routine. People began to talk
+of other things; and only Doņa Teresa, the widow of Miguel, continued to
+go daily to the dark old chapel back of the Mission dining-room, and
+kneel in prayer before the wooden saints in the niches. She sat in the
+patio of Juan Alvara's house, and stared listlessly from one square of
+tiling in the pavement to another. The priest had just left her after
+the perfunctory words of solace, and was refreshing himself with a glass
+of brandy preparatory to a game of _malilla_. The week had been one of
+trial; it always is so when the death is one of accident--no one is
+ready.
+
+The Doņa Teresa had been a pretty girl in the days when Miguel Arteaga
+serenaded her endlessly, and her family had insisted that the marriage
+should not be postponed to add to their sleepless nights. One year--two
+years, and the serenades were a thing of a former life, and so was fat
+Teresa's beauty. From the willows was brought again the Indian girl
+whose two children had been christened in his name. She looked after the
+servants who cooked for the vaqueros. Her manner was ever quiet and
+submissive to Doņa Teresa, who accepted her as better than any of the
+others of the same class. Doņa Teresa had no children, and envied though
+she was not jealous of Aguada of the smoke-black eyes and the babies.
+And it was Aguada who came to Doņa Teresa in the patio, undid her
+bonnet-strings, and bathed her face and hands with cool water.
+
+Past the veranda of Juan Alvara, at San Juan, all the world of
+Southern California found its way. There was a tavern down the street,
+where the stages stopped between Los Angeles and San Diego, but Juan
+Alvara's house was the one dwelling where distinguished travellers were
+entertained, after the hospitality of the padres at the Mission was a
+thing of the past. It was up to this veranda Keith Bryton rode from the
+second round-up at Boca de la Playa. He was tired and dusty, and
+accepted gratefully the wine for which the old man sent when he saw his
+guest approaching.
+
+Alvara did not usually like "Gringos"; but at the time the Juan Flores
+bandits were holding up the town for ransom, it was Keith Bryton who had
+gathered a posse of men, including the sheriff, and headed them again
+for San Juan. Grain-sacks were piled along the roof of the Mission as a
+barricade, and behind them some riflemen guarded, as best they could,
+the several families who had fled to the walls of the church for
+protection.
+
+Only one store had been burned, and one store-keeper killed, when the
+help came--thanks to Bryton, and that one ride broke down all barriers
+for the young Gringo in San Juan. He now never rode past Alvara's
+veranda without a halt for a glass of wine, or a chat, or even that best
+test of understanding, a rest in silence together, looking out across
+the river to the blue shadows of the hills.
+
+This day as the young man sat smoking in such silence, viewing idly the
+passing Indians whose dark faces were lit by the rosy glow of the
+lowering sun, and watching the circling doves whose white wings caught
+flashes of pink from pink clouds above, the older man, regarding his
+thoughtful face, asked after a quiet interval, "What is it, my friend?"
+
+The handsome bronzed young fellow stretched wide his arms with a great
+sigh, and laughed shortly.
+
+"Foolishness, Don Juan, much foolishness. I was homesick for a something
+I never knew, so I left Los Angeles and came here to find it. Can you
+understand so crazy a thing as that?"
+
+The old man nodded slowly.
+
+"It is a girl--no?"
+
+The young man laughed again, without mirth.
+
+"Which of them?" and Bryton made a gesture toward a group of dark faces
+across the plaza. "There is pretty Lizetta, Teresa; and if one wants the
+other sort, there is Chola Martina staring at us both under her
+mantilla."
+
+"It is you she stares at. The Lieutenant danced with her last night. He
+is just off the ranges, so she is to-day crazy over the Americanos.
+No--it is not any of such girls you are for."
+
+"I reckon not," agreed the young fellow. "I think it is just the
+atmosphere, and perhaps the old monastery. The pictures of Mexican towns
+paint themselves on the memory and stay there. Were you ever in Old
+Mexico, Don Juan?"
+
+"Not I; never have I been a travelled man. But you--?"
+
+"I was down there a year ago," answered Bryton, looking hard at the
+hills. "I found a town in a valley like this,--there were just the same
+sort of 'dobes, and the same sort of big church walls,--only it was a
+nuns' cloister, instead of a deserted monastery."
+
+"And--?"
+
+"I'll never go back, but--I'll never forget it! That old broken wall,
+and Moorish chimney, and the doves--they all belong to the same sort of
+picture. I come here to sit and moon over them once in a while, that's
+all!"
+
+The old man regarded him with shrewd, kindly eyes. He had the strain of
+Spanish blood, condoning many follies of youth.
+
+"So!" he said, kindly. "Thou comest here to dance with the girls of San
+Juan, that the other girl may be forgotten? Ai--yi!--these other
+sweethearts are fellows who make much trouble!--so?"
+
+"It is something more than a sweetheart keeps me away," remarked the
+young fellow after a slight pause. "A mere sweetheart is not such a
+barricade; most of us are perverse enough to think it rather an
+incentive."
+
+"You too, my friend?"
+
+"Who knows?"
+
+The old man puffed out another cigaretto and threw the stump away before
+he spoke.
+
+"The wives of other men it is wise to go clear of, my friend."
+
+Keith laughed more than the remark called for; in fact, his amusement
+dispelled the murky thoughts by which he had been driven to the
+hospitable veranda.
+
+"True--very true; but which of us is always wise?"
+
+Alvara made no reply to this, only shook his head, and the other, noting
+the perplexity of it, chuckled.
+
+"Don't lose sleep over my depravity," he suggested. "I am no blacker
+than the rest of the sheep."
+
+"Even then thou wouldst fall far short of whiteness," remarked the older
+man. "The padre swears that San Juan will have worse than earthquakes if
+there is no reform."
+
+"That is bad," said Keith, with owl-like gravity.
+
+"It is bad, seņor--and it is true. I heard him say it but an hour ago.
+He was playing _malilla_ with old Henrico and won three pesos. He says
+it is wrong to race horses on Sunday, since José went under and had his
+neck broke. José, like Miguel, had not confessed, and the padre wants
+money for a mass."
+
+"Will he get it?"
+
+"Sure. The boys will not see him stay in purgatory for thirty pesos.
+They are throwing dice at Don Eduardo's now, to see who will pay."
+
+"If it was the horse of Don Eduardo, and José had ridden for him ten
+years, why cannot Don Eduardo pay?"
+
+"Don Eduardo is English. The Englishmen are used to going to hell."
+
+"They would deserve to go for that, if for nothing else," commented
+Bryton, as the report of a blast shook the ground, and across the plaza
+the air was filled with flying rock and brick and plaster; and then a
+great cloud of dust drifted upward as the Mexican workmen strolled back
+to their task of tearing down the old church of San Juan Capistrano,
+whose massive stone walls it had taken the padres and their neophytes so
+many years of toil to complete.
+
+"Not a church equal to it in the Californias; not a church equal to it
+dreamed of in the States when it was being built!" and the young fellow
+stared moodily at the devastation of it. "Can't the bishop stop that?"
+
+"Ten years the Church fight to get it back. They must win some day--oh,
+yes--sure!"
+
+"But what will they have when the suit is won, if this is allowed to go
+on?"
+
+"Who knows?" queried Alvara, placidly. "We may be in our graves, seņor,
+and not here to see it. When Eduardo wants foundation for an adobe, he
+blows down a stone wall; when he wants walls for a well, he blows down
+the arches of the patio, until bricks enough fall. It is quicker than to
+burn new ones."
+
+"But the padre?"
+
+"There is the man who is padre of San Juan Capistrano in these days,"
+said Juan Alvara, briefly.
+
+A man was coming up the middle of the road, his boots wet and muddy from
+irrigating-ditches, a short black pipe between his teeth. He halted to
+chaffer with an Indian woman who carried a basket of fish from the sea.
+
+Contemptuously viewing the modest sea bass, he said: "Fish only a foot
+long--what good are they? Who is fool enough to buy such?"
+
+"It is not to sell, father. Tia Concepcion, who is much sick, ask for
+these; they are to give, for she is sick."
+
+"Humph! a sick woman to eat ten fish! They will be sending for me in the
+middle of the night for prayers. You go to my cook, and leave seven of
+these with him in the kitchen for my supper."
+
+The Indian lowered her head and passed on to the Mission. The padre
+crossed the plaza to where the group of girls stood chatting at the open
+gate of a patio. At his approach they fell silent, but a few brief words
+scattered them quickly toward their several homes, and the man of the
+church tramped on, the dust of the road sticking to his wet boots.
+
+"All what brings a price and is overlooked by the Englishmen, this padre
+will dig up," said Juan Alvara. "He is getting rich from many fields."
+
+"Many fields?"
+
+"Many fields--the church, the little ranch he has picked up, and the
+game of _monte_ or _malilla_. He is the new sort of priest they send
+these days from Catalonia. No one in San Juan confesses now until Padre
+Sanchez comes past. If the church wins, the Mission will be blown down
+all the same, so long while some one pay four bits a load for brick. All
+is much changed. Father Sanchez is another kind--a holy man and of God."
+
+Alvara lifted his sombrero reverently.
+
+"The vaqueros coming with the band of horses from the beach soon," he
+observed. "We will go to the corrals, and help you to forget the
+girl--no?"
+
+"I'm not so anxious to forget, I reckon--the girl is only a sort of
+dream girl. This trip was not so much to forget a girl as to--you
+remember Teddy, my half-brother?"
+
+"Don Teddy? Sure--he was the life of the valley when he came to San
+Juan."
+
+"Yes. Well, Teddy's married; he has married the woman who, you said, had
+the face of some angel."
+
+"Not Angela, the seņora who is Don Eduardo's English cousin?"
+
+The other nodded his head grimly.
+
+"But--" the old man stared at him sharply, and then suddenly recovered
+himself.
+
+"Teddy says his wife wants to come down here while he is in Mexico,"
+grunted Bryton. "What the devil can I do with her if she comes now?"
+
+"You are a relative now--is it not so?" asked the old man, with an
+affectionate smile. "She is your sister."
+
+"Sister be--" If he meant blessed, he did not look it as he tramped the
+veranda. "I start just the same for the south ranch to-morrow. If she
+comes, she can go to Mac's tavern, or to the Mission with the ghosts!"
+
+"That would not be good to do," said Alvara seriously. "The wife of your
+brother must come to my house. Teresa, the widow of Miguel, is here;
+her English is not anything, but it is good that your sister have a lady
+with her in the house. Teresa, she feel very bad. Don Teddy's wife was
+once a widow; she will understand."
+
+[Illustration: DOŅA ANGELA]
+
+"Will it make many changes in the business--his death?" asked Bryton.
+
+"It will lose the ranches more quickly to the English and the
+Americans," stated the older man. "Rafael will have all the money now,
+and--it is good that he gets married quick. The girl--she is Estevan's
+daughter--she likes no English--so they say."
+
+"Oh!--Estevan's daughter--Estevan's! I heard a queer story of that name
+once--a queer story!"
+
+"He left when the Americanos came to California. Always he fought
+against the Americanos. He was a strong soldier, and he die there in
+Mexico, and all his money is for the girl if she marry; for the convent
+if she not marry at all."
+
+"It was another Estevan," said Keith. "It was a story of an old Aztec
+temple that would make your hair curl! Might have been a relation of
+your soldier Estevan."
+
+"There may be the same name in Mexico, but Felipe Estevan had no
+brothers."
+
+Keith rolled a cigarro, and did not notice that the old man's hand
+trembled as he did the same, and that his eyes were striving in vain to
+appear careless.
+
+"My Spanish was pretty queer those days, and I did not grasp the details
+of the story. You find all sorts of half-buried towns and temples and
+palaces in the country--queer places no one on earth can tell who built.
+But the temple was a plain fact. Stonework cut for all the world like
+that," he added, pointing to the gray Mission ruin. "Zig-zags on the
+cornices and Aztec suns just the same over the portals. There were great
+old walls left, but no roof. Trees grew all through it, and right in the
+open was something like a bench covered with queer Indian figures of
+fight, and sacrifices, and the only one I ever saw down there carved out
+of marble."
+
+"Yes--a bench of marble!" Alvara was listening intently, nodding his
+head, and forgetting to smoke.
+
+"Well, an old miner down there told me a lurid story of the last Indian
+sacrifice offered up on that altar. He found the body and helped to bury
+it--the name was Estevan."
+
+"It is a good name," said the old man.
+
+"Fine! but wherever he had lived he was used to a different sort of
+woman from the one he met at the old temple. She was of pure Spanish and
+Aztec stock. The women in those temples don't usually appear to count,
+but she came of a long line of Aztec priests. After the Catholic Church
+got hold of them, they became Catholic priests instead of Aztec ones,
+and served the same God under a different name."
+
+"So?" remarked Alvara.
+
+"It seems Estevan drifted into the country with considerable
+money--cattle-man, I think; anyway, he had a ranch of some sort--and
+fell dead in love with the sister of one of these hereditary priests,
+and they were married. The old miner said a lot of queer old Indians
+gathered from the Lord only knew where, and had a great bonfire and
+crazy dances and ceremonies at the temple the night she was married.
+They were waiting for a new priest of their own old religion to be born
+some day and every marriage in that family was of interest."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well--I don't know how to make clear that there are wives in the world
+to whom brown girls in the willows are--well--they are absolutely taboo
+to the husbands--understand?"
+
+Alvara nodded silently.
+
+"This Estevan was not used to women like that. He was crazy over the
+priest's sister till he got her, and then he was like many other men--he
+went back to the brown girls."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Then that old Aztec tribe seemed to hear of it on the wind--no one
+knows. A brown girl was caught by the Indians one night, her long hair
+cut short to her head; and the next day Estevan was found tied on that
+altar with the same hair plaited into ropes. The heart had been cut from
+the body and rested in a little urn or vase carved in the stone of the
+wall. There were no other mutilations or signs of cruelty--it was more
+like a pagan ceremony than anything else. The girl's hair was the only
+clue as to what the cause might have been."
+
+"And the wife and the child--what did the man tell you of them?"
+
+"Child?" Keith stared at the old man. "I did not mention a child; never
+heard there was one. The widow of Estevan entered a convent and was
+never heard of again. The old miner said the priest took charge of the
+property--for the Church, he supposed! I think of that old temple every
+time I see the cactus and Aztec sun cut in this gray-green stone of your
+church here; but I had forgotten the name of Estevan until you mentioned
+it."
+
+"It is a good name," added Alvara again. "Felipe Estevan was wild and a
+fighter, but he was not a bad man in California. He had no wife, and the
+girls all wore beads he bought--but why not? He knew we have only one
+life to live here!"
+
+"True, seņor; and the story of the tragedy made me forget poor Teddy's
+comedy--one I can't laugh at yet."
+
+"Some day you ask us to a wedding, and you will forget that marriage is
+a madness," said Alvara.
+
+And then Doņa Teresa came slowly out on the veranda in her many folds of
+black. There was a hard glitter in her little black eyes, but her lips
+curved ever so slightly in a courteous greeting as Keith Bryton bent
+over her hand.
+
+"I hear how you telling that story, seņor," she remarked, pleasantly.
+"You think that it is good to tie a gentleman on a bench, and put his
+heart on a shelf--no?"
+
+"Good? Why, it was the most ghastly heathenish thing I ever heard of.
+But--"
+
+"But you Americanos think most of the women who do such things," she
+persisted; "you think it better than to let him live where there are the
+brown girls."
+
+"Oh--seņora?"
+
+He saw that he had irrevocably damned himself in her eyes. She might
+speak to him courteously through a long lifetime, but one of the
+institutions of their pastoral life--an institution ignored by the usual
+guest in the land--had been referred to in a sarcastic manner, and he
+knew that never again could he expect the good will of Teresa Arteaga.
+The allusion had been the most distant, the most unintentional, but at
+the first word the blood of the Mexican was arrayed against the Gringo.
+
+"You think it well when that wife put the knife in the heart of the
+husband?" she continued. "(Yes, Aguada, I will have a cup of orange
+juice, and you may bring wine for the gentlemen.) You think your
+American ladies do that same thing--no?"
+
+"Oh--the old miner never suggested that it was the woman did it--the
+wife!" he protested. "It was thought to be the work of the old hill
+tribe of Indians."
+
+"It was not alone the Indians," stated Doņa Teresa, with sudden insight.
+"Men would not think to tie him with girl's hair. No, it was the wife."
+
+Alvara looked at her warningly over his glass.
+
+"If there are such wives in Mexico, we hope they stay there," he said.
+"Our own Indians make trouble enough for the padre and the alcalde. The
+kind you tell of are best left with their tribes in the hills."
+
+For a little longer they talked of the new horses needed for the
+frontier warfare, and touched upon the chance of the Capitan's stealing
+them before they got across the divide.
+
+"But there is no danger even of El Capitan now, when the Seņor Don
+Bryton have put himself to help guard," remarked Teresa, eyeing him with
+a cat-like glance to discover if her sarcasm was appreciated. "We all
+feel very safe now in San Juan valley."
+
+"With those brilliant army officers in town, you certainly should," he
+remarked, easily. "The women have always been the Capitan's best
+friends, and the officers are cutting him out!"
+
+"He see too much--and he talk too much," said Teresa, as Bryton left
+them and walked leisurely down the road toward the inn and post-office.
+
+"He means no harm," remarked Alvara. "The ways of the Americano are not
+our ways, but I like him better than the army men. He makes no
+scandals."
+
+"If the army men make love to the girls, they keep quiet about it,"
+returned Teresa. "But this man--he thinks himself too good for the
+'brown girls' he talks of. Men who are too good should go to stay in the
+church and pray for the sinners!"
+
+Alvara knew that no remark of Bryton's had been meant to reflect in the
+least on social conditions in San Juan. But what use to argue with an
+angry, jealous woman hunting for a grievance?
+
+The widow of Miguel had gone through the years of jealous bitterness,
+the shock of Miguel's death, the knowledge that she would inherit but a
+widow's share, the nerve-wrenching strain of a Mexican funeral, the
+sight of her husband's Indian children beside the bier; but that had all
+been in the midst of the people who understood--where house-servants
+were often legacies to the estate from brother, or uncle, or cousin. But
+this man, who told of a wife that revenged herself, had unconsciously
+flung in her face a new standard; she hated him, and hated the sort of
+women he knew in his own country,--the white-faced women who had snow in
+their blood and did not understand!
+
+Bryton tried in vain to think what he had said to annoy Teresa so
+exceedingly; could it have been his inquiring as to the estate? Surely,
+she must know that many persons were asking the same questions. Her
+brother-in-law, Rafael Arteaga, was such an uncertain quantity that
+wagers were plentiful as to his management of the several ranches. If he
+left them as Miguel had done, principally to the lawyers, it might not
+be so bad, but Rafael's disposition to make his own bargains made older
+people shake their heads. His mother, Doņa Luisa, was old and ill. He
+could have time to make very bad bargains before she could make the
+journey from Mexico; and even then would she be physically able to take
+note of business details? All those questions Bryton had heard talked
+over and over. Also, the matter of the wedding,--would it be postponed
+because of the funeral? No one knew whether Doņa Luisa and the bride
+were not on the way when the death occurred. Rafael had, it was
+understood, come ahead that he might make the preparations for their
+reception. A letter had also arrived saying that all things must be put
+in order at the dwelling-rooms of the Mission; it stated that the
+"donas"--the bride gifts--he had selected in Mexico might arrive any
+day. They had come by sea to San Pedro, and San Juan was in quite a
+flutter of excitement over its most important wedding in a generation.
+
+The alcalde met Bryton, and incidentally mentioned that it was a pity
+the horse deal had not been held over for the week of the wedding; there
+would be barbecues and horse races for the latter part of the week.
+
+"Sorry I can't stay," observed Bryton. "I'm keeping tab for the
+contractor on those cavalry horses, and must stay with the bunch, at
+least until they reach Los Angeles. Teddy has gone down into Mexico; if
+he stays, I may follow."
+
+"Now that one of you boys is married, you should settle down and be a
+permanent citizen of some district,--what is the matter with this
+place?"
+
+"It's the most beautiful valley I ever saw," agreed Bryton. "But for
+getting Teddy to locate sixty miles from town--never! And as to the
+lady in the case, she will insist always on an audience more--"
+
+What more it would have to be was interrupted by the clatter of the
+stage down the street, and on the seat beside the driver was a little
+woman in pale blue flounces thick with dust, and a white hat with pink
+rosebuds dancing and swaying with the rock of the stage.
+
+"God--" began Bryton, and then checked himself.
+
+The alcalde smiled.
+
+"Mrs. Ordway--or Mrs. Teddy Bryton now--looks pretty well satisfied with
+this as a temporary audience," he remarked, as he sauntered across the
+street to his own abode. Bryton's exclamation showed that he was by no
+means pleased to see her, and the alcalde did not care to witness a
+family reunion of that sort, so he walked away smiling.
+
+The lady waved her hand and flung a bright smile toward the half-brother
+of her husband. He lifted his hat, but did not move from his tracks
+until the horses came to a halt, brought suddenly to their haunches by
+the driver, who was making a showy entrance into the village for the
+gratification of the lady.
+
+"I've had a delightful trip from Los Angeles--thanks to Don Rafael," she
+called, gaily. "I never--never expect to drive so fast again. Come and
+help me down!"
+
+But the slender, handsome Mexican beside her had leaped to the ground,
+and, sombrero in hand, was ready to perform that service before the
+American reached the stage.
+
+"You are always the day after the fair, Keith," she remarked, her eyes
+narrowing in a smile. "I am a thousand times obliged to Seņor Arteaga!"
+
+"It is I who am honored, seņora," he returned with a sweep of the
+sombrero, and one brief yet steady look into her eyes. Mrs. Bryton
+turned away with a pleased little smile, and proceeded to shake the dust
+from the ruffles of her sleeve.
+
+Keith Bryton saw both the look and the smile, and it gave a tinge of
+coldness to his greeting.
+
+"How do you do, Seņor Arteaga?" he remarked. "Thank you for looking
+after Mrs."--the word seemed hard to say--"Bryton. Are you adding
+stage-driving to your other accomplishments?"
+
+Rafael Arteaga had caused too much jealousy in his day not to suspect he
+recognized it in the attitude of the American, whom it was something of
+a victory to outrival.
+
+"Only when there is extra precious cargo on board," he said, meaningly.
+"American ladies are rare in San Juan. I was the only one present to
+show our appreciation of such a visit."
+
+"But I am not an American--never in this world!" she insisted. "It was
+only the accident of marriage took me to your Mexican America. I was
+born in London, and am a subject of the Queen! Don't ever fancy me an
+American!"
+
+"Few people will make that mistake," said Bryton, dryly. "I suppose you
+know that your cousin and his wife are not here?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I discovered that through Seņor Arteaga when I was part way
+down. But he tells me the army men are here, and that there are always
+dances, horse races, and a general festival while they stay. I thought
+it might be worth while. Seņor Arteaga will look after me if you are too
+busy."
+
+"With many thanks for the honor, seņora."
+
+"The barbecues are over," said Bryton; "they were rather subdued this
+time, because of the funeral of Don Rafael's brother. I leave with the
+army men to-morrow for a trip farther north, and you had best return to
+Los Angeles, or go to your cousin in San Diego."
+
+She pretended to busy herself concerning a bandbox on which the cord had
+broken, but her little white teeth bit into her lip. Rafael had entered
+the post-office with the driver of the stage.
+
+"I am not interested in San Diego," she observed. "There must be
+somewhere in this row of adobes a place where a lady could stay."
+
+"There is the tavern kept by Mac. You may be able to retain a room there
+alone, if no other women stop over."
+
+"Share a room with strangers? But Don Rafael offered--"
+
+"Don Rafael has only several adobes here, where the vaqueros eat and
+sleep--neither he nor his brother has lived here as a regular thing;
+when they do, they share the house of the major-domo, who has an Indian
+wife. The only privacy Don Rafael could assure you of would be to give
+you the key of the Mission."
+
+"That graveyard! I must say you are not very brotherly, amigo--I learned
+some more words of Spanish on the way down! Well, if I must go to the
+awful tavern, I must! Do you suppose that villanous-looking
+black-and-tan in the serape will carry my boxes into the hotel? You've
+not said one civil word, Keith! Are Teddy and I to do the best we can
+without your blessing?" she asked, mockingly.
+
+He looked at her slowly from head to foot, and back to her innocent
+wide-open blue eyes.
+
+"I congratulate you," he said, briefly. "I will see that your
+belongings are taken to your room. The gentleman in the serape chances
+to be a Mexican Don, not accustomed to carting bandboxes."
+
+"You are not very cordial in your congratulations," she observed, as if
+determined to break down his cold unconcern,--to make him _say_
+something.
+
+"No, I'm not," he agreed, tersely. "If Teddy had given me any idea of
+it, you know he would not have been a married man now."
+
+"Oh, I knew you would be jealous, no matter whom he married," she
+replied; "I told him so!"
+
+"So I supposed. But if you want to secure a room alone, you'd better not
+delay. Apartments are rather at a premium in San Juan."
+
+He walked with her past the admiring group of prominent citizens toward
+the patio of the inn. Several of the men swept sombreros to the earth as
+she passed. The cousin of Don Eduardo was a lady they must show special
+deference to, even if she had been ugly, which she certainly was not.
+
+Most of them envied the tall, rather good-looking fellow swinging along
+by her side, but he did not seem as happy in the privilege as others
+would have been. Alvara, seeing himself forgotten for Don Eduardo's
+pretty blonde cousin, smiled a little, and continued his walk alone to
+the corral.
+
+"She make him forget,--but she is not the woman," he said, shrewdly.
+
+Mrs. Bryton surveyed the coarse furnishings of the adobe with disgust as
+she was led to the one room where she could secure sleeping
+accommodation. It contained three beds with as many different-colored
+spreads, queer little pillows, and drawn-work on one towel hanging on a
+nail. The floor had once been tiled with square Mission bricks; but many
+were broken, some were gone, and the empty spaces were so many traps for
+unwary feet. Names of former occupants were scratched in the whitewashed
+wall. There was no window, and but one door opening on the patio and to
+be fastened from within by a wooden bar.
+
+"But this--there must be something better than this!" she exclaimed.
+
+"It is the one home where you could make yourself understood. The
+proprietor chances to speak English. If you come without notifying
+your--relatives, you must take what you find, or go on to San Diego.
+Your cousin is there--also his wife."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders, and dropped wearily to a wooden bench.
+
+"I can't ride another mile--I'm dead tired. But you don't ask why I
+came!"
+
+"That is your husband's affair, not mine," he returned. "If there is
+nothing else I can do for you, I will go and look after my own affairs.
+I start south in the morning."
+
+"Because I came?" she demanded, with a slight smile. At sight of it his
+face flushed, and then the color receded while he regarded her steadily.
+
+"Don't make any mistake about that," he suggested. "I did leave town out
+of impatience with another friend of mine, who was wasting his time with
+you. Of course he would not listen to me, and he has evidently told you.
+I liked him, and did not want to see him made a fool of."
+
+"Oh, you are a silly!" she replied, unfastening her hat-string and
+glancing at him strangely. "It never was that man for one little minute;
+you, of all the men, ought to know."
+
+"I, of all the men, have been the one who did not guess that it was
+Teddy," he retorted. "But since it is, there is one thing to
+remember,--Teddy is the best fellow in the world, and the easiest mark,
+and you are not to forget it!"
+
+"I did not promise to honor and obey you!" she retorted, petulantly.
+
+"But if you don't in this case--" he halted abruptly and walked away.
+Her high, sweet voice called after him, but he did not turn his head. He
+evidently realized that he had come very near threatening her; and,
+after all, if Teddy chose to make a fool of himself for a pretty doll--
+
+For she was undeniably pretty, and she had created quite a flurry a year
+before when she reached San Pedro by steamer from Mexico, a girlish
+widow with one child, and waited there until the English cousin of her
+husband, Eduardo Downing, had been notified and came up in state from
+his ranches, with his Mexican wife, to receive her.
+
+One child more or less never made any difference on the ranch of
+Eduardo, and his wife rather liked the little white doll that was alive,
+for her own brown-skinned grandchildren to play with. It was better than
+an Indian baby--more of a novelty, so that the family affairs of the
+young widow were easily adjusted. She accepted invitations to visit
+friends of her cousin on ranches and in town. For a year she had earned
+the reputation of being a rather gay flirt, and she could have married
+several times. Keith Bryton's friends had more than hinted that she was
+waiting for him, and when the word went abroad that it was his
+half-brother, eyes were opened wide in Los Angeles. There were lifted
+brows, and smiles. Keith knew how the marriage would be commented upon,
+and he was filled with rage that she should assume at once her
+care-free attitude, and fraternize with Rafael Arteaga, as she evidently
+had done on the ride down. And Teddy trusted her absolutely--good old
+Teddy, who had been infatuated from the first sight of her, and had
+loved without hope until lately, very lately indeed!
+
+They had been married on the eve of his trip to Mexico. His letter,
+written that night, and given her to mail, had been held back by the
+bride until she was ready to follow it on the next stage. What mad idea
+had she in thus coming to the last village likely to be attractive to
+her? Was it to enjoy her victory?--to show him that his years of
+devotion to Teddy went for nothing when she chose to turn the light of
+her countenance his way?
+
+Something like that it must have been,--the freakish defiance of a
+spoiled child. Not innocent, despite the big baby-blue eyes, but too
+ignorant of social conditions in this Mexican town for him to leave her
+to the guardianship of Rafael Arteaga when he should ride away
+to-morrow. The only American men in the place were unmarried. For
+Teddy's sake he must see that she went too. For Teddy's sake--that was
+the devil of it!
+
+Rafael was lounging in the door of the post-office smoking, when Bryton
+emerged from the patio. There was a smile in his eyes as he noted the
+annoyed face of the American.
+
+"I was waiting for you, amigo," he said, walking beside him. "I have no
+wish to object to the hotel of our friend Mac; but I believe it may be
+possible to secure a better place for seņora, your sister. The widow of
+my brother is still here, Mac has just told me. I can turn over to them
+a house of plenty of room to-morrow."
+
+"Many thanks to you, Don Rafael; but the lady will probably remain only
+until the next stage passes. It will not be necessary to inconvenience
+any of your people."
+
+He nodded good-naturedly and left Rafael at the gate of Alvara. Teresa
+was yet on the veranda, interested in the one event of the day, the
+arrival of the stage, and the lady who was its most noticeable
+passenger. Alvara did not think it could have been Don Eduardo's cousin,
+for if so, surely Seņor Bryton would have brought her at once to the
+Alvara home. Teresa, on the other hand, insisted that it was the English
+cousin; she had seen her once, and was sure that no other white woman
+would look so much like a white doll.
+
+They at once appealed to Rafael to settle the question. Teresa pushed a
+chair toward him and suggested a glass of wine.
+
+"Thou art tired, of course, and choked with the dust; a desert wind
+blew to-day! And who was your pretty seņorita? Don Juan Alvara and I
+could not agree; he said it could not be the cousin of Don Eduardo, or
+she would certainly have accepted the very kind invitation he gave her
+to live here while waiting for her relations."
+
+"Invitation?" Rafael looked quickly from one to the other. "I am very
+sure Seņora Bryton failed to receive your invitation. She confessed
+herself in despair if her cousin should not be here on her arrival."
+
+"But Seņor? Bryton was told to bring her here."
+
+"Oh--h!" He was silent a moment and then he smiled reassuringly. "I see
+how it is! He thinks she will remain over only one day and does not like
+to put you to trouble; but the poor lady down there alone is no doubt
+very uncomfortable--perhaps unhappy. If your daughters could call and
+see her--I would accompany them. In fact, for the cousin of Don Eduardo
+I will do anything I may be allowed to do."
+
+"Sure," agreed Alvara; "it is the right thing for a lady to ask her;--if
+only Dolores and Madalena have not ridden to the beach--"
+
+He went into the house to see, and Teresa looked at Rafael and shrugged
+her shoulders.
+
+"Thou hast told a part, but not all, my Rafael," she said, quietly. "Is
+the so good Seņor Bryton not so good at last? Does he want his
+brother's wife to see only himself?"
+
+"You don't like him?" he said, quickly.
+
+"Well--if not?"
+
+"Then we could play him a fine trick--fine! He is jealous, that is all.
+She rode down with me, and of course, when I learned who she was, we
+talked--you saw! Well, our Americano likes to be the only man. He means
+to send her away to-morrow,--he is so angry because she marry his
+brother! Of course she goes, unless we keep her. It would be a good
+trick to play if we could walk down there, and--"
+
+"We will go," decided Teresa, promptly; "at once we will go before he
+comes back from the corral. His brother's wife--eh? I ask myself if
+those people--the Americanos--are so much better than our own men,
+Rafael. I want no scandal and will help you with none; but if you take
+from him the woman he wants, I will make you a present--a fine one."
+
+"It is a bargain!" he agreed. "I promise to earn the gift. He is a good
+enough fellow, but much too conceited; we will cure him!"
+
+As Alvara came out on the veranda to tell them Dolores and Madalena were
+away, and to ask Teresa to call on the stranger in their stead, Teresa
+and Rafael were on the street.
+
+"It is a good thing to do," he thought, contentedly rolling a cigarro
+and looking after them. "It is a kindness to Don Eduardo's cousin, and
+it is good for Teresa. For the first time since the death of Miguel she
+is smiling. Yes, it is a good thing."
+
+When Bryton left the corrals, the evening had come; the afterglow was
+flooding the hills with pale rose, and Indian boys were driving home
+cows through the village street. The more time he had to consider the
+matter, the more impatient he grew at the reckless disregard of his new
+sister-in-law for the conventionalities.
+
+Since she had married Teddy, she might at least have remained decently
+and quietly where he had left her. Or she might have continued her
+journey and joined her cousin at San Diego; but to do so mad a thing as
+to stop off here--he determined she should go either north or south
+to-morrow, if he had to carry her to the stage. He would tell her so at
+once.
+
+He had arrived at that determination as he crossed the plaza and heard
+her laugh through the door of Alvara's house. The door was open; she was
+trying to teach Alvara English, at which his daughters laughed very
+much. It was the sharp eyes of Teresa that caught sight of Bryton first,
+as he involuntarily halted in the road.
+
+"Yes, Seņor Bryton, it is all true; we have robbed the Seņor Mac's hotel
+of your sister!" she called to him with a new air of elation,--of
+victory.
+
+Alvara appeared and invited him to supper, which he declined for a
+previous engagement with Don Antonio. His sister-in-law came out and
+listened to his excuses, and smiled quietly at him with the baby-blue
+eyes, in which he read a certain defiance.
+
+"I would have smothered in that awful cell you took me to!" she pouted.
+"These people are charming to me; they are friends of Cousin Edward's.
+It was Don Rafael took them to me. He looks like a hero in a
+picture-book! How does it come I never met him before?"
+
+"Perhaps because during your last visit down here he was in Mexico,
+making love to the girl he is to marry very soon."
+
+"Oh! is _that_ why you are guarding him so carefully?" she said,
+laughingly. "Well, since I am married, I am willing to stay and dance at
+his wedding; but, Keith, if I had seen him first--"
+
+She broke off, laughing at the quick anger in his eyes.
+
+And Teresa, listening, understood the game of Rafael and the mocking
+laughter, and the anger of Bryton, and was as happy as she was likely to
+be, with Miguel under the ground.
+
+[Music: _Danza Mexicana._]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Many things had happened, and it had been a bad day. "A day cursed of
+God!" said Pedro Gallardo, the driver; and against such ill fortune the
+carriage of Seņora Luisa Arteaga made such progress as might be, from
+San Luis Rey to San Juan.
+
+Clouds had drifted along the mountains each night for a week, and never
+the ranges a bit the better for it, until the cavalcade of Doņa Luisa
+had started north from San Diego; and then--well, it was not what you
+would call a rain, it was a torrent came down. The skies had opened, and
+a deluge followed.
+
+Then, after leaving San Luis Rey, a carriage-pole must break in an
+attempt at a runaway, and two horses were lost over that, to say nothing
+of the off leader, whose "sire had been the devil, and whose dam had
+been a witch thrice accursed in the foaling!" Their joint offspring
+had demonstrated his infernal lineage by breaking his own leg as well as
+the carriage-pole, and another untamed beast had to be roped on the
+range--hog-tied, and blindfolded to get the harness on him; and because
+of him Pedro's throat was fairly blistered with curses.
+
+As the wheels sank into the sands or plunged from one ravine into
+another, Doņa Luisa prayed and trusted to the saints that she might see
+her own valley again, and her companion, Doņa Jacoba, protested, and
+forgetting to pray, waxed argumentative.
+
+"Raquel was right, Luisa," she repeated for the twentieth time between
+her groans; "we had been wise to wait at San Diego for Rafael. She has
+an old head on her shoulders--you will have a wise daughter when the day
+comes."
+
+"Wise! Yes--yes!" moaned Doņa Luisa, shaking her head. "I thank the
+Virgin for that, every day, for Rafael is young, Jacoba; a baby of a
+wife would be his ruin. Yet--a baby might love him!"
+
+"Our boys get love enough!" grunted Jacoba, thinking of her own sons,
+and her own troubles. "They need wives with sense; and our girls all go
+wild these days about the Americanos, so--"
+
+[Illustration: RAQUEL ESTEVAN]
+
+"The girls, too!" and Doņa Luisa's tones were strident with censure. "It
+is bad enough when men must buy and sell with the Americanos in the
+markets; but the girls,--the women of California,--it is in their hands
+to shut the door when the Americano knocks--is it not so?"
+
+"Oh, yes, of course--yes--it is as you say," agreed Jacoba, weakly, as
+she thought of the many girls of their relationship, who had opened
+doors very wide indeed for the Americanos, and of not a few who were to
+open also the door of the Church. But who could tell Doņa Luisa that?
+
+"Rafael is all I have left, now that Miguel is killed," continued the
+mother. "My only grandchildren are half-breeds, and only Rafael is left.
+Ai! it is hard to grow old,--to let go all lines. But you know what
+makes me happy, Jacoba? No? It is this one big thing. Raquel will be
+what I was. She may suffer, but she will stand square on her feet; and
+she will fight as her father fought--and it will be for California."
+
+"You think so?" asked Jacoba, doubtfully. "It may be so, but--do you
+expect strong fights from a girl who was half a nun? I say she knows too
+little of the world to fight it."
+
+"You take from me my one hope when you say that!" and the older woman
+put out her hand appealingly. "Our men are wild--always! It is the
+women's work to save them. The death of Miguel is making me think much
+and quick. Rafael must be marry. There must be no more Indio women and
+children."
+
+Jacoba glanced doubtfully at her friend. These five years, while Rafael
+had been learning California ranch life, Jacoba had lived near enough to
+hear much that she never could repeat to the old mother, whose life was
+so nearly spent, whose weakness and prejudices could never cope with the
+new life in the changed land--and of what use to torture her with the
+truth? She wished with all her heart the exile had elected to stop over
+at San Diego or San Luis Rey, until some little glimmer of present
+conditions should enlighten her.
+
+"It is well the _donas_ came by water," she remarked, eager to find some
+straw of comfort in the situation. "Even extra baggage would be a care,
+with these roads and troubles, to say nothing of the temptation to El
+Capitan! Thanks to God, he never yet has had record of troubling women
+on the road."
+
+"He was a fine boy," said Doņa Luisa, musingly. "It is not his fault
+that he is an outlaw to these States. It means only that he is patriot
+to California. He was a fine boy."
+
+"Ask thy son how fine he thinks El Capitan!" remarked Jacoba. "Rafael
+has paid him a heavy tax in his best stock. They have long ago
+forgotten they are cousins."
+
+"Raquel will make him remember," said the older woman, with certainty.
+"Did he not fight as he was able beside her father? Ai! he fought for
+California when only a boy. Do Californians forget?"
+
+"He does not let them do so," remarked Jacoba dryly. "Much has changed,
+Luisa."
+
+"I see no change, only the Indios more poor. The hills are green, as
+always after the rains. All these ranges are the same like we rode over
+them forty years ago. The hills and the sea never change, only the
+people. It is good to hear there is one of the young left who thinks in
+the old way."
+
+"But--holy Maria!--we were never robbers, Luisa!"
+
+"Well, we did not need to be," returned her friend. "But I tell you
+truly, Jacoba, I could find it in my heart to forgive a son who fought
+the Americanos as he does, even if they made him outlaw. He could not be
+outlaw to the Church, nor to me."
+
+Jacoba said no more. Of what use was it to tell her that a few such
+women would be firebrands in the land if they had youth, and that the
+American soldiers, instead of coming peacefully to buy stock and pay
+good prices, would come from Los Angeles shooting,--would come with
+torches to burn each town where rebels hid. It was no longer little
+internal wars, such as they used to have in the days they both
+remembered, when the men who smoked or played together one month would
+fight under different leaders the next.
+
+There were no faction fights now. It was one great ugly pale nation to
+the east, trailing slowly over the ranges and planting itself like the
+live-oak in the caņons. The Mexicans might hate, might curse; but the
+curses made no difference against the heretics. They had no churches,
+and they laughed at the beautiful wooden saints in the old chapel. Had
+not some of them snuffed out candles on the graves with their accursed
+rifles, last All Souls' Day? Yet the sky had not fallen, and no
+earthquake had come! What would even prayers or holy Church do against a
+people so ignored by God?
+
+But Jacoba knew there was no use to fight. She remembered what that
+meant in the other days. In an old adobe of San Juan's one street she
+had helped as a girl to nurse the wounded of San Pascual. It was years
+ago, but she had not forgotten the cruel wounds, or the young Americano
+who died in her arms there. She had never mentioned to any the reason of
+her hatred for war; for even with revenge in reach, on whom would she
+seek it?--on her brother who had killed a stranger forcing their gates?
+
+"You do not forget how the blessed Junípero Serra himself spoke from the
+altar of San Juan in the old days, Luisa; our grandfather telling us
+that many times,--how, when the Spanish guard was hard with the Indios,
+he stood on the altar and say that a new people will come and put the
+foot on the neck of the Mexican like the Mexican tramp on the Indios. He
+say it, and cry--cry for the reason that the good God no can make their
+hearts more soft to the Indios. I think of that when I see the
+Americanos come. They not put the foot on the neck--but they are here!"
+
+"Father Junípero was old then--very old--like a child, and would make of
+the Indios babies to be petted," returned Doņa Luisa, leniently. "He was
+a saint--not a man; only the saints could have the patience with those
+Indios--I remember! One of the old scares of the padre's was that the
+water would fail us; yet San Juan still has its river!"
+
+Jacoba nodded. They were likely to find the river a difficulty after the
+rainfall. The ford was not a good one in high water; but the thought of
+getting across the ford was a trifle compared to the difficulty of
+impressing Doņa Luisa with any idea of the change she would find in the
+land she had known.
+
+In sheer despair she returned once more to a safer subject, Raquel
+Estevan,--Raquel the wise, who was to marry with Rafael and forever
+build a wall about him from American influence; Raquel, who might not
+love, because of that dark shadow of the cloister, but who would be all
+the more wise for that! Still, who could tell?
+
+"When one is young like that, one never can be sure until the right man
+comes," said Jacoba; "and she is handsome, your Raquel. But is it true
+what they say, that there was the blood of the old Mexican Indios in her
+mother?"
+
+Doņa Luisa did not commit herself; yet she realized that Raquel Estevan
+might have a few battles to fight along the line of race, as well as
+against the Americanos; for of course Rafael was a favorite; of course
+there would be burning hearts and jealousy at first.
+
+[Illustration: KEITH BRYTON]
+
+[Music: _Esta Noche_]
+
+    Esta noche voy a verte,
+    Al otro lado del rio
+    Te encargo que estes despierta ay!
+    Para quando te haga (_se silva_)
+    Ay! Paloma, daca el pico De ese rico manantial,
+    Ay! Paloma, daca el pico De ese rico manantial!
+
+[Music]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+From Las Flores, where the Indian village still held together in a
+shiftless sort of way, Raquel Estevan and her friend Ana Mendez galloped
+north mile on mile over the mesa above the sea.
+
+"Art never tired, Raquel?" demanded the older and darker of the two as
+they halted to let their animals drink where a rivulet ran full from the
+foothills. "Since we left the ranch house thou hast never lessened the
+gallop."
+
+"Tired? I should shame to acknowledge that, when Doņa Luisa never rests
+on the way. She endures it all, while only the young ones complain."
+
+"Endures! What would she not endure for her beloved Rafael--now your
+beloved Rafael?"
+
+Ana was not malicious, but there was a touch of mockery in her tone and
+questioning glance.
+
+"Why should he not be beloved?" asked the other, smoothing carefully
+the mane of her horse and bending low to conceal the slight flush of
+cheek. "Is he not handsome and good?"
+
+"It is not easy to be good when a man is so handsome," laughed Ana;
+"still, I will take your word for it! But, Raquel, you always get clear
+of the question; not once have you said that you find him beloved. Are
+you going to be coquette to the wedding-day?"
+
+"You talk to amuse yourself," and the violet dark eyes were lifted an
+instant. "You learn to coquette when you marry, and cannot forget; but
+the nuns never teach us that."
+
+"What need?" and Ana showed her white teeth in a laugh. "They did not
+teach us we must breathe to live; yet some way we learned it! But
+confess! You outride all the party to reach San Juan, and Rafael; yet
+how are we sure what urges you?"
+
+"My promise."
+
+"But why the promise, if the man is not beloved? You have had no harsh
+guardian, as I had; you were all free."
+
+"Free? Oh yes, I had always the choice between some husband and the veil
+of a nun. And then--then Doņa Luisa came with her love and her son, and
+her great plans of good work I could do out in the world. And so--and
+so we are riding to meet him, and I outride you!"
+
+"I never hasten to trouble," remarked Ana Mendez; "and if we should meet
+him on the way, you would send me at once to the carriage. I should put
+in hours listening to the virtues of Rafael Arteaga and peril my soul
+pretending to agree with his mother."
+
+"Why should you do that?"
+
+"Raquel, do you really see how little the ideas of Don Rafael and his
+mother agree? I know little enough--thanks to California, which keeps
+its girls from education; but I do see that every thought of Rafael
+Arteaga is for the new ways, the ways of the Americano."
+
+The younger girl drew up her horse with a cruel jerk, and faced her
+friend.
+
+"Anita, beloved," she said, sadly, "you have said the thing I felt, but
+did not know. Why not let some less dear one tell me?"
+
+"Holy Maria! Who else would? You are going among strangers, but you are
+no more a stranger to the California of to-day than is Doņa Luisa. I
+hope all the time some one tell you at San Diego, or at San Luis Rey,
+but no one does; and Rafael does not meet us; and--"
+
+"The letter did not reach him, or else he has gone by boat," said the
+other, steadily. "Anita, why do you sometimes seem not quite friendly to
+Rafael? Your words--"
+
+"Never think it!" cried Ana. "We are friends enough, but--I know him
+better than his mother--that is all! He has turned the heads of many
+girls, but I do not think he has turned yours, Raquelita!"
+
+The other girl made no reply.
+
+"I do not think so," continued her friend, "because you have never once
+lost sight of duty,--the duty Doņa Luisa and the padre have taught you
+to see. You are good, Raquel,--when you are not in a temper; but about
+Rafael you do not think your own thoughts. You dream of the life of your
+father and Doņa Luisa when all this land was theirs. But the dream is
+gone, and to-day we wake up."
+
+"I see--the old world was too slow. You wake up to be all
+Americano--no?"
+
+"Raquel, do you hate them as much as Doņa Luisa?"
+
+The girl from Mexico turned her face toward the sea, and did not answer
+at once. Then she said:
+
+"Only once in my life have I spoken with an Americano, and I did not
+hate him."
+
+"A young man?"
+
+"He--he was not old," she confessed.
+
+"On my soul, I believe you have had a lover!" cried Ana. "Oho! you can
+play Rafael at his own game, after all! Santa Maria! I thought you were
+too pretty to be the saint they think you. Tell me!"
+
+"There is not anything to tell," said the younger girl, quietly, though
+the color crept to her cheek; and then after a little she added, "He
+died. I never saw him but once; the padre said I was wrong to--to--oh,
+they said things to me about heretics! I never knew any other, and I
+promised not to. But if he had lived I should not have promised; that is
+all."
+
+"All! Rafael would think it enough! On my soul, I am glad you are so
+human--though I have no love myself for heretics!"
+
+"Human!" mused Raquel. "Is it human to remember, when one should forget
+and cannot?"
+
+She did not say it aloud, and refused to discuss the matter further.
+
+"He is dead," she said; "Rafael cannot be jealous of a man I saw but
+once; it was only the dream of a girl--like a picture in a book--and the
+page is closed. I shall marry Rafael, and work in the world instead of
+in the convent. It is for Mother Church and--it is right!"
+
+At San Onofre the surf was breaking against the cliffs. It was high
+tide, and the beach road was deep enough for a horse to swim. Raquel
+had ridden far ahead, and now stood on the brink of a torrent cutting
+its way down from the hills to the sea.
+
+The girl glanced back at the swaying chariot-like carriage on a far
+hill, and wondered what would be expected of their broncos in this
+crisis.
+
+The animal she herself rode danced and fretted with fright at the roar
+of the surf and the dash of the hill stream, but she sat the saddle with
+ease, answering to every curve or side leap as lightly as a gull that
+floated on the incoming wave.
+
+Her face held something of the power suggested by her strong right hand.
+The eyes were so soft, yet steady, and of darkest violet. The black
+lashes touching her cheeks gave them tender shadows, and the hair, in
+two thick braids reaching to her waist, framed a face of youthful curves
+and charm. But what was it made every man, and many women, turn to look
+again at the face of Raquel Estevan?
+
+Many girls were as beautiful, but something beyond the beauty of feature
+or color was in her strange half-Egyptian face,--a certain barbaric note
+held in check by the steady eyes and the mouth firm yet tender. It was a
+mouth made for love; yet--was it the shadow of the dark veil she had so
+nearly worn? Was it a hint of regret for the cloistered life left
+behind? Or was it the shadow of some future--a prophecy of the years to
+come?
+
+Ana paused at the edge of the stream, in terror at the volume of water
+barring their way on every side.
+
+"Ai! ai! And Aunt Jacoba but a moment ago declaring that she will have
+her supper in the refectory of the San Juan Mission. Neither Mission nor
+supper can we see this night--and no Rafael!"
+
+She turned dismayed though roguish eyes on Raquel.
+
+"He did not expect us when the rains came," said Raquel with quiet
+certainty. "If he received Doņa Luisa's letter, he has gone by sea to
+San Diego. Did she not say so, Anita?"
+
+"Oh, he can do much, your handsome Rafael," agreed Ana, "but he cannot
+yet stop the tide, or dam La Christienita! Such a dry bed in Summer! and
+now it is a river."
+
+"But not deep?" hazarded Raquel. "Not so deep as the carriage bed."
+
+"Deep? There is one ford that is safe if one knows it; but, Holy Maria!
+on each side are pits of a depth to drown us all!"
+
+"Oh, if there is a good ford to be found--" The rest of Raquel's
+sentence was drowned in Ana's shrieks of protest, as her horse was
+spurred into the torrent in search of the roadway safe for a carriage.
+
+Ana was right; there were pits, and there were great round bowlders on
+the edges of them. The horse stumbled on one, recovered, and stumbled
+again where the current swung into a whirlpool; and then, as the water
+roaring in her ears almost drowned Ana's screams, a sharp authoritative
+voice sounded from the bank--
+
+"Loose the stirrup!"
+
+Raquel did so mechanically, just as a rope circled about her shoulders,
+pinning her arms to her sides, and with a quick, cruel jerk she was
+wrenched from the saddle; and as her horse, relieved of her weight, swam
+straight for the opposite shore, she felt herself caught by a strong arm
+and lifted across another saddle. The man with the reata had caught her
+first, lest she be dragged downward into the whirlpool, but it was
+another man who dashed through the whirl of waters and bore her to the
+shore, where half a dozen men waited. They were evidently vaqueros; one
+of them had thrown the reata, and hastened now to loosen it, to lift her
+from her rescuer and stand her on her feet. She swayed a trifle, and
+reaching blindly for support, she caught the arm of a man beside her,
+the one who had lifted her from the water. Then for the first time she
+noticed that he wore the garb of a priest, evidently a secular priest,
+for he wore a beard, and even then it struck her as strange that he
+looked so bronzed and rugged. His grasp was that of a rider of the
+range, rather than a priest of the Church.
+
+"Father, the Virgin have you in her keeping! You saved my life then. I
+shall always--always--"
+
+Then she could no longer distinguish priest from vaquero; the earth
+seemed to meet the sky, and between them she was extinguished.
+
+When she awoke she no longer could hear the screams of Ana, and the red
+rays of the lowering sun touched the face of the priest as he bent over
+her. It had more of youth than she had at first perceived.
+
+"Lie you still," he said, as one used to command. "The water was rough
+with you, and the reata rougher. Swallow some of this wine; it came from
+your own carriage, and is better than ours."
+
+"From the carriage?" The carriage was on the opposite side of the
+stream, but her horse had followed her and was tied near, shaking
+himself like a great dog.
+
+"Yes. I sent one of the boys--the vaqueros--across. Your friends know
+you are safe, but the carriage cannot come over--not yet; you have had
+good fortune to get out."
+
+"The good fortune was to find you here, father," she said, and catching
+his hand she kissed it reverently. "It is a good omen and shows me a
+blessing is on my journey to my father's land. You may have known him by
+name. I am Raquel Estevan, and it was my father Felipe who once owned
+this land from mountain to sea."
+
+"Felipe Estevan--you! But that cannot be. He is dead, and his one child
+is in religion--I was told so--I--"
+
+The color came back to her face, and she raised herself on her elbow.
+
+"It is true--I was for the Church--but I will tell you all--some time!"
+
+"Go on," said the priest, authoritatively, "tell me now!"
+
+"I was told it was better to work for God out in the world," she said,
+softly, "and so I am coming with my Aunt Luisa, father's cousin, and--"
+
+"And--" he looked at her strangely. "Then it is you--you they bring to
+marry with Rafael Arteaga. Holy Mary! And it is Felipe's
+daughter--Felipe Estevan--who sold for a song rather than live under the
+Americanos; and it is for his daughter I wait here by San Onofre--for
+his daughter!"
+
+Raquel stared at his evident agitation, not understanding. The sentences
+of the padre sank to muttering beneath the black beard, as he turned and
+strode away. The vaqueros, standing together holding their horses as if
+eager to be gone, exchanged wondering glances and eyed the girl
+curiously. Directly he came striding back and halted beside her.
+
+"Yet you marry with Rafael Arteaga," he said, accusingly. "You are
+Felipe's daughter, yet you are much Americano--eh? You are of the
+States, is it not so? Between you two, old California will no longer
+have foot-room from San Jacinto to the water out there. God!" and he
+ground his heel into the turf. "Yet are you Felipe's daughter, and we
+must let you go!"
+
+"No!" she cried as vehemently as he. "I go nowhere from the rules of my
+father in this land. The things he loved I love; the things he fought
+for I will guard! It is for that, father, I marry with Rafael. He is--he
+is not so much for old California, I know--I hear! His mother is afraid;
+she grieves over that much! But the two of us--the two of us, with your
+prayers to help, and we keep him always for our father's country--always
+till he die--with your help!"
+
+"With my--help?"
+
+"Your prayers, father! You will see I am Felipe Estevan's daughter, even
+while I am born in Mexico. I will do what a son would do for our land
+and our Church. You will see--you will see! It is a blessing from God
+that you meet me here like this at the edge of the land. Always I have
+thought these thoughts in my heart, but only to you--a priest--could I
+say them in words, and it is well you meet me here like this. Your words
+are the words I needed to make me see what I want to do. It is like a
+baptism that I went under that water a girl, and your hand lift me out a
+woman! The Virgin sent me here this day that I meet you. You have opened
+the gate of the land for Felipe Estevan's daughter."
+
+He leaned against the trunk of a young live-oak and stared at her with a
+derisive smile in the smoke-black eyes.
+
+"Yes, the Virgin sent me," he said at last, "and she came near sending
+me too late. The trail is bad along La Christienita for the night-time,
+and the night is close. The man will take you back to your friends."
+
+"But you, father? You come to the carriage and see the mother of
+Rafael--no? They wait for us. Doņa Luisa is so very old; she will be
+anxious till she speak with me--and with you."
+
+She arose and held out her hand. He regarded her strangely, and shook
+his head.
+
+"The men have other work than to camp with a pleasure party. I stay on
+this side and have far to travel before sunrise. This once I talk with
+you--maybe nevermore, and to San Juan you take one message for Rafael
+Arteaga."
+
+"A message? Yes?"
+
+"Tell him Felipe Estevan's daughter has saved to him this once a
+treasure; but no woman can guard him always, for--El Capitan is never
+too far to come quickly!"
+
+"Oh--Capitan?" she said with sudden comprehension. "I was told at San
+Luis Rey how much he is the enemy of Rafael. But it must not be, father.
+Cannot we help that? I have heard of Capitan from an old soldier of the
+wars, who told me all I know of my father: he was a brave boy and--he
+fought beside my father. I remembered that when I passed his mother's
+grave at San Luis Rey--it will never be bare and forgotten again--never!
+I planted it thick with the passion-vine. Doņa Luisa tells me she was a
+great woman. She prays that some day the two cousins may be friends."
+
+"Doņa Luisa prays for what only the good God could make happen," said
+the priest, grimly. "But of course all things are possible to the good
+God, even in the land which God forgot. Fidele is waiting."
+
+He made a movement toward the Mexican holding her horse, and without
+further words mounted another animal himself, and galloped away along
+the fringe of trees skirting the caņon. Several of the others followed.
+Only three remained to watch Fidele pilot his charge across the ford,
+where the ford was safe though deep; and once her animal's feet touched
+the opposite bank, her attendant, with a sweep of sombrero, but no
+words, wheeled his own horse and fell in line after his comrades, who
+were disappearing one by one toward the mountains.
+
+Raquel Estevan sat her horse at the edge of the stream and stared after
+them, giving little heed to the shrill calls and exclamations of the
+women. Even after they had stripped her of the soaked riding-dress and
+wrapped her in serapes for the night, she maintained a thoughtful
+silence, and all Ana's hints of romances went for nought, so far as
+gaining replies or special notice.
+
+What treasure had Felipe Estevan's daughter saved for Rafael Arteaga?
+And why--why--that strange intensity of the priest? These questions were
+turned again and again in her mind as she lay there in the light of the
+camp-fire watching the stars move across the high blue. The other three
+women were sleeping as best they could in the carriage, smothered in
+serapes. Jacoba lamented every waking moment, because of much-feared
+rheumatism,--she was so certain it would mean a camp at the hot springs
+for a month, just at the time of the wedding!
+
+Doņa Luisa made no complaint. When told the carriage could not by any
+means cross safely, she braced herself for the ordeal of the night, and
+Raquel, glancing toward her, could see her face gray-white in the
+gathering dusk. All the night that gray profile met her eyes, for she
+slept not at all.
+
+The driver had stretched himself where his horses were tethered, but the
+two Indian boys who rode with the carriage kept a fire of aliso boughs
+burning. They would nod at times with sleepiness, but the whispered
+command of the girl ever wakened them quickly, and the dying fire would
+blaze again. There was no conversation, only brief commands and prompt
+obedience; and thus the girl passed the first night in the land of her
+father, the roar of the sea and the wild calls of the coyotes keeping
+silence from the night.
+
+When the coyotes ceased and the birds heralded dawn, one Indian boy rode
+across at the ford and gauged the depth of the water on his cow-pony's
+legs. It was "muy bueno"--very good indeed, the water had gone down a
+foot, and before the dawn broke, the whole cavalcade was again under
+way. There was breakfast to ride for, and it was several miles across
+the hills.
+
+Pedro was of the opinion that there was a round-up in the caņon of La
+Paz, about half-way to San Juan. If so, there might be "carne oeco" and
+coffee to be had--perhaps tortillas. The vaqueros would be eating by
+dawn, but if it was possible to drive fast, there might be hope of
+coffee at least.
+
+So Raquel rode ahead, alert at the coming day and the promise of it. Ana
+was glad to stay in the carriage with the older women, complaining that
+she had caught cold from the sea-damp. At one bend of the road she
+noticed Raquel far ahead, bending low over the neck of her horse,
+scanning the ground. Then she turned out of sight under the live-oaks in
+a narrow caņon, and came galloping back to the main trail as the
+carriage came up.
+
+"One would think you were searching the sand for grains of gold washed
+down from the mountains!" called Ana; but the girl shook her head, and
+rode thoughtfully up the incline to the mesa above. She had been noting
+the curious fact that the party of vaqueros and the priest had left the
+trail one by one, heading toward the hills wrapped still in the mist of
+the morning.
+
+[Music: _El Charro_.]
+
+    Nescesito buen caballo,
+    Buena Silla, y buen gaban.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+At La Paz they were in time for coffee, and Raquel, who had ridden ahead
+with an Indian boy, was told a strange story by the Mexican cook.
+
+A good breakfast had been cooked, but the devil had got among the horses
+in the night; there had been a stampede--or something. Every one had got
+into the saddle and ridden that way--up the river,--no one had come back
+to tell him what it meant or to eat the breakfast that was ready. It was
+cold now, all but the coffee, but they were welcome to it.
+
+He was a newcomer in the land, and had never heard of the Doņa Luisa. To
+the cholo the lady or the lord of the land is often an unknown
+personality; their representative, the major-domo, is the centre of
+their little universe.
+
+But as the carriage came lurching down from the mesa, the oldest of the
+vaqueros, a very black Indian, rode back to camp, and at sight of Doņa
+Luisa's face white and drawn in the morning light, he slid from his
+bronco, and ignoring the cook's impatient questions stood with bent head
+uncovered, until the old mistress noticed him and spoke.
+
+"You are Benito, are you not?" she asked, as she brought him to the
+carriage with a gesture, and rested her hand on his to alight.
+
+"Yes, seņora," said the old man with grave courtesy, though trembling
+with pleasure at the honor she chose to bestow; "I am Benito. I used to
+break all the horses you rode. No one else was let put a hand on them.
+You do not forget; I thank you."
+
+"I could not forget the things of my home. Is there coffee? I am very
+glad."
+
+She held her left hand against her side, and the women exchanged
+frightened glances at her pallor and the strange weakness of her voice.
+While she drank the hot coffee Jacoba deftly drew the old vaquero aside
+to look at a bit of broken carriage harness which Pedro was mending with
+rawhide.
+
+"Benito, is there no boy here to ride fast to the Mission?" she demanded
+when out of hearing of the others. "Our Doņa Luisa is a sick woman, and
+no one dare say it. Some one must go and have a bed ready--everything!"
+
+"There is no boy here. The horses were run off last night by Juan Flores
+or Capitan--no one knows how many. All the men have gone that way. I
+ride to the Mission. Don Rafael, he go to San Diego to-day."
+
+"To-day? Santa Maria! he may have gone! Ride fast!"
+
+"He not go yet," and the old man shrugged his shoulders. "Too early.
+Army men going away. Don Rafael make barbecue yesterday, and last night
+he have a big dance for the Americanos in the Mission."
+
+"Hush! Ride fast! We will drive as slow as she will let us. But tell Don
+Rafael Arteaga I say for him to meet his mother on the road."
+
+Raquel noticed the old man cantering slowly along the level green, and
+heard the sound of his horse galloping rapidly once he was out of sight
+past the fringe of sycamores and low growths along the river.
+
+"For what is that, Jacoba?" she asked.
+
+"Oh, some bandits have run off some horses--they may send more
+vaqueros," she replied as easily as she could with the girl watching her
+like that.
+
+Raquel looked as though she thought all the truth might not be in the
+reply, but she turned quietly away.
+
+"I would have ridden with him if I had known," she said, and went back
+to Doņa Luisa, who was so eager to continue the journey that she would
+wait for no breakfast but the coffee.
+
+"Cut another strap of the harness and take time to mend it," muttered
+Jacoba to Pedro; "we are not all so near to being angels that we can
+live without eating."
+
+Thus was a little more time gained.
+
+Benito made the second crossing where the river bends around the mesa,
+and there met one of the boys from the village looking for a pair of
+strayed mules.
+
+"The Don Rafael--he has started for San Diego?" demanded Benito. "Turn
+and ride with me, José."
+
+The boy did so, grinning.
+
+"When Don Rafael wake up to-day he much too late to go to San Diego," he
+said, and the old man uttered a sigh of relief.
+
+"He sleeping, then?"
+
+"No one sleep in San Juan last night," said José. "There was the supper,
+and some girls stay. The army men they all start north an hour ago, but
+maybe the others still dance in the Mission, Don Rafael say he go to get
+married, this is his last night--no one must sleep, or be sober!"
+
+José thought it a great joke, but Benito muttered, "Jesus and San
+Vicente!" and ordered the boy to go back for the mules, and rode on down
+the valley alone.
+
+It took José some time to find the mules, and when he did find them they
+were even more perverse than usual; he had got them so near home as the
+hill above San Juan, when one of them went careering along the mesa as
+though heading for San Jacinto mountain.
+
+By the time he had secured it and got back near the road an astonishing
+sight met his eyes--something one was not used to seeing at sunrise in
+San Juan.
+
+A carriage came down the valley road from La Paz caņon. There were only
+women in it, and two Indian boys rode in the rear. Where could a
+carriage like that come from at such an hour? No one who rode in
+carriages lived up those valleys!
+
+In staring at the carriage he failed at first to notice the girl on
+horseback, who had ridden alone in advance of the carriage, and had
+halted in the road, on the brow of the hill, looking down across the old
+pueblo to the sea.
+
+She was so motionless, he was very close before he noticed her, close
+enough to hear her indrawn breath of delight, to see the soft flush of
+emotion touch her face. Almost he thought there were tears in her eyes;
+he thought her the most beautiful lady he had ever seen alive,--though
+one picture of the Virgin in the chapel was as fine.
+
+José stopped at the sight of her and stood very still. He could not
+drive mules into the road ahead of a lady who was more lovely than even
+the wooden saints with the gold painted around the border of their
+gowns; and that is how he chanced to see a strange meeting on that hill.
+
+No one knew why the English seņora had elected to take a pleasure ride
+alone that morning, when the message of Benito, shouted as he galloped
+past, had effectually banished from the minds of Dolores and Madalena
+their intended picnic at the hot springs in the mountain, for which they
+were all ready, and had actually started. But when they tumbled with
+delighted exclamations from the new American buggy, and straightway
+forgot all their plans for the day, including the entertainment of their
+English guest, she stared in ill-concealed irritation from one to the
+other as they chattered in Spanish, scarcely enlightening her as to the
+reason of the sudden change in their plans.
+
+When she finally gathered the idea that it was the unexpected proximity
+of Rafael's bride-to-be, and that all the other social lights of the
+valley must expect to be extinguished in her honor, the red lips of the
+Englishwoman straightened a trifle, and the baby-blue eyes took on a
+shade of coldness; for since her arrival in California she had been made
+the centre of many social affairs. In San Juan her one week, managed by
+Teresa and Rafael, had been enough of a triumph to cause Keith Bryton
+inward rage and to hold him there as long as an excuse to stay had
+offered.
+
+Once she said in a burst of irritated frankness:
+
+"For mercy's sake, let me be happy once! You are a dog in the manger,
+that's all! These people really live! There is an empire here for the
+right woman, and you need not tug at my chains to remind me that I was
+fool enough to marry before I found it!"
+
+And now the real ruler of the empire was about to enter into possession,
+and the temporary one was frankly forgotten! Whatever her thoughts were,
+she did not mean to assist at the royal entry of those two women whose
+rule meant the ignoring of the English-speaking people.
+
+Only Teresa, watching her out of beady black eyes, comprehended and was
+content. Rafael had earned the gift she had promised, but it had gone
+quite far enough; it was as well Doņa Luisa was coming with the other
+girl!
+
+So, when Bryton's sister-in-law looked rather blank and did not descend
+from the carriage, it was Teresa who agreed that it _was_ a morning too
+beautiful to stay indoors, and of course if Doņa Angela cared to drive
+alone--and would excuse them--
+
+Doņa Angela would. She leaned back languidly, a picture of carelessness,
+and motioned the driver to go on, but her lips still held their straight
+hard line as they passed the great dome of the ruined chancel, where the
+birds held sovereign sway.
+
+"It looks like a place for a throne," she thought, enviously; "and a
+black creature from Mexico is coming to rule it!"
+
+They were crossing the bridge at the streamlet, when an exclamation from
+the driver caused her to glance ahead and see the erect slender figure
+on the dark horse silhouetted against the yellow flood of sunrise.
+
+No girl of San Juan rode alone like that on the mesa, and certainly not
+one would have paused like that, transfixed by the beauty before her;
+there was not one that would not rather have admired the beautiful new
+buggy and the pretty hat of the fair lady in it.
+
+But the girl on the horse did not appear to notice either any more than
+she had noticed José. Her horse had halted straight across the middle
+of the road. The driver of the buggy had turned aside before she brought
+her gaze back from the sea cliffs to rest for an instant on the fair
+indignant face of the Englishwoman.
+
+The road was miles wide really--since one could drive anywhere on the
+mesa, but the Mrs. Teddy Bryton had heretofore seen every native step
+aside from the beaten trail when she drove abroad, and she was furious
+at the driver for turning his horses an iota out of his way for that
+girl who looked like--what did she look like?
+
+Mrs. Bryton could not have put into words the idea of the girl's face;
+but her own angry blue eyes were caught and held for an instant by
+strange fathomless violet ones--held until she shrank suddenly, and the
+color left her face. Yet--as the carriage paused, her head was still
+turned toward the stranger, and José saw her put her hands suddenly
+across her eyes with a gesture of repulsion or pain, and sink back on
+the cushions.
+
+The girl on the horse had not moved a muscle. She might have been carved
+from marble, for any sign she made after she read the angry insolence of
+the blue eyes.
+
+"Don Felipe Estevan's daughter," said the Mexican driver, "and here
+ahead of the carriage of the Seņora Luisa--it must be so."
+
+Mrs. Bryton gave no sign that she heard, neither did she glance at the
+occupants of the carriage as they whirled past; her mind held only one
+hateful picture.
+
+"Felipe Estevan's daughter" meant that she had looked into the eyes of
+the "black woman from Mexico" who had come back to her father's land to
+rule, and the Mexican woman had proven not so black as she had fancied,
+and had sat there on the crest of the hill with a pride that was half
+regal,--and almost half barbaric,--as though the highway was her very
+own--as though the centre of it belonged to her by divine right. Mrs.
+Bryton's vain soul was fired by a momentary wild temptation to test that
+divine right, to show her there was one man in San Juan not to be ruled
+by anyone else if she, Angela Bryton, cared to call him to her side and
+keep him there. Should she--or should she not?
+
+Teresa was quite right in her fancy that the trick against the Americano
+had been quite successful enough; it was time the other girl came to
+claim her own!
+
+[Music: _La Noche Fatal_.]
+
+    En la noche fatal que a tus ojos
+    Dirigi una mirida ardoro-sa
+    Comprendi que la dicha amorosa,
+    No me es dada en el mundo gozar.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+It was quite true that no one was allowed to sleep that night of
+Rafael's last bachelor supper. Because of Miguel's death, there could be
+no dancing, but the hours passed merrily enough, for all that. The army
+men stayed until the faint gray shone in the east, when they mounted and
+rode north after the horses, started a day ahead.
+
+Keith Bryton had ridden with the herd as far as Santa Ana, and then, to
+Angela's amusement, returned to San Juan. She was certain that his
+return had not been for Rafael's supper, but to see that she did not by
+some man[oe]uvre manage that it be a ladies' supper and graced by her
+attendance. She had in jest threatened to suggest it, and Keith felt
+very much as Teresa felt--it was quite time the bride were at hand to
+stop a flirtation bordering on the dangerous.
+
+But, after all, the ladies of San Juan were not included. It was a
+carouse instead of an entertainment. Girls were there, and guitars; and
+the big Mission doors and wooden shutters inside the deep windows barred
+the outer world from the hilarity, the songs, the shrieks of laughter
+over toasts of the old men to the groom-elect.
+
+At earliest dawn the army men, with promises and gold pieces to the
+girls, and an extra glass to Rafael and his bride, mounted their horses
+and rode north to catch up with the herd before it reached Los Angeles.
+One of the girls wept lest the one who had made her favorite might never
+ride that way again, and the wilder spirits marched around her with
+lighted candles, singing a funeral dirge, ending in a wild fandango.
+
+Don Antonio was there, and old Ricardo Ruiz, and they sat through the
+night playing with the dice, and emptying each other's pockets in turn,
+and comparing the old entertainment with the new, between the drinks.
+
+The fandango ended by Concha, the weeping one, doing the maddest
+dancing of all, and Fernando Mendez poured out goblets of wine to drink
+luck to her next lover.
+
+"It is good luck for himself he wants, Concha!" called Rafael across the
+room. "Fernando is a coyote, always awake for young chickens!"
+
+"Concha mia, he is jealous; never heed him, but drink wine with me to
+the next lover!"
+
+"He offers her a glass of wine, Antonio," grunted old Don Ricardo.
+"Huh!--that is the love-making of California to-day!"
+
+"True, Ricardo; at his age you or I would have been at her feet and our
+jewels on her breast."
+
+"Fernando has no jewels left."
+
+"I should say not. His father made love after our fashion, hence--"
+
+"The deluge!"
+
+"The deluge of poverty and Americanos," assented Antonio. "A plague on
+them both! They have changed the land!"
+
+A burst of laughter from Rafael's end of the table drowned the
+grumblings of the old men. Rafael had told a story so very funny that
+the girls had shrieked and giggled and protested behind their fans.
+
+"Fie, Don Rafael! and you to be a married man in a week!"
+
+"But a week is seven nights away, and all of them your own, Merced mia!"
+
+"Merced!" called another man from a game of _malia_ at an old table once
+used for altar service--"Merced, darling, never listen to a word he
+says! A paltry seven nights! My heart is at your feet for a lifetime!"
+
+"Of nights or days, seņor?" asked the girl, laughingly.
+
+"She caught you there, Seņor Gonzales," observed Bryton, who was dealing
+the cards. "Don Rafael, after all, makes the only definite offer."
+
+"You are right, Don Keith," returned the other. "With the help of the
+Americanos, Don Rafael is learning to be a good maker of bargains."
+
+"The sooner the rest of you learn the same trick, the better for
+California!" retorted Rafael.
+
+"You hear?" said Don Ricardo.
+
+"Sure," assented the major-domo. "What if his mother heard?"
+
+"All the saints! There would be murder!"
+
+"Por Dios!" exclaimed Rafael, as a servant opened a window because of
+the thick tobacco smoke; "it is daylight, and I must start for San
+Diego. My last bachelor carouse is ended, and none of us under the
+table!"
+
+"How sad that we are still able to stand on our own feet!" laughed
+Merced. "See!" and she sprang to the top of a beautiful silver-decorated
+chest against the wall; "one of us is even able to dance good-bye to
+your last night of freedom! Good-bye, O free heart of Don Rafael! On
+some to-morrow the bride comes!"
+
+"Holy Maria!" ejaculated Don Antonio, putting his glass down; "she is
+dancing on the _donas_ of the bride!"
+
+"The _donas_!" echoed Don Ricardo, aghast; "and the bride a young saint
+stolen from the Church!--the _donas_!"
+
+"What's that?" asked Bryton, while the rest applauded the dancer.
+"_Donas?"_
+
+"The gifts of the groom to the bride,--the gown, the wedding veil,
+the--holy God! it's sacrilege!"
+
+"Is it?" asked the American; "then we'll stop it. Come to coffee,
+Merced!"
+
+Without further ceremony he picked the girl up in his arms, and carried
+her, laughing and struggling, into the great refectory, where the Indian
+servants were placing breakfast on the table.
+
+"That was quick work, Antonio," observed Don Ricardo, with a breath of
+relief.
+
+"Sure; he is the best of all the Americanos. Ai! even more like the
+caballeros of other days than our own sons!"
+
+Don Ricardo did not care to commit himself so far as that. He contented
+himself with grumbling at Rafael's indifference.
+
+"And the girl a young saint--meant to live in religion!"
+
+Bryton rejoined them with a cup of coffee, and both the men hastened to
+assure him that it was not Rafael who was in fault, but the many glasses
+he had emptied.
+
+"Sure, it was the glasses," affirmed Don Ricardo. "No man of California
+would let a girl of pleasure dance on the things sacred to the woman of
+his family; eh, Antonio?"
+
+"Of course; at any other time Rafael would have thrown the girl through
+a window; truly, he would!"
+
+"No doubt of it," agreed Bryton.
+
+"Doņa Luisa has given the boy a long rope. It must be that she has
+learned that it is too long--she comes back after the years to steady
+him with a wife,--and such a wife! Young, wealthy, beautiful!"
+
+"And a young nun, all but the veil!"
+
+"That seems rather a joke--or a tragedy--after all this," and Bryton
+motioned to the remainders of the night's carouse.
+
+"If there is a joke, it is the devil playing it on the saints."
+
+"Sure; and the devil wins," agreed Don Antonio. "It is all settled. The
+Doņa Luisa is a wise woman. Her son wins a wife, and the convent loses a
+fortune and a nun at the same time."
+
+"Had the good son nothing to do with the arrangement?" asked the
+American, dryly.
+
+"Oh, of course, seņor. Three times he have gone to Mexico, where Felipe
+Estevan's daughter visit with his mother. He has time to sing many
+dozens of serenades,--all of the burning hearts and torment of love, and
+lost souls, to make a girl have pity. Maybe she have never before talked
+with one young man, one minute of her life; who knows?"
+
+"It is good time she comes," observed Don Ricardo. "One year--two years,
+and Rafael, like Miguel, would be content with half-breed children and
+their mother. Little Marta's child is born, and they say she will not
+stay at Las Flores, where he sent her--not for the best house there!"
+
+A peal of laughter reached them from the other room.
+
+"Bravo!" called Rafael; "I take you at your word, Merced. A kiss to seal
+the compact!"
+
+"Keep it for your wedding-day, Don Rafael," she retorted, and ran from
+him through the door into the room where the three men were talking. But
+Rafael caught her inside the portal, and dragged her back, his face
+flushed and his beautiful eyes glowing.
+
+"I will have it!" he muttered, with his lips against her own. "You
+pretty devil, I will!"
+
+"And this is the home your young nun will come to from her convent,"
+Bryton remarked. "Some one said there was Indian blood in her family; it
+may prove fortunate, for she will need war-clubs instead of religion to
+quell this sort of thing."
+
+"But with the help of her saints--"
+
+"Of course," agreed Bryton; "with the help of her saints all things may
+happen."
+
+An Indian servant came in from the plaza, and closed the door and stood
+with his back against it.
+
+"The Doņa Madalena, and Doņa Dolores, and the Seņora Bryton, stop in the
+calesha," he announced, stoically; "they come in!"
+
+"Bar that door! they sha'n't; they must not!" called Bryton, but it was
+too late. The side door opened, and the three appeared--the two girls
+plainly frightened, but Mrs. Bryton beautifully audacious.
+
+"Nonsense! Doņa Teresa will not scold; we will stop only a minute. Your
+uncle and cousin are here--it is all right!" Then she saw Bryton, and
+laughed.
+
+"I told you I would at least see inside," she observed, "and it is quite
+worth while. What a magnificent chest!"
+
+Bryton walked directly to her.
+
+"I will see you to your carriage," he said, laying his hand on her arm.
+"What the devil did you mean by this bravado?"
+
+She wrenched her arm free and regarded him coolly.
+
+"Thanks. I came because I said I would come, and you said not to dare.
+'Dare' is a risky word, amigo. We will go directly. We are going to the
+hills, and only halted to wish good luck to Rafael."
+
+"Malediction!" muttered Don Antonio. "He can't be seen--he--"
+
+A burst of laughter came from the dining-room, and the two girls
+retreated toward the door.
+
+"Women!" breathed Dolores; "if Doņa Teresa hears this--"
+
+"It is the servants--only the servants," said Don Antonio. "Don Rafael
+has perhaps started on his journey; he will be disconsolate that--"
+
+But at that moment Rafael and Fernando came in from the dining-room, one
+smoothing his hair and one arranging his cravat. Rafael was the less
+sober of the two, but he managed to bow with a certain grace as he took
+Mrs. Bryton's hand.
+
+"My poor house is at your service, madama," he murmured, "and I am at
+your feet. I hastened to you as soon as--"
+
+--"As soon as he could get the other girls out the back door," remarked
+Fernando, aside to Bryton.
+
+"Mr. Bryton was horribly cross to me for coming in; he thinks it too
+unconventional; he thinks I do not know the Spanish customs, and--"
+
+"I offer myself as your teacher," said Rafael, looking straight into the
+blue eyes. "Believe me, seņora, there are many delightful things to be
+learned in old California!"
+
+"I shall remember your offer," she returned, smilingly. "See how sulky
+Mr. Bryton looks! He never takes time to be gallant himself."
+
+"That is true," assented Rafael. "He never looks at the girls, or speaks
+except to tell them to keep quiet."
+
+"Oh!" she replied, with a little malicious smile, "there is always a
+girl excepted!"
+
+Bryton looked at her with impatient wonder; he was about to speak, when
+an Indian came in with a tray of coffee, and Rafael offered a cup to
+Mrs. Bryton.
+
+"Honor me, madama, and let us hear of the girl who is an exception."
+
+"Bravo! The exceptions are always of interest. Don Keith is forever a
+reproach to the rest of us; he has no vices."
+
+"Or conceals them better!" put in Rafael, with a touch of malice.
+
+"You are to be unmasked, seņor," murmured Dolores, with lenient eyes.
+
+Bryton glanced at his watch and then with impatience at his
+sister-in-law.
+
+"I have not the slightest idea of the lady's meaning," he said, coldly;
+"and if you want to make an early start for the hot springs--"
+
+Mrs. Bryton shut her teeth together with a little click, at his palpable
+ignoring of herself.
+
+"Oh--short memory of man!" she said, chidingly; "He has forgotten in a
+year!"
+
+"A year?" Bryton stared at her with a puzzled frown, and a slight motion
+of his hand toward the door. That, with its little suggestion of
+authority, decided her.
+
+"I shall tell it," she announced. "How many of you believe in love at
+first sight?"
+
+"All of us, after meeting you!" declared Rafael, with an exaggerated
+bow.
+
+"Sure!" agreed Don Ricardo.
+
+"My husband, you know, is an engineer, and goes on long journeys into
+queer corners of the mining world."
+
+"Bad habit for husbands with pretty wives," remarked Don Antonio.
+
+"Last Winter," continued she, slowly sipping her coffee and watching
+Bryton; "last Winter he went to Mexico."
+
+"Pardon! We do not ask for the love affairs of your lucky husband,
+but--"
+
+"But last Winter Don Keith went along; yes--he went along to look up
+some mining property in the Indian hills, and when he came back--Have
+any of you noticed the peculiar ring Mr. Bryton wears?"
+
+"Angela!" said Keith, sharply; but she looked at him with smiling
+insolence.
+
+"Oh, I know your little romance of Doņa Espiritu; Teddy told me."
+
+"Damn Teddy!" he remarked, while the rest shouted with laughter at the
+color flaming in his face.
+
+"Doņa Espiritu!" repeated Don Ricardo. "The lady of the Spirit--let us
+hope it was a good spirit, Don Keith--and that she was kind!"
+
+"To her health!" cried Rafael. "Pour brandy, Fernando; we drink our last
+toast of this meeting to the love of Don Keith--to the Doņa Espiritu!"
+
+"I would rather see the ring than drink the toast," said Dolores. "May
+I, seņor?"
+
+"There is nothing remarkable about it, except that it is very, very
+old," and he held out his hand for her inspection. "An onyx engraved
+with the Aztec eagle--now the Mexican eagle."
+
+"But given him by--"
+
+"By a lady who was of service to my brother, to an old priest, and to
+me."
+
+"See how he drags in the others," laughed Mrs. Bryton. "Teddy and the
+priest got no ring; Ted had a knife-thrust, and the priest a black eye.
+Keith had some hurt on the head, from which he had a long and
+interesting case of fever."
+
+"Let us hope Doņa Espiritu nursed him through it, and the priest did not
+watch them too closely," remarked Rafael, with a meaning glance at
+Bryton. The last drink of brandy had been the one too many, and his
+smile was not nice.
+
+"Did she nurse him through the illness?" whispered Madalena in Angela's
+ear.
+
+"Oh, I could tell," said the latter, demurely; "but Keith evidently
+resents his romances being made public."
+
+"Seņorita, there is no more to tell," remarked Keith, coldly; "not even
+so much as Angela would suggest. My brother and an old priest and I lost
+our way in the hills; and seeing a light, we chanced on some religious
+meeting of a strange hill tribe of Indians. They thought we were spies
+of the Church or the government, and there was trouble. A lady, whom the
+Indians and the priest called by the name you heard, saved us all that
+night. She was the one person of the Catholic Church they would allow
+to know them well, and she was a nun or a novice."
+
+"Santa Maria! and she gave you rings?"
+
+"The ring was some talisman respected by the tribe. She put it on my
+finger after I had been struck down and--well--used up. It stopped them
+when words were of no use. We made a litter for the old priest, and tied
+Teddy on a burro,--he had a leg wound,--and we walked beside them over
+the wilderness trail until dawn came, and we met help. I fainted from
+loss of blood about that time, and Teddy and I recuperated in the house
+of the old priest. We never saw the lady again."
+
+"You never saw her again after an adventure like that!" cried Fernando
+in amaze. "That is cold blood for you!"
+
+"It may be that she was ugly--or old," suggested Rafael.
+
+"On the contrary, she was so charming that he shouted for her in the
+delirium of the fever; that is how Teddy learned that she was the one
+exception among girls! But all their scheming could not learn her name
+from the priest or the Mexicans. 'Doņa Espiritu' was all they ever
+heard. Teddy fancied they had shipped her to Spain for the adventure
+with a heretic that one night."
+
+"Is it all true, seņor?" asked Dolores. "Doņa Angela laughs at it, and
+you frown; and between the two, how are we to know how serious it may
+all be to you?"
+
+"Serious enough to make him bare his head at every old battered shrine
+for her sake," said Angela, with a little shrug; "and an old ring of his
+mother's was lost from his finger on that wilderness trail, while the
+Mexican eagle took its place. Oh, nuns are only women after all, and
+much can happen in the length of a Mexican night!"
+
+"Well, seņor," said Dolores, with sudden courage, "I am a good Catholic,
+thank God! and I see no sacrilege in the sort of love for which a man
+bares his head at a shrine. Seņor Bryton, the story will make us of
+California more than ever your friends!"
+
+"Sure," agreed Don Antonio.
+
+"I am at your feet, seņorita," said Bryton, with kindly deference. "Now,
+Mrs. Bryton, if you have no other--romances--to elaborate and embellish,
+perhaps you will allow me to see you to your carriage, before I start
+for Los Angeles. Don Rafael is detained by us when he should be on his
+way south, and--"
+
+"Oh--I beg--" began Rafael, but Madalena interrupted.
+
+"Not another moment must we stay. Aunt Teresa will scold us well for
+this!"
+
+"For taking pity on a lonely bachelor?" asked Rafael.
+
+"Lonely?" repeated Dolores. "We will come again when the bride comes.
+Until then we leave you to prepare your soul with this--and this!"
+
+She motioned to the decanter, and picked up the scarlet fan of Mercedes.
+
+"You cruel one! You would make Doņa Angela think--but do not think it,
+madama! I assure you, it is my mother's--or my aunt's--or--"
+
+"He never had an aunt," laughed Madalena. "Come, Uncle Ricardo, Doņa
+Maxima wants you at home; she is at our house saying things to make your
+ears burn."
+
+"Sure!" said Don Ricardo, getting on his feet and taking the cane
+offered him. "But it is in honor of Doņa Luisa Arteaga I am here. When
+her son makes gay company, it is the time for the steady friends of the
+family to stay by. So I am here, Madalena mia; and I shall say to my
+wife I was here all the evening, right here at this table as a
+respectable friend, and won seventy pesos!"
+
+"Sure, he did," assented Don Antonio. "But it is over! The sun is up, it
+is good time to go home."
+
+Rafael managed in the farewells to kiss the hand of Mrs. Bryton twice,
+and to be observed by Bryton only once. That was enough of victory for
+the moment, and when the door was closed he flung himself into a chair
+and reached again for the decanter.
+
+"Ai! she is delicious--the madama whose husband plans mines and goes on
+long voyages! How she makes our women look tame!"
+
+"Tah! She is insolent, that is all. We would lock up our women if they
+had the American way. Drink coffee--not more brandy."
+
+"To the devil with your coffee! And it is not an American way--she is
+English--the delicious lady!"
+
+"Worse still!" grunted Fernando.
+
+"How?" roared Rafael, straightening up in his chair. "You forget, seņor!
+She is my friend--my very illustrious friend--she is--no matter what she
+is. Her husband goes on long voyages--and you must apologize to me--you
+hear? I have the admiration for her--I--"
+
+"You are drunk; that is what ails you, Rafael," said his friend,
+bluntly. "You think that you are in love with that woman, but you are
+only drunk."
+
+"Drunk--I? And you call her--call the illustrious lady who is a friend
+of mine, 'that woman!' Seņor, there are two swords on the wall. You take
+your choice--you--"
+
+Fernando tried to avoid him, but he wrenched the sword from the wall and
+lunged at him wickedly.
+
+But for a girl who shrieked and rushed from a shadowy doorway, and flung
+herself on the arm of Rafael, it would have gone ill with Fernando.
+
+"Rafael mio!" she cried, clinging to him, "for the love of God!"
+
+"Marta!" he cried, and dropped the weapon. "I--did I not tell you--"
+
+He broke off vaguely, and avoided Fernando's eyes; that young man
+laughed good-naturedly.
+
+"Another illustrious friend whose husband goes on long voyages!" he
+said, lightly. "I leave you, my friend, until you are sober. Seņorita,
+adios."
+
+Rafael stared moodily at the girl. She was a pretty bit of bronze flesh
+with passionate eyes.
+
+"I told you to stay on the ranch," he said at last; but she broke into
+tears and caught his hands.
+
+"I could not! They all know--the old woman and the priest. They thought
+I was dying, and he came and I had to tell him the name of the child's
+father; and--and when my own father comes back from the herding he will
+beat me, and I will not stay! I will not! He is not a fine gentleman,
+Rafael; he is only a herder who was a soldier in Mexico. Fine words
+would not count with him, unless it would be words before the priest,
+and you promised--"
+
+"Jesus, Maria, and Joseph!" burst out Rafael. "What an hour to come with
+a list of a man's promises! I've been up all night, and I'd fight with
+the saints if they came my way. Go, Marta; I will tell Antonio to make a
+home for you away from the crazy herder. I--I am very busy; I start
+south in an hour."
+
+"But, Rafael--"
+
+"Well--well?"
+
+"They say you are to marry an illustrious seņorita--that you--"
+
+"They say a lot there is no sense in saying!" he burst out angrily. "If
+you had stayed on the ranch, you would not have heard their lies or--"
+
+"Ai! I am happy that it is not true. But that one lady--whose hands you
+kissed--Rafael--"
+
+"Oh, for the love of God, go!" he said. "You women drive a man mad!
+You--"
+
+Fernando rushed in, interrupting him:
+
+"Rafael! Your mother--she is here!"
+
+"My mother?"
+
+"On the hill--her carriage--a man brings the news."
+
+"Damnation! Coming here--now? And my head--Yes, it's true, Fernando; I
+was drunk. Help me to think! Make them clear all this away!" and he
+pointed to the tables and the dice and the cards on the floor. "Por
+Dios, how my head swims! And my mother is no fool--she will see! Think,
+Fernando! Help me to plan something. And you, Marta, let yourself not be
+seen!"
+
+The frightened girl was only too glad to slip away, while the rest of
+the group stripped the rooms of evidences of the night's orgy.
+
+"Mount a horse and ride to the beach," decided Fernando. "You will be
+gone on business, to see about--eh--to see if the vessel for hides has
+come in. Make yourself decent, and I will send a messenger after you.
+Don't be too easily found--you are likely to be drunker in an hour than
+you are now."
+
+"Curse the brandy! And Bryton was to come back to see me about--oh, God
+knows what! But don't let my mother see him--an accursed heretic
+Americano, you know! Dios! If I could only sleep for an hour!"
+
+Fernando fairly pushed him out at the door.
+
+"Take a sea bath; drink black coffee; get out of sight while I receive
+the bride!"
+
+Then, after the door was closed on the groom-elect, he took a quick
+survey of the room.
+
+"That is right, open all the windows. Some one cut lilies--the white
+ones--quick! Hide this fan for Merced. Light those candles on the
+Virgin's shrine, and put the lilies there and on the table. Whose pipe
+is this under the edge of our lady's lace robe? It smells vilely--take
+it away! Where is the key of the chest of the _donas_? Here it is in the
+chest, and that is unlocked--only Rafael could do that. Let us hope he
+has not let Merced try on the wedding-dress! Are there no more flowers?
+Get some for the room of the seņorita. Tell some one to make French
+coffee. Manuel, put out the light."
+
+Dolores and Madalena ran through the open door, breathless.
+
+"Fernando, she is here--the Seņora Arteaga, and--"
+
+"Already! Aunt Teresa told us to run and help; she will come also. Don
+Rafael?"
+
+"Has ridden to the harbor."
+
+"More likely to bed," remarked Madalena, skeptically.
+
+"Seņorita!"
+
+"Sh--h!" whispered Dolores, with lifted hand. "The carriage; they are in
+the plaza!"
+
+She rushed out, and the others followed. Teresa was there greeting Doņa
+Luisa; but all fell suddenly silent as they noticed the gray-white of
+the old face, and the frail figure as she descended from the carriage
+with the help of Fernando Mendez and Ana--his cousin's widow.
+
+Fernando cast one glance at the girl who sat her horse and glanced over
+their heads for the face she did not see.
+
+A wizened old Indian woman alighted from a cart and came to her and
+touched her foot on the stirrup.
+
+"It is your new land, little mistress," she said, in a tongue not
+understood by the others, "the land of your handsome lover."
+
+The girl looked again across the many faces gathering in the plaza, and
+then accepted the help of Don Antonio to alight.
+
+"But he is not here, Polonia--the handsome lover," she returned, and
+then walked past all the others and slipped her hand under the arm of
+Doņa Luisa.
+
+"A thousand welcomes, seņora," said Fernando, at the portal. "The town
+will rejoice to-day."
+
+"One welcome I had a right to expect at this door," the old lady
+answered, "and he is not here."
+
+"He will be heart-broken. He did not think you had yet reached San
+Diego. To-day he was to start for there. Will it please you to have this
+seat?"
+
+"Not yet," she said. "Raquelita!"
+
+Raquel Estevan gently disengaged her other hand from Dolores, and the
+frail old woman led her to the little shrine of the Virgin, where the
+candles glimmered. The others halted at the door, but Fernando and
+Dolores and Ana knelt also as the old woman and the girl from Mexico
+clasped hands and bent heads before the statue in the niche.
+
+The old woman rose first and kissed the girl's forehead.
+
+"My daughter," she said, faintly, "I welcome you for my son and for
+myself, to the land where you are mistress. Now, seņor!"
+
+Fernando placed a chair for her, and she sank into it wearily.
+
+"My last journey, my children! You are the son of Manuel Mendez?--we
+called ourselves cousins once. I present you--all of you--to my
+daughter--Doņa Raquel Estevan."
+
+"At your feet, seņorita!" said Fernando.
+
+"I appreciate the honor of your acquaintance, seņor," replied Raquel, in
+the conventional greeting of the day and land. Then the others crowded
+about, and spoke many pretty things of welcome. But in the midst of it
+all Doņa Luisa arose, and leaning on Jacoba's arm, passed into the room
+prepared for her. The group left behind stared into each other's eyes.
+
+"How frail! How could any creature like that make the journey?" asked
+Fernando. "She has been very ill."
+
+"She _is_ ill; we dare not mention it to her!"
+
+"But Rafael--her son--"
+
+"Must not be told, so she says; not until the wedding is over. All at
+once she has gone like that. It is the heart, seņor, and she is old. It
+may be months--may be days--may be only hours, and we can do nothing but
+keep her quiet and happy."
+
+"Santa Maria!" muttered Dolores, "and Rafael--"
+
+"His heart it will break--no? To not see him at the door is like a bad
+omen. She likes not the new Americanos' way of business--to be gone at
+breakfast time to look at ships! But of course he is very good!"
+
+"You are very good," replied Dolores. "Have they sent for Rafael?"
+
+"I will see," said Fernando, and went away muttering, "The so good
+Rafael!"
+
+"Oh! we have a thousand things to ask you, Raquel," said Madalena.
+"Could you have been a nun and been happy if--Rafael had not found you?"
+
+"To work for Mother Church--is not that of happiness?"
+
+"Never to dance! Never to hear a serenade! Never to watch on moonlight
+nights for a handsome caballero!"
+
+"I would as soon live in a tomb," confessed Dolores.
+
+"But if you had never seen a dance, would you miss dancing? My mother's
+people were priests; she was to have been a nun. My blood and my
+teaching have been of the church. My life has been lived in one little
+narrow strip of the world. All at once the world changed. Sometimes it
+bewilders me, this change. You say 'happy,' but I don't think I know
+that word as you know it. Maybe I never shall learn it--who knows? But I
+can find work for the Church even here in the world, and you will all be
+my good friends, and--I shall be content."
+
+Doņa Luisa had entered the room while she was speaking, and nodded her
+approval.
+
+"Content? You will be happy, my child; you will be with Rafael! Have you
+seen the chest of the _donas_? Is it not handsome? If we only had the
+key!"
+
+"There is a little silver key on the shrine," said Dolores, and ran to
+get it.
+
+"Aha! On the shrine of the Virgin!" said Doņa Luisa. "Is that not love,
+Raquelita?"
+
+"I am willing to believe it," she said, and took the little key, only
+to hand it back to Dolores. "You open it--and may you be the next happy
+bride!"
+
+Dolores rushed to unlock the chest, and Madalena to lift the lid, and
+Ana, as well as the older women, exclaimed at the richness of the
+contents.
+
+"Ai! Raquel Estevan, thou happy one!" cried Ana; "you have more luck
+than a queen!"
+
+They pulled out embroideries and laces and jewels, with little shrieks
+of ecstasy at the beauty and fineness of them. Raquel looked on, smiling
+at their delight.
+
+"Aha! is not that a lover, Raquelita?" repeated Doņa Luisa. "Bring me
+the mantillas. Those two are for the bridesmaids; see how they look on
+Madalena and Dolores--fine--fine! And here is the wedding-veil--and the
+shoes, and the rosary--not anything is forgotten! He is so dear, so
+good--my Rafael!"
+
+The girls insisted on placing the wreath and veil on Raquel's head, but
+she broke from them at sight of a silken scarf of green and red and
+white.
+
+"Ah! more than all the jewels!" she cried, and clasped it to her bosom.
+"The flag of my own Mexico! I will love him for that--I will love him
+with all my heart!"
+
+"Ah! thou hast said it at last," said Doņa Luisa, in triumph; "never
+forget thou hast said it!"
+
+"When I say it," whispered Dolores to Ana, "it will be to the man, not
+to his mother."
+
+"Come to me, daughter," said Doņa Luisa, sinking back into a chair. "The
+heart feels--feels almost too happy! My dear Raquel--my dear Rafael!"
+
+"The Americanos will be crazy to see this wedding in the old California
+fashion," said Madalena, adjusting Raquel's veil caressingly. "Seņora
+Bryton would give her two ears--ouch! Doņa Ana, you break my arm!"
+
+"Give thanks it is not your neck, babbler!" muttered Ana. Doņa Luisa
+looked at the two intently a moment.
+
+"Who is the American seņora of the two ears?" she inquired; "and why
+should the wedding of my son have interest for such--persons?"
+
+"She--she was a cousin of Don Eduardo, and now she is married again--and
+she visits us, and her husband is some kind of engineer to make
+railroads, and mines, and--"
+
+A pinch from Dolores stopped her this time, but it was very clumsily
+done, Doņa Luisa saw it.
+
+"Ah," she said, quietly; "and when is he to bring the railroad of the
+Americanos to the Californias, eh?"
+
+The women and girls stared at each other.
+
+"I--I cannot tell her," murmured Madalena to Jacoba; "you speak! Of
+course it is not Doņa Angela's husband who does it, but--the railroad
+does come--so they say."
+
+"Why do you whisper, and not speak aloud?" demanded Doņa Luisa, putting
+aside the hand of Raquel, who tried to quiet her rising resentment. "Is
+there not anyone here to speak plainly, and the truth? What is it you
+try to hide from me?"
+
+"Oh, Luisa," begged Jacoba, tearfully, "do not make of this a thing to
+trouble you! No one tries really to hide things; it is not here the
+railroad is to be first; it is only talk; it may never happen--it may--"
+
+"Where?" demanded Doņa Luisa. And Jacoba, with tears in her eyes,
+confessed having heard of the impertinence of the Americanos, who meant
+to build a new road of their own instead of the wagon trail to San
+Antonio.
+
+"That was good enough for our fathers. What is now wrong with the San
+Antonio road?"
+
+"Not anything, of course; but the government--"
+
+"Ah ha!" and the old voice lifted to a shrill note of triumph in having
+at last found the key of the question. "The American government! I
+thought that would be it. What new crime do they plan against the
+Californias? This it is to grow old and lame--they would hide it from
+me! Speak, and tell me all! Does the fine new government want my home to
+quarter their pigs of soldiers in, as they did in the Mission in other
+days? And would my friends have hidden it from me until these upstarts
+were across my door?"
+
+"Luisa--chulita--you were not well. Rafael said you were not to be told;
+but since you think we mean to speak falsely, or deceive you--"
+
+"Where is it to come? How near?" Doņa Luisa was not to be led an iota
+from the main question. But at her demand, Jacoba tried to speak, and
+failed, and could only weep noisily at the hardness in her old cousin's
+tones.
+
+"Why do you make Aunt Jacoba weep like that?" demanded Ana, resentfully.
+"What has she to do with the railroads--she or her family? Your good
+Rafael does more to bring them than any one else. He sells them land; he
+and Don Eduardo help them to get the rights to go where they please.
+Aunt Jacoba would not do that; her father and her husband would be
+burned at the stake before they would help these new people to use the
+graves of the holy fathers at San Gabriel as a road-bed!"
+
+"Mother of God!"
+
+Doņa Luisa arose, as though to annihilate the daring speaker; but
+Raquel caught her and she sank back in her chair with one tremulous hand
+extended to the frightened Ana.
+
+"Go on!" she said, hoarsely. "Go on! Perjure thy soul with lies, since
+thou lovest them so,--lies against a son of Mother Church. Go on!"
+
+Ana shrank, and faltered, but the accusation brought back her courage.
+
+"If the truth is shameful, the shame is not mine," she retorted.
+"Through two of the Arteaga ranches in the north has Rafael sold the
+right of way for the American railroad to Monterey. That it might come
+closer to his ranch-houses, he has let it be built across the forgotten
+graves of the Mission fathers. Beneath the feet of the Americanos will
+lie the holy apostles of our Mother Church! The Protestant heretics will
+wheel their pigs to market across the gardens where Ava Marias have
+sounded all the years of religion in California!"
+
+Doņa Luisa stared at her with white face, and her lips moved stiffly
+when she tried to speak. The other women and girls were clinging
+together in tears, and Raquel stood with her strong young arms about
+her, as though to guard her against the world.
+
+Bryton, who had strolled back through the patio for a final word with
+Rafael, had heard nothing of the arrivals; he pushed open the door at
+the back, and then halted at the sight of the group there,--the women
+and girls frightened and weeping, the scattered wealth of silks and
+laces flung across chairs and tables, and the three girls with
+bride-like veils.
+
+"Is it--a witchcraft?" half whispered Doņa Luisa at last; but the
+whisper was plainly heard above the sobs of the girls, who scarcely
+dared to breathe. "It is a work of the fiends to snare his soul for hell
+Immaculate Mother, let it not be!"
+
+Raquel bent above her with murmured assurances of divine help, and the
+old woman suddenly caught the hands of the girl in her own and held her,
+staring in her face with questioning eyes; then she spoke eagerly,
+fiercely.
+
+"Your wish but a moment ago! You wished for some great work for Mother
+Church--to fight evil out in the world; your guardian angel heard the
+wish and has sent you a soul to save from the heretics,--the soul of the
+man you love!"
+
+Raquel stared at her, but did not speak. Her eyes looked a bit
+frightened, but she rested her cheek on the frail old hands, and
+caressed them reassuringly.
+
+Doņa Luisa lifted the gold and ebony crucifix, and held it above her
+head.
+
+"Kneel!" she said; and the girls and women did so. Bryton, in the
+doorway, caught sight of the girl in the bride's veil, and made a
+movement toward her, but was checked by the voice of the mother.
+
+"It is for the soul of the man you love, Raquel mia. Never forget
+that--never forget!"
+
+"I will not forget," said the girl, gently; and at the sound of the
+voice Keith Bryton's jaw set in a tense, ugly way, and he stepped back
+into the shadow.
+
+"Then swear by the Holy Mother of God!" said the old voice, and the
+crucifix above the head of the kneeling girl was held rigidly steady.
+
+"I swear by the Holy Mother of God!"
+
+"Swear by the blood of Christ crucified!"
+
+"I swear by the blood of Christ crucified!"
+
+"To stand as a guard over the soul of Rafael!" The old voice had a
+faintness, despite the steady words; the end of her strength had come.
+
+The eyes of Raquel widened ever so little as she realized what she was
+promising. There was an involuntary pause before she spoke again, and
+then the absolute despair of the mother, and her one hope, swept over
+the girl's consciousness, and a spark of the martyr fire lit her own
+soul.
+
+"To stand as guard over the soul of Rafael," said she, steadily.
+
+"So long as you both shall live!"
+
+"So long as--we both--shall--live."
+
+Then the crucifix fell to the tiled floor, and the old face looked very
+gray, as she sank back on the chair; and Jacoba smothered a shriek at
+sight of her eyes; and Raquel, still on her knees, clasped her about the
+waist and whispered:
+
+"Doņa Luisa, Doņa Luisa!"
+
+The staring eyes regained a momentary glimmer of consciousness at the
+sound of the girl's voice, and she lifted her hand again as though it
+still held the crucifix.
+
+"Until--the day--of--" and then the sentence trailed along into the
+eternal silences of the unseen land.
+
+"Seņora!" called Raquel, appealingly; but Ana caught her by the shoulder
+and looked in her face, and said:
+
+"God help you, Raquel Estevan! To the recording angel she has taken that
+oath."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Keith Bryton closed the door on the weeping women, and walked out
+through the old refectory to the inner court, where he met Fernando.
+
+"What is it, seņor?" he asked. Bryton looked at him much as though he
+had not been there.
+
+"I--I scarcely know," he said, dully. "You had better--"
+
+"But you have the face of a ghost!" interrupted Fernando. "Something has
+happened--in there?"
+
+"I think so," agreed the American, recovering under Fernando's curious
+gaze. "Some one is ill--or--"
+
+Fernando ran past him, and Bryton walked slowly along the inner court to
+where the one-time baptistry lay roofless to the sky. Through an old
+doorway with the Aztec sun cut in the coping, he passed into the old
+graveyard of the padres, and thence to the great altar-place of the old
+earthquake ruin. Even there the cries of the girls came to him through
+an open window--a wailing chorus of tragedy. Then an old Indian untied
+the ropes of the belfry, and the toll of death sounded along the valley.
+But it seemed very far away. He stared at the half-pagan decorations of
+the old stonework--never the cross of Christ anywhere on them--and sat
+so still that two linnets lit almost at his feet and were not afraid.
+
+"I wondered why I should stray back to this little corner of the world,"
+he said at last, "and now--now I reckon I'm finding out. God! I feel
+like a bad dream. And my hands tied!"
+
+He paced back and forth on the old altar-place, until the mad clatter of
+hoofs coming from the sea cut across the tolling of the bells and told
+him the lost bridegroom--the man she said she loved and would never
+forget--had been found.
+
+He swore softly as he crossed the plaza to the veranda of Juan Alvara.
+The old man, rolling his first cigarro of the day, was sitting there on
+the bench in the early sunlight.
+
+"Don Juan," he said, holding out his hand, "I ride to catch up with the
+officers and go with them into the Indian country, and I may not see San
+Juan again for a long time. Your home has always been a pleasant place,
+and I thank you for many courtesies."
+
+The old man shook his hand gravely.
+
+"Adios! You come back to San Juan--no?"
+
+"Perhaps not," said Bryton. "If there is anything I can do for you in
+Los Angeles--"
+
+"Thanks, seņor; there is nothing. My daughters go there in a week with
+the wedding party. For whom think you old Tomás tolls the bell?"
+
+When informed, he stared vaguely at the Americano. Alvara was growing
+old. Teresa had warned them all that no one should tell him until his
+breakfast was over and he had had his smoke.
+
+"Luisa! the Doņa Luisa! Dead, you say?--before the wedding-day? No,
+seņor, pardon, but you have not understood. I know Luisa Arteaga when
+she is still a little girl--and always. She not dying before she have
+marry the boy like she want."
+
+Still, his hand trembled as he reached for his cane. Across the plaza
+Indians and Mexicans were moving toward the Mission. It was early for
+San Juan to be astir in the street. Old Matia, who had been nurse to
+Miguel and Rafael, went past, not seeing the two men for the tears in
+her eyes. Yes--after all, there was trouble--but Doņa Luisa!
+
+In his perturbation he turned, and again held out his hand.
+
+"Adios, seņor," he repeated; "but you coming back for sure. To San Juan
+all people coming back some time. You go with the horses across the
+deserts?"
+
+"Yes, I am going across the deserts. Adios!"
+
+[Music: _El Corazon_.]
+
+    Yo te he de amar,
+    te he de amar
+    hasta muerte,
+    Y si pudiera--
+    Yo te a maria despues.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+He had crossed the ranges twice and returned, but the City of the Angels
+had lost its old witchery.
+
+The rose-tinted dawns, and the amethystine dusks were beautiful as ever,
+but to banish the memories he had once dreamed over there, he galloped
+alone to the harbor called "The Hell of California," and lay all one day
+on the beach, and stared moodily at the waves whipping the yellow sands
+of San Pedro.
+
+To the south there, far beyond the prosaic stretch of grazing-lands
+bordered by the sea, beyond all the tame levels where the water was
+green or yellow in the shallows, beyond all the jutting points, veiled
+in the miles of mists, he could follow in his mind each curve, until
+the one valley of beauty would gleam like a green jewel seen from the
+cliffs of San Juan.
+
+And at the foot of those cliffs there were no flat stretches of color
+such as make weary the eye; the water there held all the shimmering,
+bewitching, iridescence of a peacock's feathers,--the gold and purple,
+the greens and the blues ever changing,--the strange touch of pink
+making it all glorious in certain glints of the sunlight; and at the
+edge of it all, the fringe of foam--a string of pearls shattered on the
+brown cliffs or sandy beach, and gathered up to be dashed again and
+again and again--the endless garniture of old Ocean's robe.
+
+Never on any other shore had mere waves, running to the sand, the same
+witchery. Alvara had said that all men came back some day to San Juan.
+What witchery was it by which its mesa and its valley and its wonderful
+shore were forever set apart from other shores of California? Some
+mystery of life brooded there from sea to mountain, suggesting so much
+which was left for poor humanity to solve; it was only a whispered
+suggestion, dim and delightful, as the music of the waves heard from the
+Mission plaza, or as dreamy as the high film of fog, drifting high up
+and tempering the sun's rays until they fell softly as a benediction on
+the valley between blue sea and blue summit.
+
+[Illustration: "NEVER ON ANY OTHER SHORE"]
+
+His own life stretched before him like the brown levels and yellow
+flatness of San Pedro; and there to the south, miles across the ranges,
+was the heart of the dreamland he must not enter: another man had that
+claim under fence. He gave voice to some self-condemnation of a sort
+reserved for men who go _loco_ over a woman who forgets, and after hours
+of brooding there alone by the shore, arrived at only one decision--the
+California of the south ranges was no longer his own. All the width of
+it was now narrowed to one little valley, where the poppies flamed over
+forgotten graves and adobe walls, and the doves circled above a ruined
+chancel.
+
+He rode into town, where some kind friends mentioned that Don Rafael
+Arteaga and his bride were being _fęted_ by the leading Spanish families
+of Los Angeles, and he was invited to a dinner in their honor a week
+hence.
+
+"I go to Mexico--I start to-day," he answered, briefly. Ten minutes
+before, he had not thought of it.
+
+"To Mexico? You cover ground fast these days, Don Keith. On the new road
+of iron they mean to make, you could not go so much faster than on the
+horses you ride; you have the good American luck in the pick of them."
+
+"Yes, the good American luck!" said Keith Bryton, with a touch of
+bitterness. "May your saints send you a better!"
+
+A man who stood near, and who much desired the invitation Bryton had
+refused, shrugged his shoulders as the Americano mounted his horse and
+rode away.
+
+"What better luck could a man have, than a chance to meet Doņa Raquel
+Estevan de Arteaga?" he queried of any who might care to answer. "The
+bishop himself shows her honor, and they say she is working for the
+Church against Downing, the Englishman, who holds the Mission lands
+under Pico's sale. Sixteen years has the Church fought for those lands
+in the courts; if she gets them back, she deserves the pope's blessing.
+And the fool boy of an Americano rides south when he could meet
+her--perhaps touch her hand!"
+
+But the fool Americano rode south and kept on riding south for many
+dusty days. He crossed a corner of the Yaqui country, and then across
+the ranges to the old mine, called the Mine of the Temple--the one of
+which he had told Don Juan Alvara--was it so few weeks ago? It might
+have been years instead of weeks, by his own feeling and attitude of
+mind. He was riding back a different man. He evaded the few Mexicans as
+he neared the mine; no turn of the trail was lonely for him. Memory
+kept pace, and the murmur of one girl's voice spoke through the rustling
+leaves of the mountains.
+
+A travelling priest, jubilant at the idea of comradeship, hailed him in
+one of the mountain passes, and found him but a sorry companion.
+
+"This is a country," said the padre, "where the sight of a white face is
+most welcome. Six months since I was sent to this parish, and few of
+them have I seen. Now, I ride out of my way just to talk with an
+American who works a mine up here. Your brother, is it? Well, he has a
+good name with the brown folks. A lot of pagans they are! It is not a
+priest they need here; it is a missionary the bishop should send to
+teach them their religion anew. If ever they had any, it has been lost."
+
+But it was evidently the opinion of the padre that they had never really
+secured any to lose. He discoursed at some length on the failure of the
+Church to impress upon them the advantage of marriage. Few were the
+wedding fees to be obtained from the Mexicans, while the heathen Indians
+had some form of their own, arranged by the head of their clan, and it
+was a disgrace to a land held under cross and crown for two
+centuries--an endless shame!
+
+Keith assented, without heeding the list of Indian iniquities. He was
+rather glad, after all, that Teddy had a civilized neighbor, willing to
+be companionable. Teddy liked people too well to exile himself from them
+but for the one thing--to go back north, able to cover one white throat
+with pearls, or two white hands with diamonds.
+
+His greeting of his half-brother was a bit shy, though wholly glad, and
+the padre served to bridge over the first few awkward moments. Both men
+recognized the fact of a change in each since the Los Angeles days.
+Teddy thought it due only to his clandestine marriage, and Keith felt
+guilty as he realized how little, how very little, Teddy's marriage
+meant to him now. While the padre was getting acquainted with the
+Mexican, the two brothers walked apart, and talked of the chances of the
+mine's success, and the failure of the backers to see the necessity of
+using money more freely on the enterprise.
+
+"It's there, you know," insisted Teddy; "all this district is flooded
+with stories of the ore taken out of it in the first days of the
+Spaniards; then the Indians descended upon them, and there was a
+slaughter, and no Spaniard dared venture into these hills for a
+century."
+
+"Yes. We put in a good many fruitless days trailing those old legends,"
+assented Keith, "but only the Indian superstition tends to show that
+this is the real mine of that history. The rich one may not have been
+on this side of the mountain, since you have not yet struck the lode."
+
+"Don't let's talk about it, if you feel that way," suggested Teddy, "I
+hear plenty of that from the others; and you didn't really come all the
+way down here to talk mines. Say, old chap, you acted like a prince over
+the--well, the wedding. I felt pretty nearly three inches higher when I
+got your letter. I--I know I acted like a kid, but Angela wanted it
+arranged so; and--as she about filled the whole horizon--"
+
+"Cut out the explanation, Teddy. A man is never sure of himself until
+the right woman crosses his trail--or the wrong one. God knows I'm not
+fit for alcalde in the case. At least, you married your wife."
+
+Teddy stared at him an instant, and then shouted with laughter.
+
+"Married my wife? Well, rather! How else could she be my wife?"
+
+Keith avoided the frank boyish blue eyes of Teddy, and turned away,
+seating himself on a great bowlder and staring across the little
+semicircle of the caņon basin, to where gnarled century-old trees
+reached grotesque arms above some old stone ruins and fragments of
+marble. Teddy looked at him an instant, and then whistled softly.
+
+"If it were any other man than you, Keith, I'd think--but it's too
+ridiculous!"
+
+"Say it," suggested Keith.
+
+"Well, I'd say the wrong woman had crossed _your_ trail."
+
+"Not the wrong one."
+
+"Good Lord! you don't mean that by any chance it is at last the right
+one?"
+
+"At last--the right woman."
+
+"And you sit there looking as solemn over it as a wooden Mexican god!
+Wake up, old fellow, and tell about her."
+
+"There is nothing to tell. She is the right woman, and I shall never see
+her again."
+
+"Keith!"
+
+"And I've come back here to tell myself so," continued Keith, doggedly;
+"to say it over and over, and beat it into my brain, if I have any left.
+The desert didn't help me--I thought this might."
+
+"This?"
+
+"These hills, and--speaking of it."
+
+His brother said nothing, only looked at him in wonder, as he rose with
+hands thrust in pockets and walked the length of the little terrace
+formed by the refuse of the mine. The two brothers had changed places.
+It was now Keith, the cool, the indifferent, who had crossed some line
+of emotional experience where speech was a relief--Keith, of all men!
+Teddy wondered who the woman could be; she would be worth seeing.
+
+"So you see, Ted," observed the other, with a forced laugh, "you need
+not explain things to me. When the woman comes, none of us cares much
+what the other fellow thinks."
+
+"If she is the right woman, I'm mighty sorry, old man, that it's going
+to be as you say--that you are not going to see her again."
+
+"Don't waste good sorrow! I'm the only fool in the case--she doesn't
+care."
+
+"That's not so easy to believe," declared Teddy, loyally. "You probably
+only asked her once, and then hit the trail before she could change her
+mind."
+
+"Ask her. When people care, words are not so necessary."
+
+"Perhaps not, but girls do expect words; though the right girl--"
+
+"She doesn't know that she was the right girl; I may not have made it
+clear. I was a fool who dreamed dreams and believed them true. Talking
+about it doesn't help. I thought it might; that's all."
+
+He continued to walk the terrace, as though with a certain impatience at
+having let go of himself. Teddy regarded him for a few moments of
+awkward silence. Keith had never been demonstrative, and this sudden
+confidence caught Teddy unprepared. He felt ill at ease, realizing that
+it was no light sentiment, causing him to let go of himself and speak.
+
+"I reckon this particular mountain must be bewitched," he said at last.
+"The only other time you talked of a girl--any special girl--was after
+we were led across yon range by that girl of the convent. Even then you
+talked of her only when the knock on your head sent you luny. What was
+the name they called her? Spirit--Doņa Spirit--Doņa Espiritu! That is
+it! I really thought for a few days of your ravings that we were going
+to have a nun in the family; and now it's a new girl!"
+
+Keith regarded him for a moment, then in silence took out tobacco and
+made a cigarette. Of what use were words?
+
+"I always wondered who that girl was and what became of her," continued
+Teddy. "The old padre was as dumb as an oyster on the subject. Did you
+learn more than her name?"
+
+"Not much," said Keith, briefly.
+
+"I always meant to. Funny how those crack-brained Indians let up on the
+attack that night, when she slipped that ring on your finger and held up
+your hand for them to see. It was the last thing I noted before I
+keeled over. Those Indians have not forgotten that. They knew when I
+came back here, and they seemed to watch either the mine or me,--I don't
+know which it is. Once they asked an old Mexican for you; he speaks
+their lingo. They described you as 'the man of the ring.'"
+
+"That's queer."
+
+"Did the girl tell you what the ring meant?"
+
+"Meant?" repeated Keith, questioningly.
+
+"Yes. To the tribe, it means more than a mere ring. The old Mexican
+gathered that much. It had something the significance of a sceptre, and
+was worn only by one of the rulers in the old days. When that girl put
+it on your finger, the tribe thought it meant that she had picked you
+out for marriage. She didn't tell you?"
+
+"No, she didn't tell me."
+
+"Well, it's all that saved our lives that night. You know the old padre
+is dead. It was he did the sleight-of-hand work in getting the girl out
+of sight before you got on your feet again. With some threat of eternal
+flames, he shut the lips of every Mexican I tried to bribe to find her."
+
+Keith took the cigarette from his lips, and looked at him without
+speaking. Teddy smiled and nodded.
+
+"Yes, I looked for her without your knowing it. You came nearer going
+'over the range' in that fever than you ever realized. The English
+doctor down there asked me who the devil 'Espiritu' was, and said that
+she could probably do more to lower your temperature than his drugs. I
+tried to locate her, as soon as I could hobble on a crutch, but it was
+no use. The padre said she had taken the black veil: that shut us out."
+
+"Yes, of course," assented Keith, absently.
+
+"You never mentioned her name after you got on your feet, so I figured
+that it did not really mean anything. Girls never did mean much to you,
+individually, Keith,--until now."
+
+"Until now."
+
+"And now it's no use, since you can't see her again."
+
+Keith puffed away in thoughtful silence before he spoke.
+
+"Perhaps not. Yet--_quien sabe_? A sentiment may be like a sunrise,
+lifting clouds for you and making you see things--things within yourself
+you never suspected were there. Our trail in these hills followed the
+light of the morning star once, and we got out of the wilderness to
+safety: that star has meant something to me ever since. I can't possess
+it, but the meaning of it is mine. I can't give myself to the right
+woman,"--and he held out his hand and looked at it,--"but no conventions
+of the world, no man-made walls can prevent the thought of me from going
+to her--the thought which, after all, is the real me. When that is so,
+who can say that even an unknown love has not its own uses? It may prove
+the illumination of a whole lifetime."
+
+Teddy, with wonder in his eyes, laid his hand on his brother's shoulder.
+"Old man, that kind of feeling is beyond me. I want my girl with me, and
+I want her mighty bad. I've lived beside you all my life, and never
+dreamed it was in you to care like that for any woman. It only shows how
+little we know, after all."
+
+"Yes; how little, after all, until the right woman crosses the trail."
+
+"The chances are that we can never talk of it again. I know you _that_
+much! I told you this old hill of the temple was uncanny--bewitched,--and
+it is. You never would have mentioned this to me in civilized places."
+
+"Perhaps not," agreed Keith. "And you're right--I could never speak of
+it again."
+
+They never did. That night they talked only of Teddy's enterprise, and
+covered much paper with many figures, and made fine plans for the
+future.
+
+The next day it was that Keith, hunting in the hills, heard an unusual
+blast from the mine, felt the ground tremble from the shock, and turning
+back on the trail, met a Mexican with a bleeding hand and a cut face,
+who urged him to hasten. It was the word of the padre!
+
+He reached Teddy's side only in time to accept "Angela--poor little
+Angela--" as a life-long legacy. There had been an explosion. Graves
+were made for the young engineer and three of his Mexican miners on the
+side of the mountain. When it was all over, Keith Bryton climbed to the
+heights above, where the broken walls of stone showed white and gray
+among forest growth on the temple terrace. Below, and beyond the ranges,
+lay the world. In his isolation of grief, he felt as alone as the
+solitary mountain rising from the plain below, through which a river
+ran. Far down the river, miles away, gleamed a cross on the chapel of a
+convent. It was the old Mexican pueblo of which he had told Alvara. He
+remembered saying to the old man that he would never come back; yet here
+he was. How useless to say what one will or will not do in this world!
+One must make allowance for the moves fate insists upon in the game of
+life.
+
+Back of him, on a slight elevation, stood some broken columns, and
+half an arch yet showed where an entrance had been, and under a dwarfed
+and twisted oak half covered with tropical vines a bench of marble
+gleamed. Two birds fluttered to the ground near him and turned
+inquisitive eyes on the intruder. He watched them carelessly, until one
+of them perched on a fallen block of stone ornamented with the
+sculptured sun of the Aztecs. It brought back like a flash that other
+day when he went from the presence of death to a ruined altar-place,
+where the Aztec sun and the cactus commemorated some unknown Mexican
+sculptor who cut the symbol of the faith of his people into the walls of
+a Christian church.
+
+He closed his eyes, and the vision of that other day was only
+intensified. The wind in the oaks back of him sounded like the surf on
+San Juan's beach; and through it the slow, fateful words of a girl
+kneeling in her wedding-veil echoed in his ears as it had done a
+thousand times:
+
+"So long--as--we--both--shall live!"
+
+There were no weeping girls here, and no bells to toll out the death
+message; but otherwise the atmosphere of the place, and the illusion,
+were perfect. How--how had he chanced to enter into this half-pagan
+atmosphere of death? Unconsciously, automatically, he turned and
+re-turned on his finger the onyx ring at which Angela had laughed.
+
+He was still seated there when the miners who had filled the graves came
+up the path, and with them the priest from the plains below. The
+Mexicans halted outside the broken walls. Only one Indian, who had
+followed at a distance, crossed the line of entrance, and stood apart,
+watching and listening in a furtive way--watching the American
+especially.
+
+"Many times I have heard of this place," said the priest, "but never
+before have I been so far into the mountain. There are strange old
+traditions of it in the accounts some of the early padres left. Their
+king or chief became Christian and gave his sons to the Church, but the
+main body of the people kept to many of their pagan rites. And this was
+their temple. The men ask me if you continue with the mining, seņor."
+
+He noticed they all listened for the answer, and looked relieved when he
+said, "No."
+
+"They are all very glad, seņor. They ask me to tell you they have no ill
+will, but they say not any of their men will go into the mine of the
+temple."
+
+"Some superstition?"
+
+"It seems so. They say one man always dies when outsiders meddle with
+the mountain, but never before have three men died at once. They ask
+you to let the company know that none of them will come back."
+
+"Very good," and Bryton arose and picked up the sombrero he had dropped
+beside him. "I will tell them to bring foreigners if they mean to keep
+on; but I doubt it. The cave-in down there means a fortune to dig out. I
+don't think they have the capital."
+
+He was turning away, when he noticed the Indian.
+
+"Is he a workman?"
+
+The others exchanged glances, and then one of them stepped forward.
+
+"No, seņor. He is one of the mountain people. No one knows where they
+live. I know a little of their talk. He says for us all to go away, or
+worse things will always happen. He--he wants to speak to you."
+
+"Well?"
+
+The man hesitated, and then said a few words, and the Indian replied in
+a strange jargon with peculiar aspirated syllables.
+
+"He says," continued the interpreter, hesitatingly, "to ask if she is to
+come back."
+
+"She?"
+
+Bryton's face flushed, as the priest looked at him curiously.
+
+"You have known those people before?"
+
+"I--my brother and I were lost once in the forest here. We--well, we
+were made to feel we had trespassed; but some one--a sort of missionary
+among them--made them lead us to the plain. It would have been better if
+my brother had never come back."
+
+"And--?"
+
+The priest noticed Bryton's hesitation; so did the Indian, for he walked
+direct to him, and pointed to the ring he wore, and looked from the ring
+to Bryton's face.
+
+"Tell him," said the American, "that she is a man's wife, and lives in a
+lovely land."
+
+"You see her--some day?" asked the Indian.
+
+"No--not ever again--perhaps."
+
+The Indian bent his head, and with a slight gesture as of farewell,
+turned and walked swiftly away from them, around the bend of the
+mountain.
+
+"Your words have an unusual interest," said the priest, as they walked
+down toward the plain. "They suggest that the missionary might be the
+one they spoke of here as the Indian nun."
+
+"This lady was not Indian," said Keith, decidedly. "Her skin was whiter
+than either yours or mine. The Indians called her Doņa Espiritu! It was
+the only name they knew her by."
+
+"It was the same, and her father's name was Estevan," said the priest,
+quietly.
+
+"Yes, I know now. His name was Estevan, but--"
+
+"And he was the man who died the awful death up there." And he pointed
+back to the temple.
+
+"No!" Bryton stopped on the path and faced the priest, thus halting the
+entire procession at a point where a yawning gulf of a caņon reached to
+unseen depths below.
+
+"For the love of Christ--seņor!" screamed the priest, while the Mexicans
+in the rear clung to their burros and swore.
+
+"The man who was killed left no child," persisted Bryton. "I heard the
+story."
+
+"A daughter was born six months after his death--after the wife had
+taken the black veil of eternal renunciation of the world," declared the
+priest, solemnly. "Now, seņor, for the love of God, will you let us find
+safer footing?"
+
+"Oh, yes. Pardon me!" and Bryton continued thoughtfully along the trail
+to the plain below. When they reached a broader road where it was
+possible to ride abreast, he asked one more question.
+
+"Father, does she know?"
+
+"Not unless some in the world have told her. Here, the old priest, her
+uncle, had power enough over the wild tribe to make them promise they
+would not tell her until she had lived twenty years. He died ten years
+ago, but they kept faith. There are some people in the world who had to
+know,--the lawyers and judges who settled the estate,--for Estevan was a
+man of wealth. He carried wounds here from the war for California. The
+child thought he died from the effects of those. Out in the world where
+she has gone, that wild barbaric outbreak of her mother's people will
+never be known; and of the few who have learned it who would tell her?"
+
+"True, father: who would?"
+
+[Music: _La Passion Funesta_]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+He did not go north for a month. His letter to Angela contained a check,
+which she at once invested in very becoming mourning, for which she of
+course had to journey to Los Angeles.
+
+With her went Don Eduardo Downing and his wife, Doņa Maria, who, with
+Rafael, had unpleasant business to transact with the bishop, and were
+irritable in consequence. Bryton called upon them at the home of the
+ex-Governor of California. After Angela's first emotional outburst at
+the details of Teddy's death and burial,--and regret that a Protestant
+clergyman was not to be had,--she managed to come back to subjects
+nearer home, and retail a few of the changes since the death of Doņa
+Luisa.
+
+There had not been time for many. Yet--well--there had been the
+marriage, of course; and the relations who thought it so fine a thing
+that Rafael married an heiress and a saint were not so sure now. The
+tone of Angela and her slight shrug of contempt showed that she shared
+their doubts.
+
+Raquel Estevan de Arteaga was in the city. She had ridden the sixty
+miles on horseback, and all the old Spanish families were entertaining
+her in a style magnificent as their means would allow; but all who cared
+to have her must invite no heretic Americans, and it was understood to
+be a promise to Doņa Luisa. She did not wish to meet the
+English-speaking people; not one had yet crossed her threshold; even Don
+Eduardo, sharing some business interests with her husband, was not
+welcomed, because he held fields of the old Mission, for which the
+Church was fighting in the courts of law.
+
+The bishop himself had set the pace for courtesy toward Raquel. He had
+called on her personally, had a long private interview (Angela's opinion
+of clerical private interviews with young wives was expressed by another
+shrug), and he made a point of calling on several families where she
+visited.
+
+Doņa Maria was of course justly offended. Her estates had been greater
+than those of the Arteagas, and her family name was older in the land
+than Estevan, which after all was only Spanish for Stevens. On this
+subject it was easy to see Angela agreed perfectly with the wife of her
+cousin. Each had built her own plan for certain social supremacies in
+the little kingdom of San Juan, but neither had reckoned with the fact
+that the girl from a convent in Mexico would assume a rule there such as
+no one else had ever dared attempt, and emphasize it by barring out
+heretics, even when married into Catholic families.
+
+What Rafael thought of it no one yet knew. He hated the old Mission,
+above all places. The only time it was worth while was when the dances
+were held in the old dining-room; and when his mother died he thought of
+course no woman would ever wish to live there. A town residence was
+assured, and thus closer connection with the new, progressive people.
+But the bride of a day had decided differently: when a home befitting
+their station was built for her in San Juan, she would move to it; until
+then the Mission rooms would serve, and they must arrange it with the
+bishop.
+
+To tell her that the bishop no longer had jurisdiction over the property
+was of no use whatever. She had listened quietly to the legal details of
+the auction sale, when it had all been bought by Eduardo Downing and
+Miguel Arteaga.
+
+"That is right, to buy it when the place was sold for debt; any son of
+the Church should do that," she conceded; "but to hold it,--to treat it
+as a quarry from which to mine bricks and blocks of stone,--may the
+saints intercede for your brother in his grave, who did such wickedness!
+If your mother had known that a son of hers was fighting in the courts
+of law against the Church, it would have killed her the day the word
+reached her. If you people value money more than the blessing of God, I
+will give you money for it--to you and your English partner; but not
+another blast of powder must shatter the place of the altar."
+
+It was in vain they told her Doņa Maria had a pious plan to blow down
+the stonework--the most magnificent monument of such Indian labor ever
+erected in that part of Mexico which is now United States,--and to build
+on its site an adobe chapel of her own design. Raquel Estevan de Arteaga
+listened quietly to all the plans, but shook her head.
+
+"It is sacrilege; it shall not be," she repeated. "Since gold is the god
+of the English people, we will give them gold."
+
+"But you forget, beloved," put in Rafael. "Doņa Maria is Catholic--is
+Spanish--is--"
+
+"Rafael," said his bride, quietly, "will you listen a little? Then it
+will be no need to speak of those things again--we will both
+understand. The padre comes a stranger to San Juan as I do, but he comes
+from a strange land, and cares not anything for these different races.
+But I have all the names of those people from your mother, that I know
+whom to avoid in this life--and in the next."
+
+"My mother was one of the old Spanish people; they were slow. Times
+change."
+
+"Yes, times did change when men like Alvarado were pushed aside and a
+quadroon ruled the politics and the Mission property. Thus California
+paved the way for American rule. In politics and business men must meet
+unpleasant people often, but it is not ever necessary for the ladies of
+any family to do so; and, Rafael, here before your padre, two things I
+must say. The heretics I have promised never to meet except as God sends
+them in our path. As for the Spanish ladies you mention, if you do not
+know that there is not a woman of noble Spanish blood in the length of
+this valley, then you shut your eyes very tight when you might see. The
+daughters of Don Juan Alvara have one Spanish strain in them; the others
+are mixed people of Mexican, Indian, and negro, and few of them care to
+remember their grandmothers. When you bring into my house Spanish ladies
+of good breeding, I shall be glad to make them welcome, but I do not
+care for the substitutes. The Indios by the river are of more interest,
+for they need to be taught."
+
+This conversation had been repeated by Padre Andros to Doņa Maria over a
+game of _malilla_ and a glass of the new American drink called
+whiskey,--a gift from the army officers, and enjoyed very much by the
+ladies of San Juan; it suggested a drink made of chilis, because of the
+appetizing burn it gave the throat.
+
+Padre Andros was frightened when he saw the effect of his recital. Doņa
+Maria was not so stout as most of the women of the mixed races; but as
+he saw the dark color mount luridly to her face, and her eyes look
+almost bloodshot with sudden fury, he set down the glass of whiskey to
+cross himself, and dropped an ace in his perturbation.
+
+"For the love of God! seņora," he exclaimed; and then it was Angela
+entered the room and found her cousin's wife ill with a fury she durst
+express only in prayers and maledictions against this girl brought to
+San Juan by Doņa Luisa to ruin them all!
+
+Only fragments of the cause of her fury reached Angela, despite all her
+sudden sympathetic interest in the wife of her cousin, to whom she had
+heretofore been rather indifferent. But she pieced the fragments
+together, and as she told them to Bryton he could, with his own
+knowledge of the early racial mixtures in the land, get a very fair idea
+of the situation. The girl from Mexico had dared open the closet of a
+forgotten skeleton.
+
+"Of course she rules Rafael just now, to a certain extent," conceded
+Angela, carelessly. "He sees the Church and half the town at her feet
+here; she is a novelty, and he sees everyone turn to look at her. But at
+San Juan she will find no one at her feet, and her churchmen will be far
+enough away. The padre there detests her; she stopped him from selling
+bricks from the cloister pillars."
+
+"The padre and Doņa Maria should make a strong team," observed Bryton.
+"The woman need be strong to win against them--is she?"
+
+"How do I know? I've never spoken to her. She has nasty eyes. That's all
+I can remember of her."
+
+"Nasty?"
+
+"Oh, it is the expression. I saw them once, and she made me nervous.
+Perhaps it was because she divined that I was one of the 'accursed
+heretics.' I understand that is the way the lower order speak of
+Protestants!"
+
+"But she cannot be quite of the lower order, can she? Her father was of
+the best Spanish and American blood ever joined on this coast, far
+above the Arteagas."
+
+"Oh! So you also look up pedigrees here; I wonder why."
+
+"It is a country where you hear of them without question," he returned,
+indifferently. "The people are always sparring among themselves and
+referring to their ancestors--if they dare. Doņa Luisa was a pure-blood
+Spanish woman, but the Arteagas had a bad Indian and Mexican streak. She
+saw it develop in her own children, and it gave her a bad fright. She
+counted on this marriage bringing the last of them back to the old
+conservative manner of life."
+
+"Ah!" She shrugged her shoulders contemptuously; "but you forget that
+Raquel, the present Seņora Arteaga, has also a Mexican streak."
+
+"No, I don't forget; but there are high class and low of every race.
+Noble Indians and high-class Mexicans have gone into history. The
+American makes a great mistake when he judges the high classes by the
+masses. In this land one has to dig out the facts of each individual
+line, if he wants to know the truth of a pedigree. But the lady from
+Mexico seems to have drawn her distinctions very closely, and realizing
+her own superiority, she dares dictate."
+
+"Even to her--husband?" There was just the slightest possible hesitation
+at the title.
+
+"Why not, if she is the superior?"
+
+"But--oh, can't you see how all these marriages are a barter-and-sale
+family affair,--money that is married, instead of people? If she was in
+love with him as a--a real woman would be, she never would know she was
+superior, never! Not that I believe she is," she added with a shrug; "to
+me she looks as wooden as the saints on her own altar."
+
+He arose and walked to the window, staring out over the heads of the
+people.
+
+"She may not be wooden to those she cares for," he said at last.
+
+"Perhaps not; but I'm certain of one thing: if she ever cared for any
+one, it is not the man she married. If she cared, she would forget that
+rigid fanatic sense of duty sometimes."
+
+"I came to talk of your affairs," he said, abruptly. "Teddy left some
+mining shares; they may pan out later on. I have talked with a lawyer
+about them; this is his address," and he handed her a slip of paper.
+"Whatever funds are procurable he will turn over to you quarterly. Is
+there anything else I can do for you at present?"
+
+"Yes," she returned; "you might be a bit human and sympathetic. You
+seem to forget," and her red lip quivered in self-pity, "how utterly
+alone I am among these Mexicans, and all their women jealous as fiends."
+
+He regarded her with a long, steady stare, and then smiled as he rose.
+
+"I don't blame them," he observed, quietly. "You have given more
+attention to several of their men than you ever gave to poor Ted.
+Where's your baby?"
+
+"Heavens! Do you suppose I could drag her on this trip, and a Mexican or
+Indian nurse?" she demanded, impatiently. "That's so like a man! They
+think a woman with a child should be merely a domestic animal, like
+those dunces of Spanish women. I feel as if I were in jail, hedged
+around with all their conventions. I don't dare walk on the street
+alone, or with a man; I don't dare ride in a carriage with a man, and
+it's no pleasure to go with those empty-headed women. Doņa Maria is as
+bad as the rest since I'm in mourning; it is a sort of prison,
+forbidding the wearer a free breath!"
+
+"Take it off," he suggested, so quietly that he quite deceived her, and
+she uttered a little cry of shocked appeal.
+
+"Keith! And poor Teddy--"
+
+"Angela!" and his hand fell heavy on her shoulder, "listen to me just
+once. When Ted was alive I could bear to hear you mention his name, but
+now that he is dead I--can't. He belongs to me now, and I forbid it."
+
+"Keith!" She gasped again, but this time in sheer fright. "And the
+money--the shares you--"
+
+He laughed mirthlessly, and took his hand from her shoulder. His moment
+of feeling gave place to amused appreciation of the real woman poor Ted
+had never known.
+
+"Who says women are inconsistent?" he queried. "You are a living
+illustration of the contrary. I have never seen you vary a
+hair's-breadth from my first instinctive feeling concerning you, you
+pretty baby kitten! You needn't look so frightened; you will get
+whatever money is in reach. Now, don't go to whimpering! Get on your
+bonnet, if Doņa Maria may think it allowable for me to take you both for
+a carriage drive. I promised Ted to do things for you, and I must make a
+beginning."
+
+"Is that the only reason?" she began, with righteous indignation.
+
+"That is the only reason, my lady," he returned. "Are you coming?"
+
+A little later they were rolling along Spring Street, past the plaza,
+and many heads turned to look at the golden-haired girlish little figure
+in mourning, drooping beside Doņa Maria, whose rigid, unsmiling, dark
+features were the best possible foil. Keith Bryton, sitting opposite,
+noticed the admiration she aroused. The caballeros who had swept
+sombreros to the ground at the passage of the carriage in which Raquel
+and the bishop were riding did so as a matter of reverence to a devotee;
+but the rule of the woman whom Keith had called a baby kitten would
+always be one of childish appeal, personal to a degree.
+
+Looking at her cynically, he tried to fancy her twenty years ahead,--the
+mother of a grown daughter,--but failed. The daughter would have to be
+guardian; the mother would always need one. She was watching him
+furtively to see the effect this open admiration might have upon him. He
+was the one man of them all who had ever dared treat her so carelessly.
+His attitude had piqued her to the point where she had a brief tigerish
+desire to rend his heart--his affections--if he had any! And Teddy was
+the weapon.
+
+Of course she had regretted it all--there were other men with so much
+more money. Still, as it had turned out, it was not so bad. She was
+installed as a member of his family, and that was better than to
+depend entirely on the cousinship to the Mexican Doņa Maria. She was
+really a little afraid of the swarthy black-browed women of the country.
+To be sure, they sat around in fat content, with their bits of
+embroidery or drawn work, and seemed to see nothing else; but she had
+seen Doņa Maria whip an Indian servant with her own hands one day, and
+the blind rage in the dark face had ever after made Angela a trifle more
+respectful. It was not nice to be entirely at the mercy of ignorant
+power. Don Eduardo was always ready with gold pieces for a pretty woman,
+but even the distant cousinhood might not be all the protection required
+for a lady of Angela's beauty, if any animosity should ever take root in
+Doņa Maria's mind.
+
+So it was all well as things stood. Keith Bryton would, she knew, keep
+to both letter and spirit of any promise he had made poor Teddy, and she
+felt sure the fond boy had exacted much of the brother who he thought
+could accomplish all things.
+
+Thus she decided, as she watched and weighed his apparent amused
+indifference to the admiration she excited. Fair women were at a premium
+in the City of the Angels. He had just arrived from the dusky tribes of
+Mexico; before that he had ranged the desert land; but she realized with
+resentment that no beauty of hers would ever make an oasis for him.
+The men who did admire her he regarded as fools.
+
+He saw her glance from him, and she set her white teeth together with a
+little click of absolute frustration. She had accepted his ungracious
+invitation in order to show him the admiration her mere appearance on
+the drive would excite, and it all weighed not an iota. Would he ever
+really care for any one? Had he ever cared?
+
+Then he moved his hand, and the sun gleamed on the ring he wore, the
+Mexican onyx with the Aztec eagle. It recalled the adventure over which
+she had laughed at the Mission. She had never believed Teddy when he
+declared that Keith's attraction for that queer Mexican nun was a
+serious fact. Teddy knew so little, so very little, of the real feelings
+of either men or women. He had gone to his death buoyed for any sort of
+adventure by the absolute conviction that his wife adored him. Poor
+Teddy! Never would any woman be able to fool Keith Bryton like
+that,--not even the woman he would care for, if she ever did appear.
+
+While she thought so, and watched him, his face grew suddenly rigid and
+colorless. The carriage of the bishop came down the street, the
+palomentos with their golden coats and silver manes and tails shining
+like satin in the sunlight. Rafael sat with his back to the horses,
+looking very much bored indeed, but beside the bishop sat the woman who
+had faced her on the hill of San Juan, and who had held her horse in the
+middle of the road.
+
+She was prepared for the sudden light of appreciation in Rafael's
+beautiful eyes, as he lifted his hat and let his glance linger and meet
+hers for one swift instant of comprehension, but she was not prepared
+for the sudden leaning forward of his dark-browed bride, and the quick
+look with which she took in the two women in the carriage, and then the
+colorless face of their escort.
+
+He looked at her levelly as he lifted his hat in acknowledgment of her
+husband's salutation. If his glance held ever so slight a suggestion of
+warning, it was unheeded by her. Her dark eyes glowed, her red lips
+parted and lost their color as she rested one slender jewelled hand on
+the carriage frame, and stared at him with incredulous eyes; one could
+see that she did not even breathe as the carriages whirled past each
+other; at least Angela noted it.
+
+By turning her head she saw Rafael put out his hand suddenly to his
+wife, who had sunk back on the cushions beside the bishop. His manner
+suggested that he thought her ill. Keith could see the same without
+turning his head. But even after he observed the lace-draped shoulders
+straighten themselves, and the head held again proudly erect under the
+mantilla, he continued to gaze after them, unconscious that the blue
+eyes opposite him were alive with curiosity.
+
+"One would think you were a long-lost brother, from the way that woman
+stared," she remarked. "One would think she would show more restraint
+when riding in state beside the bishop, and with her husband opposite."
+
+Keith recovered himself and turned his attention to her.
+
+"Was that Rafael Arteaga's wife?" he asked, carelessly. "I supposed it
+was, but have not had the honor of being presented."
+
+"Well, they told me she would not notice heretics, but one heretic was
+the only person she noticed in this carriage. How she looked at you! I
+told you she had nasty staring eyes, like augers boring through one. Did
+you see, Doņa Maria? Did you not fear she would disgrace us all by
+leaping into the carriage?"
+
+Doņa Maria's black, bead-like eyes were regarding the young man
+curiously.
+
+"It may be a custom of Mexico for ladies to show attention to strange
+men in that way," she observed, guardedly. "It may be so. I had never
+heard of it. The new lady of the Mission is teaching San Juan many new
+things, but I do not think she will teach it that sort of manners. They
+do not compare well with the American ladies' manners--no?"
+
+"I fancy it was only as your escort she was gracious enough to turn and
+look at me; she might have fancied I was known to her. She looks very
+young."
+
+"You would forget she was young if you heard her talk to the padre,"
+returned Doņa Maria, significantly. "It was enough to bring a
+malediction on all our heads to listen to it!"
+
+"The bishop has forgiven her; at least it looks so."
+
+"Oh, she is clever! He thinks she is a saint, this bishop. But the padre
+knows!"
+
+She did not add, "and I know," but her thin cold lips with their
+satisfied smile suggested as much, and Bryton, observing it, felt anew
+that the girl from Mexico had a strong team to fight in Doņa Maria and
+the padre.
+
+[Music: _The Magpie's Reveille_ (Indian Gambling Song)]
+
+    "A'a'a'i-ne! A'a'a'i-ne!
+    Ta'a'-ni-aine! Ta'a'-ni-aine!
+    Bita alkaigi dike yiska ne.
+      Gayelka'! Gayelka'!"
+
+            TRANSLATION.
+
+    The magpie, the magpie, here underneath,
+    In the white of his wings
+    are the footsteps of the morning.
+      It dawns! It dawns!
+
+[Music]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+When the night was old, and others slept, Raquel Arteaga crept in
+silence to the bedside of the old Indian woman of the hill tribe who had
+been her nurse, who was still her maid, and who was the one link she
+kept near her of the old life.
+
+"Tia Polonia, awake!" she said, briefly; and as the woman did so,
+frightened and full of questions, her mistress held up her hand and
+rested herself on the side of the pallet, regarding the dark old face
+with doubt.
+
+"Thy husband, beloved,--he has--"
+
+"It is not my husband this time, Polonia. He is quite safe at the
+gaming-table, and will come in at sunrise with empty pockets. It is not
+my husband. It is--" She paused a long time, scrutinizing every feature
+of the old woman, who grew gray of visage under those smouldering eyes,
+and her hands shook.
+
+"Darling, little one, thou art so like thy mother; more than ever when
+angry, and it is night; and I--Holy God! It is like a ghost comes to my
+bed to--to--ah, Doņa Espiritu--mia!--what is the anger in thine eyes?"
+
+"Can a dead woman be angry?" demanded her mistress drearily, the
+beautiful curved mouth quivering for an instant. "And it is a dead woman
+they have made of me--all of you! You lied to me, Polonia, when you
+brought word to me he had died there in Mexico!"
+
+The old woman covered her face with her hands, and sank back whimpering
+on the pallet.
+
+"I trusted you, and you lied to me, all of you!" the girl repeated in a
+hopeless tone of finality. "All these months he has been alive, and I
+have not known. You liars--liars--liars accursed!"
+
+The old woman uttered a smothered shriek, and buried her face in the
+blankets.
+
+"Not the curse, beloved, not the curse!" she begged, tremulously, "the
+curse of your people. It means--it means--Ai! not the curse, little one!
+Thou hast only meant to frighten me to tell you how it was, and I
+will--I will! Only, child of the spirits, Doņa Espiritu, bring not the
+curse!"
+
+[Illustration: "YOU LIED TO ME--ALL OF YOU!"]
+
+She cowered and mumbled in a sort of palsied fear, but the girl sat
+there untouched by her misery, looking at her drearily. Perhaps she had
+some slight hope of denial, but Polonia's gray face put that out of her
+reach.
+
+"Sit up," she commanded, and the old woman hastily scrambled into a
+sitting posture, but with her hands over her eyes, her body still
+rocking with fear. "Why did you do it?"
+
+Never before had Tia Polonia heard those hard cold tones from her
+"querida"--her little one--her nursling of other days. This girl sitting
+there erect in the glimmering light of the candle was really Doņa
+Espiritu of the tribe of the kings.
+
+"Excellencia," she muttered, "it is true; I did sin. But the padre gave
+me the word. He said your soul was lost; that the man had bewitched you
+as--as your little mother had been bewitched when she--when she left
+religion for your father, and in the end they both died--and so
+soon!--and--and I wanted you to live, Excellencia! and I wanted your
+soul to live; and--so it was I took the word of the padre to you, and
+told you he was dead--and wished that he was dead--but it was all no use
+at all! On his hand when the fever burned was your ring--it kept him
+alive and he could not die, and all day and all night he said, 'Doņa
+Espiritu! Doņa Espiritu!' The padre heard, and I heard. The American
+brother, he heard too, and asked the Indios who was Doņa Espiritu, and
+where did she live, that he might send for her. But it was no use. The
+padre made them all afraid for your soul, so that I told you the lie.
+Now it is all said, and my life is going out of my body at the curse of
+your anger."
+
+In fact, the fear in the old creature had worked on her own nerves, so
+that her final words were very faint. She spoke as one half swooning,
+and put out her hand in pitiful plea for help.
+
+"Ah--the good padre," said the girl, bitterly. "Well, you see how it has
+all ended. The padre died, and has gone to God to answer for the lie;
+and the man he wished dead is alive--alive--alive, and oh--Mother of
+God! is happy with--with--"
+
+Her cold self-control melted in a flood of tears, and she flung herself
+face down on the pallet beside the frightened Indian woman, her form
+shaken with shuddering sobs of absolute despair.
+
+The dawn was near. All the night she had walked in her room alone,
+stunned and wordless over this thing she could not fight, or reason, or
+pray away; and now, having heard it all,--even of his calls for her when
+unconscious,--she had let fall for the first time the cold mask she had
+worn since the death of Doņa Luisa, and since the significance of her
+vow had been revealed to her by the days and nights of Rafael's life.
+
+She wept in a wild abandonment of grief at the hopeless vista of years
+reaching on to the edge of the world where death is. It had all been
+dreary enough before; but now--
+
+When the birds began their welcome of the day she was still lying prone,
+but silent. The tempest of feeling had passed, and her Indian woman
+stroked her hair softly, and waited, and did not speak. At last she
+rose, and looked out on the yellowing light touching the purple of the
+mountains.
+
+"This is only a dream of the night, Polonia," she said, with a great
+sigh; "sleep again, and forget it all."
+
+But the old woman clung with trembling hands to the folds of the girl's
+gown, and rested her cheek on the silken slippers.
+
+"And the curse, darling? what of the curse of the lie?"
+
+"Curses come home to the people who utter them," said the girl,
+drearily. "On my head they all lie--the curse by which I was made blind
+for a little, little while of life, and which now allows me to see when
+it is too late. The curse of God has followed our people; no blessing of
+the Church can wipe it out."
+
+"But I--I--beloved?"
+
+"The sin that is for love is not so black a sin, and it was your love
+the padre trusted to--your fear that I was bewitched and lost. But it is
+all over; we are in a new land, and this is a new life."
+
+"And--he is happy--without thee?"
+
+"I have seen his wife; people call her beautiful. I saw him almost
+touching her, yet I did not scream."
+
+"Mother of God! his wife!"
+
+"I heard her name,--it was enough. His I did not need to ask; I
+remembered."
+
+"But--dear one--it is better that he is married. Pardon, beloved--I am
+at thy feet, and I feel thy heartache. But, after all, is it not to
+thank the saints that he is married?"
+
+"Perhaps. Otherwise, he might say to me some day, 'Come!' And the
+witchcraft of the ring might hold, and--"
+
+"Holy Mother! and then--"
+
+"And I--God knows what I might do, Polonia."
+
+And then the old Indian woman was left alone, mumbling prayers and
+crossing herself.
+
+Later she got up and went to the priest of Our Lady of the Angels and
+brought a bottle of holy water to sprinkle on the threshold of the
+street door, and all sides of Doņa Raquel's room, that no curse of
+witchcraft or bad dream of the night might have power over the days.
+
+It was broad daylight when Rafael came home whistling gayly a dance of
+melody. He had been gifted with unusual good luck, and his pockets were
+full of gold pieces. He threw a buckskin sack of coin on his wife's bed
+before he noticed that she was not lying there.
+
+"Hola! Raquelita mia! There is plenty to pay for masses; your priests
+always want money for that sort of thing. Since you look after my soul,
+I pay for the prayers when I have good luck."
+
+Raquel arose from where she knelt at the little altar in the corner.
+
+"Oh, is that where you are? What need to pay the priests when you do
+enough praying for an army?"
+
+She smiled absently, but did not speak. He stood watching her as she
+brushed her mass of dark, slightly waving hair.
+
+"Let your woman do that," he said at last, with perfunctory solicitude.
+"It tires your arm, and I don't want you tired to-day. There is a
+picnic, and we should go."
+
+"Which of our friends make it?"
+
+"It is Doņa Maria Downing, who, as our one neighbor down the country,
+wants to add to the entertainment Los Angeles gives you. It is to make
+peace with the bishop, I think; at least, so it looks. He is invited.
+You can help them to be friends. Is that not the duty of us both as good
+Catholics?"
+
+She halted in her task and looked at him quietly. He was plainly set on
+being very agreeable, for some reason; too seldom had he mentioned their
+faith but to scoff at the rigid rules of his mother and his wife.
+
+"You want it very much," she said; "but why? You do not care at all for
+Doņa Maria's personal peace with the bishop. That can be arranged
+without a picnic to the hills. It only needs that they give back, of
+their own free will, that which belongs to the Church, and make a
+confession that it was wrongly held."
+
+"If you would only talk to her of this graciously, instead of demanding
+it," persisted Rafael, gently, "much could be effected. Doņa Angela
+thinks for certain--"
+
+"Doņa Angela?"
+
+"Oh, I mean her--the relative who is with her now--the Mrs. Bryton who
+drove with her yesterday. The bishop asked who she was--you remember?"
+
+"I remember," she said, quietly, though a little shudder touched her.
+"But I am tired of this town, Rafael. I meant to tell you so this
+morning. I want to ride home to-day. Doņa Maria's merry-makings do not
+attract me. Our business here is over; let us go."
+
+"Holy God! but you are a wife for a man!" he cried in sudden fury. "I
+weigh you down with jewels and silks and laces, and you would bury them
+all with yourself in that old rat-hole of a Mission. I wish to God the
+padre and Doņa Maria had blown down every brick of it before you saw the
+accursed place!"
+
+"Accursed? The Church of God? Rafael!"
+
+"Ay, accursed, since you will know!" he repeated. "Every old Indian of
+San Juan can tell you that."
+
+"Some Indian, perhaps, who has had to be whipped by the padres," she
+remarked, with quiet scorn.
+
+"You don't believe me?" he cried. "Well, you shall! Sit down--sit down
+and listen for once, and you will be glad to keep out of the
+curse-haunted place."
+
+She regarded him with a little tolerant smile, and drew a serape of blue
+around her, and curled herself on the foot of the bed and waited.
+
+"It is early for stories," she observed; "but since it is your
+pleasure--"
+
+"Not any pleasure has any of it been to me from first to last," he
+retorted, "nor any pleasure will it be to whoever holds it! You think
+you are strong, your saints will help you! But no saint ever put on an
+altar--not even that of the Virgin herself--can take off the curse from
+San Juan till the altar is bathed in human blood, as the tiles of the
+floor have been bathed--that is the curse of Sahirit."
+
+She stared at him with wide eyes and blanching face.
+
+"Until the altar is bathed in human blood, as the tiles of the floor
+have been," she whispered. "Rafael! That--that is of a religion older
+than the life of Christianity in Mexico. God of Gods! Does it follow me
+here?"
+
+"Follow _you_!" and he laughed contemptuously; "it is a story older than
+our grandfathers. Only the old Indians whisper it now each time ill luck
+comes to any of us--and I've had enough! When they picked up Miguel
+tramped into the earth by the cattle, only the white men would help--no
+Indian; they knew it was the curse coming true."
+
+"Tell me," she said, briefly. Her lips were white, and she shuddered
+with cold, and drew the serape close.
+
+"You'd rather hear some old Indian tell it," he answered; "they make
+one chill when they count on their fingers and toes the things the curse
+has brought. We had a curse of our own in the Arteaga family: my mother
+was always in prayer because of that; she never knew that Miguel had
+bought an interest in another."
+
+"Go on--tell me! How comes the rule of the Aztec altar to this Christian
+temple?"
+
+"Aztec? I did not say Aztec. I know nothing of their mummeries. But it
+can't be that--there have been no Aztecs since the time of Cortez and
+the priests."
+
+"I--I have heard there is one hill tribe still refusing the saints, and
+giving the sun worship," she said, slowly. "But go on; tell me!"
+
+"Sun-worship! yes, that's the thing!" he cried. "A man, who was a
+heretic of Mexico and a great builder of stone, killed a priest and a
+woman down there. Some say the woman was his wife. He was to have his
+head cut off for it, but word went down from here that such a man was
+needed by the priests of San Juan; they wished to build a stone church
+instead of adobe brick, as all the others were, if only a master mason
+could be sent to them. They had soldiers to guard him, even if the man
+chanced to be a convict, as many of the guards had been, and they got
+the viceroy to help; and in the end the heretic who had killed a priest
+was sent to San Juan. The old Indios say he looked as big as two men,
+and he worked as he pleased. When the padres interfered he sat down and
+looked at the piles of stone and did nothing, and nothing could move
+him. They could have shot and buried him, but that would not build their
+church, which was to be the finest in the Californias. So they had to
+let him alone, and he built it as pleased himself. Their ground plan
+only he accepted. It was like a cross, as you see it now, but on no
+other part of the church was any symbol of Christianity--only stars and
+other things which some say are flowers and some say are suns and moons,
+and on the corner-stone and key-stone of the high altar is carved a
+thing no Christian can read, not even the padres--and somewhere in those
+symbols is held the curse."
+
+[Illustration: "R[~U]ELAS ME FECIT. ME LLAMA SAN JUAN. 1796."]
+
+"Who says? Did he?"
+
+"He? No; he died laughing, and refused the blessing of the priest. One
+thing only he said when he read the words on the oldest bell, as he
+built a place in the tower for it. The name of the maker is on the bell;
+you can see it yet; it is Ruelas. 'So Ruelas made you--iron-tongue,' a
+soldier heard him say, 'and your name is San Juan. Well, Seņor
+Ruelas, you only have your name in this work. The good padres will see
+that my name is forgotten, but instead of a name, I will leave myself,
+and so long as stone stands on stone I will call louder and farther than
+your iron tongue when rung your loudest! When the storms of centuries
+shall beat out every star and moon and sun in the stone of the temple,
+the man from Culiacan will be remembered here in Sahirit.'"
+
+"Sahirit?"
+
+"The Indian name for the valley was 'Quanis Savit Sahirit'; you can see
+it on the church records."
+
+"And it means?"
+
+"No one knows, and no one cares; it may mean another curse, for all I
+know. The Indios either do not know or will not tell."
+
+"But--" and she drew in a long breath of relief--"what the man from
+Culiacan said to the bell--the thing the soldier heard--was not a curse;
+it was only that the beautiful work should be remembered."
+
+"Oh, yes, that! But there was a prophecy years before, when the
+corner-stone was set in its place and blessed by the padres, and the
+Indios were all there on their knees saying a rosary, and the viceroy
+and all the dignitaries. An Indian hunter was also there from the south,
+and he was a stranger. He looked at the thing carved on the
+corner-stone, and he looked at the builder, who leaned against the wall
+and laughed when the holy water touched it; and the stranger crossed
+himself, for his mother was a convert; but to the captain of the guard
+he said the thing I told you, and the captain of the guard was of my
+father's family. So it was repeated down to our time."
+
+"But the words--he said what of a prophecy?"
+
+"He said human blood, and not holy water, must baptize the stones and
+the altar of a temple with those signs. He was afraid the padre would
+put malediction on him if he told him that the blessing of a Christian
+saint was not so strong as the gods of the Indians, but he would not
+stand or kneel beside the lines where the church was to be, and he would
+not tell why he was afraid. He said he did not know what would happen
+there: it might be a tidal wave from the sea in sight, or it might be a
+pestilence, for the people were very wicked and very dirty, but it was
+marked with a sign for evil, and it would be well if the walls never
+went higher."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"They tried to get him to tell the padre, so that the builder might be
+whipped, but the stranger Indian was afraid. He said he wanted to live
+to see his children again, and they lived south in the hill country;
+and he ran away when they tried to keep him, but he had warned some old
+Indios, and when the first earthquake cracked the walls, they all
+remembered."
+
+"And--?"
+
+"The mason laughed, but mended the cracked walls and went on at work,
+always singing, always working, even before sunrise. The old Indios who
+helped said it was at sunrise hour only that he worked on the keystones
+with the suns and star things, but they maybe lied. And after the
+dedication of the church he died as he lived, laughing and a heretic;
+and when the earthquake came and the tower of the bells fell, and the
+tiles of the floor were wet with the blood of the thirty-nine lives
+crushed out there, then the old Indios whispered and remembered many
+things; for the prophecy of the strange learned Indian of the south had
+come true."
+
+"And--the altar? Did--some one--"
+
+Her lips were stiff as with cold, and she could scarcely articulate.
+
+"Holy God! how white you are, Raquel!" he exclaimed. "I thought you were
+not a coward like the other women. Take this wine--take it! Por Dios,
+but you gave me a fright!"
+
+She swallowed the wine, and smiled absently at his excitement, and drew
+the serape closer. She did not speak again for a long time, just sat
+staring out toward the blue of the hills.
+
+"Are you in a trance?" he demanded. "Santa Maria, but you are a wife to
+come home to! If I interest you at all, I have to talk to you of things
+bad enough to scare the devil. Now you see why Doņa Maria blows down the
+walls--they were accursed from the beginning. She thinks maybe she is
+doing a pious thing, who knows?"
+
+"Selling to others the stone that is accursed?"
+
+"Oh, that is a side issue. But I think truly, Raquelita, she is afraid
+of the bishop now, since you have come. I even think she wants to be
+friends; Doņa Angela told me. She has promised that she will build a
+chapel there of adobe, if the bishop will give his benediction. Much of
+bad luck is coming to them, and she is growing afraid."
+
+"Yes; she has no sense of justice in her; she has only fear," returned
+Raquel. "Let her build chapels if she likes, but the blessing of God was
+put on those stone walls, as well as the curse of a heretic, and what
+she has done is sacrilege. I will do nothing to countenance it, or allow
+it to continue."
+
+"But, at least, you will do one thing," he said, emphatically. "You have
+heard enough of the curse to show you why it is no place for human
+beings to live. Only half the curse is carried out. The tiles have been
+baptized by human blood--but not the altar. You will stay here with live
+people, and let the old ruin wait alone for the curse to be lifted."
+
+"I will go back," she said, with sudden decision, dropping the serape
+from around her shoulders and beginning to braid her hair. "No, you need
+not swear like that, Rafael; God would shut His ears if He heard you.
+You have told me a fine story of fear, and some of it may be true, but
+our duty lies there. We may lift the curse; we can go back and try."
+
+Her husband sprang to his feet and flung his chair crashing into the low
+window opening on a veranda. The shattered glass fell in a glittering
+heap, but the noise of it did not drown his oaths.
+
+"It is no use at all to break the windows of our friends, Rafael,"
+observed his wife; "and neither the saints nor Our Lady the Virgin will
+allow such curses as yours to be heard. There are dangers here for--for
+both of us, perhaps,--dangers more to be afraid of than the walls of the
+good padres. I ride back to-day."
+
+"You think of it as all past, that curse?" he demanded, threateningly.
+"Well, you think so! Priests have gone mad there, though the Church
+keeps it quiet. Since the year Don Eduardo and Doņa Maria bought it,
+what has happened? All their land is slipping away. To-day she is
+building an adobe on the old Mission ranch, to hold one hundred and
+sixty acres in case they lose all the rest of their thirty miles of
+ranches. Two of her sons have been killed in the streets--one by a
+woman. All that remains is slipping slowly through their fingers. It is
+like a handful of wheat: the closer they try to hold it, the less they
+have in their hands. All they try is of no use. When they first bought
+those old walls of the Mission at Pico's auction, they were masters of
+the land, but what of that?"
+
+"If it is a curse, they earned it by tearing down the temple consecrated
+to God, that is all!"
+
+"All? Miguel, my brother, blew down no walls; he did no harm to anything
+at all. He only bought an interest in the Mission lands, and claimed
+some living-rooms as his share, and he is struck like the others by the
+curse, and does not die in his bed either, but is trampled into the
+earth until no one can see him!"
+
+"But that may be the other curse working--the curse on the Arteagas. You
+people seem to have earned a great many! Is it not time some of the
+family should try to live for blessings?"
+
+He did not answer, only stared at her with angry eyes and lips twitching
+in wrath he could not express. She looked at him an instant, and
+stretched out her arms wearily. All the glorious world of love about
+them, yet never aught of harmony in their two lives linked together. She
+had never seen the life domestic of young people. She did not know what
+it might mean to other women, but there were days when she grew sick
+with the dread of future years, the endless prison of her vow, the--
+
+Suddenly she turned to him with a little gesture of appeal, almost
+tremulous. It was such weary work to battle constantly; and his mother--
+
+"Rafael," she said, gently, "the blessings are in the world
+somewhere--shall not we try to find them? The old lives of the
+maledictions are gone. Ours is the new life, and we have done no wrong
+to expiate. And it may be, if we live as--as your mother would have
+wanted us to live, that the saints--"
+
+"To the bottom of the sea with your saints!" he broke in, angrily. "Por
+Dios! you are always dragging the dead out of their graves to make the
+days like a funeral. I prefer most the picnic in the hills, and I go
+to-day."
+
+"So do I," she answered; "but it will be to the hills of the south by
+the sea. To-night the moon shines, and the ride will be better than a
+picnic of your political friends."
+
+"By--"
+
+"It is no sort of use for you to make empty oaths, Rafael. I leave this
+town to-day; with you if you are wise, without you if you are not. But I
+myself--I go!"
+
+He went out and slammed the door, and directly she heard him tell Juan
+Castillas that he had married one of the wooden saints of the Mission
+come to life.
+
+"I am glad it is not one with the broken glass eyes and the missing
+fingers," laughed Juan. "Doņa Raquel is the most beautiful woman in the
+Californias to-day."
+
+She turned from the window and looked at herself in the mirror. The most
+beautiful woman in the Californias! Was that so? Could it be? Yet what
+was beauty, after all, if--
+
+Between herself and the glass another face seemed to arise,--the
+blue-eyed childish face for which she had been forgotten.
+
+"Holy Mother!" she moaned, and covered her own with her hands. "Of what
+use is beauty to a woman who is not beloved?"
+
+[Music: _El Tormento de Amor._]
+
+    Tormento de amor,
+    passion que devora,
+    Tu marchi taste
+    la fuente de mi vida.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+"I wasted the holy water on the doorway of the sala and the bedroom,"
+grumbled old Polonia, ensconced among the serapes on the carreta; "I
+should have kept it for the road to the sea. She rides away from him
+alone; but it is a witchcraft, all the same."
+
+Secretly the old woman gave sympathy to the handsome Rafael, who loved
+women of gaiety and fine clothes. The town was a very good place to
+stay, and the band played, and there was a good circus; and to choose
+instead a nasty old Mission where a cross priest scolded, and smoked,
+and drank himself stupid each dinner-time! What kind of a girl would go
+back there?
+
+Still, the old Indian knew that she was not of wood, like the statues in
+the old church, let the husband think as he might! Last night had proven
+she could be her mother's own child in a storm of passion. It was
+perhaps for the best that she did not love her husband so madly; for if
+he should ever prove untrue,--and men of course were so--what might not
+happen?
+
+She thought of the witchcraft of the mother, and crossed herself.
+
+The moon, the beautiful moon of the month of Mary! shone round and
+silvered in the blue above the mountains, as the blaze of the sun sank
+into the western sea. South lay the ranch of San Joaquin, and Raquel,
+for all her thirty-mile ride, was sorry. She would have no excuse to
+ride past; it was the one slight of the country to pass the house of an
+acquaintance, and this family was one deserving of honor. The soft dusk
+of warm lands had stretched over the level. The sweet clover along the
+road had a deeper note of perfume, and the patches of mustard bloom
+added its own spicy fragrance. Gladly she would have ridden on alone in
+the perfect night, but it would not do. She cared little for the herd of
+people, but she always tried to keep in mind what the Doņa Luisa would
+have done in the little duties toward the opinion of the valley, and
+she had no idea of making a scandal, or of appearing to ride in secret
+from the town where her husband was still detained.
+
+So, when the dogs barked, she galloped forward to the ranch-house, and
+was met with excited welcome from the mistress and her two vivacious
+daughters and their cousin Ana Mendez. All the news of the town they
+asked for. They had heard wonderful things of the courtesy shown her by
+the new bishop, who was not given to showing much pronounced attention
+to even the devout of the faith. They had rejoiced each day to hear of
+the honors showered on her by the families of the city. It was as if a
+queen had arrived in their valley--and to leave it all and ride alone in
+the night!
+
+Ana cut their queries short and bade them see to old Polonia, that she
+might be fed and rested well, and the driver also, and then carried her
+guest to her own room, where she put her hands on Raquel's shoulders and
+looked into her eyes, and then without a word led her to the shrine in
+the corner, where they both knelt.
+
+When the prayer was over and she had seen her guest supplied with bread,
+and red wine, and olives, and sliced beef, she regarded her sadly a
+moment, noting that only the wine was swallowed, and that the girl
+looked pale in the candle-light.
+
+"Poor little dear," she said, softly, and patted her shoulder and spoke
+with the tenderness of intimacy. "I think now thou wert only a child
+that morning in the wedding-veil, when she gave thee that vow and died.
+Thou hast such strength in looks, my Raquelita, no one remembers how
+young in life thou art. But I see now how it is. Rafael is the son of my
+mother's cousin, and I know that blood! You but give the word, and my
+uncle shall ride to Los Angeles in the morning and say what is right to
+be said to Rafael. We know those boys--Miguel too," and she crossed
+herself. "My uncle always look himself to the door-key when that Miguel
+Arteaga come with a serenade. Oh, we know those boys in this valley
+better than their mother, who thought to guard Rafael from the heretics.
+Holy Mary! No heretic in the land lived worse than the life on Miguel
+Arteaga's ranches!"
+
+"That does not make any difference at all," said the girl, wearily. "I
+took the vow, '_So long as we both shall live_.' That seems a long time,
+my dear Ana, but I must have not one other thought in this life."
+
+"And he sends thee home?"
+
+"No; this is not his fault--do not think it," and she evaded the eyes of
+Ana. "He will follow, now that I have come; I am most certain of that;
+but he was in a rage, of course, and if I would live there in the town
+he would do anything to please me, almost. But I feel weak some days.
+I--I am not strong enough to fight the people there whom his mother was
+afraid of. In my own house they will not come. In my own valley I may
+keep my promise."
+
+"Poor little dear," moaned Ana again. It was a good hope, and the girl
+did not seem to have much else to live for; but Ana had known the
+Arteaga men for many years, and had her doubts.
+
+"It is time that Rafael were at home," she conceded. "Juan Flores is
+around the range again; some say El Capitan is with him, and they are on
+this side. Last night they had supper at Trabuco ranch; they did no harm
+there, but that does not mean that he will do no harm elsewhere. Avila
+let him have horses once when the marshal was close behind; since that
+time Avila's house is safe, and his herds as well."
+
+"And Capitan?"
+
+"Oh!" Ana's tone was carefully careless. "No one seems certain he is
+along. He does not so often come this way; for a year he has been
+somewhere in Sonora--only when the horses are picked for the government,
+or the Arteagas have a fine lot broken, does he cross to this country.
+There is where Rafael needs guarding more than from heretics."
+
+"From Capitan? He--he--would not kill--"
+
+"No," said Ana, slowly; "I never think he wants Rafael to die; he only
+wants him not to be happy; always he wants Rafael to remember he is not
+so far away but he can do him harm. Rafael hates the lonely Mission
+valley on account of that. In a town Capitan never can make him afraid
+so much."
+
+"Rafael is not a coward, I think," returned Raquel.
+
+"No, but he knows Capitan does not forget--there was a girl between them
+once. Rafael is the handsomer, so he got her. Oh, that is long ago. But
+Rafael was foolish and laughed too loud, and so he has to pay!"
+
+"But I think that is a mistake. I heard all about the trouble; his
+mother told me. Capitan fights the government only, and takes horses
+from the Arteagas because they go with the Americanos as friends; that
+is all. We heard it all at San Luis Rey as we drove north--you
+remember?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I am not forgetting that," and Ana laughed. "I listen all the
+time to what his mother thinks she knows about that; and it is true,
+too, but not all the truth. I could tell you--"
+
+She stopped suddenly, not certain it was wise to tell the girl the
+thing causing her amusement, for, after all, it was not really funny; it
+was serious enough in itself, it might frighten the girl very much. No
+other in her place would live one hour in the valley, or ride at night
+with only one man and an old Indian woman as guard.
+
+"If you know that I have been told lies, you had better tell me the
+truth," said Raquel. "It may cost me more to find it out alone than to
+hear it from a friend."
+
+"That is true," agreed Ana, after a moment of thought. She went to the
+door and looked in the outer room to be sure no curious ears were there.
+She could hear ecstatic cries from the girls, who were giving old
+Polonia good things to eat, and plying her with endless questions. She
+was recounting the brilliant worldly scenes her old eyes had lately
+witnessed, and pitying herself a little that she could not remain; for
+each day had been finer than the day before. And the horse-races, and
+the fine cavaliers, and Doņa Raquel always in the finest carriage--Holy
+Mary! but it was a thing to see!
+
+Ana closed the door tightly and came back and sat down beside Raquel and
+took her hand.
+
+"My aunt and the girls are over their heads in delight out there," she
+remarked, dryly; "and I will tell you a thing no one has been told
+concerning that ride from San Luis Rey. Rafael lost some fine horses
+that night--do you remember?"
+
+Raquel did not; she might have heard--but Doņa Luisa's death, all that
+sorrow, all the many and quick changes, had blotted out the fainter
+records of that day.
+
+"Well, when we stopped for coffee at the camp the cook told us; you may
+not have heard. However, they were taken after you went into the river.
+You have not forgotten that?"
+
+"How could I? Oh, yes, I remember! The priest told me that night. How
+strange it should have all been crowded out of my mind! He told me to
+give Rafael a message of warning. What was it? What was it?"
+
+She clasped her hands over her brows and tried to remember. Her first
+meeting with Rafael beside the dead body of his mother had driven out of
+her mind the message she was to have delivered. It was a warning, a
+warning of some sort; that much she was sure of, and--what was it about
+her father--her father's name?
+
+"I think," said Ana, speaking softly and watching her, "that he told you
+Felipe Estevan's daughter had saved Rafael Arteaga a treasure that
+night."
+
+"Anita! So he did; and you know the words, the very words he spoke to
+me!"
+
+"I know more, Raquel mia; I know what the treasure was."
+
+"And--?"
+
+"It is not nice to tell," and Ana hesitated. "But he saw you there that
+evening with his own eyes."
+
+"The priest?"
+
+"Yes, the priest. He saved you from being carried to the hills by the
+Juan Flores robbers, while Capitan took others of the men and secured
+the chests of wedding gifts from the old Mission. Oh, it was all planned
+for the one big revenge on Rafael Arteaga. But he saw you, and so--"
+
+"And that priest saved me from them, Anita?"
+
+"Yes, he saved you--the priest--and sent you back to your friends, and
+sent the men across the mesas--because you were Estevan's daughter. But
+he did not try to save Rafael's horses; that night many of the finest
+were headed eastward and never came back."
+
+"And if--if the padre had not been there at the right moment, I--"
+
+"It is not a nice story, at all," acknowledged Ana. "They are rough men.
+One of them would have married you, and you would never have cared to
+see your friends again, and Rafael never would have found you."
+
+"Mother of God! He hates Rafael like that, yet lets him live?"
+
+Ana laughed a little and shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Capitan is like that," she observed. "No one is like him. If Rafael's
+life were in danger this hour, Capitan would ride to save him. Oh, he
+does not mean that he shall die while young, and handsome, and rich, and
+beloved!"
+
+Her tone had a little hard ring for a moment; her eyes were sparkling
+with a certain admiration for the character she was describing. The
+story had brought the color back to Raquel's face, and she listened
+feverishly. What strange, strange things could be possible in the
+smiling valleys of San Juan! For the moment she forgot the dull ache in
+her heart which had driven her to ride alone back to sanctuary.
+
+"And you know all this, Anita; even the words of the padre! How?"
+
+She caught Ana's hands in hers impetuously, and made her look in her
+eyes.
+
+"He told me," said her friend, simply.
+
+"Then you know him? You see him sometimes?"
+
+"Sometimes."
+
+"And he is called--?"
+
+"Libertad."
+
+"Padre Libertad--the Liberated? I never have heard him spoken of. Where
+can I find him? Anita, I will go alone, but this feud shall be ended. He
+will help me. And I--I never knew what he saved me from that night. I
+scarcely thanked him. He was so strange, so abrupt, so masterful, I
+accepted all he did, and never knew! Tell me. Anita. I will go to him--I
+will--"
+
+"No one goes to him," said Ana. "He never stays in one place. If you see
+him, you see him--but--"
+
+"But he comes to San Juan?"
+
+"Oh, yes, he comes to San Juan once a year at least, so they will not
+forget him."
+
+Ana's lips curled in a little smile, quickly suppressed.
+
+"But, Anita, that he tells you all these things, so that you know the
+reasons of Capitan--"
+
+"Oh, Capitan is a sort of cousin of our family. Even when he is outcast,
+I do not want him to lose his soul; so I--my people do not know--but
+always I pay for a mass when I hear that the robbers have killed a man.
+I never think that Capitan would like to kill; still, it might happen.
+So I remember--as I remembered him when I was a little girl, and when I
+was married--and I pay for a mass, that is all."
+
+"I am glad to-night, very glad you tell me all this, Anita. Not glad
+that it is so, but, thanks to God, it is something to do--to do--to
+do!"
+
+"And what?" asked Ana, regarding her curiously. Heretofore the wife of
+Rafael had appeared to her self-restrained and cold, but to-night--
+
+Raquel caught her hand and pressed it, and laughed.
+
+"You are saving me to-night, Anita, and you do not know it," she said,
+with feverish intensity. "I was unhappy when I rode to your door; so
+tired of all the world that I could think of nothing sweeter than to
+ride on and on to the sea, and into it, and go to sleep there."
+
+"Raquel! That is a mortal sin!"
+
+"So it is, but I shall do penance, and when the padre comes again, O my
+dear Ana, you alone will not pay for the masses; we can do many things
+for good together, you and I. You must come to me to the Mission; you
+must! I have had many things to fight alone, Anita, and I never can tell
+you what they are. But this new thing we can fight together,
+darling--you for your relation and I for my husband and my promise; and,
+the saints helping us, we shall win, Anita, and it will all come right;
+and thanks to God I came to you this night!"
+
+Her eyes were alight with excitement, her cheeks flushed and burning.
+Once or twice she shivered slightly; and Ana, who had been reassured by
+the beautiful color so quickly replacing the pallor of the cheeks, grew
+all at once apprehensive, as she noticed that the hands of Raquel were
+very cold indeed, and that her laugh was nervous, and that her teeth
+chattered, and that the words she tried to utter grew indistinct.
+
+"Holy Mary! I have given her a fever," gasped Ana. "That my tongue had
+been blistered, before I babbled all that to her! Raquel, for the love
+of God don't shake like that, and don't laugh at me! Stop it! The laugh
+is the worst of all! Raquel--Raquelita--darling mine!"
+
+But Ana's frenzy of fear was so irresistibly funny, that Raquel
+continued to laugh, and the laughter grew louder after the other women
+were called in, and helped to undress her and wrap her in blankets to
+smother the chill. That night, candles never went out in the house, and
+Ana knelt before the altar with prayers to the saints that they might
+undo the folly of her tongue. But old Polonia knelt instead by the couch
+of Raquel and cursed the American, that he had not died there in Mexico.
+
+In the early dawn Polonia crept unseen to the aquia, and of soft clay
+made an image of him, and thrust pins through every vital portion of it,
+that there might be no chance left of life in the man it represented;
+then, having finished her work, she left it where the sun would dry it,
+and crept back to the room and curled up on a rug, and slept the sleep
+of the content.
+
+The good holy water she had paid money for had failed. But there are
+always two ways. If the saints refuse to help, there is always the devil
+left. If the padres did not get more effective holy water, whose fault
+was it that poor souls had to seek help elsewhere? She would do penance,
+of course, after the man died, and perhaps pay for a mass, and that
+would make it all right for everybody, and was so easy! She went to
+sleep wondering if he would die from a slow lingering disease, or how it
+would be. It was inconvenient that one was not allowed to select the
+very way the end must come. But the devil would know what she would like
+best,--that the foot of his horse might go down in a gopher-hole and
+pitch him on his head just so that the neck would break, quick, like the
+snapping of a finger. And no one would ever guess how it had been
+brought about!
+
+[Music: _El Sueņo_]
+
+    En el sueno dichoso prové----
+    Delicias, rodear mi existencia.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Tea made of Castillian rose petals, and all the other little helps of
+the herb family, were brewed and steamed in the kitchen of the ranch for
+the saving of Raquel from the grasp of a strength-sapping fever.
+
+Conscience-stricken, Ana fought and argued against sending for Rafael.
+Every hour of the day and night she was willing to watch and work, if
+only Raquel's illness might pass without the cause of it being known;
+and she was certain that the cause was the shock of learning how
+narrowly she had escaped kidnapping at the hands of Rafael's enemy.
+
+Sometimes, indeed, Raquel did murmur in her sleep of "Padre Libertad"
+and the water surging over her head; and then again it was "the
+altar--the altar--and the blood on the tiles of the temple"; then "the
+ring--the ring--the ring." Sometimes she would moan that the beautiful
+one with the happiness must not receive the ring--never the ring of
+Aztec witchery! Then her words would trail along in inarticulate
+whispers, and sink into brief periods of slumber.
+
+Old Polonia, listening and watching, heard all. Of Padre Libertad and
+the dream of the water she cared not anything. Of the ring she
+understood, and was afraid lest a name be uttered. But when the girl
+moaned of the blood on the altar and on the floor of the temple, the old
+creature dropped in a cowering heap and screamed with fear, and begged
+with tears that the husband would come, and that a padre must come, for
+it was all of no use to do any more of anything; and that the mother of
+Doņa Raquel had come from--from death, to tell of hidden things to her
+daughter, and it meant that death was in the home with them, and that
+Doņa Raquel would never again sing with the birds, or gallop across the
+mesas!
+
+Ana, trembling with fright and this assurance, almost smothered old
+Polonia, that the others might not hear the wild prophecy, but without
+further delay she sent a letter to Rafael, and the man who bore it was
+to spare neither horses nor himself on the errand.
+
+The man rode well, and made only one halt to change a horse at a ranch.
+The sheriff of Los Angeles County, and many owners of ranches, were
+there. The sheriff looked at the rider and his reeking horse carefully.
+
+"From where do you come?" he asked, and the man jerked his thumb toward
+the south.
+
+"San Joaquin."
+
+"What's up there?"
+
+"Not anything, seņor."
+
+It never entered his head that a woman sick at the San Joaquin ranch
+would have interest for a party of horsemen who looked as if out for a
+hunt. But the party exchanged glances. One of them, a farmer who knew
+him, stepped forward.
+
+"Where do you ride in such haste, if nothing is up?" he asked.
+
+"I take a letter to Don Rafael; his wife is sick."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"At San Joaquin ranch, seņor. Adios!"
+
+He had his foot in the stirrup, when the sheriff laid his hand on his
+arm.
+
+"Wait a bit," he said, quietly. "I think it is said that a picnic is
+given to-day by Seņora Downing for Doņa Raquel Arteaga who is visiting
+in Los Angeles. How can she be at the same time at the San Joaquin
+ranch?"
+
+"I know not anything of the picnic, seņor, but I know a woman rode her
+horse into the ranch at dark last night, and they say it is Doņa Raquel
+Arteaga; and she has a fever, and screams and laughs all night in the
+room of Doņa Ana. I know, for I am called after I am asleep, to get wood
+for a fire. No one sleeps, and outside the window I hear all what she
+screams, and it is enough to freeze the blood,--all of altars where
+blood is, and a ring that she cries for; and I am glad to get away and
+ride for Rafael Arteaga."
+
+"Rather thin, isn't it, all of that story?" remarked one of the
+ranchmen. "Bryton, when we asked you to join us didn't you stop to send
+word to the Downings that you couldn't attend their little celebration
+in the hills?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Bryton had turned from the others and was rolling a cigarro. He replied
+without looking up from his task.
+
+"And it was given in honor of Doņa Raquel Arteaga and the bishop?"
+
+"I understood so."
+
+"Understood? Why, that was the reason Arteaga gave for refusing to come
+along," broke in one of the other men. "I heard him."
+
+"That's so; I did too, and I thought at the time a picnic for a woman
+and a priest was a mighty small excuse to give for evading--"
+
+"Careful!" And the sheriff shot a warning glance at the speaker. "A
+newly married man was excused, even in Bible times, from going to the
+wars, so Arteaga's reason is all right."
+
+"Just a moment," said Bryton. "I am as certain as it is possible to be
+of anything one does not see, that the boy tells the truth. She is
+there, and she is ill. Let him take the message."
+
+"What makes you think so?" and the sheriff eyed him carefully. Bryton's
+jaw set stolidly, though his face flushed.
+
+"I know it; that's all," he said, briefly, as he turned away.
+
+"But--"
+
+"The boy is speaking the truth; I know it!"
+
+The sheriff looked after him a moment, and then spoke to one of the
+others.
+
+"Just keep the boy here a bit until I can see clearer," he said, "if
+Bryton knows."
+
+He tramped after Bryton, who was going for his own horse tied in the
+shadow of a pepper tree.
+
+"Bryton, tell me _how_ you know!"
+
+"I can't do it. Take my word or ignore it, as you like."
+
+"But, hell, man! it is not your word; it is only your impression! Give
+me your word as to how you know it, and I'll take it quick. I suppose
+it's some inside family history you've dropped on; but the lady is at
+Los Angeles, and it is some other woman they are nursing at the ranch
+and deceiving the servants about. That is my theory. There are some
+women mixed up with that Flores outfit, and I happen to know that El
+Capitan, who is the brain of the gang, is related to the folks at that
+ranch. Now, is it reasonable to think that Arteaga's wife would ride at
+dark, alone, over this country where hold-ups are so common? Would he
+let her? Would not the Downings have known?"
+
+"They probably did know, and Rafael Arteaga certainly did," returned
+Bryton, impatiently. "Their picnic was more a matter of policy than a
+pleasure party. They wanted the bishop there, to put an end to that
+church fight. They wanted Doņa Raquel Arteaga to serve as an attraction
+and help them. She has absolutely refused all along to assist with any
+compromise; and to avoid it this time she has evidently ridden quietly
+out of Los Angeles, and her husband, who wanted the picnic very much,
+has kept her absence a secret."
+
+"But if she is as sick as this boy says, how could she take a
+thirty-mile ride on horseback?"
+
+Bryton made a gesture of impatience.
+
+"She is there!" he insisted. "I--I feel that she is there. The sooner
+you let the boy ride for Arteaga and the doctor, the less likely she is
+to die."
+
+"Doctor! Did he say anything about a doctor?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You see, if the woman was very ill, the fellow would say it was a
+doctor he was riding for."
+
+"No; it would be a priest. These women do their own doctoring. If herb
+teas and prayers can't save a life, it is let die. Good God! She may be
+dying now while we talk. Let the boy go!"
+
+"Well, I'll be damned!"
+
+The sheriff was staring at Bryton, whose face was white and set. He was
+untying his horse, with quick decided movements, and cinching up the
+girth.
+
+"If you don't send the boy on that errand, I'll go myself," he said,
+curtly.
+
+"Well--I'll be--" The sheriff broke his sentence midway, to stare at
+Bryton in amazement. "What the devil is it to you?" he demanded.
+"Arteaga is no bosom friend of yours, is he?"
+
+"Not that I know of. If the boy doesn't go, I go! The girl may be dying,
+and the help she wants, she's going to get. Speak up!"
+
+He was in the saddle, and the sheriff, with one look at him, walked back
+to the group.
+
+"Boy, do you carry only a message to Don Rafael Arteaga?" he demanded,
+"or is it a written letter?"
+
+"A letter," said he, sullenly, "and Doņa Ana raise the hell if you don't
+let me take it."
+
+"Ah! The Doņa Ana! I thought so. Doņa Ana is an interesting little lady.
+Let me see the letter."
+
+The man hesitated, but finally pulled the letter from his pocket. The
+sheriff took it and walked back to Bryton.
+
+"I'm humoring your queer notion all I know how," he observed; "for I
+want you south with us instead of taking the back trail. You read
+Spanish; the letter is not sealed. Read it."
+
+Bryton read it aloud, slowly. Ana had not minced her words.
+
+"RAFAEL ARTEAGA:--
+
+"For the love of God, come quick to Raquel. Among us, some way, I think
+we have killed her. That she is too good for you is no reason that you
+should let her ride alone with a heart-break. I think myself she does
+not want to live any more,--and no medicine cures that. Maybe you cannot
+cure it either, but it is your place to be here if she dies.
+
+          "Your cousin,
+
+                   "Ana Carmencita Mendez."
+
+"You see," said Bryton, handing it back. "I told you."
+
+"I see," conceded the sheriff. "It reads all right, but there is always
+a chance of--" He folded the paper thoughtfully, and stared hard at the
+ground. "This is all a ticklish business, Bryton, and if Flores's
+friends have got wind of this little _pasear_ of ours, they may send all
+sorts of scare messages where they will do most good. These greasers
+have tricks of their own, and most of them are cousins--see?"
+
+"I see; but that is not a message of that sort. Does the boy take it, or
+do I?"
+
+"The boy takes it, and I'll send a man with him to be sure he takes that
+message and no other; and you, if you are so keen for the road, can ride
+south and investigate before Cousin Ana can expect any reply to her
+message."
+
+"I--ride alone to San Joaquin ranch?"
+
+"That's it! You've got the best horse in the bunch. If the whole outfit
+rides in, they'll get scared, but one man alone on his way to San Juan,
+that looks all right. You may chance on things worth while, when we
+finally catch up."
+
+"But there are other men--men who know the family better."
+
+"Not one would be so apt to note the points we need. The family is
+square, but of Cousin Ana there have been some curious things said. She
+is the one of the lot who openly claims El Capitan as cousin. That's all
+we really know, but keep your eyes open."
+
+"Let me see the letter again."
+
+The sheriff handed it to him and looked at him curiously as he half
+turned away to read it, and his eyes sought out the one statement: "I
+think myself she does not want to live any more, and no medicine cures
+that. Maybe you cannot cure it either, but it is your place to be here
+if she dies."
+
+He pulled his hat low over his eyes and gathered up the reins.
+
+"All right," he said, briefly. "I will go. Adios!"
+
+A little later, and only a cloud of dust marked the way in the south
+that he had gone; and the mist in his eyes, hidden so well from the
+sheriff, was dashed away by his hand, but came back again and again.
+
+"It is your place to be here if she dies," he repeated, grimly,--"my
+Doņa Espiritu--my beloved! The message was written to him, but fate sent
+it first to me, and I--I will be with you to-night. You will not be
+again alone with the heart-break."
+
+[Music: _Indian Torture Chant._]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Toward evening Raquel grew more quiet, and Ana, seeing that the fever
+was abating, gave herself much blame for sending in such haste for
+Rafael; and what she had written to him only the good saints could tell,
+for she had been so frightened she had possibly told him unpleasant
+things!
+
+However, all things could be endured if only Raquel would open her eyes
+in reason once more, and lift the load of self-blame from the heart of
+Ana.
+
+Not only the young girls, but the mistress as well, kept a respectful
+distance from the room where Raquel lay, adjoining the hall. Her moans
+and strange words had filled them with dread, but no more so than had
+the grovelling fear of the old Indian woman. All day she had crouched at
+the door like a patient animal, waiting the end. Sometimes she muttered
+to herself in queer Indian words, sometimes she crept to the couch of
+Doņa Raquel for a little while, and then back again to the door, always
+mumbling or praying, and always insisting that the mother of Raquel had
+come from the grave to tell things, and that the last of the kings was
+gone now for always!
+
+Any attempt at a question, any interpretation of her mutterings, would
+arouse her to a realization that she was among new people in a strange
+land, and her lips would shut in a straight line, to be kept shut so
+long as she was conscious of their presence.
+
+The Indian servants crept past the door, with fearful eyes fixed in
+dread. She was of another race and another tongue than their own
+forebears, straight and slender even in her old age; darkest
+reddish-bronze in color, while a San Juan grandmother was always fat,
+and nearly always black. Beside them, Polonia looked almost Caucasian.
+Yet she proudly denied any white blood; she was an Indian of a hill
+tribe of the south, the name of which she would not utter.
+
+All this, and her mutterings, and the wild words of her mistress, put
+terror into the heart of the San Joaquin household. The girls huddled
+together and whispered tales of witches and ghosts, and thought she
+looked like each in turn; and Doņa Ana got great credit for courage in
+staying in the room with her in the night-time.
+
+But all their vague fears were changed to a definite terror when one of
+the Indian children found the clay image by the aquia, and in its yet
+moist members all the pins, for the stealing of which half the children
+around the ranch had that morning received a taste of the rope's end.
+
+Such a gray-faced, wailing lot as scampered up from the aquia! Girls
+screaming, old women wailing, and the mothers herding the children out
+of reach of the accursed thing!
+
+All was explained now, about the sudden awful sickness of the Doņa
+Raquel! The Indian woman from the south was a very devil! Doņa Raquel
+had perhaps had to whip her some time, and she had waited until she was
+with her in a strange house to do this thing: that was why she crouched
+at the door as if on guard; she was afraid some one might enter to pray,
+or with holy water, or any of the helps of the saints. And after the
+life had gone from Doņa Raquel, who could tell that she might not kill
+others, even all of them on the ranch? Since she had in one hour's time
+changed her mistress from a well woman to a crazy woman who laughed, how
+long would it take to do the same for a dozen? Not a day! In a week she
+could kill them all!
+
+Panic seized the entire herd. They raced in terror for the ranch-house
+and overwhelmed the mistress with their fears. Her daughters clung
+together, white-faced at the frenzy facing them. The men were out on the
+ranch and ranges; Don Enrico was with them, and there was no one to
+control the dark mob of fanatic faces, any more than one could head a
+stampeding herd of cattle: that was what terror developed in them--the
+mad, unreasoning rush of animals to trample underfoot, or tear to
+pieces, the thing they feared.
+
+The mistress could only gasp, "Pray to God--pray to God!" but her voice
+was lost in the tumult of the wild chorus. It was too late for prayers;
+prayers were no good after a devil had got hold of any one! Then there
+was only one thing to do, and they had the knife for the meat and the
+axe for the wood! A devil could be burned out, or drowned out, and there
+was not water enough this side of the sea for the drowning; therefore--
+
+In vain their mistress screamed, and her daughters clung to the bare
+brown arms of their serving-women. They were thrown aside in the
+stampede of the savage herd. Let the lady say what should be done with
+white blood; but this was an Indian, and an Indian of a strange tribe
+and country!
+
+Even in their panic the bovine cowardly herd remembered that fact; there
+would be no Indian relatives of the witch to wreak vengeance on them;
+she was the devil's own, and she had no other kindred!
+
+They tore across the hall, sacred at other times to the family, and Ana,
+rising in wonder at the tumult, was met at the door by the mob. She
+retreated to the couch of Raquel, with outstretched arms to protect her
+guest, as she commanded that they be gone.
+
+Her words were scarcely heard. At the door, crouching, and with covered
+head, they found her they wanted, and dragged her unresisting through
+the hall and out into the open.
+
+The mistress, sick and half fainting, stumbled to her own room, and
+cowered at the altar, with one daughter clinging to her and sobbing,
+while the other stood at the portal of the patio and called for some of
+the boys, or a man, or horse for any one who could ride for help and
+stop the horror.
+
+"Mother of God! They make the fire!" she screamed.
+
+It was true. They were dragging the wood and making ready for a fire.
+Children followed their mothers, gathering leaves and straw. One
+black-skinned creature had brought a shovel of coals, and was lying
+prone on the ground beside it, blowing it with her breath until it
+glowed and sent demoniac lights into her heavy-lidded eyes. One old hag
+held the devil's witness, the clay image, before the accused, and after
+one brief look Polonia made no struggle. It was fate; she had known from
+the feverish words of Doņa Raquel that some one must die as sacrifice.
+
+Then she began to croon a strange whining chant, and the hands of those
+holding her fell away in sudden terror of even the touch of her. Slowly
+she stumbled to her feet, and looked at the sun, and raising her old
+hands toward its lowering light, waved them to and fro in weird
+salutation, never checking the strange song or chant.
+
+Ana had a pistol, and stood in wavering uncertainty as to whether she
+should run out, or stay on guard beside Raquel; but to the final
+adjuration she responded as one suddenly aroused from a stupor of fear,
+and rushing to the little plaza she screamed loudly and then fired two
+shots in quick succession; then after a deliberate little pause she
+fired once more, and with pale cheeks turned toward the door, trembling,
+and waiting.
+
+"God be praised! See, help is coming," gasped Juanita, pointing
+northward. "Good! The dust--the man on the horse--and how he rides--how
+he rides!"
+
+Ana watched the rider, fascinated and weak with terror. Juanita was
+laughing and crying with joy, but her cousin stood pale and motionless,
+and said not a word as the horseman swept past the garden to the back of
+the house, where smoke was rolling up in a white cloud.
+
+He was none too soon. The fire was leaping in long tongues from the
+crackling sycamore boughs. The dark faces of the fanatics were alight
+with frenzied eagerness for their pious task of destroying a witch
+before they might be interfered with. They had heard the screams and
+shots, and knew what they meant, and the log they were tying the witch
+to was held upright by many willing hands.
+
+Her hands were already tied together; there was nothing left to do but
+fasten a rope around her at the waist, and toss both log and witch into
+the hottest corner.
+
+And then Juanita ran screaming toward the group, and back of her rode a
+man on a fiend of a horse, knocking the pious devotees right and left,
+and caught up the limp figure of old Polonia and flung it on the saddle
+in front of him.
+
+She opened her eyes and looked at him once as he raised her from the
+ground, and then closed them and looked no more. It was all of no
+use--neither the holy water to keep away the thought of him, nor the
+witchcraft to take the life from him. It was the accursed Americano, and
+the charm had only served to bring him more quickly!
+
+After the first staggering blow from the stranger's horse, some of the
+stronger spirits rallied, and lunged forward to drag the woman from her
+rescuer, while others lashed his horse that it might become
+uncontrollable. Two able-bodied wenches held on like grim death, despite
+the quirt which he brought down across their shoulders again and again,
+while he held the horse and Polonia with one arm.
+
+The animal, between the lashing of the mob and the roaring of the
+flames, was leaping madly, and the rider had all he could do to control
+its terror. Any moment a shot, or a club, or a stone thrown at his own
+head might give them two victims instead of one. That was Juanita's one
+wild fear. She screamed for Ana with the pistol, but Ana had sunk down,
+white and trembling on the doorstep, as she saw a black form suddenly
+appear in the midst of the howling mob of savages. An instant she saw
+him on the outer edge of the leaping, struggling circle, and the next
+he was by the head of the horse, and a strong arm struck right and left
+until there was space enough to show he was a bronzed, bearded man in a
+priest's habit.
+
+"Back to your kennels, dogs!" he cried, sharply. "Since when have ye
+dared strike at gentlemen? On your knees, every one of you! On your
+knees!"
+
+The younger girls and children dropped in the dust, but some of the
+older were less willing to give up.
+
+"She is a witch, father; she is killing a woman," cried one; "it is
+right a devil be put in the fire!"
+
+"Then how hot must the fire be made when your day comes!" he replied,
+and raised his hand and spoke slowly, solemnly, "Thrice heated will that
+fire be for the thrice-accursed! To your knees, in the name of God!"
+
+With sullen, shamed, disappointed faces, they obeyed. A white man who is
+a stranger they dared attack, if enough of them were together, but not a
+priest--a priest who could hit hard enough to knock a bull down.
+
+"That was a close shave, padre," observed the American, with a breath of
+relief. "They had this poor old wretch almost pulled in two--will you
+take her?"
+
+The priest made a step forward, and then halted and smiled, as in vague
+perplexity.
+
+"I have not the pleasure of understanding English," he said, gently.
+
+Ana arose and came forward; she was still very pale and still trembling;
+she looked at the priest and tried to speak, but the words were
+smothered in a half sob.
+
+"My daughter," he said, quietly, "take courage." Then he glanced at the
+pistol still in her hand. "It was you who fired? That was right. I was
+on the hill in the edge of the wood, and it is well you sent that
+warning. Your American friend said--?"
+
+"Oh, I speak a little Spanish too," remarked Bryton, in that tongue; "it
+is the woman with the tied hands I wanted you to take."
+
+The padre did so, untying the rope deftly, and steadying her wavering
+figure, while Bryton slipped from the saddle, and spoke to Juanita, who
+had the one welcoming face he had seen.
+
+"I know you," she said, eagerly. "Did I not see you at San Juan
+Capistrano, at Alvara's and at the Mission? I was sure of it. This is my
+cousin Doņa Ana and Father--"
+
+"Libertad," the padre interrupted, briefly, and spoke directly to
+Bryton, "from Mexico."
+
+"You will think us all savages to allow this, father," and she pointed
+to the huddled Indians and the leaping flames; "but it was all so
+quick--like that--no one could think! My mother is in hiding from it,
+and--"
+
+"Father," said Ana, speaking for the first time, "a priest is needed in
+the house. We have a woman who may be dying. Will you come quickly?"
+
+She was eager to separate the priest from the others, and, her speech
+was nervous and eager.
+
+"Dying?" he repeated, "is that what they meant when they said the Indian
+had killed a woman?"
+
+"Yes, father," broke in the quavering tones of old Altagrazia, "here it
+is--the devil she made!" and she held up the clay image, from which the
+head had been broken in the _męlée_. "One day ago the lady is well and
+rides like a caballero, and this day the sun goes down and she dies. The
+Indian from Mexico put on the curse!"
+
+Old Polonia understood, and screamed denials in her native tongue, and
+then turned to the padre and pointed to the American.
+
+"It is that man!" she cried, shrilly, "he is a devil! He does not
+die--not for anything! And while he lives he breaks the heart of my
+mistress. It is he; that is the man! Put on him the curse of the Church,
+father! Put on him the curse to send him to a desert where he never can
+find a road again!"
+
+The padre smiled grimly. "That is all they use their religion for after
+a century of Christianity," he observed. "They still stick to their
+devil-worship, and call on the Church only when they want maledictions
+or absolution. Woman, you talk like a fool. Did you do this?"
+
+He took the headless clay pin-cushion and held it before him. Polonia
+flashed one vindictive glance at him and then nodded her head sullenly.
+It was bad luck to lie to a padre.
+
+"It was to save her," she muttered, "but the Americano is a devil, and
+nothing kills him."
+
+She turned one glance of hate and fear upon her rescuer, and moved
+toward the house.
+
+"She means you?" asked the padre.
+
+"Oh, she is crazy, that old Indian," cried Juanita; "always she makes me
+afraid. The Seņor Bryton she never perhaps has seen until this minute.
+That is her thanks that he pull her from the fire!"
+
+The padre turned for one level look at the pale face of Ana.
+
+"Your name is Bryton?" he then said, quietly. "Will you, Seņor Bryton,
+see that these savages do not attempt another roasting, while I look to
+the woman who is dying?"
+
+Bryton turned to Juanita.
+
+"Is it so bad as that?" he asked. "The Doņa Raquel--"
+
+"We think she is better this evening; still, it may be a fever coming;
+one never knows. Ah! there are my father and the men."
+
+Don Enrico Cordoba and some vaqueros rode madly through the corral and
+into the place of the huge bonfire and the still kneeling Indians. Now
+that their white heat of passion was over, they remembered only the
+beating they would get, and crouched doggedly where the padre had bidden
+them; the younger ones wept with fear when Juanita told her father the
+story.
+
+"Holy God!" he shouted in a rage, breaking in on her recital. "In my
+house to trample on my family and drag a woman to the fire! Tomás, count
+every head and remember every name. In three days every one shall be
+tied to a tree and whipped; if one runs away, she shall be caught and
+whipped twice,--once here on the ranch, and once on the Mission plaza of
+San Juan, on a Sunday after mass. You cattle, you dogs, you devils,
+begone from my sight!"
+
+He struck right and left with the green-hide reata, spurring his horse
+after those who stumbled along too slowly to suit him, striking old and
+young alike as they ran wailing with terror at the promises he had made
+them, and which they knew would be kept. The Mexican master was quite as
+prone as the Indian servants to find acute methods of torture or
+punishment.
+
+When all were despatched he rode back, puffing and laughing, to his
+daughters and guest, with whom he shook hands heartily.
+
+"Holy saints! but we did ride when we saw the smoke; it looked like the
+house on fire. It winds a man, a ride like that at my age," and he shook
+his fat sides with laughter. "Come inside and have a glass of whiskey,
+Seņor Bryton. We met at the alcalde's last year when the army officers
+were in San Juan? Yes, I thought so. I am glad you have come to my
+house, and--who knows--you maybe saved my wife and my daughters as well
+as the old woman. When these savages get the taste of blood, they are
+crazy wolves, never fighters in the open, brave only when there is a mob
+like that. Come in, come in! Juanita, go tell your mother we have a
+guest who has saved you all. What was it you said of a padre? where is
+he?"
+
+"With Doņa Raquel, father."
+
+"She is worse?"
+
+"We do not know, but thanks to the Virgin, she no longer laughs or
+cries. Ana is there. If she live or die, we all feel the padre has come
+if the husband do not."
+
+"Humph! Oh, yes, yes, always the priests!" he grunted. "Women can't keep
+house without the padres. I think I build a chapel for my women; then
+they can pray all the time to be sure they save my soul," and he laughed
+skeptically; then he tossed aside his sombrero, and brought bottles and
+glasses to a little table of marble on the veranda. "Will you have
+whiskey, or the bottle of wine?"
+
+"I prefer your own wine of the ranch, Don Enrico," and Bryton poured out
+the white moselle, of which the Cordoba family was justly proud; "I
+think the padre was also off a journey, seņor; perhaps a swallow of this
+fine wine--"
+
+"Oh, let the women alone to look after the wants of the padre," laughed
+his host. "They own my house when they are in it, though sometimes I
+never see them. 'How much money do you want?' I say when they come, and
+that ends my business with the padres! I buy and sell with them and get
+beaten at _monte_ or _malilla_, but I let women do the praying with
+them! Here comes my wife. Refugia, this is the preserver of your house,
+the Seņor Bryton. Have some whiskey, dear; you are still pale."
+
+"Pale! Never shall I get over this day. Think of the shame of it! Doņa
+Raquel Arteaga has been entertained like a queen by the bishop, and when
+she honors our home, her servant is dragged out to be burned! The word
+will go out that we are savages. Enrico, never so long as you live do
+you leave this house again without a man in it!"
+
+"Surely not. Drink the whiskey, dear, and be composed."
+
+Doņa Refugia drank the fiery liquor, and appeared to enjoy it very much,
+but it had not a quieting influence. It rather helped her to remember
+and recount all the details of her own stages of fear during the
+stampede of the self-appointed executioners.
+
+"After the night we all had," she lamented, "to have it followed by such
+a day! God grant that Doņa Raquel slept or was unconscious through it
+all. Had she seen those fiends, it might have killed her or brought back
+the fever. Juanita says a padre has come, which is the one lucky thing."
+
+"Seņor Bryton came first, which was a more lucky thing," said her
+husband; "all the saints could not have saved the woman from the fire if
+he had not come when he did. Such a thing has not happened here in this
+valley since I was a boy. Have some more of the wine; it will give you
+an appetite for supper."
+
+At the mention of supper his wife remembered that all the help of the
+kitchen might have deserted the premises under the scourging of Don
+Enrico's reata, and calling the girls to help, she left the gentlemen to
+their glasses.
+
+At the hall she halted to ask after Raquel, and in the shadow saw her
+niece and the padre talking softly. Ana's head was bent as though
+weeping, and the hand of the padre was smoothing her hair, and his words
+were reassuring.
+
+"There, there! it is not so bad, after all," he was saying. "You did the
+best you knew; and now that I am here, there is nothing to do but--"
+
+"Oh, I know," broke in Ana; "you say all this so I will not blame
+myself. You would do the same if the worst, the very worst, happened."
+
+"It is not going to happen," he said, quietly; then, as he saw Doņa
+Refugia in the hall, "Your friend is surely not so dangerously ill as
+you fear; by to-morrow--"
+
+Ana looked up quickly at his change of tone, and arose to her feet.
+
+"Here is my aunt," she said. "Aunt Refugia, this is a padre journeying
+south to Mexico. He--he came at the right moment to help Seņor Bryton,
+and I have asked him to stay--and--"
+
+"Of course," said Doņa Refugia, promptly. "Thanks to God you are here
+this night! Show him to the padre's room, Ana, while I see to supper. Is
+she sleeping?" she asked, nodding toward the couch.
+
+They did not know; she lay with closed eyes most of the time, and they
+received no replies to queries, but Ana felt that she only slept
+fitfully, and then her own muttered words were certain to arouse her to
+a sort of half wakefulness in which she was simply conscious of the
+presence of some one without caring in the least who it was. The
+entrance of the mob had not impressed her mind more clearly than the
+visionary pictures of the night before.
+
+Old Polonia had again crouched outside the door, in the hall, wordless
+as before, and, except for some slight disarrangement of her clothing,
+showing less sign than might have been expected of the horrid scene she
+had been a part of. She had gone in to look at her mistress, had
+swallowed some wine offered her by Juanita, and with a short guttural
+laugh had settled herself outside the door as a sentinel--or near enough
+to hear the slightest call from Raquel.
+
+The priest regarded her sharply and turned to Ana.
+
+"You are certain it was not Estevan's daughter she meant to harm?" he
+asked, quietly, but not so low but that the sharp ears of the Indian
+caught the name. She pulled a corner of the mantilla from across her
+eyes and looked at him.
+
+"Sure," said Ana, "why, she was her nurse, and the nurse of her mother
+before her. She would make a carpet of herself for Raquel's feet."
+
+"The nurse of her mother before her," said the priest, slowly. "Then she
+is of that strange hill tribe of the temple mountain, and she herself is
+not a common Indian. To have been nurse to that family of the priests,
+means that her own family was entitled to notice. Yet she has followed,
+in her old age, to a strange land. Yes, it must mean devotion. But why
+does she dislike the American?"
+
+"God knows! She could not have ever seen him before. I thought she
+lied."
+
+"The hate in her eyes was no lie," observed the padre. "His presence
+here was lucky, but it is not explained, any more than is my own. To me
+it looks--well, as I said, he is in with the officers."
+
+"And it is my fault he has seen you--my fault," murmured Ana. "If you
+would only go at once--"
+
+"I think not; it is a good chance to watch the gentleman. If I were sure
+that old woman meant her hate for him--"
+
+He stared at Polonia a moment, and then nodded his head.
+
+"I'll take the chance," he decided, and went alone to her and pulled the
+cover entirely from her face.
+
+"Friend of a daughter of many kings," he said, slowly.
+
+She stared at him, and stumbled to her feet in salutation.
+
+"It is true, my father, but the kings of the hills are dead; and now,"
+pointing toward Raquel, "there will be no more in the land."
+
+"Who knows?" said the strange padre. "There still lives a daughter;
+guard her better than you did her mother when I carried love messages
+from Estevan."
+
+"Ai! I know you now. You have become padre, and you guard her from the
+heretics--the heretics, father," and she pointed toward the veranda
+where Don Enrico and his guest could be heard in conversation. "That
+accursed Americano--"
+
+"Sh--h! quiet, you!" and he placed a hand on her arm authoritatively;
+"make no noise, say no words, but watch him all the time--every time
+when I am out of sight. Understand?"
+
+She glanced from the padre to Ana, who nodded her head, and at once the
+dark old face was illuminated; at last she was not alone in this strange
+land! Others were here who hated the Americano, and that made them her
+kindred. She caught the hand of the padre and pressed it to her
+forehead.
+
+"I watch always," she promised, fervently; and to herself she thought,
+"After all, we get him killed some way, if the padre, who was a soldier,
+helps."
+
+They left her in her chosen place, crouched in the hall just outside the
+door of Raquel, content at last that she was not alone in her hatred of
+the man whom she blamed for the weary hours of wretchedness lived
+through by her mistress.
+
+Ana showed the padre to the room set aside always for the use of such
+priests as travelled from San Gabriel to San Juan. They were not so many
+of late years, but in this house they were always honored guests, no
+matter what their order, or land, or language.
+
+"I am afraid--afraid!" said Ana, as she opened the door; "if some one
+should come who knows--"
+
+"No one will," he said, reassuringly, "and this may be a good chance to
+learn much. Go, help your aunt, and forget to fear."
+
+Ana sighed, but went as he bade, to the kitchen, where Doņa Refugia was
+doing her best to make amends for the distraction of the cooks. They
+were like big, fat, frightened children, not one of them of any use that
+night.
+
+Still, there chanced to be enchilladas made the day before, and the
+tortillas took but a little while to bake, and the bonfire in the yard
+had settled to a bed of gleaming coals where the beef could be barbecued
+with no delay but the sending of some girls to the creek for spears of
+peeled willow. Ana glanced out and saw them squatted peacefully around
+the red heap, turning the poles on which the strips of beef were hung,
+as phlegmatic as though they had not howled for a human roasting there
+not an hour ago.
+
+Juanita had made the table look very nice, in honor of the strange
+American guest who had followed her call and saved the family from the
+disgrace of such a killing.
+
+He filled her girlish ideal of the heroic, and she was not like some
+women who thought that California girls should marry only their own
+race: a big American husband seemed the finest thing in the world to
+Juanita.
+
+So there were red geraniums on the table, and yellow poppies, and the
+best new plates brought from a steamer at San Pedro but a month before;
+they were a bright blue, and Juanita thought the color combination very
+fine indeed. She ran to put on a new dress, that the stranger might not
+think they all looked as if the house had been wrecked. Ana, for a
+wonder, was indifferent to her own personal appearance, and kept on an
+old black dress with not even a collar of lace to break its severity.
+
+Don Enrico showed Bryton to a room where he could wash and brush a bit,
+but so interested was he in his chance guest, that he remained at the
+door chatting affably, and recounting the word he had received that day
+that Flores and his men had made a big fight with some cattle people
+over in Sonora, and had either got a boat at San Onofre and gone out to
+sea, or else they were somewhere in the San Juan mountains, and of
+course had spies on the outlook for the marshal or the army men. Don
+Enrico himself thought it time for the army men to interfere--there were
+many army men in Los Angeles, and this was no longer a county affair.
+
+"But the devil of a trouble in this country is that too many Mexican
+men, and women too, will help to hide Flores's men because of Capitan,
+who has never yet taken a peso from a Mexican, except the Arteagas, and
+who never fails to strip an American if he starts on his trail. They
+like that, these Mexicans, whose men fought the Americanos; they are not
+strong enough to fight in the open, but they like to help this vagabond
+Capitan, who should have been priest instead of bandit, and who keeps up
+their fight for them under cover."
+
+He had entered the dining-room while talking, and so interested was he
+in his pet complaint against the troublesome outlaws, that he did not
+notice the tall black figure by the side of his wife.
+
+"Uncle, this is Padre Libertad," said Ana, almost timidly. Don Enrico
+did not like priests in general; he made the mistake of classing them
+all with the Catalonian padre of San Juan, whom he disliked so much that
+he would not eat at the same table. His women folks never knew how he
+would receive a man of the Church until he was proven to his taste.
+
+However, the good American whiskey had put him in a cordial mood, and he
+nodded amiably as he took his seat.
+
+"A good day to you, padre," he said. "You tramped a long way in the dust
+to find trouble, did you? Well, the women are thanking the saints you
+came at the right time, you and Seņor Bryton. So it is all very well,
+and God send that the fight gave you an appetite."
+
+And evidently something did, for the priest ate like a vaquero off the
+ranges. Don Enrico felt a growing respect for the man who could eat more
+barbecued meat than himself, and drink as much red wine. In fact, all
+did ample justice to the beef of the bonfire built for old Polonia,--all
+except Ana,--who still looked pale and uneasy, and Bryton, who made a
+pretence of eating, but who refused a second glass of wine, a thing the
+padre noticed with a smile, and their host commented on vigorously.
+
+"You can't drink--you Americans," he insisted; "and look at your
+plate,--not half empty! It takes students and brain-workers like the
+padre and me to spoil a side of beef! You are Spanish and of Mexico,
+padre?"
+
+"No, not even my grandfather came from Spain; so I cannot claim to be
+Spanish," said the padre. "I claim only to be Mexican."
+
+"And good enough too! Across the line, do these bandits of ours make
+much trouble these days?"
+
+"No one has complained to me of them. You say they take most from the
+Americano, but in our country there are no Americano ranches yet; we do
+not expect to find them there for many years."
+
+"Well, Capitan does go down there sometimes," insisted Don Enrico; "I've
+heard of it. His family meant him for the Church, but the young devil
+ran away and joined the army with his elder brother. The Americans shot
+Roberto; this one was only a boy then, light-weight to ride, and he
+carried despatches, and never went back to the Church. Oh, he is
+Californian, all right,--is cousin to half the country. He is--what
+relation should he be to us, Refugia?"
+
+"He is second cousin to me," said Ana.
+
+"So if you hear of him being in trouble for his soul, say a prayer for
+him, padre, on account of his loyal cousin," said Juanita, and laughed
+teasingly; but Ana lifted troubled, dark eyes to the padre's face.
+
+"Do so, father," she said, simply; "for the sake of his soul, remember
+me!"
+
+"These women!" laughed her uncle; "they are always troubling us about
+our souls, padre. Don't let them spoil your supper with a list of
+prayers!"
+
+"And what would become of some of your souls if we women did not say the
+prayers?" retorted his wife. "God knows, Capitan needs them."
+
+"We all need them," said the priest, quietly.
+
+"Still, I always have understood that he is the whitest of the bunch,"
+observed Bryton.
+
+"There are, then, different shades of blackness?" asked the padre. "I
+believe the law holds all equally guilty."
+
+"El Capitan's motives, at least, have been different, and it has come to
+be understood that when extremely brutal things have occurred on their
+raids, Capitan is never of the party."
+
+"Is it so? I did not know you Americanos gave Mexicans credit for such
+negative virtues?"
+
+Bryton looked up quickly. There was a mocking light in the eyes of the
+padre, and he was smiling across the table. The smile puzzled Bryton as
+much as the quick alarm in the eyes of Ana. Was she afraid of
+controversy over the still warm question of Mexican and United States
+rights?
+
+"I think that, individually, we give each other credit," he replied,
+"especially to the fighters. It is only the political schemers who make
+the troubles between the two factions. As for Capitan, he has too much
+daring not to force admiration even from the people he dislikes."
+
+Ana flashed a grateful glance at him, and a slight flush crept to the
+forehead of the padre; he gulped down the contents of his glass, and
+pushed back his chair.
+
+"Do you fear any trouble with those Indians to-night?" he asked,
+abruptly. "Had I better speak with them?"
+
+"It is better, perhaps, that we say a rosary, and bring them together
+that way," observed Doņa Refugia; "it is the best way. I will have Pedro
+ring the bell--"
+
+Ana slipped out of the dining-room beside the padre.
+
+"You will?" she asked.
+
+"Surely; a rosary is easy. Why do you look so frightened? Your Americano
+will not eat me."
+
+"But you don't like him?"
+
+"What does that matter? At least, he says no harm of a man behind his
+back, and it is true what he says of the politicians. Oh, if he keeps up
+the compliments, who knows but that we may be good friends yet--after he
+has paid for the horses he took north? Chut!--that is only jest! Smile a
+little and help to corral the Indians."
+
+Bryton, with Juanita beside him, had sauntered again to the veranda.
+Passing the door of the hall, he noticed Polonia still crouched there,
+and Juanita shuddered and drew away.
+
+"I am always frightened at her," she confessed; "not alone would I go in
+a room where she is at dark for all the gold they say there is in
+Trabuco Mountain. It is not so strange to me that the poor creatures
+were afraid and thought her a witch. If you had heard the Doņa Raquel
+all last night, you also would have thought only witchcraft could make
+her so suddenly fall sick with a heart-ache for a ring that would save
+her, and a temple where a sacrifice was. Truly, it was pitiful--her
+cries. I pulled the pillow over my ears. Only Ana was brave enough to
+stay close to her,--Ana and the old mummy."
+
+"And Doņa Ana--she thought what of it all--the madness--the--"
+
+"Oh, Ana has no love for Rafael; she blames him in some way; and it may
+be that he does make trouble for his wife--he would not be an Arteaga
+else. But she never mentioned his name in all her cries, never once. She
+called always--always for the ring, and laughed that some one who wore
+the ring was again alive. Oh, it was all of queer crazy things like
+that--ghostly things--she made laments for. It was like purgatory to
+hear her, yet Ana was not afraid. She has courage, that girl!"
+
+"She is asleep now?" he asked, suddenly.
+
+"Who--Ana? why--"
+
+"No, no, I mean Doņa--I mean the sick lady. She is better--or--how?"
+
+"She notices nothing, and says nothing, but she does not scream for some
+one who was dead and is now alive, as she did last night, when she
+laughed and wept; so I think that means the herb teas have checked the
+fever. Do not you?"
+
+Just then the bell rang in the patio for the rosary, and Juanita, with a
+word of apology, slipped away, saying diffidently, "Though you are
+welcome to come and pray with us,"--divided between her wish to have
+him, and her reluctance to make it obligatory on a heretical guest to
+attend their services.
+
+"I shall pray with you," he said, simply, "but I shall remain here. My
+presence might not have a soothing effect on your servants. I shall
+smoke a cigar here on the terrace until you return."
+
+Juanita blushed. She would rather have lingered there herself than
+joined the others. The dusk was coming on; a few last bars of red lay
+along the sky line to the west where the sea was, and at that hour there
+was no corner so delightfully appealing as the great veranda where the
+gold-of-Ophir roses made a lattice of green and yellow against the warm
+sky.
+
+Ana entered and lit a candle in the hall and another in the room of
+Raquel, and went out again with a quiet nod to the American guest pacing
+the veranda aimlessly, and smoking one of Don Enrico's prime cigarros.
+
+When she had disappeared, he sauntered as aimlessly through the hall to
+the patio where the dark people were gathered with bent heads, murmuring
+responses sullenly, scarcely daring to lift their eyes to the group on
+the veranda.
+
+A few candles had been lit along the wall where the shadows were
+deepening, and in their soft light Bryton could see Don Enrico and all
+the men of the ranch--vaqueros and ploughmen alike--kneeling back of the
+women, and the red light yet showing through the gray of the ashes where
+the flames had leaped so lately.
+
+[Music: _El Campo._]
+
+    Ya me voy de esta campo querida,
+    Donde tiernas caricias gocé
+    Y me voy con el alma partida,
+    Campo ingrata por ti llovaré!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+Only an instant he gave to it all, but in that instant he made certain
+that every man and woman on the place was at prayers, except the old
+Indian woman, who squatted with covered head in the hall, and himself.
+His movements were no longer aimless. He retreated swiftly to the
+veranda, and tossed the cigarro into the garden. One glance he gave the
+wooden-like figure of the old Indian. Only as a last resort would he
+attempt to pass that way, but if the windows were not barred--
+
+They were not. Ana had gone against her aunt's Mexican rule, which was
+that all fresh air should be excluded from a sick-room; and while that
+lady and all her servants exclaimed against the admission of air, they
+let the blame lie on the shoulders of Ana, and no one closed the window.
+It swung wide to the wind of the west, and on the couch within, Bryton
+could see Raquel's face.
+
+The lids were closed over the violet eyes, and the lips were apart,
+showing the white teeth. It was still so light that he could see the
+little flush on the cheeks against the white pillow, and on her right
+hand one little old ring of plain gold. On the left hand shone the red
+gold of her new wedding-ring.
+
+She looked so pathetically young and so utterly alone, as she lay there,
+that all the man in him arose in protest, and a mist of tears blinded
+him for a moment to the beauty of her face.
+
+"Poor little one," he whispered, "my poor little broken Doņa
+Espiritu--my one lady of the spirit!"
+
+The sound of the words did not wake her, but the sense of them reached
+her some way; for she opened her eyes suddenly, and without any shadow
+of wonder they rested on his face.
+
+"I waited a long time," she said at last, "then I heard your voice, and
+I knew you were coming to me."
+
+He set his lips tightly, and nodded, but did not speak.
+
+"I waited a long time," she repeated, as a child appealing for
+understanding. "Did they tell you I thought you were dead?"
+
+[Illustration: "THEN I HEARD YOUR VOICE"]
+
+He nodded assent. No one had told him so, but the words explained much.
+
+"You said you would come back if you lived, and you never came, and they
+told me--the padre told me--that you were dead!"
+
+"So I am," he said, gently; "and they told me, my lady of the spirit,
+that you had taken the final vow of the convent--that the night, our one
+night, was a thing you were forgetting under a black veil. Child, child!
+they lied to us, and now--"
+
+"Forgetting?" she said, slowly. "How does one forget a night like that,
+when we walked out of the wilderness into the day together? You never
+came back; and I--I wanted to be in the world where you had been, so
+I--"
+
+"I know," he whispered, gently; "I know, my doņa of the spirit."
+
+He had not meant to touch her,--only to look at her and speak to her
+once, and then ride wherever fate might take him.
+
+But she reached her hands to him, and with a smothered groan he knelt by
+her couch and his arms were around her.
+
+"Don't weep like that!" she whispered, and laid her hand on his head.
+"I have wept enough for two, since our carriages passed and I found you
+had not died. And you--you knew all the time."
+
+"I knew when I saw you kneel in your wedding-veil and take that
+oath--not until then. I heard his mother say that he was the man you
+loved; and, soul of mine! you had not said as much as that in words to
+me. So I--"
+
+"You heard that? Then you know the life I have to live." He nodded,
+without lifting his head from the pillow of her arm. There are some
+things hard to face with open eyes, but she felt the shudder that passed
+over him. Through the opened window came the rise and fall of many
+murmuring voices repeating the rosary. In the gold-of-Ophir rose-tree
+two birds fluttered and called to each other in the very whisper of bird
+notes. The soft lavender-grays of a Californian nightfall were sifting
+through the warm light of the afterglow, and away there in the west
+stretched bars of blood red, the last trace of the dying day. All the
+sequestration of the hour was about them, all the hush of the pause,
+before the final plunge of their day into the shadows, and the two souls
+were enveloped by the atmosphere of that ever-recurring tragedy of the
+hours, and of lives.
+
+How long he knelt there he did not know. She felt his lips on her
+wrist, and felt rather than heard the broken words he was
+whispering--the wild, mad words he had meant not to say, as he had meant
+not to touch her; then her eyes grew bright as the stars picking their
+way through the vault of blue, and the golden-haired woman of the
+carriage belonged to a feverish phantasy of the past hours. She might
+exist, that golden-haired creature of beauty, but the real life of the
+man who knelt there in the dusk belonged only to her, to her always,
+through the bond of one starlit Mexican night of witchery, and this last
+hour of the California day.
+
+Nothing made any difference now; though she lived in a hell of purgatory
+all her waking life, the bonds of their dream life would be closer than
+all else--always, always!
+
+She felt suddenly well and strong. Ah, there was so much in the world to
+live for! Though they never met, never spoke again, this hour of the
+tryst would be his through all her life--her hour of a rosary of the
+heart.
+
+A girl's voice in the patio came softly through the dark in an old
+Spanish hymn. It was Juanita, and the service of prayer was ending in
+the usual duo; one of the vaqueros with a fine barytone voice was
+singing the echoing stanzas of praise.
+
+It was the signal for dispersing, but the man at the couch did not know
+that. Neither did he know that the crouched form of the Indian was no
+longer in the hall. She was waiting in the dusk at the door, and she was
+clutching with a claw-like hand at the robe of the padre, and muttering,
+"He is there--it is true. He is there--and she is again bewitched. Now
+you will help me to kill the American?"
+
+The padre looked at her sharply, and then motioned to Ana, who was close
+behind.
+
+"Remain with the others. Make some excuse to keep them there--another
+hymn--anything. And be quick--quick!"
+
+Startled though she was, Ana obeyed, and from the door of the hall he
+heard again the voice of Juanita; this time it was in a favorite known
+to all, and the volume of sound told him that Don Enrico himself was
+joining in the refrain, and that no one would leave the patio until the
+finale was reached.
+
+No candle burned now in the hall. Polonia had blown it out, that no ray
+might enter the half-open door of the inner room. She would have gone
+with the padre, but the sudden vigorous grasp of his hand on her
+shoulder stopped her where she stood, and without a word being spoken,
+she knew better than to follow.
+
+Quickly as a cat of the hills, the padre crossed the hall and stood
+where he could see the open window and the kneeling man, and the hand of
+Raquel on his bent head.
+
+"Every night when the dusk comes it will be our time of the day," she
+was saying. "They told me you were dead, else--but you know. I think the
+mad hours have gone by for me; I can go on living if--if you do not
+forget."
+
+The listening priest could not hear what the man said, but she heard,
+and smiled, and sighed.
+
+"There is one thing," she said, hesitatingly: "the ring, you have worn
+it a year--and--"
+
+"I know," and he lifted his head. "We need no visible emblem, you and I.
+I put it back on your finger, my lady of the spirit,--Doņa Espiritu;--a
+pledge of renunciation, and a reminder of the rosary of the dusk."
+
+She took from her right hand the little gold band and gave it to him,
+and in its place he slipped the onyx ring of the Aztec eagle and
+serpent.
+
+"I did not tell you what that ring means to my people," she said, as he
+kissed it in its new resting-place. "Maybe I never can tell you. I--I
+thought I could be stronger if I wore it on my own hand, for--for the
+reason that my heart went out of my bosom to follow it, and--and I rode
+my horse as fast and as far as I could from you, because I--was
+afraid."
+
+"Good God!" whispered the man. "You don't know what you are saying.
+Remember that I dare not touch your lips, and that I love you--love
+you--love you!"
+
+Then the nestling birds in the gold-of-Ophir rose were startled from
+their repose by the man who strode through the open window and walked
+blindly out into the garden.
+
+The padre watched the girl's face on the pillow for a moment, and heard
+her sobs, and retreated softly to the hall, where he met the others; and
+at Doņa Ana, when they were alone a moment, he smiled with a certain
+elation.
+
+"Look distressed no longer, little one," he said, reassuringly. "You
+have helped me to a good day's work, very good. Listen! I like your new
+American friend very much, and when you go to San Juan I count on you to
+help to make him welcome there. He is going to do me a good turn with
+Rafael Arteaga, and I forgive him all the horses he helped to save for
+the army men. He does not know it, but he is going to be my good friend,
+that fine Americano. He is so fine and so strong, Ana, that he thinks he
+can put a woman he loves in a niche of the memory, as we put statues of
+the saints in the niches of the altar-places."
+
+"What do you say?" she queried, perplexed by his smile and words.
+
+"And that though the woman loves him so much that she kisses her own
+hands where his lips have been, and though he loves her so much that he
+is half mad at denial, yet he will leave her always there in the little
+niche of the altar,--just above his head, but in reach of his hands; and
+the hands will never try to lift her down, Anita. He will only look at
+her as he rides past, and leave her there to remember."
+
+"I think you have gone mad," said Ana, sharply. "What did the Indian
+witch tell you in the hall?"
+
+"Ask her!" he suggested. But when Ana did so, she met only scowls and
+gutturals. And even the sound sleep of Raquel, and the absolute freedom
+from delirium, brought nothing but suspicion to the heart of old
+Polonia. It was witchcraft, like all the rest, and the padre should have
+put the malediction on the Americano when he had so good a chance. Above
+all, he should not have let him ride away in safety.
+
+[Music: _Indian Reveille._]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+The padre himself rode away very early. Don Enrico lent him a horse to
+ride to San Juan, and wondered a little that the San Gabriel people had
+not done as much; but times were changing in the land. One could not
+expect the old customs to live when so many strangers were crowding into
+the country.
+
+The offered horse was accepted gratefully, and the padre breakfasted
+with the vaqueros, and left for the south before the family were astir.
+Bryton watched him go, but lingered for a sight of Ana, that he might
+hear how the night had passed inside the window of the golden rose.
+
+And Ana was the last to join the party at breakfast, but was a very
+happy creature, compared with the nervous, pale woman of the night
+before. All were astonished at the fact that Raquel announced that she
+had slept like a child and all the illness and fever were forgotten. She
+was not sure but that she could ride to San Juan, and above all things
+she was grateful to Ana, and wished both the girls to go with her and
+visit in the old Mission.
+
+The servants were again the quiet listless folk they had been before the
+finding of the witch charm. But as Bryton rode out of the patio after
+many farewells and blessings from Doņa Refugia, and cordial invitations
+from Don Enrico to ride back that way, and consider the place as his own
+home, there were sullen scowls among the dark people.
+
+On the veranda Juanita stood alone and waved an adios to him. Back of
+her was the open window of the golden rose, and a slender girlish figure
+swayed toward him for an instant and then stood erect, and their eyes
+met and lingered, while he swept his sombrero to the stirrup.
+
+Juanita wondered, since he saluted so gallantly and rode with his face
+turned toward her veranda until the hedge intervened, why he did not
+smile; she was accustomed to gayer caballeros. She realized that she
+must have looked very pretty in her pink gown framed in the blossoming
+vines, and she turned away with a pout and a shrug. After all, Fernando
+was right: American men did not know how to make love.
+
+Raquel was rather pale and very quiet that morning, but insisted upon
+staying up; she even remembered to ask what the loud calling and running
+of many feet had meant the evening before; or had she dreamed it? She
+supposed it was a stampede of horses--was it? Was any one hurt? She had
+heard the voices of women.
+
+Ana told her it was only the breaking loose of part of a wild herd, but
+that no one was injured. Old Polonia heard, and blinked and scowled at
+Ana, but said nothing.
+
+It was noon when Rafael reached the ranch and caught sight of Raquel in
+a porch-chair under the vines. She paled slightly at sight of him, and
+turned the onyx ring so that the carving did not show, and by the time
+he had crossed the patio and walked to join them, her face was a serene
+mask. The only surprise she betrayed was at the dark look he cast on
+Ana.
+
+"Are you two in a politician's pay, that you bring me from Los Angeles
+in a fright of life and death, when I am needed every minute there for
+the business matters?" he demanded, and saw in a moment that his wife
+did not understand. Ana only laughed.
+
+"I did it," she acknowledged. "I sent the boy with some truths for you.
+Your wife was like to die the first night she came. It is by the grace
+of God she has been saved from a siege of fever. She does not know in
+the least how ill she was, but if you had heard her gabbling of
+blood-stained altars and strange wedding-rings, and floods sweeping over
+her until she screamed to be saved from them,--well, Don Rafael, you
+might well have forgotten to spare your horse. Three hours would have
+brought a lover here, but it takes thirty for the husband."
+
+"Why do you two quarrel always?" asked Raquel, indifferently. "I did not
+know she had sent for you. I was very tired, and the hot
+sun--something--oh yes, I was ill, and wakened myself screaming. But it
+is all gone. I can go home."
+
+Rafael tramped the veranda and sulked.
+
+"A fine laugh you have made for me in Los Angeles! They will think you
+were sick, that I follow my wife!" he said, frowning at Ana. "God of my
+soul! Why do you not get another husband to worry into the grave, and
+let your neighbors alone?"
+
+She only laughed again, and bent over her embroidery frame, where white
+butterflies were being woven on the drawn threads of linen.
+
+"Because no fine, manly, handsome caballero like yourself rides this
+way to ask me," she retorted. "All the most desirable men are always
+married."
+
+"The Seņor Bryton was here for the night," remarked Juanita.
+
+"Oh, he was? Alone?" asked Rafael.
+
+Juanita nodded. "And a priest," she added. "They both rode south."
+
+"Bryton alone?" mused Rafael. "I thought perhaps--Did any strangers ride
+south last night,--a large party?"
+
+No one had heard of any one passing.
+
+"Doņa Maria comes in a carriage by this morning," he remarked, "and Mrs.
+Bryton. I suppose they will want you to travel in their carriage, if you
+feel equal to the drive to San Juan."
+
+"Oh, she must not go to-day--not for anything!" decided Doņa Refugia,
+who had come from the hall and overheard. "Doņa Maria and her friend can
+stop here a few days, and then perhaps if your wife is strong enough--"
+
+"Certainly, that is the best, the very best," assented Rafael, with a
+smile of relief. Doņa Refugia was making it necessary that Raquel should
+at least meet the friends of Doņa Maria. All was turning out well, after
+all.
+
+Raquel made no remark, only looked out idly across the garden to the
+fields, yellow where the mustard bloom glowed. She knew she could not
+bear it just yet. Later, perhaps, she could grow strong enough to see
+Bryton's wife, and hear her voice cut across the days and the dusks
+here, where his whispers had awakened her to life--some day, perhaps;
+but she knew it could not be either to-day or to-morrow.
+
+Her husband watched her curiously. If she would only give some sign of
+what she felt, as another woman would do! How was a man to read a woman
+who stared out on life like a sphinx, seeing nothing and hearing
+nothing?
+
+In the same way, she had seemed a bit of wood over that old legend of
+the curse on San Juan: it had not changed in the least her determination
+to go back there; yet, since she had screamed of it in a fever, who was
+to know what feeling it had awakened back of those fathomless violet
+eyes?
+
+Rafael turned this theory over in his mind, and smoked several cigarros
+to help to solve the problem, but it was of no use. It had been a very
+fine marriage for him. Her visit to Los Angeles had further emphasized
+that fact; but he had the galling feeling of being only prince-consort
+to the queen, and it was not so pleasant to a man who had been shown
+favor of a different sort by many women who would have been glad to
+give him the king's place.
+
+To marry a girl who is like a wooden saint in a church may be a victory;
+it may be even romantic when she is half a nun; but it is not comforting
+to a husband who expects only a wife, a home.
+
+Then across his thoughts came the blue eyes and yellow hair of the woman
+he had said a reluctant good-bye to in Los Angeles. There was a woman
+who would have met all his friends half-way, would have promoted his
+interests, instead of closing doors and refusing to entertain any but
+the slow old Spanish, who were letting all the money slip out of their
+hands. In a few years their names would be forgotten in the new world of
+commerce building, through the Americanos in Los Angeles,--the
+Americanos whom his wife disdained, but whom the clever little woman of
+the blue eyes would have won to his interests in so many ways that her
+influence would have weighed down all the gold of the Estevan heiress,
+who did not know how to use it. It is only a trick of fate that the
+money always goes to the wrong people.
+
+So he thought, and smoked, and looked at Raquel Estevan de Arteaga, and
+wondered by what man[oe]uvre or stratagem he could break down her
+prejudices; he wondered, also, how a woman with such eyes and such lips
+could be so cold. He supposed it was inherited from the nun, her mother.
+
+Rafael had never heard the story of the love, and revenge, and widowhood
+of that nun. One or two of the older people of San Juan had heard of it
+at the time of Estevan's death, but none knew how true it was. It seemed
+too much a bit out of the dark ages of the Indian records to be true of
+the debonair Felipe, who had ridden and fought to the admiration of all
+Californian Mexico, who had found women wherever he rode, and had made
+love as a caballero's duty. It seemed scarcely credible that he, of all
+men, should have met death in that way on the far southern mountain; and
+the older men crossed themselves and tried to forget it, and the younger
+ones never heard of it.
+
+Rafael, smoking on the veranda and watching the serene face of his wife,
+and ascribing her coldness to the chill of convent walls, understood her
+no more than had Felipe Estevan understood the nun who had stepped down
+from her saint's niche for him; and old Polonia, sitting in the shadow,
+watched them both, and in her dull brain was also a query: Would he ever
+discover that she was not cold? And would he find out in the same way?
+Both God and the devil would be needed to help them all on that day,
+for California was not the hill of the temple, where the Indian still
+ruled!
+
+Rafael at last rode out to the range to see Don Enrico about several
+matters. He did not care to alarm the women concerning the rumors of the
+bandits, but now, since he had left Los Angeles behind, he would just as
+soon ride with the vigilantes as not, and Don Enrico could be trusted.
+It would be five long hours before the carriage with Doņa Maria and her
+bewitching guest reached the ranch, and one must kill time some way.
+
+He killed more time than he had counted upon. As the sun began to lower,
+and he and Don Enrico turned their horses for the ranch-house, the dogs
+started a coyote, and with one accord the Don, his guest, and his
+vaqueros, took up the trail, following the howls with hue and cry over
+mesa and along creeks, and by the time the dark had fallen, they were
+far toward Trabuco. They rode back laughing and singing, and making
+little dashes at racing, under the early stars.
+
+But their laughter was changed when they rode into the corral. News had
+come from the south, and a bad thing had happened there. The sheriff
+from Los Angeles had been ambushed by the Flores men at Niguel Rancho,
+and nine men were lying dead there. Carts were on the way to take them
+to San Juan for Christian burial, and Bryton had sent a messenger to Los
+Angeles with the word; the man had only checked his horse at San Joaquin
+ranch to shout out the news; that was hours ago. The Indian who had
+searched the ranges for Don Enrico had come back and said he was not to
+be found. Doņa Refugia had thought it possible that they had heard the
+word on the ranges and ridden direct to San Juan, and thanked God they
+had not done so.
+
+She went on to recount to Rafael her terror of the night before, and the
+awful scene from which she had by no means recovered, and now for this
+horror to follow so close, and the dread that they might be left alone
+on the ranch--well, she was having chills at the thought. Ana was the
+only one not afraid, but with Ana gone to San Juan Capistrano--
+
+Rafael grasped her arm so tightly that she gasped.
+
+"To San Juan?" he demanded. "Alone?" But he was certain of the answer
+before she spoke.
+
+"Holy Maria! What a grip you have! No. Did I not tell you? Well, we are
+crazy over it all; we forget. No; she went with your wife, and wild
+horses could not have held either one of them."
+
+"A malediction on the pair of them!" burst out Rafael. "God curse the
+horses they ride, that they break their necks on the way!"
+
+"Rafael, for Jesus' sake, not so loud!" and Doņa Refugia tried to put
+her hand over his mouth, but he dashed it aside in fury.
+
+"Loud! Holy God! What do I care?" he demanded, wrathfully. "Do you know
+why they go like that? It is all a lie, that ambush story. That devil
+Ana Mendez has schemed to have some one ride past and call that out to
+you, so that they could pretend an excuse to ride anywhere away from
+here; and do you know why?"
+
+Doņa Refugia was past speech, and could only shake her head dumbly.
+
+"Well, I will tell you. It is because Raquel Estevan did not mean to
+meet the friends you said you would be pleased to entertain on their
+arrival from Los Angeles. Doņa Maria she will speak to, but Doņa Angela
+is one of the heretics she vows her doors will not open to. That is the
+reason."
+
+"But, Rafael--"
+
+"Now listen to me," and he turned his fierce stride across the hall,
+"and God curse me if I do not keep my word!"
+
+"Rafael!" she gasped, frightened at the white fury of his face; but he
+held up his hand.
+
+"I swear she shall open her door to admit the women she slighted, first
+at Los Angeles and again in your home. She will find she has an Arteaga
+for a master. She shall open her door; she shall receive her; she shall
+make up for the insult to your home. By God, she shall make up, with
+interest!"
+
+Then he strode out of the door, leaving Doņa Refugia in a cold terror
+lest the guest of whom he spoke had heard his words through the closed
+door of Ana's room. It had been given to Mrs. Bryton on the arrival of
+the party an hour before, and though the door was closed, who could tell
+that his words might not have been heard there?
+
+But the window on the veranda was open, and Doņa Refugia breathed a sigh
+of relief when, a few minutes later, she saw Mrs. Bryton's fair face
+emerge from a bower of clematis in the garden. She had been admiring the
+beauty of the lilies out there, and looked like one herself,--so cool,
+so sweetly childish in her little appeals for admiration of the
+beautiful blooms she loved. Rafael met her there, and was enslaved anew
+by the blue eyes, as he bent over her tiny hand and kissed it furtively,
+and walked with her to show her Doņa Refugia's carnation-beds, and under
+the starlight help her to see the beauties of the San Joaquin garden.
+
+But old Polonia, who had heard his words to Doņa Refugia, and who
+watched the two walking in the starlight, muttered in her Indian jargon,
+"Have a care, Don Rafael; have a care!"
+
+Despite Rafael's doubt, it was all true about the ambush. It was quite
+true, and very awful. It had occurred in the morning, and Bryton had
+missed it only by his stay that night at the ranch. But he was also
+quite right when he said the two girls had left the ranch for other
+reasons. Raquel was quietly preparing to leave, when the word came
+warranting her in taking Ana. The two rode south with few words, each so
+wrapped in her own reasons for going that she gave no thought to the
+reasons of the other.
+
+They found the town panic-stricken. Don Juan Alvara was ill, and Padre
+Andros absent at San Luis Rey. Raquel rode into the plaza white and weak
+from the long ride, but sat erect to hear of the things done and the
+things needed for the dead.
+
+It was almost dark. While Ysadora the cook prepared supper, Ana
+questioned concerning a padre who had ridden a San Joaquin horse to San
+Juan that morning, but no one had seen him. Later, the animal was found
+grazing along Trabuco Creek. Evidently, some one had passed with a wagon
+or a herd going south, and had given the padre help on the way:
+beyond that, no one thought, except Ana, and what she thought she did
+not say.
+
+Raquel walked through the little hall of the Mission into what had once
+been the garden of the padres, the little enclosed bit at the back of
+the belfry built after the falling of the tower. It was the one little
+corner from which the world seemed shut out. Under the carved doorway
+she passed into the old domed vestry with its stone centre cut, or worn
+by the dripping water, into the semblance of a leering face; "the
+devil's face," it was called, and people looked from its queer smile to
+the twisted serpent-like carving over what had once been the arch to the
+church itself, and wondered what the strange carvings meant, and found
+no one to answer. They were only a sign left by an unknown Mexican
+sculptor a half-century ago.
+
+Raquel glanced at them and shuddered, and passed out into the great
+unroofed, beautiful place of fluted pillars and carven cornices.
+
+The pink reflection of the sunset yet lingered on the mesa and the
+highlands above the sea. The world of the strange new town to the north
+was left behind. Here among the ruins consecrated, she breathed the air
+of home-coming, and paced the old altar-place with noiseless step, and
+with closed eyes and hands clasped she murmured prayers not in the
+book, taught by the good nuns; and she drew great breaths of strength
+from the wine-like air, and knew that somewhere, riding the mesa, a man
+was remembering this hour of the rosary.
+
+Ana found her later on the altar steps, with head bowed over her knees.
+Gaining no reply to questions, Ana felt that she had been weeping. She
+undressed her and put her to bed in the little chamber of the barred
+window facing the sea, and gave her all the care a devoted friend could
+in the grim isolation of the old walls.
+
+And that was the home-coming of Raquel after her half-royal reception in
+the City of the Angels.
+
+[Illustration: "HERE AMONG THE RUINS CONSECRATED"]
+
+[Music: _El Capotin._]
+
+    Con el capotin, tin, tin, tin,
+    que es ta noche va llover.
+    Con el capotin, tin, tin, tin,
+    que sera al amanecer!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+When Andres Pico and his men rode into San Juan with the doubtful
+decoration of necklaces of human ears strung on rawhide strings, there
+was a breath of relief from the natives: it meant that the bandits had
+been "confessed," according to the General's naive explanation of the
+absence of prisoners they knew he had taken; the backbone of the bandit
+gang was broken.
+
+The vigilantes were the heroes of the hour. As the band of outlaws
+divided and fled in various directions, they were waited for at every
+pass and hewn down by the dozen. Only two--Fontez, who had shot the
+sheriff, and El Capitan, who had not been seen by any one at any time of
+the raid--were still missing. One of the prisoners, on being
+questioned, stated that Fontez had taken his share of the plunder and
+started for Lower California; and when questioned as to El Capitan,
+swore wrathfully, because El Capitan had disagreed with Flores over the
+raid, refused to be counted in, and in consequence they would all go to
+hell! If El Capitan had helped, things would have been different, very
+different. He had voted against starting out with fifty men to drive the
+gringos from Southern California; he had fought them before in the open,
+and knew them. He had told Flores he was a fool, and left them in
+Santiago Caņon, and ridden away, and after the slaughter of the sheriff
+and his men he had ridden out of the mustard on a horse of the San
+Joaquin brand, and told them to ride south and stop for nothing; and no
+one had seen him since. They had not taken his advice--and now it was
+all over! A little later, it certainly was over for that particular
+unfortunate, and his ears were added to a string decorating a swarthy
+ranchman, who was especially lionized because of his gruesome trophies.
+
+In the plaza of San Juan Mission, Ana listened to the hero of the
+necklace reciting all the glories of the campaign, and shuddered at the
+ghastly witness of its veracity. Raquel, standing beside her horse,
+listened also and felt a loathing of it all. Regular war, such as she
+had heard of, had never appeared so awful as this series of slaughters
+from ambush, where the victors of either side decked themselves like
+savages.
+
+"It is bad that we have no soldiers left who are hidalgos," she
+remarked. "The wild Indians carry scalps at their belts; I did not know
+people did so who had learned their religion from the padres."
+
+She mounted and rode toward the sea, the only woman who dared venture
+alone out of sight of the protecting walls of the Mission in those days.
+The man with the necklace looked after her, and then up at the line of
+grain-sacks still left as a barricade along the roofs of the corridor.
+Behind them, men with rifles had lain through the days and nights when
+the panic was at its worst, and women and children had huddled in dread
+of massacre in the inner court.
+
+"Does the seņora forget all that," he asked, "or is there a caballero to
+guard her where she rides?"
+
+Ana turned on the hero, glad of an outlet for her pent-up anger.
+"You--you butcher!" she said between her little white teeth. "You know
+Rafael Arteaga is not here. What other man would ride with his wife?"
+
+"Who knows?" he laughed, easily. "The lady is not afraid, that is clear;
+and El Capitan is somewhere in the hills, or the willows."
+
+She said nothing, realizing that he was watching her closely, for all
+his apparent carelessness. When she continued silent, he laughed and
+swept his sombrero to the ground and sauntered away. She knew then that
+he had simply tried her, to see if by any chance she showed knowledge
+of, or fear for, the outlaw she had never disowned as cousin.
+
+Teresa, seated beside her, saw her changing color, and reached over,
+patting her hand.
+
+"Even when thou wert little the Capitan made a pet of thee," she said,
+kindly; "and now every friend he ever had is being watched. If--if--in
+any way you could warn him--"
+
+"Warn him? How can we, when no one knows? I would walk barefoot across
+San Juan Mountain if I knew where he was hidden. He may be dying, or
+dead."
+
+"That is so," decided Teresa, placidly; "and it would be better. They
+will always hunt him if he is alive."
+
+There was silence between them for a little while, and then she added,
+"Well, there will be no mourning for him in the Arteaga family. Rafael
+will be glad."
+
+"Oh, he!" muttered Ana, with impatience. "He is hanging on the skirts of
+Doņa Maria these days, when he should be here with these other fine
+gentlemen." She pointed to the plaza where the vigilantes and their
+friends were gathered preparatory to starting on a new trail suggested
+by an Indian who had seen a white man without a horse somewhere in the
+hills.
+
+"On the skirts of Doņa Maria," repeated Teresa, her little eyes
+twinkling with interest. "It is true, then--it is that English woman
+still?"
+
+"Still? How you talk! Is it so long since Los Angeles?"
+
+"Oh, it was long, long before that! I was--Santa Maria!--I had a fright
+for a while! I thought there would be no wedding. He was crazy as a boy
+over her. It started, oh, with only a pin-point of a chance; for the
+Americano Bryton was here, and her eyes were for him! And then--Basta!
+All at once things changed, and Doņa Angela and Don Rafael were never
+apart; and if she had not been married, I think always Raquel Estevan
+would have had no husband here in San Juan Capistrano."
+
+"Raquel--does she know?"
+
+"Raquel Estevan is too proud to show if she knows, just as she is now!
+Never will she go along or follow him when he rides abroad, but if she
+knew his time was with that heretic--she hates the heretics!"
+
+"She is patient with him."
+
+"Oh, sure; she is a good wife. But if she cared more, would she do as
+she did when the girl Marta came to the Mission with her child? On my
+soul, I think Rafael was afraid when she gave to Marta the bed and the
+clothes, and counted out how many cattle she could have,--to say no word
+as to how she stood herself as godmother at the baptism! The padre
+laughs over that!"
+
+"And Rafael--?"
+
+"Rafael--God knows what he said to her! He tried to make her send some
+one else as godmother, and she would not. Ysadora heard her say 'It is
+for your soul's sake, and the souls of your children, Rafael,' and he
+turned white and walked away."
+
+"Poor Rafael," mocked Ana, "I do not think that he has much of a soul.
+It is as when a man sees he is beloved for his bravery, and all the time
+he is afraid of his own shadow, and hopes the one who loves him will not
+discover his weakness: that is how Rafael feels when his wife does
+penance, and prays for the soul he has not."
+
+"How you talk! We have all a soul; the padre says so."
+
+"Oh, the padre! The soul of our padre is also like a grain of mustard
+seed--so small, and no soil to grow in! Never could I confess to him. I
+wait until Padre Sanchez comes; no one but a Franciscan priest do I
+believe in."
+
+"Ai! and if you should get sick and die, and Padre Sanchez on some other
+side of the world? He is always travelling; never will he settle and
+gather 'dobe dollars like our padre. Suppose he should not come; you
+would die without confession?"
+
+"No; I would hang on to the edge of life by some thread of prayer until
+he came."
+
+"Padre Pedro of the north was here last month: that man makes me afraid.
+He tries to be a saint, and is so often under vows. This time it was a
+vow not to speak, and Padre Andros was glad when he took to the road. It
+was like a black ghost to see him walk the plaza with a black hood over
+his head, and never a word or look up from the ground. You would think
+the saints he prayed to lived somewhere in the roads. We thanked God and
+emptied some bottles with the padre when he was out of sight."
+
+"But he is a good man."
+
+"Oh, he is a saint; but we can't feel easy with saints in San Juan. That
+is why your Raquel Estevan will always be outside."
+
+"You mean above," retorted Ana. "The devil's face in the stone of the
+Mission dome fits better this place of the necklace of ears."
+
+Teresa shuddered.
+
+"It is bad luck to say things of that face," she warned. "Some think
+maybe it was an Indian god,--I heard an old Indio say so once. Never
+will I go under the dome of that old vestry since that day."
+
+"How would an Indian god be put in a Christian church?"
+
+"No one knows," and Teresa crossed herself. "The old Indios say it is
+bad luck to talk about it; so whatever the story is, it has been
+forgotten, and that is better. When I was a little child the old Indios
+told strange ghost and curse stories, and we were all much afraid; now
+the old Indios are mostly dead, and no one else remembers, only all are
+still afraid of the earthquake ruin at night."
+
+"They are sheep; they are afraid of their shadows at night," retorted
+Ana; "that is why Raquel will always be, as you say, 'outside'!"
+
+"Well, she goes against the padre, and that is always bad. It is bad
+luck to fight a padre; he can refuse absolution."
+
+Ana made no reply. She was very weary of the endless, endless stories of
+Raquel's unlikeness to the other women; and what they did not understand
+they would like to condemn. She knew so well that in Mexico the Doņa
+Luisa and the Doņa Raquel had met only the hidalgos when they went for a
+brief visit to the world of people, but in San Juan there were no
+hidalgos; only the mixed races without pride of birth or distinction,
+apart from the lands and cattle around them on the ranges. Ana could
+feel, better than any other, why the wife of Rafael rode alone to the
+cliffs above the sea, seeking kinship there in the isolation.
+
+In vain Ana had tried to solve the problem given her by the padre at the
+San Joaquin ranch that strange evening: his quick change of attitude
+toward the Americano,--even asking her friendliness and her welcome for
+him if he crossed her path. The queer idea of the Americano's love
+affairs was the most puzzling of all: it never occurred to her that he
+meant Raquel--Raquel, who avoided all heretics! Still, it was strange
+that she never thought of the Americano's love affair without
+involuntarily trying to picture a woman who would look like Raquel. And
+she did not dream those two had ever met.
+
+As Pico and his men got into the saddles and started north she heard him
+mention Bryton's name. The latter had evidently tired quickly of
+vigilante work; at any rate he had disappeared as effectually as El
+Capitan,--no one had seen him for over a week. And of course no one had
+time to hunt him up.
+
+At Trabuco Creek the vigilantes passed an Indian boy loping easily
+along the valley road. When stopped and questioned, he stated he was
+going to the Mission from San Joaquin ranch. The brand on the bronco
+corroborated his story, and he was let pass with slight attention; yet
+they would have found him quite worth while.
+
+Ana had gone with Teresa to make a little visit to Don Juan Alvara, who
+was still ill, and very impatient at being housed up when all the world
+of San Juan was astir to see the cavalcade of avengers. He was asking
+sharply why Rafael Arteaga was following his English partner's example,
+and keeping out of the work of search or battle. It was to be expected
+that Don Eduardo Downing, after being forced by El Capitan to pay over a
+thousand dollars as tribute to the Flores bandits, would feel that he
+was exempt from active service in pursuit of them; they had cost him
+quite enough. And of course he had never anything but an alien's
+interest in the country, the interest of dollars; but with Rafael
+Arteaga it was different. What was he doing these days, when every man
+who held stock and could fight rode abroad?
+
+The women exchanged glances. Of what use to tell Alvara it was a woman?
+He would only be more disgusted, and might say things to Doņa Raquel,
+and that would never do.
+
+Teresa's curiosity as to results led her very close to it, for her new
+sister-in-law was a thorn in the side of the bovine ponderous
+Californian, by whom the "brown girls" had been accepted as a part of
+domestic life. Ever since she had listened that day to the story of
+vengeance in Old Mexico, she had resented everything about it, even the
+child of that strange marriage, the child who had inherited--who knew
+how much?--of the blood and instincts of that saintly, half-Indian nun.
+
+Yes, Teresa would have dearly loved to watch Raquel Estevan when the
+story was told; also the story of Rafael's latest infatuation; yet, all
+the Arteaga boys had died violent deaths, and she had no wish to see the
+last one of them murdered. She was certain that if it did happen, the
+ghost of Doņa Luisa would be at the foot of her bed every night, and she
+would have to pay a lot for masses. They cost thirty-five dollars since
+the padre was building new fences around his orchards. So she contented
+herself with wishing as much as she dared without being held liable by
+the ghost of Doņa Luisa in case of accidents. And then Ana was always
+there with her eyes, and if any one did tell Alvara, Ana would ferret it
+out, and she had such a tongue!
+
+While they reassured the old man, and told him the troublous days of
+San Juan were nearly over, the Indian boy from the San Joaquin ranch
+stopped at the gate.
+
+"There is a letter for Doņa Ana Mendez," he said. "It came last night.
+Doņa Refugia sent it."
+
+"Doņa Refugia?" Ana knew that her aunt could not write, and that the
+accomplishments of her daughters in that line extended to the ability to
+inscribe their own names. She glanced at the message, and her lips grew
+suddenly white as she noted the writing.
+
+It was in pencil, written very plainly. The envelope was folded from a
+page of letter-paper and sealed with gum of some sort. When she opened
+it, she found the written page was a communication to Mr. Bryton
+concerning saddle-horses. But a pencil was drawn through the lines, and
+around the Bryton letter was written the real message, and it was very
+brief:
+
+_"A man is hurt here. Can you in quiet help him to San Juan?"_
+
+An arrow and a cross were the only signature.
+
+Teresa watched Ana questioningly. Letters to women were rare in San
+Juan, where few women could read; it must be of a death, or something of
+great importance.
+
+But Ana told nothing, only ordered the boy to go to Ysadora for some
+lunch before he started back, and to tell Doņa Refugia that all was
+well at San Juan. Though Doņa Teresa listened closely, that was all she
+could hear that was said, and then she knew, of course, that Ana did not
+intend to remain a widow. She had a lover who wrote letters, an
+Americano perhaps; the Mexicans did not trouble themselves with such
+useless learning, now that the old padres were gone.
+
+Ana sat quietly on the veranda for a little while, speaking of matters
+in general, and then arose languidly and confessed she wished she had
+gone with Raquel. A ride to the beach was better than to stay shut up in
+the town. Now that the vigilantes had gone, women would dare ride abroad
+without growing gray with fear.
+
+"Ai! it is not far you would ride, Ana Mendez. You are like other women
+when it comes to riding alone these days."
+
+"Raquel rides alone."
+
+"Her mother was not of this country, or she would not be so bold,"
+returned Teresa, tartly. "Men have little liking for women as strong as
+themselves."
+
+"Alas for me!" laughed Ana, "for I tell you now I am going to copy after
+her. She makes the other women look like sheep. If she would go with me,
+I would ride to the San Joaquin ranch this night and have no fear."
+
+Teresa shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"You grow like a child, Ana, as you get more years. Your letter makes
+you young again--so?"
+
+But Ana was out of the gate, and crossing the plaza with a light springy
+step, as if indeed the days of girlhood had come back. In her eyes was a
+smile, but back of the smile was a light of new determination. All at
+once she seemed to have found herself: he was in danger, and had called
+her.
+
+At the Mission she found the Indian boy with a dish of frijolles.
+
+"How did the letter come?" she asked, but he did not know. It was found
+under the door, and it had frightened Doņa Refugia, and she wanted it
+out of the house when the men were away. She thought it, maybe, was a
+demand for money, such as the outlaws had sent Seņor Eduardo Downing,
+and she asked Ana for the love of God to send word back quick what it
+meant.
+
+"It is only from the padre who borrowed the horse, and he thanks her,"
+said Ana, coolly. "Ride straight home, and talk to no one, or you will
+get a reata instead of frijolles."
+
+The Indian boy nodded silently. He knew the Doņa Ana always kept her
+promises of that sort.
+
+A little later, Teresa looked out at the sound of horse-hoofs
+thundering by, and saw Ana on the road to the sea.
+
+She let her horse have his head until she came to the Rancho de la
+Playa, when she halted to scan the meadow and sand of the shore, and
+then bent her attention to the ground, and paced slowly along until she
+found the tracks of Raquel's horse turning to the right. There was only
+one road to be followed to the right; she had gone through the little
+caņon of the cactus and up to the heights above. More than once Doņa Ana
+halted to examine the ground, to be sure that no later tracks had been
+made on a return trip. Then, away across the mesa she saw Raquel's horse
+browsing among the sage-brush on the cliff above the sea. Raquel was
+nowhere in sight; but, knowing she was near, Ana rode quietly along the
+bluff, until right at the edge of the cliff she saw her stretched at
+full length in the odorous grasses, her chin propped on her hands,
+staring down the steeps where yellow poppies nodded to the surf below. A
+cluster of the blossoms was beside her, and her skirt was torn. She had
+evidently been down there after them, and was resting after her climb.
+
+"What is it, Anita?" she asked after a brief upward glance. "Is there a
+spirit of unrest with you also? Some say there is sleep and
+forgetfulness in these little cups of gold. I have gathered some and
+lain here a long time, but it is not true, Anita. There is no
+forgetting."
+
+Ana slipped from the saddle and came closer. Never before had so much of
+confession been heard from Raquel Arteaga.
+
+"What, then, do you try to forget, my darling?" she asked, caressingly.
+"Your love and happiness?"
+
+"Love is not happiness," said Raquel, and laid her cheek against the
+sheaf of poppies. "Why do people say so? Do they wish to lie, or do they
+not know? The heart does not laugh with love; it aches. The light and
+the glory of it comes, and after that comes the earthquake; and the life
+is shaken out of us, and all we can do is to make ourselves a
+sacrifice."
+
+"Holy saints! I never knew love was all that!" acknowledged Ana. "It
+means also to dance, to listen to your lover's songs in the night under
+your window, and to go to sleep satisfied that he is not with some other
+girl. It means stolen looks like kisses. I never am sure but that they
+are sweeter than the kisses themselves, though they do not make one
+mad."
+
+[Illustration: "THERE IS NO FORGETTING"]
+
+Raquel looked at her, and smiled strangely, and rose to her feet.
+
+"Ai! you are right, Anita; it is without doubt more wise to love like
+that. All the girls in the willows think so." As she saw Ana's face
+flush, she turned in quick contrition. "Ah, forgive me! You do not love
+as they do, I am sure--those fat brown animals; but, Anita darling, I am
+a tired soul, and rest is somewhere far beyond the ranges, and--ah,
+well,--forgive me!"
+
+Ana smiled and shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Why should I not?" she asked; "for, after all, you are right. All human
+things are much alike when they love--the brown girls in the willows
+also. They nurse their babies and thank the Virgin they are not
+childless, as I am."
+
+"And you--?"
+
+"I am thankful to be as I am. When I have children, I want to love the
+father of them. My people did not ask if I loved my husband. They made
+the marriage, and God made me a widow. I thank God always that when I
+marry again I can do my own choosing."
+
+"Oh, when you marry again! Good! When is it to be?"
+
+Ana laughed and then grew grave.
+
+"You may help me to decide," she said, a trifle nervously. "I am going
+to elope to-night. Will you ride along?"
+
+"Anita!"
+
+"It is up there," and Ana waved her hand toward the blue mountains above
+Trabuco. "It is a long ride, but the moon shines, and--I am trusting
+you!"
+
+"And the man?"
+
+"Your husband hates him, and will find fault if you go."
+
+"And he does not come to you?"
+
+"He is--I think he is hurt," said Ana. "And I am going, though I go
+alone."
+
+"You shall not go alone," and Raquel whistled to her horse. "Come! I
+needed something of this sort to rouse me from poppy dreams. I ride with
+you, my Anita; and the man, whoever he is, has my blessing."
+
+They galloped together through the sweet-smelling grasses, and a load
+was lifted from Ana's heart. With Raquel beside her, she could ride
+care-free from danger to the man who had called her.
+
+"I have not been told to take any one along," she confessed, "so I
+cannot mention names; but there is a man hurt, and we must manage to get
+extra horses away from the Mission, and things to eat, perhaps, for we
+go where no people live; and--I--that is all I dare tell you."
+
+"It is enough, my Anita. We will ride together like nobles of old Spain
+seeking adventures, only we will storm no castles, and wear no colors to
+denote our caballeros!"
+
+She was elated as a child over the secret journey they were to take over
+unknown roads. The poppy dreams were left at the edge of the cliff, and
+she rode lightly across the divide, where at other times she ever halted
+for the picture of ocean and valley stretching from San Mateo at the sea
+to San Jacinto of the ranges.
+
+"I knew it was love in thy heart for some one, Anita," she said,
+smiling. "Religion alone does not make a woman comprehend heartaches for
+other women. You are the only one of all of them who asks no questions,
+yet you put your arms around me that crazy night when I rode from Los
+Angeles, and all at once I felt that I need not hold with tired hands a
+mask to my face for you."
+
+"Holy Mary! I know, and why not? My family married me to the wrong man,"
+said Ana, easily. "But I was lucky in one thing, and I know enough now
+to thank the saints for it,--I had not learned what love meant, so the
+other man had not come."
+
+"And if he had?"
+
+They had checked their speed to descend the steep ravine cut in the
+heart of the mesa, and giving outlet to the blue sea. Raquel was
+intent, apparently, on finding the best footing for her horse, and did
+not look up at once, but when no reply came she tried to laugh, and
+repeated the question.
+
+"I did not answer," said Ana, after a moment, "because, Raquelita, when
+you made me think of it, truly it seemed as if my heart stopped beating
+that minute. Poor José, my husband! It would have gone hard with him,
+and my relatives would have cursed me."
+
+"And why?"
+
+"I think I should have risked the purgatory they would have sent me to,
+but I would ride as we are riding now, straight to the man--the one
+man."
+
+"And suppose--suppose, Anita, you were bound by a vow to the dead--could
+you ride away from that? Suppose that so long as you lived you were set
+to guard one living soul--that each day when you awoke, your prayers
+were to keep worthy for the task; suppose--"
+
+"No, no! I will not suppose. A woman can endure just so much, no more. I
+know you are doing all this, my Raquel, and I see that it is forever one
+big fight and sacrifice, and all your life it will be the same. But,
+Raquel, when you awake and pray each morning, thank the Virgin at the
+same time that the other man has not yet ridden into your heart. I know
+you do not think of men--that it is to live ever in cloisters! But pray
+God that the man may never come, Raquel--for a girl is only a girl,
+after all!"
+
+"Of course, but--"
+
+"Oh, you would argue, because you do not know!" burst out Ana, with
+impatience. "Raquel, you are so good you are always beautiful; but I
+tell you truly, that if it should happen--all the saints could not help
+you. Between your vow for the soul of Rafael and your love for the one
+man--"
+
+"Well, my Anita?"
+
+"Well, you could not live through it and remain what you are. Any woman
+would go mad--any woman."
+
+Raquel touched her horse and galloped up the steep hill ahead of Ana.
+Down the longer one to Boca de la Playa she rode in the same reckless
+way, and it was not until they had reached El Camino Real that she
+pulled her horse in, and allowed Ana to come alongside.
+
+"Jesusita! how you ride away from me!" gasped her friend. "Wait until I
+braid up my hair. Look at it--all the new pins lost, the pretty ones you
+brought me from Los Angeles. We will send a boy back to hunt them."
+
+Raquel sat silent on her panting horse, looking out on the wide sea and
+saying nothing. Ana glanced at her white face while braiding her hair,
+and thought it looked cold and determined, almost angry; and as they
+started on once more, she reached across and touched her hand.
+
+"Do not make your eyes like cold agates of violet," she entreated.
+"Truly, I meant not to anger you, and I know you are good always, and
+think only of your vows. But even the saints have known temptation, my
+Raquel, and some who might have been saints have lost souls for a man or
+a woman."
+
+"Oh, my own soul!" and Raquel shrugged her shoulders with a dreary
+smile. "It is the soul of Rafael I am set to guard. Only that must I
+think of every day of my life. My own! Only Mother Mary knows what my
+own may become."
+
+"His mother knew the power of the heretics; it was not fair, Raquelita."
+
+"It is judgment," said Raquel, steadily. "I asked God to give me some
+work for the Church in the world, instead of within the convent walls.
+It was brought to me; I accepted it on my knees. What any of us think
+now does not change that in the least. I must live till I die with that
+thought."
+
+"So I know," conceded Ana, "and so I thank God the other man does not
+come. You would know then how to feel sympathy for the women who fail,
+or the women who do mad things such as I mean to do to-night."
+
+"Do I not understand? Do I not go with you? Yes, ahead of you, for my
+horse beats yours," replied Raquel; and from that to the Mission plaza
+there was only the sound of hoof-beats on the hard road, and no more
+words of love or lovers.
+
+A man had come from San Diego with a message from Rafael Arteaga. He
+would be at San Juan in a few days, and was bringing guests for a
+barbecue. Strange word had come from the vigilantes of the disappearance
+of Bryton, the Americano. It had been learned that he had not returned
+to Los Angeles, neither had he gone south. To free Mrs. Bryton from
+anxiety, Rafael and Don Eduardo meant to find him and make a holiday
+while doing it.
+
+Raquel Arteaga listened, and Ana noticed all at once how white and tired
+she looked from the little gallop.
+
+"Get down from the saddle, my dear," she said, appealingly. "Lift her,
+you, Victorio. Mother Mary! Do not faint, Raquel!"
+
+Raquel did not faint. She thanked the muscular Victorio, who lifted her
+from the saddle as though she had been but a little child, and placed
+her on one of the long seats of brick, while Ana ran for water, and old
+Polonia crouched beside her and looked up in her face, but did not
+speak. She had heard the name of the hated Americano, and she had no
+need to ask questions. It was the witchcraft come over her again; even
+the sound of his name could bring it!
+
+"No, I am not ill, Ana. I really am not," she persisted. "You say I turn
+white. Well, it may be I had no dinner--I think I forgot it, or those
+heroes the vigilantes took my appetite. See! I can stand; I am quite
+well. I am ready for the San Joaquin ride when the sun goes down."
+
+"But, if harm should come?"
+
+"Never fear. To go will not harm me. I am very strong--stronger than you
+think. Ai! I shall live long--a long, long time, Anita!"
+
+She arose and passed through the door of the carved Aztec sun and little
+half-crescents, and Ana looked after her doubtfully.
+
+"It is the Americana?" said Victorio, with a shrug and lifted brows.
+"Rafael Arteaga is mad after that baby woman--just mad. I think it makes
+Doņa Maria afraid. It would not be well to have the wrong things happen
+in her house; so they jump at the chance to ride north together, for any
+reason at all, and bring Don Rafael to his own wife. That is all the
+reason they come: Doņa Maria is afraid."
+
+"But to bring them here! The Doņa Raquel is not fond of heretics."
+
+"I think myself it is the woman and not the religion she will think of
+when they come," said Victorio; "and she must have heard
+something,--what else made her look like that?"
+
+"Who knows? A woman may be tired, may she not? You talk a great deal for
+a man of your years!"
+
+"Oh, it is only to you, Seņora. It is as well some one knows who is a
+friend,--that pretty white baby of a woman has the 'money eye.' Some one
+should warn Doņa Raquel, for who knows where it will end? You know the
+Arteaga men."
+
+Ana nodded her head.
+
+"We all know them; but, thanks to God, the right woman has come into the
+family. I do not know what she will do--Estevan's daughter; but Rafael
+will learn what a curb-bit means if he go too far. Women who do not care
+whether they live or die are more reckless than the wildest man,
+Victorio; and Rafael will do well to say good-bye to heretic pets."
+
+Victorio shrugged his shoulders, and did not quite believe. Of course a
+woman could do a lot with a man if he was not so foolish as to marry
+her, but after that what could she do but keep the home and obey? Some
+of them found other amusements when their husbands rode abroad, but what
+more could they do than that, even the most powerful?
+
+Of course if Doņa Raquel were not his wife, Rafael might be faithful:
+Victorio acknowledged he knew how that was himself. There was a woman
+who kept his house, and now after four years of content, the padre was
+at him for a marriage fee, and was putting the devil in the woman's
+head, and there was discord. All had been content for all those years,
+but when the marriage was even talked of, there was trouble; and
+Victorio had no use for it except, of course, if the woman was dying, or
+if he was--then the padre could get the marriage made. The money was
+saved up in case of such need for absolution, but otherwise--
+
+Ana interrupted him angrily, though she knew he voiced the masculine
+opinion of the valley. She had heard the padre complain that the women
+had also refused marriage for the same reason; so there was little could
+be done, and she knew that if Rafael Arteaga should fail openly within
+the year of his marriage, there would be laughs and shrugs, and the
+marriage fees would be fewer than ever. The example of their superiors
+was all that was needed to break all the little invisible bonds told of
+in the prayer-books, but remembered so little in the everyday life.
+
+"Oh, you need not rail at me, Doņa Ana," protested Victorio; "I am only
+one--and I feed my children! You do not believe so much in Rafael
+Arteaga yourself; and, after all, it may come right. It depends most on
+the woman."
+
+"Doņa Raquel Arteaga?"
+
+"Never! She is only a wife; it is the other who is still _the_ woman."
+
+Ana flung an angry look at the pessimistic, philosophic vaquero, and
+followed Raquel, slamming the door after her to emphasize her impatience
+with his all-too-true statements.
+
+She checked her tempestuous entrance at sight of the wife they were
+discussing, kneeling at the little altar in the corner of her own room.
+The tall candles were lit, and before the shrine of the Virgin Raquel
+was prostrate.
+
+Ana crossed herself and went out softly, half afraid that the argument
+in the corridor had been heard through the thick adobe walls. This new
+sign of Raquel's disfavor at every mention of the Americanos gave Ana
+several unpleasant moments. The letter now in her pocket had belonged to
+the Americano whom they were coming to search for: dare she mention it
+to the girl kneeling there at the shrine? Or did not the news brought by
+Victorio Lopez make more imperative the need for secrecy? In riding the
+hills for Bryton, what others hidden there might be discovered for
+death?
+
+Ana sent an Indian with a pack-mule of provisions to the sheep-herders'
+cabin in Trabuco caņon, with instructions to wait there until the men
+came for it, and in every way made smooth the details for the journey of
+the night.
+
+Don Antonio, the major-domo for the Arteagas, had ridden north with the
+vigilantes, so there was no one to oppose or question the order of Ana,
+given in the name of Doņa Raquel.
+
+Teresa shrugged her shoulders and said some things when the two mounted
+and rode gaily northward. She hoped Doņa Refugia would say some things
+to them for the good of their souls when they reached the ranch. Ana had
+always been a little rebel; it was well they married her when they did!
+No one gave much heed to Ana's vagaries or strange whims, but with
+Raquel it was different. The opinions of Doņa Luisa concerning the
+convent novice secured as a daughter were well known in the San Juan
+valley: she was a saint, no less. But Teresa watched the slender girlish
+form riding away on the black horse, and hated the grace and daring of
+her as only gross creatures can hate refined ones, and had her own ideas
+of two women who were young, riding like that toward darkness,--the
+darkness where even men scarcely dared ride alone these days. One might
+be saintly in soul, yet do indiscreet things in this mundane world. And
+Teresa wished them a lesson, from the centre of her fat heart.
+
+[Music: _Mi Memoria._]
+
+    Mi memoria en ti se ocupa
+    No te olvida un solo instante,
+    Y mi mente delirante En ti piensa,
+    en ti piensa sin cesar.
+
+[Music]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+The dark was falling when the two girls reached the sheep-herders' cabin
+in Trabuco. José, the boy with the pack-mules and the led horse, had
+arrived before them, and, shaking with fear, had built a fire with which
+to banish the threatening shadows. No herders were there, and to stay in
+the isolated caņon with the mule and mustang was not to his taste. José
+belonged to the Mission garden work, or the driving of the cows to
+pasture, and had little relish for the adventurous life of the ranges.
+He appreciated not at all the confidence placed in him by the laughing
+Doņa Ana.
+
+But Ana had no desire to trust an older man, even an Indian, and when
+they reached the cabin she delighted his soul by giving him a gold
+piece, the first he had ever earned, and telling him to go straight back
+to San Juan; and unless he wanted his own ears to wear on a string
+around his neck, he was to utter no word of having seen any one at the
+sheep-herders' cabin. His task was over when he left the provisions and
+extra horses there.
+
+Glad enough to escape so easily from the prospect of a night where wild
+cats and mountain lions were no strangers, José not only promised, but
+swore by the Virgin and Jesusita that no one at San Juan should be the
+wiser for his having seen the ladies in that devil of a caņon. If they
+never came out alive, he would confess to the padre before All Souls'
+Day, but until then not a word would they get from him even by whippings
+and salt water!
+
+Despite the fervor of his protestations, Ana rode up the terrace of the
+mesa, and sat there watching the trail along the creek until she saw him
+cross far below, a moving dot against the yellow stretch of sand, and
+knew that he was indeed moved by winged fear and had none of the courage
+for spy's work.
+
+Raquel watched the first star break through the blue, and knew that, if
+he was alive, somewhere in the width of California a man watched it
+also, and shut out for one brief instant any crowding humanity
+surrounding him. It seemed a very far-away thing, this tryst of the
+star, and never--never, any day of her life, durst she dream of bringing
+it closer.
+
+Ana found her huddled in the crooked white arm of a great aliso tree,
+and regarded with dismay the quivering shoulders and face hidden against
+the white bark.
+
+[Illustration: THE ALISO TREE.]
+
+"Raquelita!" she said, in quick contrition. "I have asked too much of
+you, to ride with me blindfold into the wilderness. Say so, and ride
+back while it is yet light to reach the road. It was wrong to ask you to
+share burdens of others. I am at your feet, darling. Do not blame me too
+much, for--"
+
+Raquel lifted her head and looked at her, and smiled through tears.
+
+"Anita mia, you cannot send me back, for I will not go. Do not fancy me
+unhappy because--oh--because of anything. I feel, here in the open, more
+at home than any moment since I came to California. We were of the hill
+folk, my mother's people, and out under the stars in the night all their
+old buried instincts awake in me--the pagan gladness of the wilderness."
+
+"You do not look glad," said Ana, doubtfully.
+
+"Child, child! who of us is glad with unmixed gladness, after the door
+has been closed on our youth and the dreams of youth?"
+
+She slid from her perch and slipped her hand through her friend's arm.
+
+"But to-night, beloved, we will close other doors--the doors of the
+world of people. This tree shall be the last landmark; beyond this we
+ride over enchanted ground, and fancy all wild sweet things of our
+destination. You go to--to your lover, perhaps; and I--I ride to dream
+dreams in the open."
+
+"But, Raquelita--"
+
+"Never fear they will lead us too far astray, the harmless dreams," she
+laughed. "If they do, I shall do heavy penance; be sure of that!"
+
+"You look like a witch, instead of a devotee, in this half-light,"
+observed Ana. "Your eyes are like stars; and--what has wakened in you
+this wild mood? Is it the wilderness alone?"
+
+"Not quite," acknowledged Raquel, demurely. "Since you will have a
+definite cause, I will confess, Anita mia, that it was the white, strong
+arms of--of--never look so frightened, dear,--of my friend the aliso
+tree!"
+
+They both laughed, but Ana sat a moment by the little camp-fire and
+stared at her.
+
+"That is all very well, and you have your good fun with me," she said;
+"but out here you are a different person from the lady of your
+cloisters. Yet nothing has happened to make you different--nothing,
+except that we are in the open."
+
+"Nothing? O thou wise one!" mocked Raquel. "But a star shone out, and
+its rays bewitch people sometimes, when it shines down into the heart
+until the radiance there is too great for one little bosom to hold; and
+it trembles to the lips, and all the eager longings of the world are
+understood, and one feels very, very close to one's own soul; and one
+feels that just beyond that star, or just beyond the bend of the trail
+up here, one might find it. So, let us ride hard and fast, my Anita,--I
+to my bewitched fancies, and you to your lover."
+
+"And I--I thought you did not understand!" muttered Ana. "That was
+because never before have I seen you without the hedges of people about
+you. God forgive Rafael Arteaga, who has known and ridden away!"
+
+"Hush!" said Raquel; "our outer world is on the other side of the aliso
+tree. That is our plaza, and this the inner court. Life itself has the
+same divisions: all the world may cross the plaza, but the inner court
+of one's own soul is the sanctuary, where only one may kneel beside us;
+it is the tabernacle of the heart, and no word of Church or your own
+will can give to anyone the key, or--Santa Maria!--take it out of the
+hands to which it is given by divine right!"
+
+"Raquel, beloved!" cried Ana, in dismay, "you are not laughing at me
+now. You make my heart ache with your words and your smile,--more with
+the smile, I think. And what you say is--is almost sacrilege. No Spanish
+mother teaches her daughter that the sacrament of the Church is not,
+above all things, binding. Those who break it are taught the sin of it."
+
+"But I had no Spanish mother to teach me; only a priest and an old
+Indian woman. The nuns never spoke of the worldly ties, they were so
+sure I should never know them."
+
+"But, Raquelita, you rode gladly north to Rafael; you--"
+
+"Yes; I was more a devotee than I ever shall be again," acknowledged
+Raquel, with a sigh. "I remember the elated, half-dreamlike way in which
+I rode over those mesas to meet him. I was riding to help to guard a
+wonderful soul and a wonderful life for the Church. I was upheld by the
+conviction that God desired it. If, instead of asking me to marry a
+husband for the good of a soul, they had asked me to ride my horse into
+the sea and wait for the rising tide, and given as convincing a churchly
+reason, I should have ridden into the sea and waited, I suppose. It is
+bad for one when the dreams go, and the clear vision begins."
+
+"But Rafael--"
+
+"Rafael, beloved, is contented with the life of the plaza. He will
+always be; and--the inner court is forever this side of the aliso tree.
+Come! The stars are thick now, and if we have far to ride--"
+
+Doņa Ana untied the mule and the mustang.
+
+"I think they will follow; but it is best, perhaps, to keep a rope on
+the mustang. I will lead him, and I have a bell I will tie later to his
+neck; it may help in the dark if we should go wide of the trail."
+
+The wilder mood of Raquel in the great out-of-doors, where she became
+something besides the girl of the cloisters, had a sobering effect on
+Ana herself. A girl who would sacrifice herself through a temporary
+religious fervor was not one to look with favor on any sacrifice or risk
+for heretics. Again and again she thought of the letter to the Americano
+on which that message had been pencilled. She thought also of the words
+of friendship uttered by Padre Libertad for the same American, at the
+San Joaquin ranch. Was it that the latter was dead, and thus his letters
+accessible? Or was there a chance that the man whom Don Eduardo and his
+guests were to start in search of was held either by a friend or an
+enemy in the hills they were riding to?
+
+She had felt sure, without hearing it put into words, that Raquel rode
+from the ranch that night to avoid Mrs. Bryton. What other reason could
+there be? Therefore, was it fair to lead her blindfold to meet another
+of that heretic family, to whom she would not open her door even to
+please her husband? They had mounted their horses when the certainty
+that it was not fair came upon Ana, and she slipped from the saddle and
+stirred up the sulking embers of the little fire until it broke into a
+blaze.
+
+"Raquel, it is no use! I must tell you before we start. The man I go to
+see is the friend of a heretic whom you bar out from your knowledge. The
+message sent me is written on a letter of Bryton's. You heard them say
+Seņor Bryton cannot be found; and there is a chance--only a chance--that
+he may be in the mountain where we are going."
+
+Raquel stared at her, and did not speak. In the flickering light Ana
+could see that her eyes grew large--with dread, or anger, or what? Even
+her lips grew pale, and she almost seemed to sway in the saddle.
+
+"Raquelita mia, I was wrong, I know it was wrong to bring you; but oh,
+my beloved--"
+
+"You--did not know--he--was here?"
+
+"I did not think. The devil put mud where my brain should be! It is only
+when we are on the road it commences to trouble me; and now your
+words--your--Oh, I know that of all women in California, you hate the
+heretics most; and now it is I who--"
+
+"Tell me what the letter says," interrupted Raquel, who now sat erect in
+the saddle, rigid and white. "You said your friend was hurt and--"
+
+"Some one is hurt; I do not know who. You can read the letter if you
+bend down here. Who knows? It may be his American friend."
+
+"Mother mia! It may be, it may be!"
+
+She covered her face with her hands, and Ana, looking at her, thought
+she was praying for strength to remember humanity ahead of the creeds.
+At last she spoke.
+
+"Anita mia, never feel so badly about it. We did not plan this, you and
+I, but it happens--it happens! There is only one straight thing to do: I
+can ride back to San Juan when you learn the truth. If it is the
+Americano, the word shall go to his wife quickly. I need not see the
+man, but I can carry a message, and I will; God helping me to the
+strength, I will!"
+
+"His wife? Santa Maria! The man has no wife. Half the girls of Los
+Angeles county try to marry him, but it is never any use."
+
+"Anita!"
+
+"How you stare at me, Raquel! You think I mean some other American,
+maybe. No? I speak of Don Keith Bryton. You hate them all so; no one
+ever speaks of them to you; but he is not bad. He saved your Indian
+woman at the ranch while you slept. You did not know it all."
+
+"Stop, and let me think," said Raquel, imperatively. "Some one has lied.
+Who is the fair woman with the blue eyes--the Mrs. Bryton--the Doņa
+Angela he drove with--the--"
+
+"She is the widow of his half-brother; that is all."
+
+"All? Then how--why should Teresa say this thing? Yesterday I heard her
+say that Doņa Angela made a flirtation with Rafael only to make Seņor
+Bryton jealous. I heard it, though she did not know. Why should that be,
+if it is only his brother's wife?"
+
+"Oh, God alone knows the heart of a woman, Raquel! It may be all a lie.
+Our people do not understand the gringo women. They look love to so many
+men, and mean it, perhaps, for none. But it was thought, yes, plainly
+said, when she first came to Los Angeles, that Keith Bryton was the one
+man she wanted to marry. But that is all over now; no one thinks--"
+
+"Teresa thinks."
+
+"Teresa had better be at her prayers! I could tell you something strange
+of Keith Bryton,--only you are not interested in gringos,--something
+of a love of his, and I feel sure it is never the pretty Doņa Angela."
+
+"Tell me," said Raquel, coldly.
+
+[Illustration: AN INNER COURT.]
+
+"A man--a priest--learned it from him some way. I thought the Americanos
+had no saints; but something like a love for a saint keeps Keith Bryton
+from caring much for any one else. It is as if a woman, instead of a
+wooden saint, should be in one of the niches of the old altar-place, and
+he said prayers there. Whoever she is, she seems to be very far above
+him--like the star he cannot reach."
+
+"The men who cannot reach the stars content themselves with picking
+flowers, do they not?"
+
+"Oh, God alone knows how they content themselves! I only tell you this
+thing to show you that Seņor Bryton has not anywhere in the land a woman
+to go to him if he were dying alone in the hills; his saint would not
+step down from the niche of the altar-place."
+
+"Anita mia, you forget," she said, in a strange, mocking tone. "If Keith
+Bryton is a friend of yours, you should wish him better fortune than to
+kneel at a place like our old altar. Do you forget that of the eleven
+niches still left in the old ruin, only one holds a saint,--a saint
+where no one openly kneels,--that of the Maria Madalena?"
+
+"Raquel, what things you do fancy! Now that you know whom you may have
+to meet, will you ride with me, or back to the road?"
+
+"Back to the plaza?" asked Doņa Raquel. "Anita mia, all this has come to
+me in the inner court of the aliso portal: it does not belong to the
+outer world; neither do we, I think, to-night. Whatever the shadows of
+the caņon cover for us, I think, we must ride upward to meet them. Your
+friend's saint, the Madalena of the niche, will watch over us. When we
+go back she shall have candles and roses--red ones, Anita!"
+
+Ana was voluble in her delight, and rode up the valley with a great load
+lifted from her heart.
+
+But the witching spell of the aliso portal had lost its gay charm for
+Raquel, or else it had sent her another more potent, for she rode in
+silence under the stars, without gladness, yet so steadily, so
+recklessly, that Ana more than once had to complain that only a deer or
+a coyote could keep ahead of her.
+
+[Music: _Ella No Me Ama._]
+
+    Ella vierte la copa de amargura
+    Gota, gota en mi pobre corozon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+That same evening a gay party from the south rode along the sea to San
+Juan Capistrano. Doņa Maria and Don Eduardo rode in a carriage, but the
+Doņa Angela had received riding lessons from Rafael, and disdained now
+the lounging ease of the cushioned seats. She and Rafael galloped far
+ahead at times, and then loitered idly among the odorous grasses and
+chaparral, and watched the waves roll in, and said the gay, foolish
+things that sometimes mean only courtesy, and sometimes mean the ripples
+of thought fringing pools of unsounded depths. There was little doubt of
+the quality of Rafael's thought. Whatever it had been in the
+commencement, there was little now within his power to accomplish which
+he would not have done at the bidding of her smiling childish lips.
+
+"If we had a boat out there where the whitecaps are, we could go even
+faster than the horses," she was saying. "I always wanted a boat; I
+always wanted to live near the ocean, if only the right people could be
+with me."
+
+"You shall have a boat, any day you want it," he said, eagerly. "They
+make them at San Pedro; that is not far to send. A boat, and a house by
+the sea! Why not wish for a more difficult thing? Would you like that
+bluff above the river's mouth? Or Dana's Point, beyond there? You could
+watch the whales spouting from the quay, and all the sea and valley
+could be yours at a glance, and--"
+
+"And a fine view, also, of your monastery walls, far, far away, Don
+Rafael."
+
+"I should never be far away, only as far as you bid me go."
+
+"Ah! that sounds very submissive," she replied; "but you are not really
+so, not really. I--I want to say to you that my cousin's wife reproves
+me for your--your--"
+
+Her hesitation was very pretty. It delighted the man, who caught her
+hand and kissed it.
+
+"My--my--you can find no word, madama, for my madness; is that it?" he
+asked, softly. "You are right; there are no words ever coined to cover
+it. I make myself a carpet for your feet, mi corazon!"
+
+"I don't want a carpet for my feet,--at least I think I do not," she
+said, doubtfully, "not in the face of all the frowns of California; and
+we perhaps go to-day where we see many frowns from my cousin. She says
+she may not visit your wife. Why?"
+
+"Perhaps she does not like a home where there are endless prayers," he
+said, briefly; "but, such as it is, it is for you, madama. You would
+light up even the shadows there. As for the Doņa Maria, she is--ah,
+well, she is old, and forgets many things. She has had her own romances,
+and they should teach her charity! The plans she makes in San Diego and
+on the road are all right for those places, but when we reach San Juan
+you all go to my home. I sent word ahead."
+
+"Your wife expects us to-night?"
+
+"She does not know what night, or what day, but she will expect you."
+
+"She does not care at all for people, does she?" and Angela's eyes were
+turned from him to the sea. "All this wonderful principality of a place,
+and a home like a ruined castle, and the boxes of jewels they say she
+never looks at! She must be a marvellous woman,--the Doņa Raquel
+Arteaga. I shall feel a little afraid, I think, of the magnificence she
+disdains."
+
+"A finer castle will go up on those bluffs when you say the word, madama
+mia; and the jewels--one can always find more pearls in the sea!"
+
+"How often shall I have to tell you that you must not make those foolish
+promises to me? You, a married man!"
+
+"Just so often as you make me forget the marriage--and that--"
+
+"Adam!" she laughed. "Of course it is to be the woman's fault,--'She
+tempted me!'"
+
+She sprang to her feet and ran to her horse as the carriage came in
+sight over the mesa. He was by her side in an instant.
+
+"And that, madama, is every time I hear your voice, or look in your
+eyes, or feel the touch of your hand! Ah, beloved!"
+
+"If you kiss me, Don Rafael, remember I cannot go to the house of your
+wife!"
+
+He released her with a groan, and stared at her as she leaned panting
+against her horse.
+
+"You put a man in purgatory, madama," he said, between shut teeth. "But
+it must end--only Christ knows how! It must end one of these days."
+
+He lifted her to the saddle and kept his arms about her, looking up into
+her face.
+
+"Was that about the boat all a jest? Once before you spoke of a
+boat--and us two. Perhaps it was only your woman's way to torture a man
+by helping him to think of that sort of heaven! But, after all, what is
+all this life here to you? You care nothing for the people; you will go
+away somewhere, some day, and no one will ever hear of you again. What
+better way, after all, than the boat? It leaves no tracks; there would
+be all the world before us."
+
+"Hush!" she said, with a little smile. "Who is now the tempter? You are
+quite mad, Don Rafael."
+
+"God!" he muttered. "If I could only have the happiness of knowing it
+_was_ a temptation to you!"
+
+She smiled again, and touched her horse with the quirt; and though he
+caught his horse and mounted quickly, she was a considerable distance
+ahead of him, and perversely insisted on keeping a wide space between
+them, or else lagging beside the carriage for conversation with Doņa
+Maria, whom Rafael knew she loved little.
+
+For the rest of the ride there was no chance of a word alone with her.
+Only as they turned from the beach to the river valley she checked her
+horse for an instant, and with a little flash of a glance toward him,
+she flung a kiss from the tips of her fingers to the bluffs above San
+Juan River.
+
+"Adios, O castle of the air in which Love might have lived! Adios, O
+boat of beautiful dreams, for which there is no harbor! Don Rafael, you
+sing so well--could you not put the castle and the boat in a Spanish
+song! It would sound pretty in a love-song, and it is much too romantic
+for every-day life; for, after all, there is no harbor here."
+
+He devoured her with sombre eyes of desire, and a glint of rage showing
+through their ardent depths.
+
+"There will be a harbor, madama mia," he muttered. "By the God and all
+the saints, there will be a harbor here on the San Juan shore, and there
+will be an embarcodera! And the boat will--will not be a boat in a song
+or a dream, madama mia! I swear it, I swear it, I swear it!"
+
+He dug his spurs viciously into his mount to emphasize the words, and
+the animal reared and plunged, and gave him a chance to vent his
+feelings somewhat, while the Doņa Angela tried to laugh, and failed. A
+passion like that was a very masterful force, and there had been times
+when she dared not treat it as a jest.
+
+The shrewd, red-faced ranchman, riding in the carriage beside his
+swarthy wife, noted the little pantomime and nodded to Doņa Maria.
+
+"It is as you say, dear. It is better that Don Rafael be with his own
+wife. If anything should happen--"
+
+"If one thing should happen, we should be blamed; even the bishop might
+blame us," said Doņa Maria, fretfully. "She could marry with other men:
+what white devil in her turns her to that mad Rafael? The Arteaga men
+always have their own way. She should be married."
+
+Her husband grunted assent, and regarded the fair figure of his
+kinswoman riding sedately along the green. She was such a fragile,
+childlike creature, he thought of her as a little yellow canary, pretty
+to see around the home after the many years lived among the dark people;
+but he never was certain in the least that he knew her, and he was
+beginning to consider some arrangement by which, for the good of the
+doll-like child asleep on the carriage cushions, he could suggest that
+she return to the land of the Briton and abide there--with, of course, a
+comfortable little sum for maintenance. Don Eduardo was too much of a
+politician not to see the wisdom of buying off embarrassing friends; the
+Doņa Angela in her amusements might prove not only embarrassing, but
+dangerous. He had plans concerning certain Arteaga holdings, and could
+not have even a charming woman enter into his scheme of things, if she
+suggested discord. And watching Rafael Arteaga's face and the reckless
+passion in it, Don Eduardo decided that his fair countrywoman not only
+suggested discord, she was a living, breathing, alluring promise of it!
+
+A sunset in San Juan is truly worth crossing either a continent or an
+ocean to witness, when the ranges toward La Paz are purple where the
+sage-brush is, and rose-color where the rains have washed the steep
+places to the clay, and over all of mesa and mountain the soft glory of
+golden haze. All that radiance touched the land and sea as the carriage
+of Don Eduardo, preceded by Rafael and Doņa Angela, and followed by
+Fernando and Juanita, who had been a guest of Doņa Maria, and back of
+all the rest the Indian servants and the nurse for the child on the
+carriage cushion. Amid the shrill calls of greeting, and gay exchange of
+words and laughter, the cavalcade passed the Casa Grande of Don Juan
+Alvara, and drew up before the portal of the great white Mission. Rafael
+lifted Angela Bryton from the saddle first of all, and then with his own
+hand opened the door of the carriage for Doņa Maria.
+
+"My house is your own, seņora," he said, with the debonair grace so
+charmingly his own. "I claim the privilege of carrying the child through
+the door myself. Doņa Raquel will be here on the instant, and--"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Music]
+
+    Vengo a tu ventana
+    para decirte mi amore!
+
+The padre, pipe in mouth, had been watching the arrival from his own
+door, but he drew nearer, and smiled grimly at Doņa Maria as he
+interrupted the young man.
+
+"Not quite on the instant, Don Rafael," he remarked. "The Doņa Raquel is
+well on her way to San Joaquin ranch with Doņa Ana Mendez. They rode
+good horses, and they started this evening, a few minutes before my own
+return."
+
+The child in Rafael's arms uttered a little cry. He had suddenly gripped
+her very tightly indeed, and a strange Spanish oath broke from his lips.
+The priest smiled, and the florid face of Don Eduardo flushed angrily.
+
+"You--you sent Victorio Lopez--" he began, but Rafael gave him one
+silencing look, and stepped forward, offering his hand to Doņa Maria.
+
+"Will you honor my house by accepting it during your stay, seņora?" he
+asked, smilingly. "My wife has not received the message that you would
+arrive this week. Sickness at the ranch, or some accident, has no doubt
+called the Doņa Ana there, and Raquel would not let her go alone. But
+our house and my service are at your feet. Will you enter?"
+
+There was not a moment's hesitation on the part of Doņa Maria. Let her
+English husband feel as he might, she meant to enter the doors where
+only the most exclusive had been entertained, since the day of the new
+chatelaine had dawned. Raquel Estevan de Arteaga was too well bred to
+make a scene when she returned and found them there, and Doņa Maria had
+too much of the blood of Mexican gamblers in her veins not to be willing
+to take all chances when she wanted a thing very much.
+
+As to the fact that her host and her charmingly troublesome guest would
+be thrown together even more than in the south, it did not trouble her
+in the least. Even the bishop could not blame her for what occurred in
+the house of Raquel Arteaga! Let that lady stay at home and guard her
+own husband. And if she failed,--well, it might be well to have some of
+that cold, Indian-like pride of hers lowered.
+
+The Doņa Angela said nothing, only smiled a little, and pretended to
+understand none of the Spanish spoken, but the padre, watching her wide
+childish blue eyes, and her rosebud of a mouth, noticed also the one
+quick birdlike glance she flung toward Rafael, and felt, like Doņa
+Maria, that the stubborn pride of Raquel Arteaga was at last to be
+lowered a little. She had been as an eagle swimming in the blue above
+all their heads, but this petite, golden-headed ladybird would sip more
+of honey from the blossoms of life, and touch more closely an Arteaga!
+
+And when, after the very gay supper in the old refectory, Rafael brought
+a mantilla for Doņa Angela, that its lacy film might protect her from
+the soft air of the starlight, the padre poured an extra glass of wine
+for the Doņa Maria, the Don Eduardo, and himself, and held them in
+discussion. Fernando and Juanita and the other young people could go
+along and show the Doņa Angela how beautiful were the arches and
+corridors after the sun was gone, but they, the older people, were
+content with the shelter of adobe walls after the night fell.
+
+So they wandered forth, Fernando with a guitar, that the end of a
+perfect day should be celebrated in love-songs; and as he protested that
+they sounded better at a distance, he and Juanita strayed off into the
+night.
+
+Doņa Angela and Don Rafael, from a throne of sculptured stars and
+circles, suns and crescents,--all the Aztec symbols of light,--listened
+to the passion expressed in "El Tormento de Amor" floating down to them
+from the tiled roof of the corridors, and later, when the doors were
+closed on the girls for the night, those two still listened together to
+the musical cadence of "Vengo ā tu Ventana" sung under barred windows,
+and to other harmonies never written in music, but known as a compelling
+power to the tempestuous heart of the Mexican. Under the stars of that
+night, the butterfly was made to feel that the beautiful tiger she had
+at first paraded as a trophy was not to be laughed at,--never any more!
+And even when the dawn broke, she lay wide-eyed behind the iron bars of
+her window, wordless and frightened,--a magician who had raised a spirit
+stronger than her power to subdue. What a trifle it had been at
+first,--a mere flirtation for the sake of his handsome eyes, and now--
+
+She told herself over and over that it was Keith Bryton's fault, and
+that wooden Mexican woman's fault. Why had she barred her out and raised
+the aggressive spirit in her? It was not in the beginning that she
+really meant to take her husband. And why should Keith betray his
+indifference in the way he did? It was so easy to show him that other
+men were not indifferent. And oh, the awful dismal tragedy of it! To
+think that by such a little, little chance she had missed being
+legitimate queen over this most royal domain!
+
+[Illustration: "AFTER THE VERY GAY SUPPER"]
+
+But that other woman, the Mexican, would hold it all, always! Another
+woman might win Rafael's smile and his love-songs, but the acres, the
+herds, the coin, and the jewels (he had allowed Doņa Maria to show the
+latter to her guests that evening), all those things would be held
+always in the slender strong hand of Raquel Arteaga--Raquel Arteaga, who
+stood guard over even his soul, lest the heretics--
+
+Then she smiled a little to herself, an involuntary smile of triumph.
+Had he not said in the dusk of the corridor last night that his soul was
+at her feet? With that battle won from the intolerant Mexican girl, were
+the jewels and the coin out of reach? Had he not said a boat left no
+track on the ocean,--the boat he had sworn to find a harbor for,--sworn
+to?
+
+Of course it was only a fleeting fancy, but it drifted across her brain
+as a sort of solace for her fretful, feverish rebellings against the
+uneven division of things, and it served its purpose, for she was at
+last lulled into slumber by the dream, though of course it was only a
+dream.
+
+But dreams, when dreamed by two, suggest such alluring possibilities!
+
+[Music: _Mi Corazon de Fuego_]
+
+    Mujer! Mujer! Mi corazon de fuego,
+    Te adore con delirio y con ternura,
+    Porque eres bella angelical criatura,
+    Como los flores que adoran a' Dios;
+
+    Lejos de ti no me importa la existencia
+    El mundo todo y sus mentidas glorias.
+    Lejos de ti la vida es ilusoria,
+    Porque tu eres mi vida,
+      Tu eres mi amada,
+        Tu eres mi Dios!
+
+[Music]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+It was two days later, before the sun was high, that Raquel Arteaga rode
+into the plaza, and, slipping from her horse, walked directly into the
+little private chapel and closed the door. From the other wing of the
+corridor Doņa Maria and Doņa Angela saw her, and exchanged startled
+glances. Their hostess had arrived, and had not even cast her eyes in
+their direction. They were both relieved when Rafael and Seņor Downing
+emerged from the portal of the patio.
+
+"Ah, she has arrived--my wife," remarked Rafael as he noticed her
+saddle-horse nibbling at the geraniums. "I sent an Indian messenger this
+morning. He has been quick; and, Santa Maria! so has she. Look at the
+horse!"
+
+The animal was dripping, and as an Indian boy removed the saddle the
+water ran down his sides and made little pools in the dust.
+
+"That will do him good," said Rafael. "Rub him well, and he will look
+like black satin. And the Doņa Raquel is--"
+
+"Your wife went to her own chapel; she saw no one," observed Doņa Maria.
+"I should go in, but if she is at prayers--"
+
+[Illustration: "THEIR HOSTESS HAD ARRIVED"]
+
+If she had been, her prayers were ended, for as they spoke she opened
+the door and came out on the corridor. She was more pale than Rafael had
+ever seen her, and without greeting to anyone, she spoke.
+
+"Rafael, two men have been hurt in the mountain, a priest and--the
+American who was missing from the vigilantes. I think--I understand that
+he saved the life of the padre--and both were hurt, and--they are
+bringing him here."
+
+"The American? You mean Keith Bryton?"
+
+"Yes, I mean Keith Bryton," she said, steadily. "I rode ahead. Ana is
+coming with them; she thinks he is very ill--and the padre also was
+hurt--and--"
+
+"Keith!" cried Doņa Angela, sharply. "He is hurt--and coming
+here--_here_?"
+
+"There was no place else to send them," said Raquel, quietly. "There has
+always been room in the Mission for the sick or wounded--and in this
+case--"
+
+"That is right," exclaimed Rafael, with nervous approval; "that is all
+right. Where should Seņor Bryton go but where his friends are? This
+is his sister, Seņora Bryton. It is well she is here; sick men need
+their own women folks about them. Raquelita, thou art white as the
+lilies in the garden! Get you some wine while I see to beds for the
+sick. It was lucky you and Ana chanced to meet them. When did Tomás
+reach you with the letter?"
+
+She did not reply. Doņa Maria was also asking questions, and telling her
+the Padre Andros had gone again to San Luis Rey for a week, and the
+three women entered the dining-room, leaving Rafael's question
+unanswered. He supposed that Raquel and Ana had ridden south at his
+bidding, and was elated that she had received the Doņa Maria and her
+guest as she had--without gladness, of course, but without signs of
+displeasure. He divined there was a white devil of rage under her calm
+exterior, but that made no difference so long as she showed no outward
+sign of it. Evidently she had accepted the fact that he meant to be
+master; after that, life would be easier in Capistrano. He had always
+been a bit resentful of Keith Bryton's attitude toward himself. Never
+since that dictatorial letter to San Pedro had he felt easy with him,
+and there was no doubt whatever that Bryton had avoided him since his
+marriage. But he forgot all that in the satisfaction of the news Raquel
+brought.
+
+With Bryton ill in the house, there was every reason why the one woman
+of his family should remain under the same roof indefinitely. It would
+mean the breaking down of barriers against heretic invaders, and so well
+content was Rafael over all this that he meant to nurse Keith Bryton as
+the most valuable friend the fates could send him. Elated with this
+idea, he called Don Eduardo, and together they rode out to meet them,
+and at sight of them wondered that even Raquel's cool exterior had not
+been more ruffled at the situation: she had given them no idea of what
+to expect.
+
+"Your wife, in the cause of humanity, will allow dying space for a
+heretic," observed Don Eduardo, dryly, "but she evidently thinks them
+worth little attention. The man looks worse than she led us to think. We
+should have brought Indios and a litter to meet them."
+
+Keith Bryton, with his head bound up so as to be almost unrecognizable,
+was tied on his horse and supported by the left arm of a bearded priest
+who rode on one side; while Doņa Ana rode on the other, white-faced and
+tremulous, as she recognized the two men approaching.
+
+"For the love of God, be cautious--cautious!" she whispered to the
+priest. And the latter drew the hood of his habit lower over his brows,
+to shut out the sun.
+
+"Softly, Anita mia! From this moment I am under a vow of silence. This
+heretic and I have come out of the shadow of death together, he with a
+broken head and I with a broken arm. You can send your friends to see
+where three men are still unburied in the Trabuco hills. I ask of the
+Mission only time for silent meditation until my preserver, here, is
+better--or dead. I leave the words of it to you. From the moment help
+comes I have vowed silence. Come, come, Anita, girl. When we have
+blinded a woman like Raquel Arteaga for two days and nights, we need
+fear no eyes of men."
+
+And it was so. The condition of the two men was warrant of Ana's recital
+that three refugees of Flores's bandits had assaulted the priest, with
+the idea that he was of the vigilantes. When the Americano, by some
+chance, had taken a short cut across the ranges, and, hearing shots, had
+gone to the rescue, he found one man with a broken arm keeping his
+enemies at a distance with one of their own guns. He had stumbled on
+their camp while they slept. For the rest, Ana asked Rafael to send some
+one to bury the three bodies. They were too near the trail to be left
+like that, and would frighten horses when one rode that way.
+
+Of the padre, who, relieved of his burden, had quietly fallen in the
+rear, Doņa Ana told that he was a travelling monk from Mexico, who had
+been entertained at the San Joaquin ranch, and had assisted the Don
+Keith to quell a crazy uprising there. He was under a vow of silence
+from the moment God sent help; and--and of course there was room for him
+at the Mission, not with the crusty old Padre Andros, but if Rafael and
+Raquel would allow him a private corner, undisturbed! He did not appear
+to be the sort of man for Padre Andros's game-cocks and monte games.
+
+Rafael, glancing at the sallow, bearded face under the monk's hood,
+decided that she was right. The padre looked like a man given to vigils
+and fasts, one living the life of renunciation such as one heard of from
+the older records of the valley, before the secular priests had been let
+loose upon the land to fatten, while the parish drifted from faith.
+
+"Padre Andros has been called to San Luis Rey; it will be a week until
+he returns. This man--what is his name? Libertad? That is very Mexican.
+Well, the Mission is his; he can pray where he chooses. God send he
+prays Don Keith well again. Santa Maria! but he has a fever! Does he
+know one?"
+
+Ana shook her head. He certainly did not know her, and he did not know
+the padre, and she felt a hesitation in telling him that the only one
+whose voice or hand quieted the occasional ravings of the American was
+that of his own wife. If she had done so, Rafael would have only thought
+it a great joke on Raquel, who avoided heretics. All the hours of the
+days and nights in the hills, Raquel Arteaga had moved like a woman in a
+dream, walking alone when she was not praying beside Keith Bryton's
+couch of pine boughs. While Ana slept the sleep of exhaustion that first
+night, the silent priest had gone again and again to see Bryton and hear
+if there was aught to do, and each time that girl was crouching there,
+white-faced as a spirit in the light of the waning moon, while the man
+on the couch moaned "Espiritu! Doņa Espiritu mia!"
+
+That was the one moan he had made since the fever had struck him, and
+there had been no way of quieting him. But that night, when the moans
+grew into cries, the silent priest saw the girl listen until she could
+bear it no longer, and then she went closer to him and knelt there, her
+hands clasped tightly behind her, and in them the golden beads of a
+rosary shone against her black dress.
+
+"I am here, close beside you," she said, lowly, "always beside you in
+spirit--always!"
+
+"Espiritu mia!" he muttered, and then with a great sigh of relief sank
+into slumber.
+
+The priest watched the girl to see what manner of woman might be this
+daughter of a nun, whose father had been the gay, lawless, debonair
+Felipe Estevan, of whom wild stories had been told in the old days. When
+had he ever resisted a love appealing? The man watching her knew the
+girls of Mexican California too well to doubt what the result would be:
+the lover first, and the rosary and the prayers afterwards.
+
+But the night waned, and the pale moon, facing the morning star, saw her
+still crouching there against the tree trunk. Ana thought she slept, but
+her husband's enemy, who had watched her through the night, knew better.
+He drew Ana aside, and gave her warning.
+
+"Tell Felipe Estevan's daughter nothing. I am the priest; that is all.
+She is not the woman to think this justified," and he touched the monk's
+robe. "This night I heard her prayers when she thought no one listened;
+and, Anita, girl, forget all crazy things I said about Rafael's wife
+helping me to revenge."
+
+"You said nothing about Rafael's wife," and Ana faced him with startled
+eyes. "You said--what was it you said? Oh, that Keith Bryton should
+help you--Keith Bryton, and his love for a woman who was a saint."
+
+As she spoke, the full meaning of his words burst upon her, and she
+uttered a low cry of dismay.
+
+"Barto! Holy God!--_Barto_!" she whispered.
+
+But he caught her wrist, and his voice had a note of command in it.
+
+"Silence! She may hear you. Forget the fool things I said there at the
+San Joaquin ranch. I thought I knew something of Keith Bryton, but I was
+mistaken. I thought I knew much of woman, but one girl at her prayers
+last night changed all that. We will nurse him well again, if your
+friends do not murder me, and then I will get him away. Some day when
+you and I have left all this behind us, I may tell you what I thought I
+knew, but not now."
+
+"But Raquel--"
+
+"Raquel will always be first of all the wife of Rafael Arteaga; after
+that she may show kindness to other human things, even the heretics. But
+this one heretic we will take the care of off her hands all that we can,
+Anita. She is not the girl to drag into a man's schemes of revenge."
+
+"I think she bewitches you each time she comes near you," flashed Ana,
+resentfully. "On all other things you talk to me sense, but when it is
+Raquel, my one friend, you talk riddles always, and you make me feel as
+if I were walking beside her in the dark or blindfold. What is it you
+mean? That Bryton thinks of her? How could that be, when they have not
+met? She thought until last night that he was married, so little
+interest in him has she. How do you get such crazy things in your head?"
+
+"That is true. I find they are crazy things; I confess it to you, and
+ask you to give no heed to my mistakes."
+
+"It was a mistake, then, that he cared?" persisted Ana. "You were so
+sure--"
+
+"It was another woman," broke in the priest, curtly. "Oh yes, there was
+a woman; but I was the fool when I thought I knew who the woman was;
+that is all."
+
+"And Raquel is not--"
+
+"Raquel Estevan de Arteaga is a woman men should cross themselves when
+they mention," he said, quietly. "She has a strength in her that is of
+God or the devil; she brings it from her Indian hills of Mexico, and I
+for one will be on the safe side and treat it with respect."
+
+"She has bewitched you, that is all," declared Ana; but the man in the
+priest's robe drew her behind a giant aliso tree and kissed her on the
+mouth.
+
+"Perhaps so," he agreed; "but, my Anita, it is only enough to make me
+pity the man she would bewitch in a different way. God! If he knew that
+she cared like that, his life would be a hell."
+
+"Why not a heaven?" asked Ana, turning to the care of the breakfast.
+"Raquel spoke beautifully of a love like that last night,--a love in the
+inner court of life, in sanctuary, where only one other soul could kneel
+beside one; it was a love spiritual only."
+
+"Only!" said the man, glancing toward the girlish figure in the serape
+curled against the white bark of the tree. "Only! Anita, girl, let us
+get the breakfast and leave love to people who have not a price set
+against their heads. As for that love of the inner court of life, the
+sanctuary, Raquel still dreams the dreams of a nun. Men and women of
+California are of flesh and blood, and they do not love in that way."
+
+[Music: _La Tempestad_.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+Three days later, Keith Bryton opened his eyes within the white walls of
+a little room in the Mission. The wooden shutters of the barred window
+were open, and all was still. A meadow-lark called somewhere without,
+and he could hear down the valley the beat of the surf against the
+cliffs. A bearded priest sat in the window reading a book, and a woman
+coming from the dining-room, through the quaint old Moorish doorway
+stopped suddenly with a quick-caught breath of fear as his eyes opened
+at the rustle of her dress, and he smiled at her with a great sigh of
+relief.
+
+"Doņa Espiritu!" he murmured. "I knew you would come if I waited. Such a
+bad dream has been with me! I thought I was back in California, and
+you--ah! there were higher barriers around you than the convent walls,
+and--"
+
+Doņa Raquel stood motionless, with the little earthen olla of spring
+water in her two hands. Her face grew white, and she glanced at the man
+in the window-seat. He raised a finger of warning to his lips, and arose
+and came forward.
+
+"You must not talk, Don Keith," he said, quietly. "One cup of water,
+since the lady brings it to you, and then to sleep again. Sleep is
+best."
+
+"You were of the dream, too," muttered Bryton, fretfully, "the bad
+dream. Espiritu mia! tell me it is not true. I cannot think; my head--"
+
+"Tell him, Doņa Espiritu," said the man with the book. Then he gave her
+a glance of warning and touched his temple significantly. She crossed
+the room and placed the water beside him.
+
+"What shall I tell you, Don Keith?" she asked, softly. "I am sorry you
+have been so ill and the bad dreams have come. This is Padre Libertad;
+he has nursed you very well. We must all obey him and let you sleep."
+
+"But not to dream again," he protested. "Be kind, as you were in the
+hills of the temple,--give me your hand again,--then I will sleep
+without the hell of dreams."
+
+At the command of the padre, she obeyed, and he took her one hand in
+both of his and drew it across his lips. A shudder passed over her at
+his touch, and she rested her other hand against the whitewashed wall
+for support.
+
+"Courage, my daughter," said the man with the book, gently; and the man
+on the bed looked at him and smiled.
+
+"Courage?" he said. "You should have seen her when she faced that mob of
+Indians and saved us. We had not meant to spy on their ceremonies, and
+we paid dearly for getting lost in the wilderness. Still, it was worth
+it, Doņa mia! It was worth going through it all, even the hell of
+dreams, to find you again like this, and your hand in mine."
+
+She did not speak, only turned imploring eyes on the padre.
+
+"You need not mind him," continued Bryton. "I like him better than the
+old padre, and he shall marry us when I come back. Now I can go to
+sleep."
+
+He held her hand in his, and when she tried to draw it away, he smiled
+with closed eyes, and whispered, "You remember how we watched all the
+stars cross the sky? And then the morning star, the star of the Holy
+Spirit, that was yours, Doņa mia; and then--then--you remember all--all
+of our one night?"
+
+"All of it--always!"
+
+He smiled with his eyes still closed, and released her hand, and did not
+see her as she swayed toward the door and was caught in the strong arms
+of the man she called Padre Libertad. When she knew where she was again,
+she found her face and hair wet with cold water, and all the women about
+with cordials and cures.
+
+"It is a fever; she will get it next," prophesied Doņa Maria. "A woman
+who neither eats nor sleeps gets ready for the graveyard."
+
+But Raquel waved aside all their cures and sent for Padre Libertad.
+
+"You broke your vow of silence there just now for him," she said,
+abruptly. "Break it now for me. You know?"
+
+"God help you, Raquel Estevan! I know. No one else ever shall, and
+whatever you want done shall be done."
+
+"God help me, indeed!" Raquel moaned. "To the soul of Rafael I am bound
+all the days of my life. I want nothing done. I dare want nothing."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Raquel went no more into the room where Keith Bryton awoke to a hold on
+life and reason,--that was the one thing perplexing to the man in the
+priest's gown; and not even Ana was allowed to hear the constant
+demands for Doņa Espiritu, or the girl of the temple, or the lady who
+had led him out of the wilderness under the light of the morning star!
+All those things would have seemed like maddest ravings to any but Padre
+Libertad, who carefully excluded all visitors from the room, despite the
+protests of Doņa Angela, who claimed the privilege of relationship,--a
+claim denied by a shake of the head of the silent, book-reading padre.
+
+Raquel moved almost as silently about the corridors of the Mission,
+serene, quiet, and busy, always busy with the entertainment of her
+numerous guests. The people of the country rode on any pretext to San
+Juan in those days, to meet the Downings and talk by the hour in the
+cool shadows of the patio concerning the tragedies of the bandits. The
+beautiful old Mission town had gained a new sort of fame through them.
+
+Rafael arranged barbecues and picnics to the caņons, where the wild-rose
+thickets were yet odorous with bloom. Even a dance was arranged by some
+of the gentlemen in the old wing of the Mission, called the travellers'
+room,--a Spanish dance at which only those wearing the old Spanish
+costumes dared keep time to the music, and the Mexican serape was
+discarded for the velvet cloak or cape of grander days.
+
+[Illustration: "AND--HE WAS AN ATEAGA!"]
+
+The younger men rode fifty miles for costumes. Don Juan Alvara, who
+still wore knee-breeches, stockings, and buckled shoes, had promised to
+go to bed earlier that night because of the demand on his wardrobe.
+Raquel delved in old chests of Doņa Luisa Arteaga's belongings, and
+brought out treasures of embroideries and brocades enough to turn the
+heart of Angela Bryton bitter with envy. She knew Raquel would look a
+barbaric queen in the jewelled bodices where topazes formed the hearts
+of yellow roses, or real pearl-embroidered lilies, and in laces--laces
+to wrap her like a mummy, leaving only those great violet eyes of hers
+visible to gaze in that serene haughty way at one, and through one!
+
+But once having been forced by circumstances to take the hand of a guest
+in hers, Raquel Arteaga raised no material barriers to hospitality.
+
+"They are at your pleasure, Seņora Bryton," she said, graciously. "After
+you have selected what you would like, Carmella and Juanita may care for
+some of them. The white brocade of the lilies would become you. There is
+a white mantilla of lace to go with it, and pearls--plenty of pearls."
+
+Doņa Maria and Teresa Arteaga exchanged glances. They had never objected
+to the favorites of their husbands,--no good wife did,--but even the
+most devoted of Mexican wives had never opened her jewel-box for her
+rival.
+
+However, they decided in confidence that Raquel had appeared strange and
+indifferent since the day of the fainting spell. She was more kind and
+gentle, if anything, to Rafael himself, even tender in little cares for
+his comfort, as his own mother might have been. But beyond the tender,
+conciliating, half-maternal attitude toward her husband, she walked as
+in a dream of indifference toward the rest of the world. Full of care as
+a hostess, she yet spent no moment alone with any guest except the
+silent padre, who paced the corridors, his eyes on a book, and always on
+guard at the door of the American, who had almost given his life that an
+unknown priest might live.
+
+Rafael himself did not understand Raquel's gentle, devoted attitude.
+Once, as he smoked in the corridor facing the sea and commented aloud on
+the charms of a pretty girl who crossed the plaza, some man, standing
+there, took up the subject and spoke of his wife--Rafael's--and the
+lucky fellow he was to get her,--that girl of the South with her
+strange, alluring beauty not to be defined, but so surely felt by all
+who had the happiness to meet her. As Rafael listened, he, for a moment,
+felt again a delight in the barbaric sense of possession of her. It was
+true; she was of strange beauty, and he knew every man envied him. The
+thought of it brought back the remembrance of the fitful passion she had
+aroused in him there in Mexico, where the bars of the convent had made
+more keen his desire for victory. Some echo of that fitful passion sent
+him from the man in the plaza to the door of her room. It was not love;
+but she was his, and--he was an Arteaga!
+
+The shadowy room was lit by the soft glow of candles on the altar of the
+Virgin. She had knelt there until some wave of feeling swept over her,
+leaving her prostrate at the feet of the serene, tender, changeless
+Mother of Sorrows. For a moment he halted, but the brandy he had been
+drinking was of the best. The Doņa Angela had gone bathing with the
+others on the beach, while he had been kept in the town by some
+business, and a man must console himself. He remembered that he had won
+this girl, whom others found beautiful, from one altar there in the
+South; it gave a certain zest to his present determination. A woman
+could pray at any time; but just now--well, she should remember she was
+his!
+
+What he said he did not clearly remember afterwards; but he was strong,
+and he had been silent, and she was gathered in his arms and lifted to
+her feet, and he was seeking her lips with his, when, with a cry that
+was terrible in its smothered rage, she wrenched herself free and darted
+to the table where the jewel-box lay open, and on the top of strings of
+pearls shone the glittering steel of a dagger. What she said to him
+turned him, sullen and cowed, toward the door. But there she stopped
+him.
+
+"Your child, and the mother of it there in the willows, are my care,
+Rafael Arteaga, as they would have been the care of your mother, had she
+lived. I have sworn to that dying mother to live beside you, and guard
+you from what harm I can, but if you still take your marriage vows to
+the willows, you put aside the sacrament of your marriage to me. Never
+again, while you choose to live like that, must you cross to me where
+this altar is. I guard your soul for your mother, but by the Virgin, and
+by this cross on the dagger, I will send you to account there where she
+is, if you come to me like that again! I give my life to keep my vow;
+but if you drive me to it, my soul may yet have to pay in the other life
+for the loss of your own!"
+
+As he stumbled out of the door he met the Padre Libertad pacing the
+corridor, as usual, with his book. He did not lift his eyes or speak,
+and Rafael passed on sullenly, muttering an oath: each way he turned in
+the Mission he met an altar or a priest!
+
+Ana, coming through the portal of the inner court, met him there, and
+heard the oath, and was filled with fear of a discovery so appalling
+that her woman's wit left her, and she blundered and caught his arm and
+questioned.
+
+"But, Rafael, he has done nothing. That he was at the door of Raquel is
+not--"
+
+"Sure, it is not," he agreed, scoffingly. "But when a man has a wife of
+his own,--even Raquel Estevan de Arteaga,--he does not want a black gown
+and a monk's cowl forever as her shadow."
+
+They were outside the window of Keith Bryton, and the words reached the
+ears of the man on the bed there, and brought him reeling but determined
+to his feet.
+
+It was the first word reaching him by which he could grasp at the
+reality of the life about him; all the vague dreams were dashed aside by
+that name, "Raquel Estevan de Arteaga." It cleared the visions of the
+fever his nurse had feared to dispel too quickly, and in one staggering
+flash he saw the truth: the "dream" of the California life was no dream,
+it was the real life to be met and fought again. Where was he, that the
+voice of Rafael Arteaga dared ring with such imperious directions? He
+reached the barred window dizzily and leaned his head against the high
+ledge. The world whirled about him for a moment, and when it stopped
+and stood still, he again heard the voice of Rafael, irritated this time
+into more intolerant speech by some eager protest of Ana.
+
+"Oh, ho! That is the man, is it? And he saved her from Juan Flores that
+night? That is news--God curse him!"
+
+"Rafael!" and the woman's voice was full of horror. "You are crazy with
+brandy; you do not know how you speak. Go to your bed and sleep. That
+man saved your name and your wife from disgrace, and you have only
+curses for him in your mouth!"
+
+"Basta! He may win seven heavens for aught I care. But, name of God!
+sing no praises of him for saving Raquel Estevan for me! She is not a
+woman, Anita! Never a woman for a man who wants a wife. By God, I think
+she is the devil turned saint; and the man who carries her to the hills
+is my friend and earns a herd of horses!"
+
+"Santa Maria! You are mad over that other woman, Rafael Arteaga. Every
+one sees it but Raquel; and when she does see it--"
+
+"She! she sees nothing but her saints on the altar! She has only the
+heart of a nun in that white breast of hers. Don't you put your devil of
+a tongue in this business, Ana Mendez, or--"
+
+"You are drunk, Rafael," said Ana, untouched by the personal remark.
+"You are drunk. Go to bed."
+
+No other words came to the ears of Keith Bryton. He heard the departing
+steps, and the rustle of Ana's silken gown on the tiling, and then
+someway he found himself back in the bed, with all the cobwebs cleared
+from his brain. He knew where he was now--in a room of the Mission,
+where he had not dared set a foot since the day when he heard her vow
+made to the dying woman. He was in her home, then, the home of her
+husband. And that silent padre who had shielded him from knowing
+it--what did his devoted guardianship mean? What did it mean that he had
+approved that once she had come there and stood by the bed with her
+hands in his? That she had listened to his words, and---- Or was that
+also a fancy born of the fever?
+
+But when the silent padre came in and closed the door, and heard the
+direct rapid questions, the replies were just as direct. Padre Libertad
+observed that the shock of the truth had come, and there was no reason
+for further illusion. The American was weak, but alert to all the padre
+told him; and he told him all the truth.
+
+"So you see, Seņor Bryton, you saved my life, and there is a good price
+set against it. I am here in the home of my cousin, who will make a
+fiesta of the day I am hung or shot. You know it, and the girl I love
+knows it. It has been a good place to hide: they think me in Mexico. I
+start there to-night, unless you--"
+
+"Wait: to-morrow I can perhaps go with you. God! To think I have been
+helpless here in his home!"
+
+The other man said nothing, only watched him with the dark velvety eyes
+full now of the spirit of comradeship.
+
+"It is strange it should be you I trust," he said, at last. "I remember
+days when I planned which way I would have you killed when my men found
+you. You saved the government their horses last year. I shot at you once
+as you rode from Santa Ana ranch."
+
+"Was that you?" observed the other. "Yes, I remember." Then, after
+another silence, he asked with careful indifference:
+
+"Doņa Raquel Arteaga--she was in here, and I said things I--well--you
+heard! Does she know the truth about you?"
+
+"Not even does she suspect. No one here has ever seen me since this
+beard is over my face. I pass the men on the plaza who hunted me with
+hounds and guns to the water's edge a year ago, and they bow their
+heads and lower their voices not to disturb my devotions. Madre de Dios!
+it has been great sport, but for the thought of--of a woman whose heart
+has been shown to me as a priest! The thing I have done is a sacrilege,
+and Father Andros would scorch me well for it--but I would rather burn
+than have her ever know the truth--I who am the lover of another woman!"
+
+Keith Bryton reached out his hand to the outlaw, and there were no more
+words spoken between them of the matter.
+
+Later Doņa Angela returned, and hearing from Ana that Bryton was again
+conscious of his whereabouts, insisted on seeing him; and this time the
+silent padre of the prayers offered no protest, only sat in the
+window-seat, and did not lift his eyes, and listened.
+
+"I've been wild--just that, Keith, ever since they brought you back.
+Who? oh, Doņa Raquel and Ana, and, of course, the padre. My! You looked
+awful. I'm glad you are better. There is to be a really great Spanish
+dance, and I should have hated to go unless you were out of danger. They
+would not allow me inside this door before, and I--Keith, there are a
+thousand things I want to say to you, and--"
+
+The priest arose and made a quiet movement toward the door. The
+interview was evidently terminated. Keith had not had a chance to say
+anything, and Doņa Angela whisked out of the room in a temper. She
+sought Rafael, but could not find him, for the reason that he had taken
+Ana's advice and tumbled into bed. She finally found Ana and Raquel in
+the dining-room, and smiled tolerantly at the fact that the latter,
+covered with a great apron of linen, was attending personally to the
+moulding of candles, and not a servant, not even Ana, was allowed to
+help.
+
+The days of Doņa Angela's stay had brought her face to face with many
+self-satisfying little scenes of that sort. Remembering that first
+meeting of the two as strangers, it was comforting to Angela to be able
+to look down in some way on the wife of Rafael Arteaga; and since she
+chose to make of herself a servant---- It seemed so incredible to the
+woman who had never, never, had all she wanted of luxury, that this
+other girl, young, and many said handsome, had not the natural woman's
+vanity for decking herself with the gorgeous things stacked in those old
+chests. To her it seemed a warrant to Rafael to seek companionship
+elsewhere. A woman who could claim a throne lessened her value by
+stooping to the cares of the kitchen. It argued low tastes; it
+emphasized the uneven division of things. It was a constant reminder to
+Angela Bryton that she, the woman who appreciated it all, who would have
+held a half-regal Court of Love in the old walls where only endless
+prayers were whispered,--she was the woman to whom it should belong by
+right. For her, Rafael Arteaga would have spread carpets of velvet on
+the tiled floors and cast himself, happy, at her feet.
+
+All these thoughts had given her a sort of insolent courage to comment
+on the girl who trod the Mission-made bricks, and whose eyes looked out
+so often over one's head.
+
+"Of all the Indian servants, have you none trained in so laborious a
+task as this?" she asked, sinking into one of the rawhide-seated chairs
+at the table. "It is horrid work. I wonder you spoil your hands."
+
+Ana flashed a glance of resentment at the languid blossom of a woman,
+always a shimmer of lacy ruffles, a picture of alluring, half-childish
+helplessness. It was for such a white kitten Rafael was losing all his
+sense.
+
+"I should be proud to use my hands for the same work, instead of this
+endless embroidery," she observed; "but Doņa Raquel will not hear of
+it."
+
+"To mould the candles for the altar, each woman of each house should
+make her own," returned Raquel, quietly. "You have not that custom in
+your land--no?"
+
+"Certainly not. We are not taught that extra pounds of beef tallow will
+help to save our souls if burned in silver holders."
+
+"No? What, then, does it take to save souls in your country?"
+
+"Those who come here leave their souls at home for safe-keeping,"
+declared Ana, thrusting her needle viciously into the embroideries of
+lawn; "they only bring their long purses to be filled."
+
+For one moment the snapping black eyes of Ana met the childish blue ones
+of Angela and carried in their glance an accusation and understanding.
+Angela's pretty teeth closed with a vicious click under her red lips,
+then she shrugged her dimpled shoulders, and laughed.
+
+"Oh, you see of course only the merchants here," she conceded, "the
+people who buy hides, and tallow, and herds of horses."
+
+Then she turned again to Raquel, who had seen some of the little byplay.
+
+"And those candles of purest white, packed in scented cotton, for what
+especial purpose are they reserved?"
+
+"They are the candles for the dead."
+
+Angela shuddered, as with a passing chill.
+
+"How constantly you people keep before you remembrance of the tomb!"
+she exclaimed. "One needs to get out in the sun often to remember that
+the old Mission is not really a vault."
+
+"It is," said Ana; "there are padres of the old days buried under some
+of the floors."
+
+"How perfectly horrid! And you make all those dozens of immaculate
+candles to be used for whoever comes first," she continued, addressing
+herself to Raquel, with a slight smile of disdain as at a childish
+pastime; "and they are all duly blessed, I suppose, and duly insured to
+light the souls from the path of the inferno."
+
+For the first time Raquel perceived the touch of malice under the
+smiling query.
+
+"You are right," she said, quietly; "those are of the first I ever made
+with my own hands here in San Juan Capistrano. Padre Sanchez bestowed on
+them his blessing, and the thought of so holy a man is in itself a
+blessing."
+
+"But think," persisted the soft little malicious tones, "is it not often
+the story of the pearls and the swine? Any sodden drunken Indian beast
+is likely to be laid in state with those emblems of purity burning in
+his honor."
+
+Raquel paused with the last handful of them, and the violet eyes, dark
+with indignation, met the blue ones.
+
+"That is true," she said, coldly. "We are taught that souls are all
+alike before God. These in my hand may be lit for any one--for a sodden
+beast that dies in sin, for a murderer, for me perhaps, or it may be
+they burn even for you, seņora!"
+
+"Ugh! how ghastly!" The blue eyes wavered, and she arose with a little
+shiver. "But I don't think I would want them, really," she added, as she
+was leaving the room, "any more than I would want masses said if I
+should go under a breaker some day when bathing, and never come up
+again. The fashion of the living praying for the dead seems a bit
+incongruous and amusing. Save the candles for those of the faith, Doņa
+Raquel."
+
+Her little mocking laugh made more pointed her intention of ridicule.
+The face of Raquel was still and expressionless, as she slowly placed
+the last of the candles in the perfumed box and closed the lid. Ana
+flung down her embroidery, and said to Raquel, with blazing eyes:
+
+"Raquelita! Some day I shall choke that pretty little white devil, you
+will see! How and why we endure her mocking I don't know. That she is of
+Keith Bryton's family is something, but it is not enough. When he is
+able I shall tell him some things--I shall tell Don Eduardo things! She
+makes a mock of our women, and I keep quiet; she makes her love to your
+husband, and I say nothing; but, Raquel, she makes mockery of your
+religion in your own house. Can you stand that too?"
+
+Raquel put her hands over her eyes an instant in a tired way.
+
+"Quiet, you, Anita mia," she said after a little. "Words are not so much
+use. They will go away soon now--after the dance to-morrow night. And I
+do not think it is true of Rafael. He is her caballero, as he would be
+yours or Juanita's; that is all. There is that other woman in the
+willows. She--"
+
+"Raquelita, how little you know men! Pretty Marta by the river is only a
+servant; but our men go mad for these white women of blue eyes--mad!"
+
+"A few days more, and that will be forgotten as he would forget the
+brown girls. Have patience. At least, she will not mock our religion to
+him; and the rest--it is only one day and two nights more, Anita, and
+you will help me."
+
+"At least you will find a way to keep those pearls from her," insisted
+Ana, stubbornly. "How could you offer them to her? Oh, I could have
+screamed at you!"
+
+"The pearls are but a trifle to let go for a night, dear. Help me with
+the candles to the altar-place. Oh, yes, she may have the pearls."
+
+[Music]
+
+    Porque tu eres mi vida,
+    Tu eres mia mada,
+    Tu eres mi Dios!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+Angela Bryton sought until she found Rafael asleep in a corner of the
+travellers' room.
+
+"Ana Mendez knows; she has told your wife," she said, abruptly. "Two
+nights and a day we have; that is all. Raquel says I am not more to you
+than a brown girl in the willows. You make her pay for that!"
+
+"Pay?" He rubbed the sleep of the brandy from his eyes and sat up, then
+caught her to him in the instinct of possession.
+
+Quickly she drew aside and eluded him.
+
+"Not yet," she said, with the glint of steel in her eyes. "Not until you
+make her pride pay, Rafael mio! She tosses a string of pearls to me as a
+queen would to a waiting-maid, to show how trifling a thing it is to
+her. One string! Rafael, where now is that boat?"
+
+"The boat?" He stumbled to his feet and stared at her.
+
+"The boat! You said it. Not even my hand shall you touch until it is in
+the harbor. Cousin Eduardo and Keith Bryton will send me away when she
+tells them; they will never let you see me again."
+
+"Huh!" He flung back his head contemptuously. He had never quite gotten
+away from Teresa's conviction that Keith Bryton's impatience with Angela
+was born of jealousy. So it was Keith Bryton again!
+
+"He gets you when he has killed me, not sooner," he muttered. "And they
+all know, eh? How is that?"
+
+"Perhaps not, but they will. It is that Mendez woman and your wife! I
+will _not_ be sent like a pauper back to England! Cousin Edward spoke
+yesterday of that; of an allowance for Dolly and me. Now I know what it
+means! If I go, I will go in a manner they don't dream of,--alone in
+that boat! You can join me anywhere you say, on the coast. How you
+stare! It is not so difficult, and there will never, never, never be any
+other way we can be together."
+
+"That is true; we will go."
+
+"You want all the coin; you want the jewels; you want--"
+
+"I want only you," he said.
+
+"If you want me, you must give me what I ask. Those women must not--"
+
+"To hell with the women! We will go, and no one need guess we have gone
+together. I will send Victorio with a letter to San Pedro for a boat.
+Your lips for that promise!"
+
+"When the boat is in the harbor, and the jewels in my hand, Rafael," she
+replied, and darted like a bird through the door, and out into the
+garden. Later she came into the refectory with an armful of
+lilies,--symbols of innocence,--and asked Ana for an olla for them, and
+was very demure and sweetly appealing for the rest of the day.
+
+[Illustration: "EACH WAY HE TURNED HE MET AN ALTAR OR A PRIEST"]
+
+[Music: _La Noche esta Serena_.]
+
+    La noche 'sta serena, tranquillo el aquilon,
+    Tu dulce sentinella, te guarda il corazon,
+    Y en alas de los zefiros,
+    que vagan por doquier,
+    Volando van mis suplicas, a ti bella mujer,
+    Volando van mis suplicas, a ti bella mujer!
+
+    De un corazon que te ama, recibe el tier no amor,
+    No anmentes mas la llama, Piedad a un trobadour,
+    Y si te mueve a lastima,
+    Mi eterno padecer,
+    Como te amo amame, bellisima mujer,
+    Como te amo amame, bellisima mujer!
+
+[Music]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+What Padre Libertad saw or heard he did not particularize. But when
+Keith Bryton, the day of the Spanish dance, had arisen and dressed, and
+talked a little with all those known to him in the Mission, except the
+mistress of it, the bearded priest closed the door on them all, and came
+and sat beside him.
+
+"To-morrow, my friend, we go," he said.
+
+"Can I--will she speak to me--once?"
+
+"What is there to say to a woman like that? God! To think that such a
+one should be Rafael Arteaga's wife!"
+
+"No," agreed the other; "there is nothing to be said. Only I would like
+to see her face once, even though she should not know it. Could that
+be?"
+
+"It is not wise; it sends you away with more of a heartache; but there
+is one place she goes each evening as the stars come out. There is one
+saint left in one niche of the old ruin. Since she rode with us from
+the hills, flowers are always there, and she goes from her own chapel
+there--to pray, perhaps. She has not said so, but--"
+
+"I can see her there. Will you--will you try to manage that no one else
+comes? Oh, it will be brief enough, even if we speak. But the statue in
+the niche--I can't remember."
+
+"It is in the shadow. The draperies of red are very faded, and so is the
+gilt of the embroideries now. Once it was very gorgeous, and it is
+called Maria Madalena."
+
+Keith turned on the speaker with flaming eyes.
+
+"She kneels there to pray--_she_? What mad fanaticism is that? Good God,
+man! _she_ is the soul of innocence!"
+
+"What she knows of her own heart, she knows, my friend. This is not the
+thing to tell a man who is to her what you are; but there is--there may
+be some day, a thing that will leave her free; and if it come--"
+
+Keith had covered his face with his hands. The weakness of the illness
+was still on him; he durst not leave his eyes unguarded. But after a
+little he looked up.
+
+"You know something more?" he said.
+
+"I know there is another woman who has Rafael tied hand and foot; I know
+she will take him away; the only thing I do not know is how long it will
+last. The bishop himself would help such a separation."
+
+"God himself could not," said Keith, "unless he kill Rafael Arteaga.
+When I heard what he said of her outside the window, I was tempted to
+kill him with my own hand. Nothing else would free her; I heard the oath
+she took!"
+
+"To send to eternity the soul she is vowed to guard would not free her
+from the idea. If he should die suddenly, unshriven, it is a lost soul,
+just the same."
+
+"It is the maddest fanaticism to bind a child like that to such a hell;
+and she accepts it, as--as her people in the past accepted the order for
+sacrifices."
+
+"What do you know of her people?"
+
+"What do you?"
+
+The two men looked into each other's eyes for a moment, and then Padre
+Libertad spoke:
+
+"I saw her mother years ago in Mexico. I was only a boy, and I adored
+Estevan. I carried letters for their love-making. That helps me to
+understand their daughter. It is true; it is in the blood, and you must
+go, my friend, before worse happens. And if ever she should be free--"
+
+Keith put out his hand.
+
+"Don't tempt me with a hope like that! I want to be sane when I do see
+her!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He saw Doņa Angela first, a delightful vision of brocades and white
+mantilla. She had dressed early, that she might help to receive the
+guests.
+
+She flinched a little under his keen glance as his eyes wandered from
+the pearl-trimmed bodice to the fair face.
+
+"Oh, of course it is not mourning," she exclaimed, "if that is what you
+are thinking of! But at least I wear no color, and it is only for one
+night. I have not the least intention of dancing. The whole affair is
+only to show off the old costumes."
+
+"You succeed very well," he remarked. "Let Dolly come around to see me
+when she has had supper. I leave early in the morning, and can't see her
+then to say good-bye."
+
+"So soon--going?" She tried to keep the delight from her tone of
+surprise. He was the most unmanageable man she had ever known. His
+indifference had attracted her, even infatuated her, a year ago, but
+there were days since when she thought she hated him. "Yes, I will send
+Dolly. She loves you dearly, more even than she did poor Ted."
+
+"We will not discuss my brother," he said, coldly. "But that will not
+prevent me caring for the child as he would have done."
+
+"Irrespective of her mother?" she asked, halting in the door and looking
+over her shoulder at him.
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Or--or of anything I might offend you in?"
+
+"Nothing you choose to do will affect my promise to my brother," he
+said, impatient at her persistence.
+
+"I may remind you of that some day," she said, gathering up her
+brocades. "If you do go, I hope that ghoul of a man, your padre, goes
+too. His silence makes him more like a spook than a man. The people have
+a holy horror of his piety."
+
+After she had disappeared, Padre Libertad entered from an inner room and
+smiled grimly at Bryton.
+
+"You are the sort of lover to be unhappy," he observed. "You can't
+console yourself with the other women. Half the men in the valley are
+mad over that woman, who would coquette with you if you did not turn ice
+when she comes near."
+
+Keith stared out of the window toward the hills of the sea, tinged with
+the warm rose of the sunset. And the man in a priest's robe tried to
+laugh, and ended with a sigh.
+
+"I admire your strength, though I doubt if I could emulate it," he
+confessed. "One pretty woman in sight is worth a dozen goddesses over
+the hill."
+
+"Talk sense if you can!"
+
+"I can. I shall leave to-night instead of to-morrow. I find I can go to
+Mexico, or South America if I choose, without touching land. I shall be
+running away with the property of a relative, and you might not care to
+mix up with it."
+
+"An hour ago you had no such plan."
+
+"An hour ago I had not confessed Victorio Lopez! I know an old record of
+his, and he thinks it is witchcraft. There is a lot of coin going
+along,--a matter of several rawhide sacks of it,--but it will be donated
+by a man who can afford gifts. Let me have your address two months
+ahead, and I can tell you how it all turns out."
+
+"You should be glad to get away alive, without weighting yourself with
+coin. There is a woman here who would care if things went entirely
+wrong."
+
+"Ana? It is for her I take the chance. I know a corner down the coast
+where fifty thousand will last forever. She is free, and she is of
+California--no snow of the hills in her blood! She will come to me after
+the chase is over."
+
+"She knows?"
+
+"Not yet. Women's fears upset things sometimes. If I do not tell her,
+it will be better. I need only tell that I am going; she is waiting
+eagerly for that."
+
+"And Victorio Lopez?"
+
+"He is paralyzed by the fear that I may give some old proofs of things
+to the alcalde. Oh, Victorio is all right. He knows two Indian sailors
+who will say nothing. They need to get away, and want a chance. We will
+bind and gag the others and put them ashore. It is all settled. The
+saints be thanked that I know boats and the coast!"
+
+Bryton scarcely knew whether to think the plan a wild fancy or an actual
+fact. The whole scheme of life those days was so filled with the strange
+and tragic, that all the echoes of laughter and the tinkle of guitars in
+the corridors could not even temper it.
+
+At sunset Rafael Arteaga rode a dripping horse into the plaza, and
+shouted cordial responses to the chorus of greetings awaiting him. All
+the day he had been in the saddle. "On business," was the only
+explanation to Don Eduardo and Doņa Maria. To his wife he had offered
+none, nor spoken since the scene in the chapel. But he was in high good
+spirits, gay and eager.
+
+He came direct to Bryton's room with a fine air of delight that he was
+on his feet again. Even to Padre Libertad, whom he had so fervently
+cursed the day before, he was at last gracious. When told by Ana that
+the padre was on his journey south either at once or early in the
+morning, he gave her some gold pieces to bestow upon him for his church
+or his order: priests always had all sorts of ways to use money. Padre
+Libertad accepted the alms gratefully, and exchanged for them a
+blessing.
+
+The sun was gone, and men, and women too, were riding in from outlying
+ranches. The Indians and Mexicans were trooping to the plaza to watch
+the gay caballeros and dark-eyed ladies in the dresses of their
+grandparents. Raquel Arteaga, dressed in simple black, with white
+undersleeves and white chemisette of silk, stood in the corridor for a
+while and greeted her earlier guests, while her husband dressed. All the
+people were on the west side of the plaza, where the dancing was to be.
+Bryton could see her there surrounded by the gay people, almost nunlike
+with the strings of black pearls around her throat as sole ornament, and
+in the braids of her hair the white stars of the odorous jasmine, thrust
+there by Ana, to break the severity of her garb. Her eyes burned like
+purple stars, and the pink color crept, in spite of herself, to her
+cheeks, and stayed there. Somewhere, she knew, one man was watching her,
+and each moment the terror grew that some of their many friends would
+bring him to her and make it impossible for him to refuse to come.
+
+Several times she caught the eyes of Ana regarding her curiously. It was
+the first time she had ever seen Raquel surrounded by men and bandying
+compliments, and looking, for all her nunlike white and black, like a
+royal creature at a puppet show. And Ana had a sort of triumph in noting
+that the eyes of Doņa Angela also wandered to her hostess in a sort of
+petulant amaze at the supremacy of her, when she chose to unbend and
+radiate graciousness in that manner. For Raquel jested and laughed at
+the pretty phrases of caballeros murmured in her ear. She refused a
+brooch of emerald for the Virgin in the chapel, in exchange for the
+jasmine in her hair. She promised two men to say a rosary for their
+aching hearts, and she allowed the older men to kiss her hands. One
+looking at her said:
+
+"You are Mexico come to life to-night, seņora. Always I have thought it.
+But to-night I see it with my own eyes. Mexico has always that glory of
+the opal fires at the heart."
+
+Angela Bryton saw and heard, and her own childish appeal appeared all at
+once cheap and of tinsel. The pearls and brocades of the woman she hated
+seemed to scorch her flesh, and she felt the truth of the petulant words
+she had said to Rafael: that the pearls had been tossed to her with the
+indifference of a queen. The owner of the casket could afford to stand
+serene and gemless, with only the jasmine flower in her hair, and yet
+dominate.
+
+A cold rage filled her as she realized what Raquel could mean to men if
+she cared. It would be as it was when they met first on the hill, always
+she would hold the middle of the road, if she was aroused to care. Up to
+that moment there had been a wild fancy of perhaps sailing away alone
+with the hastily gathered coin, and of stopping at no port for Rafael.
+She was half afraid of him and after all what could he do if she did
+elude him like that? But the sight of Raquel and her little court of
+admirers changed all that. The proud eyes should know all the
+humiliation one woman could cause another--all!
+
+She looked for Rafael; at once she would tell him,--now, while the glory
+of the Mexican opal eclipsed the woman of the royal pearls! She was
+blind with anger to every other thing. But he had not yet appeared. He
+was dressing, and a gentleman came to claim her for a dance. The guitars
+were already sending harmonies through the open doors, and the people
+were gathering thick along the western corridors. The rest of the plaza
+and the inner court were deserted. Not even a pair of lovers strayed
+from the crowd as yet. Later, when the moon came up, they would gather
+courage, but the shadows of the corridors seemed eerie retreats at
+night to any but souls oblivious to the world.
+
+It was not night yet. The first star glimmered in the western sky, and
+to the east a soft radiance over San Juan Mountain marked the path where
+the moon would come. In the warm dusk the woman with the opal fires of
+Mexico in her heart slipped away from the gay groups and through the
+stillness of the padres' garden, under the sculptured face and serpent,
+and then to the place of the altar, where the shadows were always
+softest. She came swiftly, silently; she had an odd feeling of being
+followed by his thoughts. The altar was the one place of refuge
+surely--the altar!
+
+But it was not. He stood there leaning against the pillar. She carried a
+tiny candle and a rosary. He watched her light other candles in the
+niche, thus outlining the carved saint with the long hair over her
+shoulders, and the draperies of crimson. Flowers were there, blood-red
+roses, and he saw it all in the soft glimmer of the candles; then, as
+she was about to kneel before them, he strode forward and caught her
+arm.
+
+The golden rosary fell on the tiled floor between them, and she placed
+her other hand over his, in mute appeal.
+
+"You shall not kneel at that altar," he commanded, his voice scarcely
+raised above a whisper; "that much of you belongs to me. I will not go
+away from you with that memory of you in my mind; I will not!"
+
+She was trembling, and dared not lift her eyes.
+
+"You should not have touched me," she said, brokenly. "All those hours
+on the hill I did not touch you even once. Must the two of us be weaker
+than one?"
+
+"Weak? Oh yes, I am weak to-night, or I should not be here--the weakness
+of a sick man who cannot help himself. It is the last time, Espiritu
+mia, so long as we live--so long as we live!"
+
+She slipped the Aztec ring from her finger and gave it to him.
+
+"I thought perhaps it was the ring that gave you power over my
+thoughts," she said, simply; "but it was not. Your heart beats here in
+my breast, and will till I die, or till you do. Take it back, keep it.
+After all, it was not the ring!"
+
+Her voice was so low, so even, that he, hearing his own heart-beats at
+the mere sight of her, felt the sudden resentment of a sick man at what
+appeared to be her cold control of herself.
+
+"Is it so easy for you, then?" he asked. "Like slipping a ring from your
+finger or a bracelet from your wrist, and putting it aside to wear no
+more? Oh, God! If but for one minute you could know aught but the sweet
+cool love of the girl, or the nun, or the devotee!"
+
+She caught her breath in a little shudder at the heart-call in his
+words, then put out her hand and looked at him as he had never seen her
+look.
+
+"Don't touch me," she said, her tones tense with a final decision. "You
+think that I do not know--that I do not understand; yet you see me kneel
+_there_!" and she flung one eloquent hand to the Madalena of the roses.
+"It is the thought--the thought! That we live on different sides of the
+world will not change the fact that you live in me, and I in you. And it
+will be always--always! I do not understand? Yet I have locked my door
+at night and flung the key through the bars of the window, that I could
+not follow my heart and go to you wherever you were! I do not
+understand? Yet there have been days when I feared to mount my horse to
+ride alone, for fear the wild wish for you would grow stronger than I
+could bear, and I should ride to you, to you only, and--oh, Mother of
+God!--ask you to keep me there!"
+
+Her voice broke in shuddering sobs, and she covered her face with her
+hands, sinking on her knees before the Madalena of the altar, the last
+crowned saint left in the ruin. Her one hand was still extended to ward
+him off, but he caught it, held it, and drew her to him.
+
+"You are mine by all that!" he muttered, scarce knowing what he said.
+"Do you think I shall leave you here after knowing the truth? Espiritu!
+The Indians named you rightly. Spirit of mine, there are no bonds of
+earth strong enough to keep me from you now. Come! Our world is
+together; the nights of the evil dreams have been lived through.
+Somewhere we shall find the sunshine."
+
+The hand clasping hers she caught to her lips, but when he would have
+clasped her, she broke from him with a low moan of protest.
+
+"I tell you this that you go away knowing that the real life of me is
+with you always," she said, and stood leaning against the altar of the
+saint. "Go now, and go quickly; for I tell you truly, if the day ever
+come again when I find myself like to follow you, I will come where I am
+now, and this will end it all."
+
+From the bodice of her gown she drew the little dagger she had taken
+from the jewel-casket the day before.
+
+"My life is not my own to live in my own way; it is bound by an oath to
+the dead, and there is no release, none--none! Go now. You know my
+heart and the madness of it. Forget me if you can,--but oh, beloved, not
+too quickly!"
+
+[Illustration: "ONE WORDLESS MINUTE."]
+
+He caught her to him and held her there. The world reeled about them for
+one wordless minute, and then he released her and walked out across
+where the tower of the temple had once been, and he knew he was leaving
+her forever. A horse was waiting. He had said he could ride best in the
+moonlight, and a little later the hoof-beats sounded through the
+strumming guitars, and she knew it was over! It was her sacrifice for
+the oath to the dead, and she sank prostrate in the shadow of the altar.
+The tiny candles glimmered and went out, yet still she lay there. The
+moon in its soft yellow light flooded the open space without, but did
+not touch her. She had found the rosary and clasped it, her lips against
+the cold pearl figure of the sculptured Christ.
+
+And then two persons came toward her through the arch of the old
+sacristy, one in the velvet and gold lace of a Spanish grandee, and the
+other a shimmer of brocade and pearl-gemmed lilies.
+
+"No, I will not go without it," the woman's voice was saying,
+petulantly, "not though a dozen boats waited! Yes, I can slip away after
+the dance. Have a horse ready. Dolly will be sleeping; she is the
+greatest risk. But we can be out of sight of land long before the dawn
+breaks."
+
+The man murmured some plea in her ear, and she turned away, shrugging
+her shoulders.
+
+"The jewels first!" she said, with pretty decision. "The coin is a
+matter of course; we shall need that to live on. But the jewels--why
+not? Half of them belonged to your own family, and for the rest--well,
+you leave her enough to give the Church; that is all she lives for.
+Bring me the jewels at once: when I see them in my own hand, I am ready
+to promise everything."
+
+"You are not afraid to wait here?"
+
+"Yes, a little," she acknowledged. "It's a horrid, creepy place, but
+it's the one corner where no one else will come. I will wait for them
+here."
+
+The woman prostrate before the Madalena arose to her feet and stood
+motionless in the shadow. Her hands were crossed unconsciously on her
+heart to quiet its beating. Her own sacrifice, then, was to go for
+nothing; the vow she had sworn to live for was to count for naught
+because of one little white vampire of a creature whose god was gold and
+jewels!
+
+The crossed hands held the rosary and the dagger.
+
+"They are here," said Rafael, returning after a few minutes, "all but
+the few the girls wear to-night. There! They are at last in your own
+hands, and now--"
+
+She slipped her white arm about his throat and kissed him on the mouth.
+
+"And you will live in my way--not hers?" she said, with clinging
+sweetness. "You are not to be even Catholic with me? You have promised!"
+
+"Thou art my only god, O little white one!" he said, and pressed her to
+his breast. "All the world can go to hell, so I have you! My soul I give
+into these little hands; my heart is under these little feet, which I
+kiss thus; and thus, and thus! Though Christ himself stood in the way, I
+would have you for myself!"
+
+She laughed softly in her triumph.
+
+"We shall be missed," she said at last. "Go that way to the plaza, and I
+will go by the old garden. These I will wrap up and carry in my own
+hands. Go,--oh, there will be other nights for kisses,--go now,
+quickly!"
+
+She pushed him from her, and he obeyed, walking across the tiled floor
+in the moonlight, and out into the plaza, as Bryton had walked so short
+a time before. The woman with the casket stood an instant looking after
+him, and then raised the lid and lifted a handful of the gems, holding
+them up that the soft light of the moon might add to the glow of rubies
+and the white fire of diamonds.
+
+"All these, and his very soul besides!" she murmured, holding a necklace
+aloft to the moon's rays,--"his soul besides!"
+
+And then a low strangled cry escaped her as the woman of the rosary and
+dagger came silently to her from the shadows and halted a moment beside
+her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A little later the Padre Libertad was stopped in the corridor by Raquel.
+He had been watching the dancers, and was about to start south. Like
+Bryton, he meant to ride at night, instead of in the hot sun.
+
+"Wait," she said, imperatively; "the chapel is open; I would confess
+before you go."
+
+"But to-morrow--your own padre--"
+
+"To-night," she said; "and I want no other padre."
+
+"If you have remembered a sin--" he began, hesitatingly; but she
+interrupted.
+
+"I think it is neither sin nor remorse," she said, quietly; "but it is
+you that must listen to me."
+
+He closed the door behind them. Old Polonia crouched unnoticed beside
+it, and in perhaps ten minutes he came out again, and started to walk
+the road to the sea. Rafael saw him, and laughed at the queer
+crack-brained padre who preferred walking to riding a good horse.
+Others laughed also, and the dance went on, until the partners of Doņa
+Angela grew impatient, and a gay party with guitars started to encircle
+the plaza for her, singing love-songs of appeal as they went.
+
+[Illustration: "THINGS KNOWN AND NEVER TOLD."]
+
+The white gleam of the brocaded gown caught the eyes of the singers, and
+then a great cry went up in the night, and the music of the dance
+ceased, and the people crowded about the dead woman on the altar steps,
+and the old Indios crossed themselves, and said in their own tongue:
+
+"It has come, after all,--the sacrifice of blood on the altar of the
+temple,--the thing our fathers told us has come to pass."
+
+The strings of pearls and other jewels were scattered on the
+diamond-shaped tiles of the floor, and many were red with blood.
+
+"Some one has tried to steal the jewels while we all danced there,"
+suggested one of the guests, "and she has died defending them. Rafael,
+she has given her life to save the jewels of your wife!"
+
+"Yes," Rafael said, at last, and stared at the speaker in a dazed way;
+"my wife. I--I will go to my wife."
+
+He strode through the crowd toward the living-rooms, and flung wide the
+door of her chamber. She was on her knees where Padre Libertad had left
+her.
+
+"Raquel!"
+
+His voice sounded hollow and strange in his own ears. A strange buzzing
+in his head blurred speech and thought, and when she arose and faced him
+with clear eyes and quiet face, he leaned against the chair and looked
+at her strangely--helplessly.
+
+"She is dead," he said, thickly; "Angela Bryton is found dead--and your
+jewels--"
+
+"Wait," she said, "and I will go with you."
+
+And turning, she lifted the lid from the perfumed box of candles.
+
+"She did not believe in these," she said, quietly, "but we will light
+them for her, just the same. None of us knew whom they would burn for;
+perhaps she knows now, Rafael."
+
+He made no answer, but moved like a man stunned mentally. Out beside her
+he walked to the altar-place, and the people made way for them.
+
+It was the hour of dawn when a fisherman rode from the beach to tell how
+he had found two sailors beaten and bound at the landing-place. They had
+a story of a sailing-vessel and sacks of coin, and a bearded man who
+looked like El Capitan; but it must have been his ghost, for it was
+thought Capitan was dead, as well as Juan Flores. At any rate, the
+vessel was gone, and the sailors were left tied on the shore. They were
+afraid to face Rafael Arteaga, because of the coin he had trusted them
+with, and the good boat, gone now straight out of sight--the saints and
+the devil only knew where!
+
+But they needed not to fear Rafael. The coin, for which he had exchanged
+all the cattle and horses possible to sell in two days' time, was a
+forgotten thing to him, or uncared for. He sat apart and silent, as
+though paralyzed by a great fear, and he ever followed Raquel Arteaga
+with his eyes, and said nothing.
+
+The people wondered much that the robbers who would kill a woman and
+steal a boat had not stopped also to gather up the scattered jewels
+strewn about her. But they had not. Not even a diamond was missing. They
+were gathered from the tiles, and the blood was washed from them, and
+the casket was taken to Raquel by Ana, who was almost as silent as
+Rafael. On that subject, never in their lives would they gain courage to
+speak. Raquel took the casket, and looked at the gems, but did not touch
+them.
+
+"And for such trifles she lost her life, perhaps her soul--who knows?"
+she said, in the same colorless quiet way, and handed the casket to her
+husband. "Rafael, have these put away for her child, when she becomes a
+woman. They were paid for by the mother!"
+
+From that night Rafael Arteaga was a changed man. Some said he had gone
+mad at the death of the woman there; others said that it was not the
+death of the woman, but the curse of the Arteagas had fallen upon him.
+No one ever heard him laugh or sing again; and when his wife brought
+pretty Marta's little boy from the willows, and had him educated to
+inherit after his father, the father accepted him almost without notice.
+
+Keith Bryton never came back. Letters concerning the child of Doņa
+Angela were exchanged with Don Eduardo, who remained her guardian, and
+after that there were long years of silence. Only one man, far down the
+coast of South America, guessed what Raquel Arteaga lived through. Even
+to Ana, who had left her own land to join him, there were some things
+known to him of the old Mission days, and never told.
+
+[Music: _Al Fin_]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+Raquel knelt no more at the shrine of the Madalena, but she went there
+nightly as the afterglow flooded the valley. Sometimes she rode her
+horse alone up the dusk shadows of Trabuco, past the portal of the aliso
+tree and into the inner court of memory. But always she kept the tryst
+of the first star of nightfall.
+
+When the years of the great war of the East came, she knew he was there.
+And when, after a battle called "Chickamauga," there came a tiny package
+from that far-away place, she stood in the dusk of the old temple, and
+slipped the ring of the Aztec eagle again on her finger. Then she knew
+that the end of the separation had come.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"If it were any other woman than you, Raquel Arteaga, men would say you
+rode to meet a lover, when you gallop like that in the night, and come
+back looking as if you had just been kissed," said Teresa, with watchful
+malice. "The old Indios say that you bathe in the night dews as a charm
+to keep young always. But why do you ride alone?"
+
+"Alone?" The woman who the old courtier had said held the opal fires of
+Mexico in her heart smiled on her sister-in-law at that question, and
+the dusk shadows of night and mystery were in her violet eyes. "I am
+never alone now, Teresa. It is a long time since I felt alone, a very
+long time."
+
+
+THE END
+
+[Music]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's For the Soul of Rafael, by Marah Ellis Ryan
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of For the Soul of Rafael, by Marah Ellis Ryan
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: For the Soul of Rafael
+
+Author: Marah Ellis Ryan
+
+Release Date: June 14, 2012 [EBook #39995]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOR THE SOUL OF RAFAEL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, tallforasmurf and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+<div style='border:2px solid silver;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:1em;padding:8px;'>
+<h3>Transcriber's Note</h3>
+<p style='text-indent:0;'>
+This etext differs from the original only in that a few minor
+typographical errors have been corrected.
+</p><p style='text-indent:0;'>
+The original includes photographic illustrations which are
+reproduced here at two resolutions. Images within the
+text are sized for online viewing.
+Click on an image to open a
+version of higher resolution. This larger version is
+scaled for printing at 240 pixels per inch (95 pixels/cm).
+</p><p style='text-indent:0;'>
+The songs and musical fragments throughout the text
+are linked to midi files. Click on a musical passage to hear
+the notes played.</p><p style='text-indent:0;'>
+The original pages were framed in elegant decorative borders.
+A part of the chapter-head border is used here to frame chapter titles.
+Borders for other pages could not be used in an etext, but sample pages
+showing the five border styles are appended at the end of the file.
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a href='images/coverp.jpg'>
+<img src='images/coverw.jpg' id='coverpage'
+	title='Cover image' alt='Cover image' />
+</a>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a href='images/frontispiecep.jpg'>
+    <img src='images/frontispiecew.jpg'
+	title='&ldquo;Because of One Little White Vampire&rdquo;'
+	alt='&ldquo;Because of One Little White Vampire&rdquo;'
+/>
+</a>
+<p>&ldquo;Because of One Little White Vampire&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='titlepage'>
+<h1 style='font-size:400%;'>FOR THE SOUL OF RAFAEL</h1>
+<h3>BY</h3>
+<h1>MARAH ELLIS RYAN</h1>
+
+<h4>AUTHOR OF &ldquo;TOLD IN THE HILLS&rdquo;
+&ldquo;THE BONDWOMAN&rdquo; ETC.</h4>
+
+<h4 style='margin-top:2em;'>WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS FROM<br />
+PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN EXPRESSLY FOR THIS BOOK<br />
+BY<br />
+<span style='font-size:larger;'>HAROLD A. TAYLOR</span></h4>
+
+<h4 style='margin-top:2em;'>DECORATIVE DESIGNS BY<br />
+RALPH FLETCHER SEYMOUR</h4>
+
+<h4 style='margin-top:2em;'>ELEVENTH EDITION</h4>
+<p style='text-align:center;'><img src='images/colophon.png'
+title='decorative colophon' alt='decorative colophon' /></p>
+
+<h4 style='margin-top:3em;'>CHICAGO<br />
+<span style='font-size:larger;'>A.C. McCLURG &amp; CO.</span><br />
+1920</h4>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span></p>
+<hr />
+<p style='text-align:center;'><br />
+<span class="smcap">Copyright</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">A.C. McClurg &amp; Co.</span><br />
+1906</p>
+<hr style='width:10%;' />
+<p style='text-align:center;'>
+Entered at Stationers Hall, London</p><br />
+<p style='text-align:center;'>
+Photographs by <span class="smcap">Harold A. Taylor</span>,
+by permission of<br />
+The Hallett-Taylor Company</p>
+
+<p style='text-align:center;'>
+The Author is indebted to the Southwest Society of the<br />
+Archæological Institute of America for the<br />
+Spanish Music contained in<br />
+this volume
+</p>
+<p style='text-align:center;'>
+Published May 12, 1906<br />
+Second Edition, Sept. 15, 1906<br />
+Third Edition, Oct. 1, 1906<br />
+Fourth Edition, Dec. 5, 1906<br />
+Fifth Edition, Dec. 15, 1906<br />
+Sixth Edition, Feb. 11, 1907<br />
+7th Edition, Aug. 31, 1907<br />
+8th Edition, Jan. 12, 1909<br />
+9th Edition, April 30, 1909<br />
+10th Edition, Oct. 15, 1910<br />
+11th Edition, Nov. 10, 1914
+</p>
+
+<p style='text-align:center;font-size:smaller;'>
+M.A. DONOHUE &amp; CO., PRINTERS AND BINDERS, CHICAGO
+</p>
+</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span></p>
+
+<div style='width:90%; margin:auto;'>
+<div class="poem" style='margin-left:8em; font-size:larger;margin-top:4em;margin-bottom:4em;'>
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Á MIS AMIGOS DE CALIFORNIA</i><br /></span>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>que siempre me han prestado su ayuda con</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>aquella bonded que les es caracteristica.</i><br /></span>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8"><i>M.E.R.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='framed'>
+<h2><a name="ILLUSTRATIONS" id="ILLUSTRATIONS"></a>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="4" summary="Illustrations" style='width:60%;line-height:1.5em;'>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'><span class='smcap'>Page</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>"<span class="smcap">&ldquo;Because of One Little White Vampire&rdquo;</span></td><td align='right'><i><a href='#Page_2'>Frontispiece</a></i></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Doņa Angela</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_32'>32</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Raquel Estevan</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_56'>56</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Keith Bryton</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_63'>62</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">&ldquo;Never on Any Other Shore&rdquo;</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_128'>128</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">&ldquo;You Lied to Me&mdash;All of You!&rdquo;</span>"</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_166'>166</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">&ldquo;R&#361;elas Me Fecit: Me Llama San Juan. 1796&rdquo;</span>.&rdquo;</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_176'>176</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">&ldquo;Then I Heard Your Voice&rdquo;</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_240'>240</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">&ldquo;Here among the Ruins Consecrated&rdquo;</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_262'>260</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">&ldquo;There is No Forgetting&rdquo;</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_278'>278</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Aliso Tree</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_294'>294</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">An Inner Court</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_299'>302</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Serenade</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_313'>312</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">&ldquo;After the Very Gay Supper&rdquo;</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_316'>316</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">&ldquo;Their Hostess had Arrived&rdquo;</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_320'>320</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">&ldquo;And&mdash;He was an Arteaga!&rdquo;</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_334'>334</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">&ldquo;Each Way He Turned He Met an Altar or a Priest&rdquo;</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_353'>352</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">&ldquo;One Wordless Minute&rdquo;</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_369'>368</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">&ldquo;Things Known and Never Told&rdquo;</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_373'>372</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span></p>
+<div class='figmusic'  style='margin-top:2em;'>
+<a href='music/m009.mid'>
+<img src='images/mu009.png'
+	title='Music: La Calandria'
+	alt='Music: La Calandria'
+/>
+</a>
+</div>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<img src='images/p009.png' title='decoration' alt='decoration' />
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+<div class="center">
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents" style='width:60%;line-height:1.5em;'>
+<tr><td align='left'>&nbsp;</td><td align='right'><span class='smcap'>Page</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>CHAPTER I</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_11'>11</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>CHAPTER II</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_21'>21</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>CHAPTER III</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_55'>55</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>CHAPTER IV</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_65'>65</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>CHAPTER V</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_81'>81</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>CHAPTER VI</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_91'>91</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>CHAPTER VII</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_127'>127</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>CHAPTER VIII</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_147'>147</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>CHAPTER IX</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_165'>165</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>CHAPTER X</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_185'>185</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>CHAPTER XI</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_199'>199</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>CHAPTER XII</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_209'>209</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>CHAPTER XIII</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_239'>239</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>CHAPTER XIV</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_248'>248</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>CHAPTER XV</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_263'>263</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>CHAPTER XVI</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_293'>293</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>CHAPTER XVII</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_305'>305</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>CHAPTER XVIII</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_319'>319</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>CHAPTER XIX</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_330'>330</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>CHAPTER XX</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_350'>350</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>CHAPTER XXI</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_355'>355</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>CHAPTER XXII</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_377'>377</a></td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='framed'>
+<div class='figmusic'>
+<a href='music/m010.mid'>
+<img src='images/mu010.png'
+	title='Music: Capitan de un Barco'
+	alt='Music: Capitan de un Barco'
+/></a>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Capitan de un barco<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Me escribio un papel<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Que si ne queria<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Casarme con el.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='framed'>
+<h1 style='margin:1.5em auto 1.5em auto;'>FOR THE SOUL OF RAFAEL</h1>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class='dropcap'>
+<img src='images/dc011.png' title='O' alt='O' />
+</div>
+<p>Over the valley of the Mission
+of the Tragedies, the grass was
+knee-deep in March that year.
+The horses galloping from the
+mesa trail down to Boca de la
+Playa (the mouth of the ocean)
+were fat and sleek and tricky as
+they ran neck and neck past the corral of the little
+plain, and splashed in glee through the San Juan
+River, where it ends its short run from the Sierras to
+the Pacific.</p>
+
+<p>Where the west trail hugged the hill, two men sat
+their broncos, watching that no strays break for the
+mesa above; and beyond the cross on Avila's hill, other
+vaqueros guarded El Camino Real (the road royal),
+lest in the whirl and dash of the round-up rebels
+might break for the open and a stampede undo all the
+riding since dawn of day.</p>
+
+<p>High above on the western cliff a giant head of
+cactus reared infernal arms and luminous bloom.
+One immense clump threw a shadow across the cliff
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
+road where it leaves the river plain and winds along the
+caņon to the mesa above the sea,&mdash;the road over
+which in the old days the Mission Indians bore hides
+to the ships and flung them from the cliffs to the
+waiting boats below.</p>
+
+<p>A man stood back of the cactus watching with tireless
+eyes the dividing of the herds and the quick
+work of the vaqueros as their excited mustangs raced
+for a stray or a rebel from the ranks. A dark serape
+was at his feet, the dust of the roads on his face, and
+when he removed his sombrero to light a cigarro in its
+shelter, there was disclosed a great shock of black hair
+worn unusually long, and matching in unkemptness
+the full beard covering his face almost to his black
+velvety eyes.</p>
+
+<p>They were the one youthful feature in an otherwise
+weather-worn visage, and at the sound of horse hoofs
+on the road, they opened wider, listening, alert, yet he
+did not turn to look whence the sounds came. Instead,
+he dropped silently to the serape, crushed the end of
+the cigarro against a cactus leaf, and waited, as still and
+as safe from detection as a lizard of the mesa in a sage
+thicket.</p>
+
+<p>He could see clearly the face of Don Antonio, the
+major-domo, and instinctively his right hand reached
+for his gun. Then he shrugged his shoulders at his
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>
+own folly, and bent his head to listen. Don Antonio
+was speaking Americano to a man riding beside him,
+and the man behind the cactus frowned impatiently,&mdash;the
+villanous tongue was an added grievance. A few
+rebellious animals had made a dash for the cliff, and
+Don Antonio waved his sombrero and ranged his
+horse across the road. His companion did the same,
+and to give the vaqueros time to cross the river after
+them, the two stood guard in the shadow of the
+cactus, and rolled cigarros and smoked leisurely, while
+the horsemen, in jingling spurs and all the bravery of
+the Mexican riders' outfit, circled and lassoed the pick
+of the herd for the Apache work of the government
+in the desert lands.</p>
+
+<p>"It is quicker done than it was a year ago," the
+American remarked approvingly, "and the horses are
+in better condition. If you can let us have the five
+hundred from the La Paz ranges, there should be no
+trouble about making up the other five hundred from
+the San Mateo."</p>
+
+<p>"Not any, seņor," agreed Don Antonio, "I send
+a man down to have them round-up for next week.
+You no want that they begin sooner than that?"</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow," returned the other with smiling
+decision.</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow! Holy Maria and José! You will
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
+cut out the fiesta and the barbecue always given for
+the army men? Seņor Bryton, the Don Miguel and
+Don Rafael Arteaga will feel offend if you refuse their
+hospitality except for the little&mdash;little while, the horse
+herd is arranged for."</p>
+
+<p>"Sorry to offend the young men," observed the
+other. "But since Don Miguel is ranging in some
+other part of California, and your Don Rafael is in
+Mexico getting married or making love,&mdash;which is
+it?&mdash;I reckon they will not miss us much."</p>
+
+<p>"No, seņor, it is not to marry down there, only to
+make it all arrange. His mother, the Doņa Luisa, is
+there in Mexico since San Pascual; but Doņa Luisa
+will be more old and crippled than she is now, before
+she lets Don Rafael be marry outside her own Mission."</p>
+
+<p>"So they come back here for the ceremony?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure! Doņa Luisa she marry Don Vicente, here
+in San Juan Capistrano. It is here he have the big
+trouble with the padre, and the padre put the curse
+on him that long time ago. It is here that he is
+brought back dead from San Pascual. And now when
+the sons have make much trouble, all are dead but
+two, and when Doņa Luisa, who was so proud, has
+only Indian grandchildren, she wants to marry Rafael
+to a seņorita who is half a nun, that the curse may be
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>
+lifted. She think that girl do more to keep him
+from walking in Miguel's shoes than prayers to the
+saints can do; and it may be,&mdash;who knows? I hear
+you talking of the padre's curse to the Alcalde, so I
+know you hearing the story."</p>
+
+<p>"Um&mdash;something of church property south of
+here, wasn't it?" remarked the American. "Yes, I
+remember. There goes a mare that is a beauty for a
+mustang."</p>
+
+<p>"Some few years, and you no getting that strong,
+wild stock some more," he observed. "Miguel and
+Rafael want English stallions and such other breeds.
+They will have English stock and American customs.
+The saints keep Doņa Luisa from hearing them all. I
+mean no discourtesy, seņor, but she is an old woman
+now, and left her home because she would not live in
+your government. She comes back for duty and the
+marriage; but the old never change, seņor, and she is
+hating it till she die."</p>
+
+<p>The American cast his eyes northward where the
+heights of San Jacinto stood guard over the beautiful
+valley. Willows marked the course of Trabuco Creek
+and San Juan River, and on the plateau between them
+gleamed the ruined dome of the old mission, a remnant
+of beauty such as the ranging American meets
+with in Latin lands, seldom in his own, and admires,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>
+and wonders if it was worth while, and drifts away
+again, but never quite forgets.</p>
+
+<p>Yellow-white it gleamed like an opal in a setting of
+velvety ranges under turquoise skies. About its walls
+were the clustered adobes of the Mexicans, like children
+creeping close to the feet of the one mother; and
+beyond that the illimitable ranges of mesa and valley,
+of live-oak groves and knee-deep meadows, of countless
+springs and caņons of mystery, whence gold was
+washed in the freshets; and over all, eloquent, insistent,
+appealing, the note of the meadow-lark cutting clearly
+through the hoof-beats of the herd and the calls of the
+vaqueros.</p>
+
+<p>"I think I should hate it, too," he said at last.
+"They lived like kings and made their own laws in
+those days. After being a queen of all this, it would
+be hard to be subject to new forms."</p>
+
+<p>"That is it, seņor, she never get used to like the
+American flag. That why she want always that Don
+Rafael marry South, a good Catholic, and a seņorita
+of Mexico. She only living for that, they say. Now
+when it is done she die in peace."</p>
+
+<p>"And Rafael, how will he manage his American
+deals when&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Don Antonio shrugged his shoulders doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Who knows? I glad I living my young life in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>
+other days. The fences have make ruin of the country
+in the north; after a while it is down here all the same.
+All cut up in little gardens. Who knows?"</p>
+
+<p>The American restrained a smile as he thought of
+the sixty-five miles they had ridden across, and only one
+little German colony where fence or hedges were in
+evidence. For the rest all was fenced on the east by
+the mountains and on the west by the sea. On the
+north the Santa Barbara range would perhaps serve as
+a barricade, and south even the Mexican line raised
+no obstacle to roving herds.</p>
+
+<p>"The fences will not come in our day, and it is all
+now to be a pleasure ground for your gay Don Rafael."</p>
+
+<p>"Not so much of a pleasure ground as it looks,
+seņor," observed Don Antonio dryly. "The same
+curse works still. It is good he marries a convent
+girl; it takes the prayers of Doņa Luisa, and a saint
+besides, to clear these ranges of Barto Nordico, el
+Capitan."</p>
+
+<p>The man on the serape shrugged his shoulders and
+lifted his head, resting it on his hands to listen better.</p>
+
+<p>"Nordico? Oh, yes! the man with an eye for
+good horses."</p>
+
+<p>"If it were only an eye," grumbled Don Antonio,
+"but the devil seems to have a hundred hands, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>
+his reata touches only the first stock on the Arteaga
+ranches."</p>
+
+<p>"Not only the Arteagas', I suppose?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you not hearing that?" and the older man's
+tone expressed surprise. "It going with the curse,
+maybe, we not knowing. Old Don Vicente have the
+brother Ramon, but Vicente buy up all Ramon's
+land some way. Ramon goes crazy mad, <i>loco</i>, on that
+account. And then his son, Barto, he study for the
+priest, that is when the war comes, and he is only little
+yet. He running away from school to fight; but all
+he can do is to carry the letters, he is so little and can
+ride so like the devil. He never is content to the
+American flags, no more than Doņa Luisa, so he just
+keeping on to fight, and the government no getting
+him."</p>
+
+<p>"Do they try?" asked the American.</p>
+
+<p>"Do they&mdash;do they try? Since he joined Juan
+Flores, one dozen men in Capistrano have the sword
+cut or the bullet mark, who have gone to try for that
+reward. It is good money, but no one getting it. He
+is a devil."</p>
+
+<p>"But I don't understand. You make him out an
+Arteaga, yet he is called Nordico?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he hating the Arteagas, so he taking his
+mother's name. He take the government mail
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>
+sometimes, and he takes the Arteaga horses always,
+and no one ever finds him any place. While men
+follow his trail for the mountains, he is out in a boat
+on the sea. The saints send that he does not meet
+the marriage gifts of Don Rafael."</p>
+
+<p>The man behind the cactus fairly held his breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Whew! would he attack the Mission or the town?"</p>
+
+<p>"It would not be the first time," returned Antonio,
+"but it is of the bride-chests on the journey that I
+speak. Sixty miles of land they must cover from San
+Diego, and they cost more than a herd of horses."</p>
+
+<p>"Rafael can replace the gifts," observed the American,
+"so long as his bandit cousin does not kidnap
+the bride; but even that, I suppose, might be done in
+this land of lonely ranges."</p>
+
+<p>The man under the cactus nodded and showed his
+teeth in an appreciative smile. He had met good fortune
+for his long vigil; it was a day of luck, and he
+crossed himself.</p>
+
+<p>The vaqueros had circled the rebellious animals,
+and headed them back.</p>
+
+<p>"It is true, the horses are in better condition this
+year," conceded the major-domo as they watched the
+horses loping along the river side. "Do you send
+them all together, or by the five hundred, across the
+range, Seņor Bryton?"
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<p>"By the five hundred, I think the lieutenant
+said," replied Bryton. "It is not easy to feed more
+in one bunch on the journey."</p>
+
+<p>The man behind the cactus arose stealthily and
+stretched his arms as the hoof-beats grew more faint.</p>
+
+<p>"Seņor Bryton&mdash;eh?" and he shrugged his
+shoulders contentedly. "The clever Bryton who put
+us off the track last year and took the stock by the
+north! This time he will not be so clever. Still, he
+gives a man ideas in the head,&mdash;may he have an easy
+death for that! Rafael's good friend who picks the
+good horses for the good government!"
+</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='framed'>
+<div class='figmusic'>
+<a href='music/m021.mid'>
+<img src='images/mu021.png'
+	title='Music: La Viuda.'
+	alt='Music: La Viuda.'
+/></a>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Corre muchacho a la yglesia,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dile al sacristan mayor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Que repique las campanas, tan! tan!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+<h2>
+<a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class='dropcap'>
+<img src='images/dc021.png' title='W' alt='W' />
+</div>
+<p>"Men make plans, and the devil
+makes other plans&mdash;and the
+devil's plan has always the luck
+with it."</p>
+
+<p>Don Antonio had expressed
+himself thus to the army men,
+who fumed and fretted at delays
+incident to the funeral ceremonies of Miguel Arteaga,
+for whom the Mission bells clanged in the gray of a
+morning, and the word went out that he lay trampled
+into the dust of the Santa Ana ranch. A thousand
+head of stampeding cattle had gone over him, and the
+younger brother&mdash;the handsome Rafael&mdash;was now
+the head of the Arteaga family. And with half the
+horses selected for the government, the work had
+stopped short. There was no head to anything
+now until Rafael arrived. In vain the army men
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>
+swore, and went farther south to secure mounts for the
+regiment. They had to come back to San Juan, and
+then it was that Keith Bryton, with his knowledge of
+the people and of the country, came to their aid.</p>
+
+<p>He heard that the debonair Rafael had landed at San
+Pedro the day of the death, and had quietly lost himself
+from the dismal ceremonies awaiting him in his
+own province. Miguel could not be seen; what use
+was it to witness the howling mob of Indian retainers?</p>
+
+<p>Bryton, knowing something and surmising more of
+the situation, held the army men with some promise to
+"fix things," and secretly despatched a trusted vaquero
+with a letter to San Pedro, allowing the new heir for
+his return just the time necessary for the next ship
+to come into the harbor, and the extra day's drive
+from Los Angeles. In the meantime a personal letter
+giving orders to Don Antonio to hand over the stock
+as per contract was needed badly in San Juan, if Don
+Rafael ever cared again for government favors.</p>
+
+<p>The vaquero rode back in forty-eight hours with the
+order. The work of rounding-up began over again,
+and only Keith Bryton and Don Antonio knew how
+it had come about.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly affairs began to assume their usual routine.
+People began to talk of other things; and only Doņa
+Teresa, the widow of Miguel, continued to go daily to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>
+the dark old chapel back of the Mission dining-room,
+and kneel in prayer before the wooden saints in the
+niches. She sat in the patio of Juan Alvara's house,
+and stared listlessly from one square of tiling in the
+pavement to another. The priest had just left her after
+the perfunctory words of solace, and was refreshing
+himself with a glass of brandy preparatory to a game
+of <i>malilla</i>. The week had been one of trial; it always is
+so when the death is one of accident&mdash;no one is ready.</p>
+
+<p>The Doņa Teresa had been a pretty girl in the days
+when Miguel Arteaga serenaded her endlessly, and her
+family had insisted that the marriage should not be
+postponed to add to their sleepless nights. One year&mdash;two
+years, and the serenades were a thing of a former
+life, and so was fat Teresa's beauty. From the willows
+was brought again the Indian girl whose two children
+had been christened in his name. She looked after
+the servants who cooked for the vaqueros. Her manner
+was ever quiet and submissive to Doņa Teresa, who
+accepted her as better than any of the others of the
+same class. Doņa Teresa had no children, and envied
+though she was not jealous of Aguada of the smoke-black
+eyes and the babies. And it was Aguada who
+came to Doņa Teresa in the patio, undid her bonnet-strings,
+and bathed her face and hands with cool water.</p>
+
+<p>Past the veranda of Juan Alvara, at San Juan, all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>
+the world of Southern California found its way.
+There was a tavern down the street, where the stages
+stopped between Los Angeles and San Diego, but Juan
+Alvara's house was the one dwelling where distinguished
+travellers were entertained, after the hospitality
+of the padres at the Mission was a thing of the past.
+It was up to this veranda Keith Bryton rode from the
+second round-up at Boca de la Playa. He was tired
+and dusty, and accepted gratefully the wine for which
+the old man sent when he saw his guest approaching.</p>
+
+<p>Alvara did not usually like "Gringos"; but at the
+time the Juan Flores bandits were holding up the town
+for ransom, it was Keith Bryton who had gathered a posse
+of men, including the sheriff, and headed them again
+for San Juan. Grain-sacks were piled along the roof
+of the Mission as a barricade, and behind them some
+riflemen guarded, as best they could, the several families
+who had fled to the walls of the church for protection.</p>
+
+<p>Only one store had been burned, and one store-keeper
+killed, when the help came&mdash;thanks to Bryton,
+and that one ride broke down all barriers for the
+young Gringo in San Juan. He now never rode past
+Alvara's veranda without a halt for a glass of wine, or
+a chat, or even that best test of understanding, a rest
+in silence together, looking out across the river to the
+blue shadows of the hills.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>
+This day as the young man sat smoking in such
+silence, viewing idly the passing Indians whose dark
+faces were lit by the rosy glow of the lowering sun,
+and watching the circling doves whose white wings
+caught flashes of pink from pink clouds above, the
+older man, regarding his thoughtful face, asked after
+a quiet interval, "What is it, my friend?"</p>
+
+<p>The handsome bronzed young fellow stretched
+wide his arms with a great sigh, and laughed shortly.</p>
+
+<p>"Foolishness, Don Juan, much foolishness. I was
+homesick for a something I never knew, so I left Los
+Angeles and came here to find it. Can you understand
+so crazy a thing as that?"</p>
+
+<p>The old man nodded slowly.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a girl&mdash;no?"</p>
+
+<p>The young man laughed again, without mirth.</p>
+
+<p>"Which of them?" and Bryton made a gesture
+toward a group of dark faces across the plaza.
+"There is pretty Lizetta, Teresa; and if one wants
+the other sort, there is Chola Martina staring at us
+both under her mantilla."</p>
+
+<p>"It is you she stares at. The Lieutenant danced
+with her last night. He is just off the ranges, so she
+is to-day crazy over the Americanos. No&mdash;it is not
+any of such girls you are for."</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon not," agreed the young fellow. "I think<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>
+it is just the atmosphere, and perhaps the old monastery.
+The pictures of Mexican towns paint themselves
+on the memory and stay there. Were you
+ever in Old Mexico, Don Juan?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not I; never have I been a travelled man. But you&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was down there a year ago," answered Bryton,
+looking hard at the hills. "I found a town in a valley
+like this,&mdash;there were just the same sort of 'dobes, and
+the same sort of big church walls,&mdash;only it was a nuns'
+cloister, instead of a deserted monastery."</p>
+
+<p>"And&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'll never go back, but&mdash;I'll never forget it!
+That old broken wall, and Moorish chimney, and
+the doves&mdash;they all belong to the same sort of picture.
+I come here to sit and moon over them once
+in a while, that's all!"</p>
+
+<p>The old man regarded him with shrewd, kindly
+eyes. He had the strain of Spanish blood, condoning
+many follies of youth.</p>
+
+<p>"So!" he said, kindly. "Thou comest here to
+dance with the girls of San Juan, that the other girl
+may be forgotten? Ai&mdash;yi!&mdash;these other sweethearts
+are fellows who make much trouble!&mdash;so?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is something more than a sweetheart keeps
+me away," remarked the young fellow after a slight<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
+pause. "A mere sweetheart is not such a barricade;
+most of us are perverse enough to think it rather an
+incentive."</p>
+
+<p>"You too, my friend?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who knows?"</p>
+
+<p>The old man puffed out another cigaretto and
+threw the stump away before he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"The wives of other men it is wise to go clear of,
+my friend."</p>
+
+<p>Keith laughed more than the remark called for; in
+fact, his amusement dispelled the murky thoughts by
+which he had been driven to the hospitable veranda.</p>
+
+<p>"True&mdash;very true; but which of us is always wise?"</p>
+
+<p>Alvara made no reply to this, only shook his head,
+and the other, noting the perplexity of it, chuckled.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't lose sleep over my depravity," he suggested.
+"I am no blacker than the rest of the sheep."</p>
+
+<p>"Even then thou wouldst fall far short of whiteness,"
+remarked the older man. "The padre swears
+that San Juan will have worse than earthquakes if
+there is no reform."</p>
+
+<p>"That is bad," said Keith, with owl-like gravity.</p>
+
+<p>"It is bad, seņor&mdash;and it is true. I heard him say
+it but an hour ago. He was playing <i>malilla</i> with old
+Henrico and won three pesos. He says it is wrong to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>
+race horses on Sunday, since José went under and had
+his neck broke. José, like Miguel, had not confessed,
+and the padre wants money for a mass."</p>
+
+<p>"Will he get it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure. The boys will not see him stay in purgatory
+for thirty pesos. They are throwing dice at
+Don Eduardo's now, to see who will pay."</p>
+
+<p>"If it was the horse of Don Eduardo, and José had
+ridden for him ten years, why cannot Don Eduardo
+pay?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don Eduardo is English. The Englishmen are
+used to going to hell."</p>
+
+<p>"They would deserve to go for that, if for nothing
+else," commented Bryton, as the report of a blast
+shook the ground, and across the plaza the air was
+filled with flying rock and brick and plaster; and then
+a great cloud of dust drifted upward as the Mexican
+workmen strolled back to their task of tearing down
+the old church of San Juan Capistrano, whose massive
+stone walls it had taken the padres and their
+neophytes so many years of toil to complete.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a church equal to it in the Californias; not a
+church equal to it dreamed of in the States when it
+was being built!" and the young fellow stared moodily
+at the devastation of it. "Can't the bishop stop
+that?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>
+"Ten years the Church fight to get it back. They
+must win some day&mdash;oh, yes&mdash;sure!"</p>
+
+<p>"But what will they have when the suit is won, if
+this is allowed to go on?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who knows?" queried Alvara, placidly. "We
+may be in our graves, seņor, and not here to see it.
+When Eduardo wants foundation for an adobe, he
+blows down a stone wall; when he wants walls for a
+well, he blows down the arches of the patio, until bricks
+enough fall. It is quicker than to burn new ones."</p>
+
+<p>"But the padre?"</p>
+
+<p>"There is the man who is padre of San Juan
+Capistrano in these days," said Juan Alvara, briefly.</p>
+
+<p>A man was coming up the middle of the road, his
+boots wet and muddy from irrigating-ditches, a short
+black pipe between his teeth. He halted to chaffer
+with an Indian woman who carried a basket of fish
+from the sea.</p>
+
+<p>Contemptuously viewing the modest sea bass, he
+said: "Fish only a foot long&mdash;what good are they?
+Who is fool enough to buy such?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is not to sell, father. Tia Concepcion, who is
+much sick, ask for these; they are to give, for she is
+sick."</p>
+
+<p>"Humph! a sick woman to eat ten fish! They
+will be sending for me in the middle of the night for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
+prayers. You go to my cook, and leave seven of
+these with him in the kitchen for my supper."</p>
+
+<p>The Indian lowered her head and passed on to the
+Mission. The padre crossed the plaza to where the
+group of girls stood chatting at the open gate of a
+patio. At his approach they fell silent, but a few brief
+words scattered them quickly toward their several
+homes, and the man of the church tramped on, the
+dust of the road sticking to his wet boots.</p>
+
+<p>"All what brings a price and is overlooked by the
+Englishmen, this padre will dig up," said Juan
+Alvara. "He is getting rich from many fields."</p>
+
+<p>"Many fields?"</p>
+
+<p>"Many fields&mdash;the church, the little ranch he has
+picked up, and the game of <i>monte</i> or <i>malilla</i>. He is
+the new sort of priest they send these days from
+Catalonia. No one in San Juan confesses now until
+Padre Sanchez comes past. If the church wins, the
+Mission will be blown down all the same, so long
+while some one pay four bits a load for brick. All is
+much changed. Father Sanchez is another kind&mdash;a
+holy man and of God."</p>
+
+<p>Alvara lifted his sombrero reverently.</p>
+
+<p>"The vaqueros coming with the band of horses
+from the beach soon," he observed. "We will go to
+the corrals, and help you to forget the girl&mdash;no?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>
+"I'm not so anxious to forget, I reckon&mdash;the girl
+is only a sort of dream girl. This trip was not so
+much to forget a girl as to&mdash;you remember Teddy,
+my half-brother?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don Teddy? Sure&mdash;he was the life of the
+valley when he came to San Juan."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Well, Teddy's married; he has married the
+woman who, you said, had the face of some angel."</p>
+
+<p>"Not Angela, the seņora who is Don Eduardo's
+English cousin?"</p>
+
+<p>The other nodded his head grimly.</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;" the old man stared at him sharply, and
+then suddenly recovered himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Teddy says his wife wants to come down here
+while he is in Mexico," grunted Bryton. "What the
+devil can I do with her if she comes now?"</p>
+
+<p>"You are a relative now&mdash;is it not so?" asked
+the old man, with an affectionate smile. "She is your
+sister."</p>
+
+<p>"Sister be&mdash;" If he meant blessed, he did not look
+it as he tramped the veranda. "I start just the
+same for the south ranch to-morrow. If she comes,
+she can go to Mac's tavern, or to the Mission with
+the ghosts!"</p>
+
+<p>"That would not be good to do," said Alvara
+seriously. "The wife of your brother must come
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>
+to my house. Teresa, the widow of Miguel, is here;
+her English is not anything, but it is good that your
+sister have a lady with her in the house. Teresa, she
+feel very bad. Don Teddy's wife was once a widow;
+she will understand."</p>
+
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a href='images/p032p.jpg'>
+	<img src='images/p032w.jpg'
+	title='Doņa Angela' alt='Doņa Angela' />
+</a>
+<p>Doņa Angela</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Will it make many changes in the business&mdash;his
+death?" asked Bryton.</p>
+
+<p>"It will lose the ranches more quickly to the
+English and the Americans," stated the older man.
+"Rafael will have all the money now, and&mdash;it is good
+that he gets married quick. The girl&mdash;she is Estevan's
+daughter&mdash;she likes no English&mdash;so they say."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!&mdash;Estevan's daughter&mdash;Estevan's! I heard a
+queer story of that name once&mdash;a queer story!"</p>
+
+<p>"He left when the Americanos came to California.
+Always he fought against the Americanos. He was a
+strong soldier, and he die there in Mexico, and all his
+money is for the girl if she marry; for the convent if
+she not marry at all."</p>
+
+<p>"It was another Estevan," said Keith. "It was a
+story of an old Aztec temple that would make your
+hair curl! Might have been a relation of your soldier
+Estevan."</p>
+
+<p>"There may be the same name in Mexico, but
+Felipe Estevan had no brothers."</p>
+
+<p>Keith rolled a cigarro, and did not notice that the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>
+old man's hand trembled as he did the same, and that
+his eyes were striving in vain to appear careless.</p>
+
+<p>"My Spanish was pretty queer those days, and I
+did not grasp the details of the story. You find all
+sorts of half-buried towns and temples and palaces in
+the country&mdash;queer places no one on earth can tell
+who built. But the temple was a plain fact. Stonework
+cut for all the world like that," he added,
+pointing to the gray Mission ruin. "Zig-zags on
+the cornices and Aztec suns just the same over the
+portals. There were great old walls left, but no roof.
+Trees grew all through it, and right in the open
+was something like a bench covered with queer
+Indian figures of fight, and sacrifices, and the only
+one I ever saw down there carved out of marble."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;a bench of marble!" Alvara was listening
+intently, nodding his head, and forgetting to smoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, an old miner down there told me a lurid
+story of the last Indian sacrifice offered up on that
+altar. He found the body and helped to bury it&mdash;the
+name was Estevan."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a good name," said the old man.</p>
+
+<p>"Fine! but wherever he had lived he was used to a
+different sort of woman from the one he met at the
+old temple. She was of pure Spanish and Aztec stock.
+The women in those temples don't usually appear to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>
+count, but she came of a long line of Aztec priests.
+After the Catholic Church got hold of them, they
+became Catholic priests instead of Aztec ones, and
+served the same God under a different name."</p>
+
+<p>"So?" remarked Alvara.</p>
+
+<p>"It seems Estevan drifted into the country with considerable
+money&mdash;cattle-man, I think; anyway, he had a
+ranch of some sort&mdash;and fell dead in love with the sister
+of one of these hereditary priests, and they were married.
+The old miner said a lot of queer old Indians gathered
+from the Lord only knew where, and had a great bonfire
+and crazy dances and ceremonies at the temple the
+night she was married. They were waiting for a new
+priest of their own old religion to be born some day
+and every marriage in that family was of interest."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;I don't know how to make clear that there
+are wives in the world to whom brown girls in the
+willows are&mdash;well&mdash;they are absolutely taboo to the
+husbands&mdash;understand?"</p>
+
+<p>Alvara nodded silently.</p>
+
+<p>"This Estevan was not used to women like that.
+He was crazy over the priest's sister till he got her, and
+then he was like many other men&mdash;he went back to
+the brown girls."</p>
+
+<p>"And then?"
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
+"Then that old Aztec tribe seemed to hear of it on
+the wind&mdash;no one knows. A brown girl was caught
+by the Indians one night, her long hair cut short to her
+head; and the next day Estevan was found tied on that
+altar with the same hair plaited into ropes. The heart
+had been cut from the body and rested in a little urn or
+vase carved in the stone of the wall. There were no
+other mutilations or signs of cruelty&mdash;it was more like a
+pagan ceremony than anything else. The girl's hair
+was the only clue as to what the cause might have been."</p>
+
+<p>"And the wife and the child&mdash;what did the man
+tell you of them?"</p>
+
+<p>"Child?" Keith stared at the old man. "I did not
+mention a child; never heard there was one. The
+widow of Estevan entered a convent and was never
+heard of again. The old miner said the priest took
+charge of the property&mdash;for the Church, he supposed!
+I think of that old temple every time I see the cactus
+and Aztec sun cut in this gray-green stone of your
+church here; but I had forgotten the name of Estevan
+until you mentioned it."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a good name," added Alvara again. "Felipe
+Estevan was wild and a fighter, but he was not a bad
+man in California. He had no wife, and the girls all
+wore beads he bought&mdash;but why not? He knew
+we have only one life to live here!"
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
+"True, seņor; and the story of the tragedy made
+me forget poor Teddy's comedy&mdash;one I can't laugh
+at yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Some day you ask us to a wedding, and you will
+forget that marriage is a madness," said Alvara.</p>
+
+<p>And then Doņa Teresa came slowly out on the
+veranda in her many folds of black. There was a
+hard glitter in her little black eyes, but her lips curved
+ever so slightly in a courteous greeting as Keith
+Bryton bent over her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"I hear how you telling that story, seņor," she
+remarked, pleasantly. "You think that it is good to
+tie a gentleman on a bench, and put his heart on a
+shelf&mdash;no?"</p>
+
+<p>"Good? Why, it was the most ghastly heathenish
+thing I ever heard of. But&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But you Americanos think most of the women who
+do such things," she persisted; "you think it better
+than to let him live where there are the brown girls."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;seņora?"</p>
+
+<p>He saw that he had irrevocably damned himself in
+her eyes. She might speak to him courteously through
+a long lifetime, but one of the institutions of their
+pastoral life&mdash;an institution ignored by the usual guest
+in the land&mdash;had been referred to in a sarcastic manner,
+and he knew that never again could he expect the good
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>
+will of Teresa Arteaga. The allusion had been the
+most distant, the most unintentional, but at the first
+word the blood of the Mexican was arrayed against
+the Gringo.</p>
+
+<p>"You think it well when that wife put the knife in
+the heart of the husband?" she continued. "(Yes,
+Aguada, I will have a cup of orange juice, and you
+may bring wine for the gentlemen.) You think your
+American ladies do that same thing&mdash;no?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;the old miner never suggested that it was
+the woman did it&mdash;the wife!" he protested. "It was
+thought to be the work of the old hill tribe of Indians."</p>
+
+<p>"It was not alone the Indians," stated Doņa Teresa,
+with sudden insight. "Men would not think to tie
+him with girl's hair. No, it was the wife."</p>
+
+<p>Alvara looked at her warningly over his glass.</p>
+
+<p>"If there are such wives in Mexico, we hope they
+stay there," he said. "Our own Indians make trouble
+enough for the padre and the alcalde. The kind you
+tell of are best left with their tribes in the hills."</p>
+
+<p>For a little longer they talked of the new horses
+needed for the frontier warfare, and touched upon the
+chance of the Capitan's stealing them before they got
+across the divide.</p>
+
+<p>"But there is no danger even of El Capitan now,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>
+when the Seņor Don Bryton have put himself to help
+guard," remarked Teresa, eyeing him with a cat-like
+glance to discover if her sarcasm was appreciated.
+"We all feel very safe now in San Juan valley."</p>
+
+<p>"With those brilliant army officers in town, you
+certainly should," he remarked, easily. "The women
+have always been the Capitan's best friends, and the
+officers are cutting him out!"</p>
+
+<p>"He see too much&mdash;and he talk too much," said
+Teresa, as Bryton left them and walked leisurely down
+the road toward the inn and post-office.</p>
+
+<p>"He means no harm," remarked Alvara. "The
+ways of the Americano are not our ways, but I like
+him better than the army men. He makes no
+scandals."</p>
+
+<p>"If the army men make love to the girls, they keep
+quiet about it," returned Teresa. "But this man&mdash;he
+thinks himself too good for the 'brown girls' he
+talks of. Men who are too good should go to stay
+in the church and pray for the sinners!"</p>
+
+<p>Alvara knew that no remark of Bryton's had been
+meant to reflect in the least on social conditions in
+San Juan. But what use to argue with an angry,
+jealous woman hunting for a grievance?</p>
+
+<p>The widow of Miguel had gone through the years
+of jealous bitterness, the shock of Miguel's death, the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>
+knowledge that she would inherit but a widow's share,
+the nerve-wrenching strain of a Mexican funeral, the
+sight of her husband's Indian children beside the
+bier; but that had all been in the midst of the people
+who understood&mdash;where house-servants were often
+legacies to the estate from brother, or uncle, or cousin.
+But this man, who told of a wife that revenged herself,
+had unconsciously flung in her face a new standard; she
+hated him, and hated the sort of women he knew in
+his own country,&mdash;the white-faced women who had
+snow in their blood and did not understand!</p>
+
+<p>Bryton tried in vain to think what he had said to
+annoy Teresa so exceedingly; could it have been
+his inquiring as to the estate? Surely, she must know
+that many persons were asking the same questions.
+Her brother-in-law, Rafael Arteaga, was such an
+uncertain quantity that wagers were plentiful as to his
+management of the several ranches. If he left them
+as Miguel had done, principally to the lawyers, it
+might not be so bad, but Rafael's disposition to make
+his own bargains made older people shake their heads.
+His mother, Doņa Luisa, was old and ill. He could
+have time to make very bad bargains before she could
+make the journey from Mexico; and even then would
+she be physically able to take note of business details?
+All those questions Bryton had heard talked over and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>
+over. Also, the matter of the wedding,&mdash;would it be
+postponed because of the funeral? No one knew
+whether Doņa Luisa and the bride were not on the way
+when the death occurred. Rafael had, it was understood,
+come ahead that he might make the preparations
+for their reception. A letter had also arrived
+saying that all things must be put in order at the
+dwelling-rooms of the Mission; it stated that the
+"donas"&mdash;the bride gifts&mdash;he had selected in Mexico
+might arrive any day. They had come by sea to San
+Pedro, and San Juan was in quite a flutter of excitement
+over its most important wedding in a generation.</p>
+
+<p>The alcalde met Bryton, and incidentally mentioned
+that it was a pity the horse deal had not been held
+over for the week of the wedding; there would be barbecues
+and horse races for the latter part of the week.</p>
+
+<p>"Sorry I can't stay," observed Bryton. "I'm keeping
+tab for the contractor on those cavalry horses, and
+must stay with the bunch, at least until they reach Los
+Angeles. Teddy has gone down into Mexico; if he
+stays, I may follow."</p>
+
+<p>"Now that one of you boys is married, you should
+settle down and be a permanent citizen of some district,&mdash;what
+is the matter with this place?"</p>
+
+<p>"It's the most beautiful valley I ever saw," agreed
+Bryton. "But for getting Teddy to locate sixty
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>
+miles from town&mdash;never! And as to the lady in the
+case, she will insist always on an audience more&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>What more it would have to be was interrupted by
+the clatter of the stage down the street, and on the
+seat beside the driver was a little woman in pale blue
+flounces thick with dust, and a white hat with pink rosebuds
+dancing and swaying with the rock of the stage.</p>
+
+<p>"God&mdash;" began Bryton, and then checked himself.</p>
+
+<p>The alcalde smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Ordway&mdash;or Mrs. Teddy Bryton now&mdash;looks
+pretty well satisfied with this as a temporary
+audience," he remarked, as he sauntered across the
+street to his own abode. Bryton's exclamation showed
+that he was by no means pleased to see her, and the
+alcalde did not care to witness a family reunion of
+that sort, so he walked away smiling.</p>
+
+<p>The lady waved her hand and flung a bright smile
+toward the half-brother of her husband. He lifted his
+hat, but did not move from his tracks until the horses
+came to a halt, brought suddenly to their haunches by
+the driver, who was making a showy entrance into the
+village for the gratification of the lady.</p>
+
+<p>"I've had a delightful trip from Los Angeles&mdash;thanks
+to Don Rafael," she called, gaily. "I never&mdash;never
+expect to drive so fast again. Come and help
+me down!"
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
+But the slender, handsome Mexican beside her
+had leaped to the ground, and, sombrero in hand, was
+ready to perform that service before the American
+reached the stage.</p>
+
+<p>"You are always the day after the fair, Keith," she
+remarked, her eyes narrowing in a smile. "I am
+a thousand times obliged to Seņor Arteaga!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is I who am honored, seņora," he returned with
+a sweep of the sombrero, and one brief yet steady
+look into her eyes. Mrs. Bryton turned away with
+a pleased little smile, and proceeded to shake the
+dust from the ruffles of her sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>Keith Bryton saw both the look and the smile, and
+it gave a tinge of coldness to his greeting.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you do, Seņor Arteaga?" he remarked.
+"Thank you for looking after Mrs."&mdash;the word
+seemed hard to say&mdash;"Bryton. Are you adding
+stage-driving to your other accomplishments?"</p>
+
+<p>Rafael Arteaga had caused too much jealousy in his
+day not to suspect he recognized it in the attitude
+of the American, whom it was something of a victory
+to outrival.</p>
+
+<p>"Only when there is extra precious cargo on board,"
+he said, meaningly. "American ladies are rare in San
+Juan. I was the only one present to show our appreciation
+of such a visit."
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>
+"But I am not an American&mdash;never in this world!"
+she insisted. "It was only the accident of marriage
+took me to your Mexican America. I was born
+in London, and am a subject of the Queen! Don't
+ever fancy me an American!"</p>
+
+<p>"Few people will make that mistake," said Bryton,
+dryly. "I suppose you know that your cousin and
+his wife are not here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, I discovered that through Seņor Arteaga
+when I was part way down. But he tells me the army
+men are here, and that there are always dances, horse
+races, and a general festival while they stay. I thought
+it might be worth while. Seņor Arteaga will look
+after me if you are too busy."</p>
+
+<p>"With many thanks for the honor, seņora."</p>
+
+<p>"The barbecues are over," said Bryton; "they
+were rather subdued this time, because of the funeral
+of Don Rafael's brother. I leave with the army men
+to-morrow for a trip farther north, and you had
+best return to Los Angeles, or go to your cousin in
+San Diego."</p>
+
+<p>She pretended to busy herself concerning a bandbox
+on which the cord had broken, but her little white
+teeth bit into her lip. Rafael had entered the post-office
+with the driver of the stage.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not interested in San Diego," she observed.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>
+"There must be somewhere in this row of adobes a
+place where a lady could stay."</p>
+
+<p>"There is the tavern kept by Mac. You may be
+able to retain a room there alone, if no other women
+stop over."</p>
+
+<p>"Share a room with strangers? But Don Rafael
+offered&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Don Rafael has only several adobes here, where
+the vaqueros eat and sleep&mdash;neither he nor his brother
+has lived here as a regular thing; when they do,
+they share the house of the major-domo, who has
+an Indian wife. The only privacy Don Rafael could
+assure you of would be to give you the key of the
+Mission."</p>
+
+<p>"That graveyard! I must say you are not very
+brotherly, amigo&mdash;I learned some more words of
+Spanish on the way down! Well, if I must go to
+the awful tavern, I must! Do you suppose that
+villanous-looking black-and-tan in the serape will
+carry my boxes into the hotel? You've not said
+one civil word, Keith! Are Teddy and I to do
+the best we can without your blessing?" she asked,
+mockingly.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her slowly from head to foot, and
+back to her innocent wide-open blue eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I congratulate you," he said, briefly. "I will see
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
+that your belongings are taken to your room. The
+gentleman in the serape chances to be a Mexican
+Don, not accustomed to carting bandboxes."</p>
+
+<p>"You are not very cordial in your congratulations,"
+she observed, as if determined to break down his cold
+unconcern,&mdash;to make him <i>say</i> something.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I'm not," he agreed, tersely. "If Teddy
+had given me any idea of it, you know he would not
+have been a married man now."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I knew you would be jealous, no matter whom
+he married," she replied; "I told him so!"</p>
+
+<p>"So I supposed. But if you want to secure a room
+alone, you'd better not delay. Apartments are rather
+at a premium in San Juan."</p>
+
+<p>He walked with her past the admiring group of
+prominent citizens toward the patio of the inn.
+Several of the men swept sombreros to the earth
+as she passed. The cousin of Don Eduardo was a
+lady they must show special deference to, even if
+she had been ugly, which she certainly was not.</p>
+
+<p>Most of them envied the tall, rather good-looking
+fellow swinging along by her side, but he did not seem
+as happy in the privilege as others would have been.
+Alvara, seeing himself forgotten for Don Eduardo's
+pretty blonde cousin, smiled a little, and continued his
+walk alone to the corral.
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>
+"She make him forget,&mdash;but she is not the woman,"
+he said, shrewdly.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bryton surveyed the coarse furnishings of the
+adobe with disgust as she was led to the one room
+where she could secure sleeping accommodation. It
+contained three beds with as many different-colored
+spreads, queer little pillows, and drawn-work on one
+towel hanging on a nail. The floor had once been tiled
+with square Mission bricks; but many were broken,
+some were gone, and the empty spaces were so many
+traps for unwary feet. Names of former occupants
+were scratched in the whitewashed wall. There was no
+window, and but one door opening on the patio and
+to be fastened from within by a wooden bar.</p>
+
+<p>"But this&mdash;there must be something better than
+this!" she exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>"It is the one home where you could make yourself
+understood. The proprietor chances to speak
+English. If you come without notifying your&mdash;relatives,
+you must take what you find, or go on to
+San Diego. Your cousin is there&mdash;also his wife."</p>
+
+<p>She shrugged her shoulders, and dropped wearily
+to a wooden bench.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't ride another mile&mdash;I'm dead tired. But
+you don't ask why I came!"</p>
+
+<p>"That is your husband's affair, not mine," he
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>
+returned. "If there is nothing else I can do for you,
+I will go and look after my own affairs. I start south
+in the morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Because I came?" she demanded, with a slight
+smile. At sight of it his face flushed, and then the
+color receded while he regarded her steadily.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't make any mistake about that," he suggested.
+"I did leave town out of impatience with
+another friend of mine, who was wasting his time
+with you. Of course he would not listen to me,
+and he has evidently told you. I liked him, and
+did not want to see him made a fool of."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you are a silly!" she replied, unfastening
+her hat-string and glancing at him strangely. "It
+never was that man for one little minute; you, of all
+the men, ought to know."</p>
+
+<p>"I, of all the men, have been the one who did not
+guess that it was Teddy," he retorted. "But since
+it is, there is one thing to remember,&mdash;Teddy is the
+best fellow in the world, and the easiest mark, and
+you are not to forget it!"</p>
+
+<p>"I did not promise to honor and obey you!" she
+retorted, petulantly.</p>
+
+<p>"But if you don't in this case&mdash;" he halted abruptly
+and walked away. Her high, sweet voice called after
+him, but he did not turn his head. He evidently
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
+realized that he had come very near threatening her;
+and, after all, if Teddy chose to make a fool of himself
+for a pretty doll&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>For she was undeniably pretty, and she had created
+quite a flurry a year before when she reached San
+Pedro by steamer from Mexico, a girlish widow with
+one child, and waited there until the English cousin
+of her husband, Eduardo Downing, had been notified
+and came up in state from his ranches, with his Mexican
+wife, to receive her.</p>
+
+<p>One child more or less never made any difference
+on the ranch of Eduardo, and his wife rather liked the
+little white doll that was alive, for her own brown-skinned
+grandchildren to play with. It was better
+than an Indian baby&mdash;more of a novelty, so that the
+family affairs of the young widow were easily adjusted.
+She accepted invitations to visit friends of her cousin
+on ranches and in town. For a year she had earned
+the reputation of being a rather gay flirt, and she could
+have married several times. Keith Bryton's friends
+had more than hinted that she was waiting for him,
+and when the word went abroad that it was his half-brother,
+eyes were opened wide in Los Angeles.
+There were lifted brows, and smiles. Keith knew
+how the marriage would be commented upon, and he
+was filled with rage that she should assume at once
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>
+her care-free attitude, and fraternize with Rafael
+Arteaga, as she evidently had done on the ride down.
+And Teddy trusted her absolutely&mdash;good old Teddy,
+who had been infatuated from the first sight of her, and
+had loved without hope until lately, very lately indeed!</p>
+
+<p>They had been married on the eve of his trip to
+Mexico. His letter, written that night, and given her
+to mail, had been held back by the bride until she was
+ready to follow it on the next stage. What mad idea
+had she in thus coming to the last village likely to
+be attractive to her? Was it to enjoy her victory?&mdash;to
+show him that his years of devotion to Teddy
+went for nothing when she chose to turn the light
+of her countenance his way?</p>
+
+<p>Something like that it must have been,&mdash;the freakish
+defiance of a spoiled child. Not innocent, despite the
+big baby-blue eyes, but too ignorant of social conditions
+in this Mexican town for him to leave her to the guardianship
+of Rafael Arteaga when he should ride away
+to-morrow. The only American men in the place were
+unmarried. For Teddy's sake he must see that she
+went too. For Teddy's sake&mdash;that was the devil of it!</p>
+
+<p>Rafael was lounging in the door of the post-office
+smoking, when Bryton emerged from the patio.
+There was a smile in his eyes as he noted the annoyed
+face of the American.
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>
+"I was waiting for you, amigo," he said, walking
+beside him. "I have no wish to object to the hotel
+of our friend Mac; but I believe it may be possible
+to secure a better place for seņora, your sister.
+The widow of my brother is still here, Mac has just
+told me. I can turn over to them a house of plenty
+of room to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>"Many thanks to you, Don Rafael; but the lady
+will probably remain only until the next stage passes.
+It will not be necessary to inconvenience any of your
+people."</p>
+
+<p>He nodded good-naturedly and left Rafael at the
+gate of Alvara. Teresa was yet on the veranda, interested
+in the one event of the day, the arrival of
+the stage, and the lady who was its most noticeable
+passenger. Alvara did not think it could have been
+Don Eduardo's cousin, for if so, surely Seņor Bryton
+would have brought her at once to the Alvara home.
+Teresa, on the other hand, insisted that it was the
+English cousin; she had seen her once, and was sure
+that no other white woman would look so much like
+a white doll.</p>
+
+<p>They at once appealed to Rafael to settle the
+question. Teresa pushed a chair toward him and
+suggested a glass of wine.</p>
+
+<p>"Thou art tired, of course, and choked with the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>
+dust; a desert wind blew to-day! And who was your
+pretty seņorita? Don Juan Alvara and I could not
+agree; he said it could not be the cousin of Don
+Eduardo, or she would certainly have accepted the
+very kind invitation he gave her to live here while
+waiting for her relations."</p>
+
+<p>"Invitation?" Rafael looked quickly from one to
+the other. "I am very sure Seņora Bryton failed to receive
+your invitation. She confessed herself in despair
+if her cousin should not be here on her arrival."</p>
+
+<p>"But Seņor? Bryton was told to bring her here."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;h!" He was silent a moment and then he
+smiled reassuringly. "I see how it is! He thinks
+she will remain over only one day and does not like
+to put you to trouble; but the poor lady down there
+alone is no doubt very uncomfortable&mdash;perhaps unhappy.
+If your daughters could call and see her&mdash;I
+would accompany them. In fact, for the cousin of Don
+Eduardo I will do anything I may be allowed to do."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure," agreed Alvara; "it is the right thing for
+a lady to ask her;&mdash;if only Dolores and Madalena
+have not ridden to the beach&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He went into the house to see, and Teresa looked
+at Rafael and shrugged her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Thou hast told a part, but not all, my Rafael,"
+she said, quietly. "Is the so good Seņor Bryton not
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>
+so good at last? Does he want his brother's wife to
+see only himself?"</p>
+
+<p>"You don't like him?" he said, quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;if not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Then we could play him a fine trick&mdash;fine! He
+is jealous, that is all. She rode down with me, and of
+course, when I learned who she was, we talked&mdash;you
+saw! Well, our Americano likes to be the only man.
+He means to send her away to-morrow,&mdash;he is so
+angry because she marry his brother! Of course she
+goes, unless we keep her. It would be a good trick
+to play if we could walk down there, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"We will go," decided Teresa, promptly; "at
+once we will go before he comes back from the corral.
+His brother's wife&mdash;eh? I ask myself if those people&mdash;the
+Americanos&mdash;are so much better than our
+own men, Rafael. I want no scandal and will help
+you with none; but if you take from him the woman
+he wants, I will make you a present&mdash;a fine one."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a bargain!" he agreed. "I promise to earn
+the gift. He is a good enough fellow, but much too
+conceited; we will cure him!"</p>
+
+<p>As Alvara came out on the veranda to tell them
+Dolores and Madalena were away, and to ask Teresa
+to call on the stranger in their stead, Teresa and
+Rafael were on the street.
+</p>
+
+<p>$1
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>
+"It is a good thing to do," he thought, contentedly
+rolling a cigarro and looking after them. "It is a
+kindness to Don Eduardo's cousin, and it is good for
+Teresa. For the first time since the death of Miguel
+she is smiling. Yes, it is a good thing."</p>
+
+<p>When Bryton left the corrals, the evening had
+come; the afterglow was flooding the hills with pale
+rose, and Indian boys were driving home cows
+through the village street. The more time he had to
+consider the matter, the more impatient he grew at
+the reckless disregard of his new sister-in-law for the
+conventionalities.</p>
+
+<p>Since she had married Teddy, she might at least
+have remained decently and quietly where he had left
+her. Or she might have continued her journey and
+joined her cousin at San Diego; but to do so mad a
+thing as to stop off here&mdash;he determined she should
+go either north or south to-morrow, if he had to carry
+her to the stage. He would tell her so at once.</p>
+
+<p>He had arrived at that determination as he crossed
+the plaza and heard her laugh through the door of
+Alvara's house. The door was open; she was trying
+to teach Alvara English, at which his daughters
+laughed very much. It was the sharp eyes of Teresa
+that caught sight of Bryton first, as he involuntarily
+halted in the road.
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>
+"Yes, Seņor Bryton, it is all true; we have robbed
+the Seņor Mac's hotel of your sister!" she called to
+him with a new air of elation,&mdash;of victory.</p>
+
+<p>Alvara appeared and invited him to supper, which
+he declined for a previous engagement with Don
+Antonio. His sister-in-law came out and listened to
+his excuses, and smiled quietly at him with the baby-blue
+eyes, in which he read a certain defiance.</p>
+
+<p>"I would have smothered in that awful cell you
+took me to!" she pouted. "These people are charming
+to me; they are friends of Cousin Edward's. It
+was Don Rafael took them to me. He looks like a
+hero in a picture-book! How does it come I never
+met him before?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps because during your last visit down here
+he was in Mexico, making love to the girl he is to
+marry very soon."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! is <i>that</i> why you are guarding him so carefully?"
+she said, laughingly. "Well, since I am
+married, I am willing to stay and dance at his wedding;
+but, Keith, if I had seen him first&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She broke off, laughing at the quick anger in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>And Teresa, listening, understood the game of
+Rafael and the mocking laughter, and the anger of
+Bryton, and was as happy as she was likely to be,
+with Miguel under the ground.</p>
+
+<hr class='chapter' />
+<p>&nbsp;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='framed'>
+<div class='figmusic'>
+<a href='music/m055.mid'>
+<img src='images/mu055.png'
+	title='Music:Danza Mexicana.'
+	alt='Music: Danza Mexicana.'
+/></a>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class='dropcap'>
+<img src='images/dc055.png' title='M' alt='M' />
+</div>
+<p>Many things had happened, and
+it had been a bad day. "A
+day cursed of God!" said Pedro
+Gallardo, the driver; and against
+such ill fortune the carriage of
+Seņora Luisa Arteaga made such
+progress as might be, from San
+Luis Rey to San Juan.</p>
+
+<p>Clouds had drifted along the mountains each night
+for a week, and never the ranges a bit the better for
+it, until the cavalcade of Doņa Luisa had started
+north from San Diego; and then&mdash;well, it was not
+what you would call a rain, it was a torrent came
+down. The skies had opened, and a deluge followed.</p>
+
+<p>Then, after leaving San Luis Rey, a carriage-pole
+must break in an attempt at a runaway, and two
+horses were lost over that, to say nothing of the off
+leader, whose "sire had been the devil, and whose
+dam had been a witch thrice accursed in the foaling!"
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>
+Their joint offspring had demonstrated his infernal
+lineage by breaking his own leg as well as the carriage-pole,
+and another untamed beast had to be roped on
+the range&mdash;hog-tied, and blindfolded to get the harness
+on him; and because of him Pedro's throat was
+fairly blistered with curses.</p>
+
+<p>As the wheels sank into the sands or plunged from
+one ravine into another, Doņa Luisa prayed and
+trusted to the saints that she might see her own valley
+again, and her companion, Doņa Jacoba, protested, and
+forgetting to pray, waxed argumentative.</p>
+
+<p>"Raquel was right, Luisa," she repeated for the
+twentieth time between her groans; "we had been
+wise to wait at San Diego for Rafael. She has an old
+head on her shoulders&mdash;you will have a wise daughter
+when the day comes."</p>
+
+<p>"Wise! Yes&mdash;yes!" moaned Doņa Luisa, shaking
+her head. "I thank the Virgin for that, every day,
+for Rafael is young, Jacoba; a baby of a wife would
+be his ruin. Yet&mdash;a baby might love him!"</p>
+
+<p>"Our boys get love enough!" grunted Jacoba,
+thinking of her own sons, and her own troubles.
+"They need wives with sense; and our girls all go
+wild these days about the Americanos, so&mdash;"</p>
+
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a href='images/p056p.jpg'>
+	<img src='images/p056w.jpg'
+	title='Raquel Estevan' alt='Raquel Estevan' />
+</a>
+<p>Raquel Estevan</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>"The girls, too!" and Doņa Luisa's tones were
+strident with censure. "It is bad enough when men
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>
+must buy and sell with the Americanos in the markets;
+but the girls,&mdash;the women of California,&mdash;it is in
+their hands to shut the door when the Americano
+knocks&mdash;is it not so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, of course&mdash;yes&mdash;it is as you say,"
+agreed Jacoba, weakly, as she thought of the many
+girls of their relationship, who had opened doors very
+wide indeed for the Americanos, and of not a few who
+were to open also the door of the Church. But who
+could tell Doņa Luisa that?</p>
+
+<p>"Rafael is all I have left, now that Miguel is killed,"
+continued the mother. "My only grandchildren are
+half-breeds, and only Rafael is left. Ai! it is hard to
+grow old,&mdash;to let go all lines. But you know what
+makes me happy, Jacoba? No? It is this one big
+thing. Raquel will be what I was. She may suffer,
+but she will stand square on her feet; and she will fight
+as her father fought&mdash;and it will be for California."</p>
+
+<p>"You think so?" asked Jacoba, doubtfully. "It
+may be so, but&mdash;do you expect strong fights from
+a girl who was half a nun? I say she knows too little
+of the world to fight it."</p>
+
+<p>"You take from me my one hope when you say
+that!" and the older woman put out her hand
+appealingly. "Our men are wild&mdash;always! It is the
+women's work to save them. The death of Miguel
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>
+is making me think much and quick. Rafael must
+be marry. There must be no more Indio women and
+children."</p>
+
+<p>Jacoba glanced doubtfully at her friend. These
+five years, while Rafael had been learning California
+ranch life, Jacoba had lived near enough to hear much
+that she never could repeat to the old mother, whose
+life was so nearly spent, whose weakness and prejudices
+could never cope with the new life in the
+changed land&mdash;and of what use to torture her with
+the truth? She wished with all her heart the exile
+had elected to stop over at San Diego or San Luis
+Rey, until some little glimmer of present conditions
+should enlighten her.</p>
+
+<p>"It is well the <i>donas</i> came by water," she remarked,
+eager to find some straw of comfort in the situation.
+"Even extra baggage would be a care, with these roads
+and troubles, to say nothing of the temptation to El
+Capitan! Thanks to God, he never yet has had
+record of troubling women on the road."</p>
+
+<p>"He was a fine boy," said Doņa Luisa, musingly.
+"It is not his fault that he is an outlaw to these States.
+It means only that he is patriot to California. He
+was a fine boy."</p>
+
+<p>"Ask thy son how fine he thinks El Capitan!"
+remarked Jacoba. "Rafael has paid him a heavy tax
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>
+in his best stock. They have long ago forgotten they
+are cousins."</p>
+
+<p>"Raquel will make him remember," said the older
+woman, with certainty. "Did he not fight as he was
+able beside her father? Ai! he fought for California
+when only a boy. Do Californians forget?"</p>
+
+<p>"He does not let them do so," remarked Jacoba
+dryly. "Much has changed, Luisa."</p>
+
+<p>"I see no change, only the Indios more poor.
+The hills are green, as always after the rains. All
+these ranges are the same like we rode over them forty
+years ago. The hills and the sea never change, only
+the people. It is good to hear there is one of the
+young left who thinks in the old way."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;holy Maria!&mdash;we were never robbers,
+Luisa!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we did not need to be," returned her
+friend. "But I tell you truly, Jacoba, I could find
+it in my heart to forgive a son who fought the Americanos
+as he does, even if they made him outlaw. He
+could not be outlaw to the Church, nor to me."</p>
+
+<p>Jacoba said no more. Of what use was it to tell
+her that a few such women would be firebrands in the
+land if they had youth, and that the American soldiers,
+instead of coming peacefully to buy stock and pay
+good prices, would come from Los Angeles
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>
+shooting,&mdash;would come with torches to burn each town where
+rebels hid. It was no longer little internal wars, such
+as they used to have in the days they both remembered,
+when the men who smoked or played together one
+month would fight under different leaders the next.</p>
+
+<p>There were no faction fights now. It was one
+great ugly pale nation to the east, trailing slowly over
+the ranges and planting itself like the live-oak in the
+caņons. The Mexicans might hate, might curse; but
+the curses made no difference against the heretics.
+They had no churches, and they laughed at the beautiful
+wooden saints in the old chapel. Had not some
+of them snuffed out candles on the graves with their
+accursed rifles, last All Souls' Day? Yet the sky
+had not fallen, and no earthquake had come! What
+would even prayers or holy Church do against a people
+so ignored by God?</p>
+
+<p>But Jacoba knew there was no use to fight. She
+remembered what that meant in the other days. In
+an old adobe of San Juan's one street she had helped
+as a girl to nurse the wounded of San Pascual. It
+was years ago, but she had not forgotten the cruel
+wounds, or the young Americano who died in her
+arms there. She had never mentioned to any
+the reason of her hatred for war; for even with
+revenge in reach, on whom would she seek it?&mdash;on
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>
+her brother who had killed a stranger forcing their
+gates?</p>
+
+<p>"You do not forget how the blessed Junípero Serra
+himself spoke from the altar of San Juan in the old
+days, Luisa; our grandfather telling us that many
+times,&mdash;how, when the Spanish guard was hard with
+the Indios, he stood on the altar and say that a new
+people will come and put the foot on the neck of the
+Mexican like the Mexican tramp on the Indios.
+He say it, and cry&mdash;cry for the reason that the good
+God no can make their hearts more soft to the Indios.
+I think of that when I see the Americanos come. They
+not put the foot on the neck&mdash;but they are here!"</p>
+
+<p>"Father Junípero was old then&mdash;very old&mdash;like
+a child, and would make of the Indios babies to be
+petted," returned Doņa Luisa, leniently. "He was a
+saint&mdash;not a man; only the saints could have the
+patience with those Indios&mdash;I remember! One of
+the old scares of the padre's was that the water would
+fail us; yet San Juan still has its river!"</p>
+
+<p>Jacoba nodded. They were likely to find the river
+a difficulty after the rainfall. The ford was not a
+good one in high water; but the thought of getting
+across the ford was a trifle compared to the difficulty
+of impressing Doņa Luisa with any idea of the
+change she would find in the land she had known.
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>
+In sheer despair she returned once more to a safer
+subject, Raquel Estevan,&mdash;Raquel the wise, who was
+to marry with Rafael and forever build a wall about
+him from American influence; Raquel, who might not
+love, because of that dark shadow of the cloister, but
+who would be all the more wise for that! Still, who
+could tell?</p>
+
+<p>"When one is young like that, one never can be
+sure until the right man comes," said Jacoba; "and
+she is handsome, your Raquel. But is it true what
+they say, that there was the blood of the old Mexican
+Indios in her mother?"</p>
+
+<p>Doņa Luisa did not commit herself; yet she realized
+that Raquel Estevan might have a few battles to fight
+along the line of race, as well as against the Americanos;
+for of course Rafael was a favorite; of course
+there would be burning hearts and jealousy at first.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a href='images/p062p.jpg'>
+	<img src='images/p062w.jpg'
+	title='Keith Bryton' alt='Keith Bryton' />
+</a>
+<p>Keith Bryton</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='figmusic'>
+<a href='music/m064.mid'>
+<img src='images/mu064.png'
+	title='Music: Esta Noche.'
+	alt='Music: Esta Noche.'
+/></a>
+<br />
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Esta noche voy a verte,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Al otro lado del rio<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Te encargo que estes despierta ay!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Para quando te haga (<i>se silva</i>)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ay! Paloma, daca el pico De ese rico manantial,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ay! Paloma, daca el pico De ese rico manantial!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class='chapter' />
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span></p>
+<div class='framed'>
+<div class='figmusic'>
+<a href='music/m065.mid'>
+<img src='images/mu065.png'
+	title='Music'
+	alt='Music'
+/></a>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class='dropcap'>
+<img src='images/dc065.png' title='F' alt='F' />
+</div>
+
+<p>From Las Flores, where the Indian
+village still held together in
+a shiftless sort of way, Raquel
+Estevan and her friend Ana
+Mendez galloped north mile
+on mile over the mesa above
+the sea.</p>
+
+<p>"Art never tired, Raquel?" demanded the older
+and darker of the two as they halted to let their animals
+drink where a rivulet ran full from the foothills.
+"Since we left the ranch house thou hast never
+lessened the gallop."</p>
+
+<p>"Tired? I should shame to acknowledge that,
+when Doņa Luisa never rests on the way. She
+endures it all, while only the young ones complain."</p>
+
+<p>"Endures! What would she not endure for her
+beloved Rafael&mdash;now your beloved Rafael?"</p>
+
+<p>Ana was not malicious, but there was a touch of
+mockery in her tone and questioning glance.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should he not be beloved?" asked the other,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>
+smoothing carefully the mane of her horse and bending
+low to conceal the slight flush of cheek. "Is he
+not handsome and good?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is not easy to be good when a man is so handsome,"
+laughed Ana; "still, I will take your word
+for it! But, Raquel, you always get clear of the
+question; not once have you said that you find him
+beloved. Are you going to be coquette to the
+wedding-day?"</p>
+
+<p>"You talk to amuse yourself," and the violet dark
+eyes were lifted an instant. "You learn to coquette
+when you marry, and cannot forget; but the nuns
+never teach us that."</p>
+
+<p>"What need?" and Ana showed her white teeth in
+a laugh. "They did not teach us we must breathe
+to live; yet some way we learned it! But confess!
+You outride all the party to reach San Juan, and
+Rafael; yet how are we sure what urges you?"</p>
+
+<p>"My promise."</p>
+
+<p>"But why the promise, if the man is not beloved?
+You have had no harsh guardian, as I had; you were
+all free."</p>
+
+<p>"Free? Oh yes, I had always the choice between
+some husband and the veil of a nun. And then&mdash;then
+Doņa Luisa came with her love and her son,
+and her great plans of good work I could do out in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>
+the world. And so&mdash;and so we are riding to meet
+him, and I outride you!"</p>
+
+<p>"I never hasten to trouble," remarked Ana Mendez;
+"and if we should meet him on the way, you
+would send me at once to the carriage. I should put
+in hours listening to the virtues of Rafael Arteaga and
+peril my soul pretending to agree with his mother."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should you do that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Raquel, do you really see how little the ideas of
+Don Rafael and his mother agree? I know little
+enough&mdash;thanks to California, which keeps its girls
+from education; but I do see that every thought of
+Rafael Arteaga is for the new ways, the ways of the
+Americano."</p>
+
+<p>The younger girl drew up her horse with a cruel
+jerk, and faced her friend.</p>
+
+<p>"Anita, beloved," she said, sadly, "you have said
+the thing I felt, but did not know. Why not let some
+less dear one tell me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Holy Maria! Who else would? You are going
+among strangers, but you are no more a stranger to
+the California of to-day than is Doņa Luisa. I hope
+all the time some one tell you at San Diego, or at San
+Luis Rey, but no one does; and Rafael does not meet
+us; and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The letter did not reach him, or else he has gone
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>
+by boat," said the other, steadily. "Anita, why do
+you sometimes seem not quite friendly to Rafael?
+Your words&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Never think it!" cried Ana. "We are friends
+enough, but&mdash;I know him better than his mother&mdash;that
+is all! He has turned the heads of many girls,
+but I do not think he has turned yours, Raquelita!"</p>
+
+<p>The other girl made no reply.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not think so," continued her friend, "because
+you have never once lost sight of duty,&mdash;the
+duty Doņa Luisa and the padre have taught you to
+see. You are good, Raquel,&mdash;when you are not in a
+temper; but about Rafael you do not think your own
+thoughts. You dream of the life of your father and
+Doņa Luisa when all this land was theirs. But the
+dream is gone, and to-day we wake up."</p>
+
+<p>"I see&mdash;the old world was too slow. You wake
+up to be all Americano&mdash;no?"</p>
+
+<p>"Raquel, do you hate them as much as Doņa
+Luisa?"</p>
+
+<p>The girl from Mexico turned her face toward the
+sea, and did not answer at once. Then she said:</p>
+
+<p>"Only once in my life have I spoken with an
+Americano, and I did not hate him."</p>
+
+<p>"A young man?"</p>
+
+<p>"He&mdash;he was not old," she confessed.
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>
+"On my soul, I believe you have had a lover!"
+cried Ana. "Oho! you can play Rafael at his own
+game, after all! Santa Maria! I thought you were
+too pretty to be the saint they think you. Tell me!"</p>
+
+<p>"There is not anything to tell," said the younger
+girl, quietly, though the color crept to her cheek; and
+then after a little she added, "He died. I never saw
+him but once; the padre said I was wrong to&mdash;to&mdash;oh,
+they said things to me about heretics! I never
+knew any other, and I promised not to. But if he
+had lived I should not have promised; that is all."</p>
+
+<p>"All! Rafael would think it enough! On my
+soul, I am glad you are so human&mdash;though I have no
+love myself for heretics!"</p>
+
+<p>"Human!" mused Raquel. "Is it human to remember,
+when one should forget and cannot?"</p>
+
+<p>She did not say it aloud, and refused to discuss the
+matter further.</p>
+
+<p>"He is dead," she said; "Rafael cannot be jealous
+of a man I saw but once; it was only the dream of a
+girl&mdash;like a picture in a book&mdash;and the page is closed.
+I shall marry Rafael, and work in the world instead
+of in the convent. It is for Mother Church and&mdash;it
+is right!"</p>
+
+<p>At San Onofre the surf was breaking against the
+cliffs. It was high tide, and the beach road was deep
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>
+enough for a horse to swim. Raquel had ridden far
+ahead, and now stood on the brink of a torrent cutting
+its way down from the hills to the sea.</p>
+
+<p>The girl glanced back at the swaying chariot-like
+carriage on a far hill, and wondered what would be
+expected of their broncos in this crisis.</p>
+
+<p>The animal she herself rode danced and fretted with
+fright at the roar of the surf and the dash of the hill
+stream, but she sat the saddle with ease, answering
+to every curve or side leap as lightly as a gull that
+floated on the incoming wave.</p>
+
+<p>Her face held something of the power suggested by
+her strong right hand. The eyes were so soft, yet
+steady, and of darkest violet. The black lashes touching
+her cheeks gave them tender shadows, and the
+hair, in two thick braids reaching to her waist, framed
+a face of youthful curves and charm. But what was
+it made every man, and many women, turn to look
+again at the face of Raquel Estevan?</p>
+
+<p>Many girls were as beautiful, but something beyond
+the beauty of feature or color was in her strange half-Egyptian
+face,&mdash;a certain barbaric note held in check
+by the steady eyes and the mouth firm yet tender. It
+was a mouth made for love; yet&mdash;was it the shadow
+of the dark veil she had so nearly worn? Was it a
+hint of regret for the cloistered life left behind? Or
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>
+was it the shadow of some future&mdash;a prophecy of
+the years to come?</p>
+
+<p>Ana paused at the edge of the stream, in terror at
+the volume of water barring their way on every side.</p>
+
+<p>"Ai! ai! And Aunt Jacoba but a moment ago
+declaring that she will have her supper in the refectory
+of the San Juan Mission. Neither Mission nor supper
+can we see this night&mdash;and no Rafael!"</p>
+
+<p>She turned dismayed though roguish eyes on Raquel.</p>
+
+<p>"He did not expect us when the rains came," said
+Raquel with quiet certainty. "If he received Doņa
+Luisa's letter, he has gone by sea to San Diego. Did
+she not say so, Anita?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he can do much, your handsome Rafael,"
+agreed Ana, "but he cannot yet stop the tide, or dam
+La Christienita! Such a dry bed in Summer! and
+now it is a river."</p>
+
+<p>"But not deep?" hazarded Raquel. "Not so deep
+as the carriage bed."</p>
+
+<p>"Deep? There is one ford that is safe if one
+knows it; but, Holy Maria! on each side are pits of
+a depth to drown us all!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, if there is a good ford to be found&mdash;" The
+rest of Raquel's sentence was drowned in Ana's shrieks
+of protest, as her horse was spurred into the torrent
+in search of the roadway safe for a carriage.
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>
+Ana was right; there were pits, and there were great
+round bowlders on the edges of them. The horse
+stumbled on one, recovered, and stumbled again where
+the current swung into a whirlpool; and then, as
+the water roaring in her ears almost drowned Ana's
+screams, a sharp authoritative voice sounded from the
+bank&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Loose the stirrup!"</p>
+
+<p>Raquel did so mechanically, just as a rope circled
+about her shoulders, pinning her arms to her sides,
+and with a quick, cruel jerk she was wrenched from
+the saddle; and as her horse, relieved of her weight,
+swam straight for the opposite shore, she felt herself
+caught by a strong arm and lifted across another saddle.
+The man with the reata had caught her first,
+lest she be dragged downward into the whirlpool, but
+it was another man who dashed through the whirl of
+waters and bore her to the shore, where half a dozen
+men waited. They were evidently vaqueros; one of
+them had thrown the reata, and hastened now to loosen
+it, to lift her from her rescuer and stand her on her
+feet. She swayed a trifle, and reaching blindly for
+support, she caught the arm of a man beside her,
+the one who had lifted her from the water. Then for
+the first time she noticed that he wore the garb of a
+priest, evidently a secular priest, for he wore a beard,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>
+and even then it struck her as strange that he looked
+so bronzed and rugged. His grasp was that of a rider
+of the range, rather than a priest of the Church.</p>
+
+<p>"Father, the Virgin have you in her keeping!
+You saved my life then. I shall always&mdash;always&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Then she could no longer distinguish priest from
+vaquero; the earth seemed to meet the sky, and between
+them she was extinguished.</p>
+
+<p>When she awoke she no longer could hear the
+screams of Ana, and the red rays of the lowering
+sun touched the face of the priest as he bent over her.
+It had more of youth than she had at first perceived.</p>
+
+<p>"Lie you still," he said, as one used to command.
+"The water was rough with you, and the reata rougher.
+Swallow some of this wine; it came from your own
+carriage, and is better than ours."</p>
+
+<p>"From the carriage?" The carriage was on the
+opposite side of the stream, but her horse had followed
+her and was tied near, shaking himself like a
+great dog.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. I sent one of the boys&mdash;the vaqueros&mdash;across.
+Your friends know you are safe, but the carriage
+cannot come over&mdash;not yet; you have had good
+fortune to get out."</p>
+
+<p>"The good fortune was to find you here, father," she
+said, and catching his hand she kissed it reverently.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>
+"It is a good omen and shows me a blessing is on
+my journey to my father's land. You may have
+known him by name. I am Raquel Estevan, and
+it was my father Felipe who once owned this land
+from mountain to sea."</p>
+
+<p>"Felipe Estevan&mdash;you! But that cannot be. He
+is dead, and his one child is in religion&mdash;I was told
+so&mdash;I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The color came back to her face, and she raised
+herself on her elbow.</p>
+
+<p>"It is true&mdash;I was for the Church&mdash;but I will tell
+you all&mdash;some time!"</p>
+
+<p>"Go on," said the priest, authoritatively, "tell me
+now!"</p>
+
+<p>"I was told it was better to work for God out in
+the world," she said, softly, "and so I am coming
+with my Aunt Luisa, father's cousin, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And&mdash;" he looked at her strangely. "Then it
+is you&mdash;you they bring to marry with Rafael Arteaga.
+Holy Mary! And it is Felipe's daughter&mdash;Felipe
+Estevan&mdash;who sold for a song rather than live under
+the Americanos; and it is for his daughter I wait here
+by San Onofre&mdash;for his daughter!"</p>
+
+<p>Raquel stared at his evident agitation, not understanding.
+The sentences of the padre sank to muttering
+beneath the black beard, as he turned and strode
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>
+away. The vaqueros, standing together holding their
+horses as if eager to be gone, exchanged wondering
+glances and eyed the girl curiously. Directly he came
+striding back and halted beside her.</p>
+
+<p>"Yet you marry with Rafael Arteaga," he said, accusingly.
+"You are Felipe's daughter, yet you are
+much Americano&mdash;eh? You are of the States, is it
+not so? Between you two, old California will no
+longer have foot-room from San Jacinto to the water
+out there. God!" and he ground his heel into the
+turf. "Yet are you Felipe's daughter, and we must
+let you go!"</p>
+
+<p>"No!" she cried as vehemently as he. "I go
+nowhere from the rules of my father in this land.
+The things he loved I love; the things he fought for
+I will guard! It is for that, father, I marry with
+Rafael. He is&mdash;he is not so much for old California,
+I know&mdash;I hear! His mother is afraid; she
+grieves over that much! But the two of us&mdash;the
+two of us, with your prayers to help, and we keep
+him always for our father's country&mdash;always till
+he die&mdash;with your help!"</p>
+
+<p>"With my&mdash;help?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your prayers, father! You will see I am Felipe
+Estevan's daughter, even while I am born in Mexico.
+I will do what a son would do for our land and our
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>
+Church. You will see&mdash;you will see! It is a blessing
+from God that you meet me here like this at the
+edge of the land. Always I have thought these
+thoughts in my heart, but only to you&mdash;a priest&mdash;could
+I say them in words, and it is well you meet me
+here like this. Your words are the words I needed
+to make me see what I want to do. It is like a baptism
+that I went under that water a girl, and your
+hand lift me out a woman! The Virgin sent me here
+this day that I meet you. You have opened the gate
+of the land for Felipe Estevan's daughter."</p>
+
+<p>He leaned against the trunk of a young live-oak
+and stared at her with a derisive smile in the smoke-black
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, the Virgin sent me," he said at last, "and
+she came near sending me too late. The trail is bad
+along La Christienita for the night-time, and the
+night is close. The man will take you back to your
+friends."</p>
+
+<p>"But you, father? You come to the carriage and
+see the mother of Rafael&mdash;no? They wait for us.
+Doņa Luisa is so very old; she will be anxious till she
+speak with me&mdash;and with you."</p>
+
+<p>She arose and held out her hand. He regarded
+her strangely, and shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"The men have other work than to camp with a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>
+pleasure party. I stay on this side and have far to
+travel before sunrise. This once I talk with you&mdash;maybe
+nevermore, and to San Juan you take one
+message for Rafael Arteaga."</p>
+
+<p>"A message? Yes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tell him Felipe Estevan's daughter has saved to
+him this once a treasure; but no woman can guard
+him always, for&mdash;El Capitan is never too far to come
+quickly!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;Capitan?" she said with sudden comprehension.
+"I was told at San Luis Rey how much he is
+the enemy of Rafael. But it must not be, father.
+Cannot we help that? I have heard of Capitan from
+an old soldier of the wars, who told me all I know
+of my father: he was a brave boy and&mdash;he fought
+beside my father. I remembered that when I passed
+his mother's grave at San Luis Rey&mdash;it will never
+be bare and forgotten again&mdash;never! I planted it
+thick with the passion-vine. Doņa Luisa tells me
+she was a great woman. She prays that some day
+the two cousins may be friends."</p>
+
+<p>"Doņa Luisa prays for what only the good God
+could make happen," said the priest, grimly. "But of
+course all things are possible to the good God, even
+in the land which God forgot. Fidele is waiting."</p>
+
+<p>He made a movement toward the Mexican holding
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>
+her horse, and without further words mounted another
+animal himself, and galloped away along the fringe
+of trees skirting the caņon. Several of the others followed.
+Only three remained to watch Fidele pilot his
+charge across the ford, where the ford was safe though
+deep; and once her animal's feet touched the opposite
+bank, her attendant, with a sweep of sombrero, but no
+words, wheeled his own horse and fell in line after his
+comrades, who were disappearing one by one toward
+the mountains.</p>
+
+<p>Raquel Estevan sat her horse at the edge of the
+stream and stared after them, giving little heed to the
+shrill calls and exclamations of the women. Even
+after they had stripped her of the soaked riding-dress
+and wrapped her in serapes for the night, she maintained
+a thoughtful silence, and all Ana's hints of
+romances went for nought, so far as gaining replies
+or special notice.</p>
+
+<p>What treasure had Felipe Estevan's daughter saved
+for Rafael Arteaga? And why&mdash;why&mdash;that strange
+intensity of the priest? These questions were turned
+again and again in her mind as she lay there in
+the light of the camp-fire watching the stars move
+across the high blue. The other three women were
+sleeping as best they could in the carriage, smothered
+in serapes. Jacoba lamented every waking moment,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>
+because of much-feared rheumatism,&mdash;she was so certain
+it would mean a camp at the hot springs for
+a month, just at the time of the wedding!</p>
+
+<p>Doņa Luisa made no complaint. When told the
+carriage could not by any means cross safely, she
+braced herself for the ordeal of the night, and Raquel,
+glancing toward her, could see her face gray-white
+in the gathering dusk. All the night that gray profile
+met her eyes, for she slept not at all.</p>
+
+<p>The driver had stretched himself where his horses
+were tethered, but the two Indian boys who rode with
+the carriage kept a fire of aliso boughs burning.
+They would nod at times with sleepiness, but the
+whispered command of the girl ever wakened them
+quickly, and the dying fire would blaze again. There
+was no conversation, only brief commands and prompt
+obedience; and thus the girl passed the first night in
+the land of her father, the roar of the sea and the
+wild calls of the coyotes keeping silence from the
+night.</p>
+
+<p>When the coyotes ceased and the birds heralded
+dawn, one Indian boy rode across at the ford and
+gauged the depth of the water on his cow-pony's legs.
+It was "muy bueno"&mdash;very good indeed, the water
+had gone down a foot, and before the dawn broke,
+the whole cavalcade was again under way. There was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>
+breakfast to ride for, and it was several miles across
+the hills.</p>
+
+<p>Pedro was of the opinion that there was a round-up
+in the caņon of La Paz, about half-way to San Juan.
+If so, there might be "carne oeco" and coffee to be
+had&mdash;perhaps tortillas. The vaqueros would be
+eating by dawn, but if it was possible to drive fast,
+there might be hope of coffee at least.</p>
+
+<p>So Raquel rode ahead, alert at the coming day and
+the promise of it. Ana was glad to stay in the carriage
+with the older women, complaining that she had
+caught cold from the sea-damp. At one bend of the
+road she noticed Raquel far ahead, bending low over
+the neck of her horse, scanning the ground. Then
+she turned out of sight under the live-oaks in a narrow
+caņon, and came galloping back to the main trail as
+the carriage came up.</p>
+
+<p>"One would think you were searching the sand for
+grains of gold washed down from the mountains!"
+called Ana; but the girl shook her head, and rode
+thoughtfully up the incline to the mesa above. She
+had been noting the curious fact that the party of
+vaqueros and the priest had left the trail one by one,
+heading toward the hills wrapped still in the mist
+of the morning.</p>
+
+<hr class='chapter' />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span></p>
+<div class='framed'>
+<div class='figmusic'>
+<a href='music/m081.mid'>
+<img src='images/mu081.png'
+	title='Music: El Charro.'
+	alt='Music: El Charro.'
+/></a>
+<div class='poem'>
+<div class='stanza'>
+<span class="i0">Nescesito buen caballo<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Buena Silla, y buen gaban.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class='dropcap'>
+<img src='images/dc081.png' title='A' alt='A' />
+</div>
+
+<p>At La Paz they were in time for
+coffee, and Raquel, who had
+ridden ahead with an Indian
+boy, was told a strange story
+by the Mexican cook.</p>
+
+<p>A good breakfast had been
+cooked, but the devil had got
+among the horses in the night; there had been a
+stampede&mdash;or something. Every one had got into
+the saddle and ridden that way&mdash;up the river,&mdash;no
+one had come back to tell him what it meant or to
+eat the breakfast that was ready. It was cold now,
+all but the coffee, but they were welcome to it.</p>
+
+<p>He was a newcomer in the land, and had never
+heard of the Doņa Luisa. To the cholo the lady or
+the lord of the land is often an unknown personality;
+their representative, the major-domo, is the centre of
+their little universe.
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
+But as the carriage came lurching down from the
+mesa, the oldest of the vaqueros, a very black
+Indian, rode back to camp, and at sight of Doņa
+Luisa's face white and drawn in the morning light,
+he slid from his bronco, and ignoring the cook's
+impatient questions stood with bent head uncovered,
+until the old mistress noticed him and spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"You are Benito, are you not?" she asked, as she
+brought him to the carriage with a gesture, and rested
+her hand on his to alight.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, seņora," said the old man with grave
+courtesy, though trembling with pleasure at the honor
+she chose to bestow; "I am Benito. I used to break
+all the horses you rode. No one else was let put a
+hand on them. You do not forget; I thank you."</p>
+
+<p>"I could not forget the things of my home. Is
+there coffee? I am very glad."</p>
+
+<p>She held her left hand against her side, and the
+women exchanged frightened glances at her pallor and
+the strange weakness of her voice. While she drank
+the hot coffee Jacoba deftly drew the old vaquero
+aside to look at a bit of broken carriage harness which
+Pedro was mending with rawhide.</p>
+
+<p>"Benito, is there no boy here to ride fast to the
+Mission?" she demanded when out of hearing of the
+others. "Our Doņa Luisa is a sick woman, and no
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>
+one dare say it. Some one must go and have a bed
+ready&mdash;everything!"</p>
+
+<p>"There is no boy here. The horses were run off
+last night by Juan Flores or Capitan&mdash;no one knows
+how many. All the men have gone that way. I
+ride to the Mission. Don Rafael, he go to San
+Diego to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"To-day? Santa Maria! he may have gone! Ride
+fast!"</p>
+
+<p>"He not go yet," and the old man shrugged his
+shoulders. "Too early. Army men going away.
+Don Rafael make barbecue yesterday, and last night
+he have a big dance for the Americanos in the
+Mission."</p>
+
+<p>"Hush! Ride fast! We will drive as slow as she
+will let us. But tell Don Rafael Arteaga I say for
+him to meet his mother on the road."</p>
+
+<p>Raquel noticed the old man cantering slowly along
+the level green, and heard the sound of his horse
+galloping rapidly once he was out of sight past the
+fringe of sycamores and low growths along the river.</p>
+
+<p>"For what is that, Jacoba?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, some bandits have run off some horses&mdash;they
+may send more vaqueros," she replied as easily
+as she could with the girl watching her like that.</p>
+
+<p>Raquel looked as though she thought all the truth
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>
+might not be in the reply, but she turned quietly away.</p>
+
+<p>"I would have ridden with him if I had known,"
+she said, and went back to Doņa Luisa, who was so
+eager to continue the journey that she would wait for
+no breakfast but the coffee.</p>
+
+<p>"Cut another strap of the harness and take time to
+mend it," muttered Jacoba to Pedro; "we are not all
+so near to being angels that we can live without eating."</p>
+
+<p>Thus was a little more time gained.</p>
+
+<p>Benito made the second crossing where the river
+bends around the mesa, and there met one of the boys
+from the village looking for a pair of strayed mules.</p>
+
+<p>"The Don Rafael&mdash;he has started for San Diego?"
+demanded Benito. "Turn and ride with me, José."</p>
+
+<p>The boy did so, grinning.</p>
+
+<p>"When Don Rafael wake up to-day he much too
+late to go to San Diego," he said, and the old man
+uttered a sigh of relief.</p>
+
+<p>"He sleeping, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"No one sleep in San Juan last night," said José.
+"There was the supper, and some girls stay. The
+army men they all start north an hour ago, but
+maybe the others still dance in the Mission, Don
+Rafael say he go to get married, this is his last night&mdash;no
+one must sleep, or be sober!"
+</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>
+José thought it a great joke, but Benito muttered,
+"Jesus and San Vicente!" and ordered the boy to go
+back for the mules, and rode on down the valley
+alone.</p>
+
+<p>It took José some time to find the mules, and
+when he did find them they were even more perverse
+than usual; he had got them so near home as the hill
+above San Juan, when one of them went careering
+along the mesa as though heading for San Jacinto
+mountain.</p>
+
+<p>By the time he had secured it and got back near the
+road an astonishing sight met his eyes&mdash;something
+one was not used to seeing at sunrise in San Juan.</p>
+
+<p>A carriage came down the valley road from La Paz
+caņon. There were only women in it, and two Indian
+boys rode in the rear. Where could a carriage
+like that come from at such an hour? No one who
+rode in carriages lived up those valleys!</p>
+
+<p>In staring at the carriage he failed at first to
+notice the girl on horseback, who had ridden alone in
+advance of the carriage, and had halted in the road,
+on the brow of the hill, looking down across the
+old pueblo to the sea.</p>
+
+<p>She was so motionless, he was very close before
+he noticed her, close enough to hear her indrawn
+breath of delight, to see the soft flush of emotion
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>
+touch her face. Almost he thought there were tears
+in her eyes; he thought her the most beautiful lady
+he had ever seen alive,&mdash;though one picture of the
+Virgin in the chapel was as fine.</p>
+
+<p>José stopped at the sight of her and stood very
+still. He could not drive mules into the road ahead
+of a lady who was more lovely than even the wooden
+saints with the gold painted around the border of their
+gowns; and that is how he chanced to see a strange
+meeting on that hill.</p>
+
+<p>No one knew why the English seņora had elected
+to take a pleasure ride alone that morning, when the
+message of Benito, shouted as he galloped past, had
+effectually banished from the minds of Dolores and
+Madalena their intended picnic at the hot springs in
+the mountain, for which they were all ready, and had
+actually started. But when they tumbled with delighted
+exclamations from the new American buggy,
+and straightway forgot all their plans for the day,
+including the entertainment of their English guest,
+she stared in ill-concealed irritation from one to the
+other as they chattered in Spanish, scarcely enlightening
+her as to the reason of the sudden change in
+their plans.</p>
+
+<p>When she finally gathered the idea that it was the
+unexpected proximity of Rafael's bride-to-be, and that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
+all the other social lights of the valley must expect to
+be extinguished in her honor, the red lips of the
+Englishwoman straightened a trifle, and the baby-blue
+eyes took on a shade of coldness; for since her arrival
+in California she had been made the centre of many
+social affairs. In San Juan her one week, managed
+by Teresa and Rafael, had been enough of a triumph
+to cause Keith Bryton inward rage and to hold him
+there as long as an excuse to stay had offered.</p>
+
+<p>Once she said in a burst of irritated frankness:</p>
+
+<p>"For mercy's sake, let me be happy once! You are
+a dog in the manger, that's all! These people really
+live! There is an empire here for the right woman,
+and you need not tug at my chains to remind me that
+I was fool enough to marry before I found it!"</p>
+
+<p>And now the real ruler of the empire was about to
+enter into possession, and the temporary one was
+frankly forgotten! Whatever her thoughts were, she
+did not mean to assist at the royal entry of those two
+women whose rule meant the ignoring of the English-speaking
+people.</p>
+
+<p>Only Teresa, watching her out of beady black eyes,
+comprehended and was content. Rafael had earned
+the gift she had promised, but it had gone quite far
+enough; it was as well Doņa Luisa was coming with
+the other girl!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>
+So, when Bryton's sister-in-law looked rather blank
+and did not descend from the carriage, it was Teresa
+who agreed that it <i>was</i> a morning too beautiful to
+stay indoors, and of course if Doņa Angela cared to
+drive alone&mdash;and would excuse them&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Doņa Angela would. She leaned back languidly,
+a picture of carelessness, and motioned the driver to
+go on, but her lips still held their straight hard line
+as they passed the great dome of the ruined chancel,
+where the birds held sovereign sway.</p>
+
+<p>"It looks like a place for a throne," she thought,
+enviously; "and a black creature from Mexico is
+coming to rule it!"</p>
+
+<p>They were crossing the bridge at the streamlet,
+when an exclamation from the driver caused her to
+glance ahead and see the erect slender figure on the
+dark horse silhouetted against the yellow flood of
+sunrise.</p>
+
+<p>No girl of San Juan rode alone like that on the
+mesa, and certainly not one would have paused like
+that, transfixed by the beauty before her; there was
+not one that would not rather have admired the
+beautiful new buggy and the pretty hat of the fair
+lady in it.</p>
+
+<p>But the girl on the horse did not appear to notice
+either any more than she had noticed José. Her
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>
+horse had halted straight across the middle of the
+road. The driver of the buggy had turned aside
+before she brought her gaze back from the sea cliffs
+to rest for an instant on the fair indignant face of
+the Englishwoman.</p>
+
+<p>The road was miles wide really&mdash;since one could
+drive anywhere on the mesa, but the Mrs. Teddy
+Bryton had heretofore seen every native step aside
+from the beaten trail when she drove abroad, and she
+was furious at the driver for turning his horses an iota
+out of his way for that girl who looked like&mdash;what
+did she look like?</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bryton could not have put into words the
+idea of the girl's face; but her own angry blue eyes
+were caught and held for an instant by strange
+fathomless violet ones&mdash;held until she shrank suddenly,
+and the color left her face. Yet&mdash;as the carriage
+paused, her head was still turned toward the
+stranger, and José saw her put her hands suddenly
+across her eyes with a gesture of repulsion or pain,
+and sink back on the cushions.</p>
+
+<p>The girl on the horse had not moved a muscle.
+She might have been carved from marble, for any sign
+she made after she read the angry insolence of the
+blue eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Don Felipe Estevan's daughter," said the Mexican
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
+driver, "and here ahead of the carriage of the Seņora
+Luisa&mdash;it must be so."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bryton gave no sign that she heard, neither
+did she glance at the occupants of the carriage as
+they whirled past; her mind held only one hateful
+picture.</p>
+
+<p>"Felipe Estevan's daughter" meant that she had
+looked into the eyes of the "black woman from
+Mexico" who had come back to her father's land to
+rule, and the Mexican woman had proven not so
+black as she had fancied, and had sat there on the
+crest of the hill with a pride that was half regal,&mdash;and
+almost half barbaric,&mdash;as though the highway was her
+very own&mdash;as though the centre of it belonged to
+her by divine right. Mrs. Bryton's vain soul was
+fired by a momentary wild temptation to test that
+divine right, to show her there was one man in San
+Juan not to be ruled by anyone else if she, Angela
+Bryton, cared to call him to her side and keep him
+there. Should she&mdash;or should she not?</p>
+
+<p>Teresa was quite right in her fancy that the trick
+against the Americano had been quite successful
+enough; it was time the other girl came to claim her own!</p>
+
+<hr class='chapter' />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span></p>
+<div class='framed'>
+<div class='figmusic'>
+<a href='music/m091.mid'>
+<img src='images/mu091.png'
+	title='Music: La Noche Fatal.'
+	alt='Music: La Noche Fatal.'
+/></a>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">En la noche fatal que a tus ojos<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dirigi una mirida ardoro-sa<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Comprendi que la dicha amorosa,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No me es dada en el mundo gozar.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+</div>
+<div class='dropcap'>
+<img src='images/dc091.png' title='I' alt='I' />
+</div>
+<p>It was quite true that no one was
+allowed to sleep that night of
+Rafael's last bachelor supper.
+Because of Miguel's death, there
+could be no dancing, but the
+hours passed merrily enough,
+for all that. The army men
+stayed until the faint gray shone in the east, when
+they mounted and rode north after the horses, started
+a day ahead.</p>
+
+<p>Keith Bryton had ridden with the herd as far as
+Santa Ana, and then, to Angela's amusement, returned
+to San Juan. She was certain that his return
+had not been for Rafael's supper, but to see that she
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>
+did not by some man&oelig;uvre manage that it be a
+ladies' supper and graced by her attendance. She
+had in jest threatened to suggest it, and Keith felt
+very much as Teresa felt&mdash;it was quite time the bride
+were at hand to stop a flirtation bordering on the
+dangerous.</p>
+
+<p>But, after all, the ladies of San Juan were not
+included. It was a carouse instead of an entertainment.
+Girls were there, and guitars; and the big
+Mission doors and wooden shutters inside the deep
+windows barred the outer world from the hilarity, the
+songs, the shrieks of laughter over toasts of the old
+men to the groom-elect.</p>
+
+<p>At earliest dawn the army men, with promises and
+gold pieces to the girls, and an extra glass to Rafael
+and his bride, mounted their horses and rode north to
+catch up with the herd before it reached Los Angeles.
+One of the girls wept lest the one who had made her
+favorite might never ride that way again, and the
+wilder spirits marched around her with lighted candles,
+singing a funeral dirge, ending in a wild fandango.</p>
+
+<p>Don Antonio was there, and old Ricardo Ruiz, and
+they sat through the night playing with the dice, and
+emptying each other's pockets in turn, and comparing
+the old entertainment with the new, between the drinks.</p>
+
+<p>The fandango ended by Concha, the weeping one,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>
+doing the maddest dancing of all, and Fernando
+Mendez poured out goblets of wine to drink luck
+to her next lover.</p>
+
+<p>"It is good luck for himself he wants, Concha!"
+called Rafael across the room. "Fernando is a coyote,
+always awake for young chickens!"</p>
+
+<p>"Concha mia, he is jealous; never heed him, but
+drink wine with me to the next lover!"</p>
+
+<p>"He offers her a glass of wine, Antonio," grunted
+old Don Ricardo. "Huh!&mdash;that is the love-making
+of California to-day!"</p>
+
+<p>"True, Ricardo; at his age you or I would have
+been at her feet and our jewels on her breast."</p>
+
+<p>"Fernando has no jewels left."</p>
+
+<p>"I should say not. His father made love after our
+fashion, hence&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The deluge!"</p>
+
+<p>"The deluge of poverty and Americanos," assented
+Antonio. "A plague on them both! They have
+changed the land!"</p>
+
+<p>A burst of laughter from Rafael's end of the table
+drowned the grumblings of the old men. Rafael had
+told a story so very funny that the girls had shrieked
+and giggled and protested behind their fans.</p>
+
+<p>"Fie, Don Rafael! and you to be a married man
+in a week!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>
+"But a week is seven nights away, and all of them
+your own, Merced mia!"</p>
+
+<p>"Merced!" called another man from a game of <i>malia</i>
+at an old table once used for altar service&mdash;"Merced,
+darling, never listen to a word he says! A paltry seven
+nights! My heart is at your feet for a lifetime!"</p>
+
+<p>"Of nights or days, seņor?" asked the girl,
+laughingly.</p>
+
+<p>"She caught you there, Seņor Gonzales," observed
+Bryton, who was dealing the cards. "Don Rafael,
+after all, makes the only definite offer."</p>
+
+<p>"You are right, Don Keith," returned the other.
+"With the help of the Americanos, Don Rafael
+is learning to be a good maker of bargains."</p>
+
+<p>"The sooner the rest of you learn the same trick,
+the better for California!" retorted Rafael.</p>
+
+<p>"You hear?" said Don Ricardo.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure," assented the major-domo. "What if his
+mother heard?"</p>
+
+<p>"All the saints! There would be murder!"</p>
+
+<p>"Por Dios!" exclaimed Rafael, as a servant opened
+a window because of the thick tobacco smoke; "it
+is daylight, and I must start for San Diego. My
+last bachelor carouse is ended, and none of us under
+the table!"</p>
+
+<p>"How sad that we are still able to stand on our
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>
+own feet!" laughed Merced. "See!" and she sprang
+to the top of a beautiful silver-decorated chest against
+the wall; "one of us is even able to dance good-bye
+to your last night of freedom! Good-bye, O free heart
+of Don Rafael! On some to-morrow the bride comes!"</p>
+
+<p>"Holy Maria!" ejaculated Don Antonio, putting
+his glass down; "she is dancing on the <i>donas</i> of the
+bride!"</p>
+
+<p>"The <i>donas</i>!" echoed Don Ricardo, aghast; "and
+the bride a young saint stolen from the Church!&mdash;the
+<i>donas</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>"What's that?" asked Bryton, while the rest
+applauded the dancer. "<i>Donas?"</i></p>
+
+<p>"The gifts of the groom to the bride,&mdash;the gown,
+the wedding veil, the&mdash;holy God! it's sacrilege!"</p>
+
+<p>"Is it?" asked the American; "then we'll stop it.
+Come to coffee, Merced!"</p>
+
+<p>Without further ceremony he picked the girl up
+in his arms, and carried her, laughing and struggling,
+into the great refectory, where the Indian servants
+were placing breakfast on the table.</p>
+
+<p>"That was quick work, Antonio," observed Don
+Ricardo, with a breath of relief.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure; he is the best of all the Americanos. Ai!
+even more like the caballeros of other days than our
+own sons!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>
+Don Ricardo did not care to commit himself so
+far as that. He contented himself with grumbling
+at Rafael's indifference.</p>
+
+<p>"And the girl a young saint&mdash;meant to live in
+religion!"</p>
+
+<p>Bryton rejoined them with a cup of coffee, and
+both the men hastened to assure him that it was not
+Rafael who was in fault, but the many glasses he
+had emptied.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure, it was the glasses," affirmed Don Ricardo.
+"No man of California would let a girl of pleasure
+dance on the things sacred to the woman of his
+family; eh, Antonio?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course; at any other time Rafael would have
+thrown the girl through a window; truly, he would!"</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt of it," agreed Bryton.</p>
+
+<p>"Doņa Luisa has given the boy a long rope. It
+must be that she has learned that it is too long&mdash;she
+comes back after the years to steady him with a wife,&mdash;and
+such a wife! Young, wealthy, beautiful!"</p>
+
+<p>"And a young nun, all but the veil!"</p>
+
+<p>"That seems rather a joke&mdash;or a tragedy&mdash;after all
+this," and Bryton motioned to the remainders of the
+night's carouse.</p>
+
+<p>"If there is a joke, it is the devil playing it on the
+saints."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>
+"Sure; and the devil wins," agreed Don Antonio.
+"It is all settled. The Doņa Luisa is a wise woman.
+Her son wins a wife, and the convent loses a fortune
+and a nun at the same time."</p>
+
+<p>"Had the good son nothing to do with the
+arrangement?" asked the American, dryly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, of course, seņor. Three times he have gone
+to Mexico, where Felipe Estevan's daughter visit
+with his mother. He has time to sing many dozens
+of serenades,&mdash;all of the burning hearts and torment
+of love, and lost souls, to make a girl have pity.
+Maybe she have never before talked with one young
+man, one minute of her life; who knows?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is good time she comes," observed Don
+Ricardo. "One year&mdash;two years, and Rafael, like
+Miguel, would be content with half-breed children
+and their mother. Little Marta's child is born, and
+they say she will not stay at Las Flores, where he
+sent her&mdash;not for the best house there!"</p>
+
+<p>A peal of laughter reached them from the other room.</p>
+
+<p>"Bravo!" called Rafael; "I take you at your word,
+Merced. A kiss to seal the compact!"</p>
+
+<p>"Keep it for your wedding-day, Don Rafael," she
+retorted, and ran from him through the door into the
+room where the three men were talking. But Rafael
+caught her inside the portal, and dragged her back,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>
+his face flushed and his beautiful eyes glowing.</p>
+
+<p>"I will have it!" he muttered, with his lips against
+her own. "You pretty devil, I will!"</p>
+
+<p>"And this is the home your young nun will come
+to from her convent," Bryton remarked. "Some one
+said there was Indian blood in her family; it may
+prove fortunate, for she will need war-clubs instead
+of religion to quell this sort of thing."</p>
+
+<p>"But with the help of her saints&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course," agreed Bryton; "with the help of her
+saints all things may happen."</p>
+
+<p>An Indian servant came in from the plaza, and
+closed the door and stood with his back against it.</p>
+
+<p>"The Doņa Madalena, and Doņa Dolores, and the
+Seņora Bryton, stop in the calesha," he announced,
+stoically; "they come in!"</p>
+
+<p>"Bar that door! they sha'n't; they must not!"
+called Bryton, but it was too late. The side door
+opened, and the three appeared&mdash;the two girls plainly
+frightened, but Mrs. Bryton beautifully audacious.</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense! Doņa Teresa will not scold; we will
+stop only a minute. Your uncle and cousin are here&mdash;it
+is all right!" Then she saw Bryton, and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"I told you I would at least see inside," she
+observed, "and it is quite worth while. What a
+magnificent chest!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>
+Bryton walked directly to her.</p>
+
+<p>"I will see you to your carriage," he said, laying
+his hand on her arm. "What the devil did you
+mean by this bravado?"</p>
+
+<p>She wrenched her arm free and regarded him coolly.</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks. I came because I said I would come,
+and you said not to dare. 'Dare' is a risky word,
+amigo. We will go directly. We are going to the
+hills, and only halted to wish good luck to Rafael."</p>
+
+<p>"Malediction!" muttered Don Antonio. "He
+can't be seen&mdash;he&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>A burst of laughter came from the dining-room,
+and the two girls retreated toward the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Women!" breathed Dolores; "if Doņa Teresa
+hears this&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It is the servants&mdash;only the servants," said Don
+Antonio. "Don Rafael has perhaps started on his
+journey; he will be disconsolate that&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>But at that moment Rafael and Fernando came in
+from the dining-room, one smoothing his hair and
+one arranging his cravat. Rafael was the less sober
+of the two, but he managed to bow with a certain
+grace as he took Mrs. Bryton's hand.</p>
+
+<p>"My poor house is at your service, madama," he
+murmured, "and I am at your feet. I hastened to
+you as soon as&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>
+&mdash;"As soon as he could get the other girls out
+the back door," remarked Fernando, aside to Bryton.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Bryton was horribly cross to me for coming
+in; he thinks it too unconventional; he thinks I do
+not know the Spanish customs, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I offer myself as your teacher," said Rafael,
+looking straight into the blue eyes. "Believe me,
+seņora, there are many delightful things to be learned
+in old California!"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall remember your offer," she returned, smilingly.
+"See how sulky Mr. Bryton looks! He
+never takes time to be gallant himself."</p>
+
+<p>"That is true," assented Rafael. "He never looks
+at the girls, or speaks except to tell them to keep quiet."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" she replied, with a little malicious smile,
+"there is always a girl excepted!"</p>
+
+<p>Bryton looked at her with impatient wonder; he was
+about to speak, when an Indian came in with a tray
+of coffee, and Rafael offered a cup to Mrs. Bryton.</p>
+
+<p>"Honor me, madama, and let us hear of the girl
+who is an exception."</p>
+
+<p>"Bravo! The exceptions are always of interest.
+Don Keith is forever a reproach to the rest of us; he
+has no vices."</p>
+
+<p>"Or conceals them better!" put in Rafael, with a
+touch of malice.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>
+"You are to be unmasked, seņor," murmured
+Dolores, with lenient eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Bryton glanced at his watch and then with
+impatience at his sister-in-law.</p>
+
+<p>"I have not the slightest idea of the lady's
+meaning," he said, coldly; "and if you want to make
+an early start for the hot springs&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bryton shut her teeth together with a little
+click, at his palpable ignoring of herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;short memory of man!" she said, chidingly;
+"He has forgotten in a year!"</p>
+
+<p>"A year?" Bryton stared at her with a puzzled
+frown, and a slight motion of his hand toward the door.
+That, with its little suggestion of authority, decided her.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall tell it," she announced. "How many of
+you believe in love at first sight?"</p>
+
+<p>"All of us, after meeting you!" declared Rafael,
+with an exaggerated bow.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure!" agreed Don Ricardo.</p>
+
+<p>"My husband, you know, is an engineer, and goes on
+long journeys into queer corners of the mining world."</p>
+
+<p>"Bad habit for husbands with pretty wives,"
+remarked Don Antonio.</p>
+
+<p>"Last Winter," continued she, slowly sipping her
+coffee and watching Bryton; "last Winter he went to
+Mexico."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>
+"Pardon! We do not ask for the love affairs of
+your lucky husband, but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But last Winter Don Keith went along; yes&mdash;he
+went along to look up some mining property in the
+Indian hills, and when he came back&mdash;Have
+any of you noticed the peculiar ring Mr. Bryton
+wears?"</p>
+
+<p>"Angela!" said Keith, sharply; but she looked at
+him with smiling insolence.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I know your little romance of Doņa
+Espiritu; Teddy told me."</p>
+
+<p>"Damn Teddy!" he remarked, while the rest
+shouted with laughter at the color flaming in his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Doņa Espiritu!" repeated Don Ricardo. "The
+lady of the Spirit&mdash;let us hope it was a good spirit,
+Don Keith&mdash;and that she was kind!"</p>
+
+<p>"To her health!" cried Rafael. "Pour brandy,
+Fernando; we drink our last toast of this meeting to
+the love of Don Keith&mdash;to the Doņa Espiritu!"</p>
+
+<p>"I would rather see the ring than drink the toast,"
+said Dolores. "May I, seņor?"</p>
+
+<p>"There is nothing remarkable about it, except
+that it is very, very old," and he held out his hand for
+her inspection. "An onyx engraved with the Aztec
+eagle&mdash;now the Mexican eagle."</p>
+
+<p>"But given him by&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>
+"By a lady who was of service to my brother, to
+an old priest, and to me."</p>
+
+<p>"See how he drags in the others," laughed Mrs.
+Bryton. "Teddy and the priest got no ring; Ted
+had a knife-thrust, and the priest a black eye. Keith
+had some hurt on the head, from which he had a long
+and interesting case of fever."</p>
+
+<p>"Let us hope Doņa Espiritu nursed him through
+it, and the priest did not watch them too closely,"
+remarked Rafael, with a meaning glance at Bryton.
+The last drink of brandy had been the one too many,
+and his smile was not nice.</p>
+
+<p>"Did she nurse him through the illness?" whispered
+Madalena in Angela's ear.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I could tell," said the latter, demurely; "but
+Keith evidently resents his romances being made
+public."</p>
+
+<p>"Seņorita, there is no more to tell," remarked Keith,
+coldly; "not even so much as Angela would suggest.
+My brother and an old priest and I lost our way in
+the hills; and seeing a light, we chanced on some
+religious meeting of a strange hill tribe of Indians.
+They thought we were spies of the Church or the
+government, and there was trouble. A lady, whom
+the Indians and the priest called by the name you
+heard, saved us all that night. She was the one
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>
+person of the Catholic Church they would allow
+to know them well, and she was a nun or a novice."</p>
+
+<p>"Santa Maria! and she gave you rings?"</p>
+
+<p>"The ring was some talisman respected by the
+tribe. She put it on my finger after I had been struck
+down and&mdash;well&mdash;used up. It stopped them when
+words were of no use. We made a litter for the old
+priest, and tied Teddy on a burro,&mdash;he had a leg
+wound,&mdash;and we walked beside them over the wilderness
+trail until dawn came, and we met help.
+I fainted from loss of blood about that time, and
+Teddy and I recuperated in the house of the old
+priest. We never saw the lady again."</p>
+
+<p>"You never saw her again after an adventure like
+that!" cried Fernando in amaze. "That is cold blood
+for you!"</p>
+
+<p>"It may be that she was ugly&mdash;or old," suggested
+Rafael.</p>
+
+<p>"On the contrary, she was so charming that he
+shouted for her in the delirium of the fever; that is
+how Teddy learned that she was the one exception
+among girls! But all their scheming could not learn
+her name from the priest or the Mexicans. 'Doņa
+Espiritu' was all they ever heard. Teddy fancied they
+had shipped her to Spain for the adventure with a
+heretic that one night."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>
+"Is it all true, seņor?" asked Dolores. "Doņa
+Angela laughs at it, and you frown; and between the
+two, how are we to know how serious it may all be
+to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Serious enough to make him bare his head at
+every old battered shrine for her sake," said Angela,
+with a little shrug; "and an old ring of his mother's
+was lost from his finger on that wilderness trail, while
+the Mexican eagle took its place. Oh, nuns are
+only women after all, and much can happen in the
+length of a Mexican night!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, seņor," said Dolores, with sudden courage,
+"I am a good Catholic, thank God! and I see no
+sacrilege in the sort of love for which a man bares his
+head at a shrine. Seņor Bryton, the story will make
+us of California more than ever your friends!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure," agreed Don Antonio.</p>
+
+<p>"I am at your feet, seņorita," said Bryton, with
+kindly deference. "Now, Mrs. Bryton, if you have
+no other&mdash;romances&mdash;to elaborate and embellish,
+perhaps you will allow me to see you to your carriage,
+before I start for Los Angeles. Don Rafael is detained
+by us when he should be on his way south,
+and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;I beg&mdash;" began Rafael, but Madalena
+interrupted.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>
+"Not another moment must we stay. Aunt
+Teresa will scold us well for this!"</p>
+
+<p>"For taking pity on a lonely bachelor?" asked
+Rafael.</p>
+
+<p>"Lonely?" repeated Dolores. "We will come
+again when the bride comes. Until then we leave
+you to prepare your soul with this&mdash;and this!"</p>
+
+<p>She motioned to the decanter, and picked up the
+scarlet fan of Mercedes.</p>
+
+<p>"You cruel one! You would make Doņa Angela
+think&mdash;but do not think it, madama! I assure you,
+it is my mother's&mdash;or my aunt's&mdash;or&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"He never had an aunt," laughed Madalena.
+"Come, Uncle Ricardo, Doņa Maxima wants you
+at home; she is at our house saying things to make
+your ears burn."</p>
+
+<p>"Sure!" said Don Ricardo, getting on his feet and
+taking the cane offered him. "But it is in honor
+of Doņa Luisa Arteaga I am here. When her son
+makes gay company, it is the time for the steady
+friends of the family to stay by. So I am here, Madalena
+mia; and I shall say to my wife I was here all
+the evening, right here at this table as a respectable
+friend, and won seventy pesos!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure, he did," assented Don Antonio. "But it is
+over! The sun is up, it is good time to go home."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
+Rafael managed in the farewells to kiss the hand
+of Mrs. Bryton twice, and to be observed by Bryton
+only once. That was enough of victory for the moment,
+and when the door was closed he flung himself
+into a chair and reached again for the decanter.</p>
+
+<p>"Ai! she is delicious&mdash;the madama whose husband
+plans mines and goes on long voyages! How
+she makes our women look tame!"</p>
+
+<p>"Tah! She is insolent, that is all. We would
+lock up our women if they had the American way.
+Drink coffee&mdash;not more brandy."</p>
+
+<p>"To the devil with your coffee! And it is not an
+American way&mdash;she is English&mdash;the delicious lady!"</p>
+
+<p>"Worse still!" grunted Fernando.</p>
+
+<p>"How?" roared Rafael, straightening up in his chair.
+"You forget, seņor! She is my friend&mdash;my very illustrious
+friend&mdash;she is&mdash;no matter what she is. Her husband
+goes on long voyages&mdash;and you must apologize
+to me&mdash;you hear? I have the admiration for her&mdash;I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You are drunk; that is what ails you, Rafael,"
+said his friend, bluntly. "You think that you are
+in love with that woman, but you are only drunk."</p>
+
+<p>"Drunk&mdash;I? And you call her&mdash;call the illustrious
+lady who is a friend of mine, 'that woman!' Seņor,
+there are two swords on the wall. You take your
+choice&mdash;you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>
+Fernando tried to avoid him, but he wrenched the
+sword from the wall and lunged at him wickedly.</p>
+
+<p>But for a girl who shrieked and rushed from a
+shadowy doorway, and flung herself on the arm of
+Rafael, it would have gone ill with Fernando.</p>
+
+<p>"Rafael mio!" she cried, clinging to him, "for the
+love of God!"</p>
+
+<p>"Marta!" he cried, and dropped the weapon. "I&mdash;did
+I not tell you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He broke off vaguely, and avoided Fernando's
+eyes; that young man laughed good-naturedly.</p>
+
+<p>"Another illustrious friend whose husband goes on
+long voyages!" he said, lightly. "I leave you, my
+friend, until you are sober. Seņorita, adios."</p>
+
+<p>Rafael stared moodily at the girl. She was a pretty
+bit of bronze flesh with passionate eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I told you to stay on the ranch," he said at last;
+but she broke into tears and caught his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"I could not! They all know&mdash;the old woman
+and the priest. They thought I was dying, and he
+came and I had to tell him the name of the child's
+father; and&mdash;and when my own father comes back
+from the herding he will beat me, and I will not
+stay! I will not! He is not a fine gentleman,
+Rafael; he is only a herder who was a soldier in
+Mexico. Fine words would not count with him,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>
+unless it would be words before the priest, and you
+promised&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Jesus, Maria, and Joseph!" burst out Rafael.
+"What an hour to come with a list of a man's promises!
+I've been up all night, and I'd fight with the
+saints if they came my way. Go, Marta; I will tell
+Antonio to make a home for you away from the crazy
+herder. I&mdash;I am very busy; I start south in an
+hour."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Rafael&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;well?"</p>
+
+<p>"They say you are to marry an illustrious seņorita&mdash;that
+you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"They say a lot there is no sense in saying!" he
+burst out angrily. "If you had stayed on the ranch,
+you would not have heard their lies or&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Ai! I am happy that it is not true. But that
+one lady&mdash;whose hands you kissed&mdash;Rafael&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, for the love of God, go!" he said. "You
+women drive a man mad! You&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Fernando rushed in, interrupting him:</p>
+
+<p>"Rafael! Your mother&mdash;she is here!"</p>
+
+<p>"My mother?"</p>
+
+<p>"On the hill&mdash;her carriage&mdash;a man brings the
+news."</p>
+
+<p>"Damnation! Coming here&mdash;now? And my head&mdash;Yes,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>
+it's true, Fernando; I was drunk. Help me
+to think! Make them clear all this away!" and he
+pointed to the tables and the dice and the cards on
+the floor. "Por Dios, how my head swims! And
+my mother is no fool&mdash;she will see! Think, Fernando!
+Help me to plan something. And you,
+Marta, let yourself not be seen!"</p>
+
+<p>The frightened girl was only too glad to slip away,
+while the rest of the group stripped the rooms of evidences
+of the night's orgy.</p>
+
+<p>"Mount a horse and ride to the beach," decided
+Fernando. "You will be gone on business, to see
+about&mdash;eh&mdash;to see if the vessel for hides has come
+in. Make yourself decent, and I will send a messenger
+after you. Don't be too easily found&mdash;you are
+likely to be drunker in an hour than you are now."</p>
+
+<p>"Curse the brandy! And Bryton was to come back
+to see me about&mdash;oh, God knows what! But don't
+let my mother see him&mdash;an accursed heretic Americano,
+you know! Dios! If I could only sleep for
+an hour!"</p>
+
+<p>Fernando fairly pushed him out at the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Take a sea bath; drink black coffee; get out of
+sight while I receive the bride!"</p>
+
+<p>Then, after the door was closed on the groom-elect,
+he took a quick survey of the room.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>
+"That is right, open all the windows. Some one
+cut lilies&mdash;the white ones&mdash;quick! Hide this fan for
+Merced. Light those candles on the Virgin's shrine,
+and put the lilies there and on the table. Whose pipe
+is this under the edge of our lady's lace robe? It
+smells vilely&mdash;take it away! Where is the key of
+the chest of the <i>donas</i>? Here it is in the chest, and
+that is unlocked&mdash;only Rafael could do that. Let us
+hope he has not let Merced try on the wedding-dress!
+Are there no more flowers? Get some for the room
+of the seņorita. Tell some one to make French coffee.
+Manuel, put out the light."</p>
+
+<p>Dolores and Madalena ran through the open door,
+breathless.</p>
+
+<p>"Fernando, she is here&mdash;the Seņora Arteaga,
+and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Already! Aunt Teresa told us to run and help;
+she will come also. Don Rafael?"</p>
+
+<p>"Has ridden to the harbor."</p>
+
+<p>"More likely to bed," remarked Madalena, skeptically.</p>
+
+<p>"Seņorita!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sh&mdash;h!" whispered Dolores, with lifted hand.
+"The carriage; they are in the plaza!"</p>
+
+<p>She rushed out, and the others followed. Teresa
+was there greeting Doņa Luisa; but all fell suddenly
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>
+silent as they noticed the gray-white of the old face,
+and the frail figure as she descended from the carriage
+with the help of Fernando Mendez and Ana&mdash;his
+cousin's widow.</p>
+
+<p>Fernando cast one glance at the girl who sat her
+horse and glanced over their heads for the face she
+did not see.</p>
+
+<p>A wizened old Indian woman alighted from a cart
+and came to her and touched her foot on the stirrup.</p>
+
+<p>"It is your new land, little mistress," she said, in a
+tongue not understood by the others, "the land of
+your handsome lover."</p>
+
+<p>The girl looked again across the many faces gathering
+in the plaza, and then accepted the help of Don
+Antonio to alight.</p>
+
+<p>"But he is not here, Polonia&mdash;the handsome lover,"
+she returned, and then walked past all the others and
+slipped her hand under the arm of Doņa Luisa.</p>
+
+<p>"A thousand welcomes, seņora," said Fernando,
+at the portal. "The town will rejoice to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"One welcome I had a right to expect at this door,"
+the old lady answered, "and he is not here."</p>
+
+<p>"He will be heart-broken. He did not think you
+had yet reached San Diego. To-day he was to start
+for there. Will it please you to have this seat?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet," she said. "Raquelita!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>
+Raquel Estevan gently disengaged her other hand
+from Dolores, and the frail old woman led her to the
+little shrine of the Virgin, where the candles glimmered.
+The others halted at the door, but Fernando
+and Dolores and Ana knelt also as the old woman
+and the girl from Mexico clasped hands and bent
+heads before the statue in the niche.</p>
+
+<p>The old woman rose first and kissed the girl's
+forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"My daughter," she said, faintly, "I welcome you
+for my son and for myself, to the land where you are
+mistress. Now, seņor!"</p>
+
+<p>Fernando placed a chair for her, and she sank into
+it wearily.</p>
+
+<p>"My last journey, my children! You are the son
+of Manuel Mendez?&mdash;we called ourselves cousins
+once. I present you&mdash;all of you&mdash;to my daughter&mdash;Doņa
+Raquel Estevan."</p>
+
+<p>"At your feet, seņorita!" said Fernando.</p>
+
+<p>"I appreciate the honor of your acquaintance,
+seņor," replied Raquel, in the conventional greeting
+of the day and land. Then the others crowded about,
+and spoke many pretty things of welcome. But in the
+midst of it all Doņa Luisa arose, and leaning on
+Jacoba's arm, passed into the room prepared for her.
+The group left behind stared into each other's eyes.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>
+"How frail! How could any creature like that
+make the journey?" asked Fernando. "She has
+been very ill."</p>
+
+<p>"She <i>is</i> ill; we dare not mention it to her!"</p>
+
+<p>"But Rafael&mdash;her son&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Must not be told, so she says; not until the
+wedding is over. All at once she has gone like that.
+It is the heart, seņor, and she is old. It may be
+months&mdash;may be days&mdash;may be only hours, and
+we can do nothing but keep her quiet and happy."</p>
+
+<p>"Santa Maria!" muttered Dolores, "and Rafael&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"His heart it will break&mdash;no? To not see him
+at the door is like a bad omen. She likes not the
+new Americanos' way of business&mdash;to be gone at
+breakfast time to look at ships! But of course he
+is very good!"</p>
+
+<p>"You are very good," replied Dolores. "Have
+they sent for Rafael?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will see," said Fernando, and went away muttering,
+"The so good Rafael!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! we have a thousand things to ask you,
+Raquel," said Madalena. "Could you have been a
+nun and been happy if&mdash;Rafael had not found you?"</p>
+
+<p>"To work for Mother Church&mdash;is not that of
+happiness?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never to dance! Never to hear a serenade!
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>
+Never to watch on moonlight nights for a handsome
+caballero!"</p>
+
+<p>"I would as soon live in a tomb," confessed
+Dolores.</p>
+
+<p>"But if you had never seen a dance, would you
+miss dancing? My mother's people were priests;
+she was to have been a nun. My blood and my
+teaching have been of the church. My life has been
+lived in one little narrow strip of the world. All at
+once the world changed. Sometimes it bewilders me,
+this change. You say 'happy,' but I don't think
+I know that word as you know it. Maybe I never
+shall learn it&mdash;who knows? But I can find work for
+the Church even here in the world, and you will all
+be my good friends, and&mdash;I shall be content."</p>
+
+<p>Doņa Luisa had entered the room while she was
+speaking, and nodded her approval.</p>
+
+<p>"Content? You will be happy, my child; you will
+be with Rafael! Have you seen the chest of the
+<i>donas</i>? Is it not handsome? If we only had the
+key!"</p>
+
+<p>"There is a little silver key on the shrine," said
+Dolores, and ran to get it.</p>
+
+<p>"Aha! On the shrine of the Virgin!" said Doņa
+Luisa. "Is that not love, Raquelita?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am willing to believe it," she said, and took the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>
+little key, only to hand it back to Dolores. "You
+open it&mdash;and may you be the next happy bride!"</p>
+
+<p>Dolores rushed to unlock the chest, and Madalena
+to lift the lid, and Ana, as well as the older women,
+exclaimed at the richness of the contents.</p>
+
+<p>"Ai! Raquel Estevan, thou happy one!" cried
+Ana; "you have more luck than a queen!"</p>
+
+<p>They pulled out embroideries and laces and jewels,
+with little shrieks of ecstasy at the beauty and fineness
+of them. Raquel looked on, smiling at their delight.</p>
+
+<p>"Aha! is not that a lover, Raquelita?" repeated
+Doņa Luisa. "Bring me the mantillas. Those two
+are for the bridesmaids; see how they look on
+Madalena and Dolores&mdash;fine&mdash;fine! And here is the
+wedding-veil&mdash;and the shoes, and the rosary&mdash;not
+anything is forgotten! He is so dear, so good&mdash;my
+Rafael!"</p>
+
+<p>The girls insisted on placing the wreath and veil
+on Raquel's head, but she broke from them at sight
+of a silken scarf of green and red and white.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! more than all the jewels!" she cried, and
+clasped it to her bosom. "The flag of my own
+Mexico! I will love him for that&mdash;I will love him
+with all my heart!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! thou hast said it at last," said Doņa Luisa,
+in triumph; "never forget thou hast said it!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>
+"When I say it," whispered Dolores to Ana, "it
+will be to the man, not to his mother."</p>
+
+<p>"Come to me, daughter," said Doņa Luisa, sinking
+back into a chair. "The heart feels&mdash;feels almost
+too happy! My dear Raquel&mdash;my dear Rafael!"</p>
+
+<p>"The Americanos will be crazy to see this wedding
+in the old California fashion," said Madalena, adjusting
+Raquel's veil caressingly. "Seņora Bryton would
+give her two ears&mdash;ouch! Doņa Ana, you break my
+arm!"</p>
+
+<p>"Give thanks it is not your neck, babbler!" muttered
+Ana. Doņa Luisa looked at the two intently
+a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is the American seņora of the two ears?"
+she inquired; "and why should the wedding of my
+son have interest for such&mdash;persons?"</p>
+
+<p>"She&mdash;she was a cousin of Don Eduardo, and now
+she is married again&mdash;and she visits us, and her
+husband is some kind of engineer to make railroads,
+and mines, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>A pinch from Dolores stopped her this time, but it
+was very clumsily done, Doņa Luisa saw it.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," she said, quietly; "and when is he to bring
+the railroad of the Americanos to the Californias, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>The women and girls stared at each other.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I cannot tell her," murmured Madalena to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>
+Jacoba; "you speak! Of course it is not Doņa
+Angela's husband who does it, but&mdash;the railroad does
+come&mdash;so they say."</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you whisper, and not speak aloud?"
+demanded Doņa Luisa, putting aside the hand of
+Raquel, who tried to quiet her rising resentment.
+"Is there not anyone here to speak plainly, and the
+truth? What is it you try to hide from me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Luisa," begged Jacoba, tearfully, "do not
+make of this a thing to trouble you! No one tries
+really to hide things; it is not here the railroad is to
+be first; it is only talk; it may never happen&mdash;it
+may&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Where?" demanded Doņa Luisa. And Jacoba,
+with tears in her eyes, confessed having heard of the
+impertinence of the Americanos, who meant to
+build a new road of their own instead of the wagon
+trail to San Antonio.</p>
+
+<p>"That was good enough for our fathers. What is
+now wrong with the San Antonio road?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not anything, of course; but the government&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah ha!" and the old voice lifted to a shrill note
+of triumph in having at last found the key of the
+question. "The American government! I thought
+that would be it. What new crime do they plan
+against the Californias? This it is to grow old and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>
+lame&mdash;they would hide it from me! Speak, and tell
+me all! Does the fine new government want my
+home to quarter their pigs of soldiers in, as they did
+in the Mission in other days? And would my
+friends have hidden it from me until these upstarts
+were across my door?"</p>
+
+<p>"Luisa&mdash;chulita&mdash;you were not well. Rafael said
+you were not to be told; but since you think we mean
+to speak falsely, or deceive you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Where is it to come? How near?" Doņa Luisa
+was not to be led an iota from the main question.
+But at her demand, Jacoba tried to speak, and failed,
+and could only weep noisily at the hardness in her old
+cousin's tones.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you make Aunt Jacoba weep like that?"
+demanded Ana, resentfully. "What has she to do
+with the railroads&mdash;she or her family? Your good
+Rafael does more to bring them than any one else.
+He sells them land; he and Don Eduardo help them
+to get the rights to go where they please. Aunt
+Jacoba would not do that; her father and her husband
+would be burned at the stake before they would
+help these new people to use the graves of the holy
+fathers at San Gabriel as a road-bed!"</p>
+
+<p>"Mother of God!"</p>
+
+<p>Doņa Luisa arose, as though to annihilate the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>
+daring speaker; but Raquel caught her and she sank
+back in her chair with one tremulous hand extended
+to the frightened Ana.</p>
+
+<p>"Go on!" she said, hoarsely. "Go on! Perjure
+thy soul with lies, since thou lovest them so,&mdash;lies
+against a son of Mother Church. Go on!"</p>
+
+<p>Ana shrank, and faltered, but the accusation
+brought back her courage.</p>
+
+<p>"If the truth is shameful, the shame is not mine,"
+she retorted. "Through two of the Arteaga ranches
+in the north has Rafael sold the right of way for the
+American railroad to Monterey. That it might come
+closer to his ranch-houses, he has let it be built across
+the forgotten graves of the Mission fathers. Beneath
+the feet of the Americanos will lie the holy apostles
+of our Mother Church! The Protestant heretics will
+wheel their pigs to market across the gardens where
+Ava Marias have sounded all the years of religion in
+California!"</p>
+
+<p>Doņa Luisa stared at her with white face, and her
+lips moved stiffly when she tried to speak. The
+other women and girls were clinging together in tears,
+and Raquel stood with her strong young arms about
+her, as though to guard her against the world.</p>
+
+<p>Bryton, who had strolled back through the patio
+for a final word with Rafael, had heard nothing of the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>
+arrivals; he pushed open the door at the back, and
+then halted at the sight of the group there,&mdash;the
+women and girls frightened and weeping, the scattered
+wealth of silks and laces flung across chairs and tables,
+and the three girls with bride-like veils.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it&mdash;a witchcraft?" half whispered Doņa Luisa
+at last; but the whisper was plainly heard above the
+sobs of the girls, who scarcely dared to breathe. "It
+is a work of the fiends to snare his soul for hell
+Immaculate Mother, let it not be!"</p>
+
+<p>Raquel bent above her with murmured assurances
+of divine help, and the old woman suddenly caught
+the hands of the girl in her own and held her, staring
+in her face with questioning eyes; then she spoke
+eagerly, fiercely.</p>
+
+<p>"Your wish but a moment ago! You wished for
+some great work for Mother Church&mdash;to fight evil
+out in the world; your guardian angel heard the wish
+and has sent you a soul to save from the heretics,&mdash;the
+soul of the man you love!"</p>
+
+<p>Raquel stared at her, but did not speak. Her eyes
+looked a bit frightened, but she rested her cheek on
+the frail old hands, and caressed them reassuringly.</p>
+
+<p>Doņa Luisa lifted the gold and ebony crucifix,
+and held it above her head.</p>
+
+<p>"Kneel!" she said; and the girls and women did
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>
+so. Bryton, in the doorway, caught sight of the girl
+in the bride's veil, and made a movement toward her,
+but was checked by the voice of the mother.</p>
+
+<p>"It is for the soul of the man you love, Raquel
+mia. Never forget that&mdash;never forget!"</p>
+
+<p>"I will not forget," said the girl, gently; and at the
+sound of the voice Keith Bryton's jaw set in a tense,
+ugly way, and he stepped back into the shadow.</p>
+
+<p>"Then swear by the Holy Mother of God!" said
+the old voice, and the crucifix above the head of the
+kneeling girl was held rigidly steady.</p>
+
+<p>"I swear by the Holy Mother of God!"</p>
+
+<p>"Swear by the blood of Christ crucified!"</p>
+
+<p>"I swear by the blood of Christ crucified!"</p>
+
+<p>"To stand as a guard over the soul of Rafael!"
+The old voice had a faintness, despite the steady
+words; the end of her strength had come.</p>
+
+<p>The eyes of Raquel widened ever so little as she
+realized what she was promising. There was an
+involuntary pause before she spoke again, and then
+the absolute despair of the mother, and her one hope,
+swept over the girl's consciousness, and a spark
+of the martyr fire lit her own soul.</p>
+
+<p>"To stand as guard over the soul of Rafael,"
+said she, steadily.</p>
+
+<p>"So long as you both shall live!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>
+"So long as&mdash;we both&mdash;shall&mdash;live."</p>
+
+<p>Then the crucifix fell to the tiled floor, and the
+old face looked very gray, as she sank back on the
+chair; and Jacoba smothered a shriek at sight of
+her eyes; and Raquel, still on her knees, clasped her
+about the waist and whispered:</p>
+
+<p>"Doņa Luisa, Doņa Luisa!"</p>
+
+<p>The staring eyes regained a momentary glimmer of
+consciousness at the sound of the girl's voice, and she
+lifted her hand again as though it still held the crucifix.</p>
+
+<p>"Until&mdash;the day&mdash;of&mdash;" and then the sentence
+trailed along into the eternal silences of the unseen
+land.</p>
+
+<p>"Seņora!" called Raquel, appealingly; but Ana
+caught her by the shoulder and looked in her face,
+and said:</p>
+
+<p>"God help you, Raquel Estevan! To the recording
+angel she has taken that oath."</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>Keith Bryton closed the door on the weeping
+women, and walked out through the old refectory to
+the inner court, where he met Fernando.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, seņor?" he asked. Bryton looked at
+him much as though he had not been there.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I scarcely know," he said, dully. "You had better&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>
+"But you have the face of a ghost!" interrupted
+Fernando. "Something has happened&mdash;in there?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think so," agreed the American, recovering under
+Fernando's curious gaze. "Some one is ill&mdash;or&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Fernando ran past him, and Bryton walked slowly
+along the inner court to where the one-time baptistry
+lay roofless to the sky. Through an old doorway
+with the Aztec sun cut in the coping, he passed
+into the old graveyard of the padres, and thence to
+the great altar-place of the old earthquake ruin.
+Even there the cries of the girls came to him through
+an open window&mdash;a wailing chorus of tragedy. Then
+an old Indian untied the ropes of the belfry, and
+the toll of death sounded along the valley. But
+it seemed very far away. He stared at the half-pagan
+decorations of the old stonework&mdash;never the
+cross of Christ anywhere on them&mdash;and sat so still
+that two linnets lit almost at his feet and were not
+afraid.</p>
+
+<p>"I wondered why I should stray back to this little
+corner of the world," he said at last, "and now&mdash;now
+I reckon I'm finding out. God! I feel like a
+bad dream. And my hands tied!"</p>
+
+<p>He paced back and forth on the old altar-place,
+until the mad clatter of hoofs coming from the sea
+cut across the tolling of the bells and told him the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>
+lost bridegroom&mdash;the man she said she loved and
+would never forget&mdash;had been found.</p>
+
+<p>He swore softly as he crossed the plaza to the
+veranda of Juan Alvara. The old man, rolling his
+first cigarro of the day, was sitting there on the bench
+in the early sunlight.</p>
+
+<p>"Don Juan," he said, holding out his hand,
+"I ride to catch up with the officers and go with
+them into the Indian country, and I may not see
+San Juan again for a long time. Your home has
+always been a pleasant place, and I thank you for
+many courtesies."</p>
+
+<p>The old man shook his hand gravely.</p>
+
+<p>"Adios! You come back to San Juan&mdash;no?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps not," said Bryton. "If there is anything
+I can do for you in Los Angeles&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks, seņor; there is nothing. My daughters
+go there in a week with the wedding party. For
+whom think you old Tomás tolls the bell?"</p>
+
+<p>When informed, he stared vaguely at the Americano.
+Alvara was growing old. Teresa had warned them
+all that no one should tell him until his breakfast
+was over and he had had his smoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Luisa! the Doņa Luisa! Dead, you say?&mdash;before
+the wedding-day? No, seņor, pardon, but you have
+not understood. I know Luisa Arteaga when she is
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>
+still a little girl&mdash;and always. She not dying before
+she have marry the boy like she want."</p>
+
+<p>Still, his hand trembled as he reached for his cane.
+Across the plaza Indians and Mexicans were moving
+toward the Mission. It was early for San Juan to be
+astir in the street. Old Matia, who had been nurse
+to Miguel and Rafael, went past, not seeing the two
+men for the tears in her eyes. Yes&mdash;after all, there
+was trouble&mdash;but Doņa Luisa!</p>
+
+<p>In his perturbation he turned, and again held out
+his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Adios, seņor," he repeated; "but you coming
+back for sure. To San Juan all people coming back
+some time. You go with the horses across the
+deserts?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I am going across the deserts. Adios!"</p>
+
+<hr class='chapter' />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span></p>
+<div class='framed'>
+<div class='figmusic'>
+<a href='music/m127.mid'>
+<img src='images/mu127.png'
+	title='Music: El Corazon.'
+	alt='Music: El Corazon.'
+/></a>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Yo te he de amar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">te he de amar<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">hasta muerte,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Y si pudiera&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yo te a maria despues.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class='dropcap'>
+<img src='images/dc127.png' title='M' alt='M' />
+</div>
+
+<p>He had crossed the ranges twice
+and returned, but the City of the
+Angels had lost its old witchery.</p>
+
+<p>The rose-tinted dawns, and
+the amethystine dusks were
+beautiful as ever, but to banish
+the memories he had once
+dreamed over there, he galloped alone to the harbor
+called "The Hell of California," and lay all one
+day on the beach, and stared moodily at the waves
+whipping the yellow sands of San Pedro.</p>
+
+<p>To the south there, far beyond the prosaic stretch
+of grazing-lands bordered by the sea, beyond all the
+tame levels where the water was green or yellow in
+the shallows, beyond all the jutting points, veiled in
+the miles of mists, he could follow in his mind each
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>
+curve, until the one valley of beauty would gleam
+like a green jewel seen from the cliffs of San Juan.</p>
+
+<p>And at the foot of those cliffs there were no flat
+stretches of color such as make weary the eye; the
+water there held all the shimmering, bewitching,
+iridescence of a peacock's feathers,&mdash;the gold and
+purple, the greens and the blues ever changing,&mdash;the
+strange touch of pink making it all glorious in certain
+glints of the sunlight; and at the edge of it all, the
+fringe of foam&mdash;a string of pearls shattered on the
+brown cliffs or sandy beach, and gathered up to be
+dashed again and again and again&mdash;the endless garniture
+of old Ocean's robe.</p>
+
+<p>Never on any other shore had mere waves, running
+to the sand, the same witchery. Alvara had said that
+all men came back some day to San Juan. What
+witchery was it by which its mesa and its valley and
+its wonderful shore were forever set apart from other
+shores of California? Some mystery of life brooded
+there from sea to mountain, suggesting so much which
+was left for poor humanity to solve; it was only a
+whispered suggestion, dim and delightful, as the music
+of the waves heard from the Mission plaza, or as dreamy
+as the high film of fog, drifting high up and tempering
+the sun's rays until they fell softly as a benediction
+on the valley between blue sea and blue summit.</p>
+
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a href='images/p128p.jpg'>
+	<img src='images/p128w.jpg'
+	title='Never on Any Other Shore' alt='Never on Any Other Shore' />
+</a>
+<p>&ldquo;Never on Any Other Shore&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>
+His own life stretched before him like the brown
+levels and yellow flatness of San Pedro; and there to
+the south, miles across the ranges, was the heart of the
+dreamland he must not enter: another man had that
+claim under fence. He gave voice to some self-condemnation
+of a sort reserved for men who go <i>loco</i>
+over a woman who forgets, and after hours of brooding
+there alone by the shore, arrived at only one
+decision&mdash;the California of the south ranges was no
+longer his own. All the width of it was now narrowed
+to one little valley, where the poppies flamed over
+forgotten graves and adobe walls, and the doves circled
+above a ruined chancel.</p>
+
+<p>He rode into town, where some kind friends
+mentioned that Don Rafael Arteaga and his bride
+were being <i>fęted</i> by the leading Spanish families of
+Los Angeles, and he was invited to a dinner in their
+honor a week hence.</p>
+
+<p>"I go to Mexico&mdash;I start to-day," he answered,
+briefly. Ten minutes before, he had not thought of it.</p>
+
+<p>"To Mexico? You cover ground fast these days,
+Don Keith. On the new road of iron they mean to
+make, you could not go so much faster than on the
+horses you ride; you have the good American luck in
+the pick of them."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, the good American luck!" said Keith Bryton,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>
+with a touch of bitterness. "May your saints send
+you a better!"</p>
+
+<p>A man who stood near, and who much desired the
+invitation Bryton had refused, shrugged his shoulders
+as the Americano mounted his horse and rode away.</p>
+
+<p>"What better luck could a man have, than a
+chance to meet Doņa Raquel Estevan de Arteaga?" he
+queried of any who might care to answer. "The
+bishop himself shows her honor, and they say she
+is working for the Church against Downing, the
+Englishman, who holds the Mission lands under
+Pico's sale. Sixteen years has the Church fought for
+those lands in the courts; if she gets them back,
+she deserves the pope's blessing. And the fool boy
+of an Americano rides south when he could meet
+her&mdash;perhaps touch her hand!"</p>
+
+<p>But the fool Americano rode south and kept on riding
+south for many dusty days. He crossed a corner
+of the Yaqui country, and then across the ranges
+to the old mine, called the Mine of the Temple&mdash;the
+one of which he had told Don Juan Alvara&mdash;was
+it so few weeks ago? It might have been years
+instead of weeks, by his own feeling and attitude
+of mind. He was riding back a different man.
+He evaded the few Mexicans as he neared the mine;
+no turn of the trail was lonely for him. Memory
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>
+kept pace, and the murmur of one girl's voice spoke
+through the rustling leaves of the mountains.</p>
+
+<p>A travelling priest, jubilant at the idea of comradeship,
+hailed him in one of the mountain passes, and
+found him but a sorry companion.</p>
+
+<p>"This is a country," said the padre, "where the
+sight of a white face is most welcome. Six months
+since I was sent to this parish, and few of them
+have I seen. Now, I ride out of my way just to talk
+with an American who works a mine up here. Your
+brother, is it? Well, he has a good name with the
+brown folks. A lot of pagans they are! It is not
+a priest they need here; it is a missionary the bishop
+should send to teach them their religion anew.
+If ever they had any, it has been lost."</p>
+
+<p>But it was evidently the opinion of the padre
+that they had never really secured any to lose.
+He discoursed at some length on the failure of the
+Church to impress upon them the advantage of marriage.
+Few were the wedding fees to be obtained
+from the Mexicans, while the heathen Indians had
+some form of their own, arranged by the head of their
+clan, and it was a disgrace to a land held under cross
+and crown for two centuries&mdash;an endless shame!</p>
+
+<p>Keith assented, without heeding the list of Indian
+iniquities. He was rather glad, after all, that Teddy
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>
+had a civilized neighbor, willing to be companionable.
+Teddy liked people too well to exile himself from
+them but for the one thing&mdash;to go back north,
+able to cover one white throat with pearls, or two
+white hands with diamonds.</p>
+
+<p>His greeting of his half-brother was a bit shy,
+though wholly glad, and the padre served to bridge
+over the first few awkward moments. Both men
+recognized the fact of a change in each since the
+Los Angeles days. Teddy thought it due only to his
+clandestine marriage, and Keith felt guilty as he
+realized how little, how very little, Teddy's marriage
+meant to him now. While the padre was getting
+acquainted with the Mexican, the two brothers walked
+apart, and talked of the chances of the mine's success,
+and the failure of the backers to see the necessity of
+using money more freely on the enterprise.</p>
+
+<p>"It's there, you know," insisted Teddy; "all this
+district is flooded with stories of the ore taken out of
+it in the first days of the Spaniards; then the Indians
+descended upon them, and there was a slaughter, and
+no Spaniard dared venture into these hills for a
+century."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. We put in a good many fruitless days
+trailing those old legends," assented Keith, "but
+only the Indian superstition tends to show that this
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>
+is the real mine of that history. The rich one may
+not have been on this side of the mountain, since you
+have not yet struck the lode."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let's talk about it, if you feel that way,"
+suggested Teddy, "I hear plenty of that from the
+others; and you didn't really come all the way down
+here to talk mines. Say, old chap, you acted like
+a prince over the&mdash;well, the wedding. I felt pretty
+nearly three inches higher when I got your letter. I&mdash;I
+know I acted like a kid, but Angela wanted it arranged
+so; and&mdash;as she about filled the whole horizon&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Cut out the explanation, Teddy. A man is never
+sure of himself until the right woman crosses his
+trail&mdash;or the wrong one. God knows I'm not fit for
+alcalde in the case. At least, you married your wife."</p>
+
+<p>Teddy stared at him an instant, and then shouted
+with laughter.</p>
+
+<p>"Married my wife? Well, rather! How else
+could she be my wife?"</p>
+
+<p>Keith avoided the frank boyish blue eyes of
+Teddy, and turned away, seating himself on a great
+bowlder and staring across the little semicircle of the
+caņon basin, to where gnarled century-old trees reached
+grotesque arms above some old stone ruins and fragments
+of marble. Teddy looked at him an instant,
+and then whistled softly.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>
+"If it were any other man than you, Keith, I'd
+think&mdash;but it's too ridiculous!"</p>
+
+<p>"Say it," suggested Keith.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'd say the wrong woman had crossed <i>your</i>
+trail."</p>
+
+<p>"Not the wrong one."</p>
+
+<p>"Good Lord! you don't mean that by any chance
+it is at last the right one?"</p>
+
+<p>"At last&mdash;the right woman."</p>
+
+<p>"And you sit there looking as solemn over it as
+a wooden Mexican god! Wake up, old fellow, and
+tell about her."</p>
+
+<p>"There is nothing to tell. She is the right woman,
+and I shall never see her again."</p>
+
+<p>"Keith!"</p>
+
+<p>"And I've come back here to tell myself so,"
+continued Keith, doggedly; "to say it over and over,
+and beat it into my brain, if I have any left. The
+desert didn't help me&mdash;I thought this might."</p>
+
+<p>"This?"</p>
+
+<p>"These hills, and&mdash;speaking of it."</p>
+
+<p>His brother said nothing, only looked at him in
+wonder, as he rose with hands thrust in pockets
+and walked the length of the little terrace formed
+by the refuse of the mine. The two brothers had
+changed places. It was now Keith, the cool, the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>
+indifferent, who had crossed some line of emotional
+experience where speech was a relief&mdash;Keith, of all
+men! Teddy wondered who the woman could be;
+she would be worth seeing.</p>
+
+<p>"So you see, Ted," observed the other, with a
+forced laugh, "you need not explain things to me.
+When the woman comes, none of us cares much
+what the other fellow thinks."</p>
+
+<p>"If she is the right woman, I'm mighty sorry, old
+man, that it's going to be as you say&mdash;that you are
+not going to see her again."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't waste good sorrow! I'm the only fool in
+the case&mdash;she doesn't care."</p>
+
+<p>"That's not so easy to believe," declared Teddy,
+loyally. "You probably only asked her once, and
+then hit the trail before she could change her mind."</p>
+
+<p>"Ask her. When people care, words are not so
+necessary."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps not, but girls do expect words; though
+the right girl&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"She doesn't know that she was the right girl; I
+may not have made it clear. I was a fool who
+dreamed dreams and believed them true. Talking
+about it doesn't help. I thought it might; that's all."</p>
+
+<p>He continued to walk the terrace, as though with a
+certain impatience at having let go of himself. Teddy
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>
+regarded him for a few moments of awkward silence.
+Keith had never been demonstrative, and this sudden
+confidence caught Teddy unprepared. He felt ill at
+ease, realizing that it was no light sentiment, causing
+him to let go of himself and speak.</p>
+
+<p>"I reckon this particular mountain must be bewitched,"
+he said at last. "The only other time you
+talked of a girl&mdash;any special girl&mdash;was after we were
+led across yon range by that girl of the convent.
+Even then you talked of her only when the knock on
+your head sent you luny. What was the name they
+called her? Spirit&mdash;Doņa Spirit&mdash;Doņa Espiritu!
+That is it! I really thought for a few days of your
+ravings that we were going to have a nun in the family;
+and now it's a new girl!"</p>
+
+<p>Keith regarded him for a moment, then in silence
+took out tobacco and made a cigarette. Of what use
+were words?</p>
+
+<p>"I always wondered who that girl was and what
+became of her," continued Teddy. "The old padre
+was as dumb as an oyster on the subject. Did you
+learn more than her name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not much," said Keith, briefly.</p>
+
+<p>"I always meant to. Funny how those crack-brained
+Indians let up on the attack that night, when
+she slipped that ring on your finger and held up your
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>
+hand for them to see. It was the last thing I noted
+before I keeled over. Those Indians have not forgotten
+that. They knew when I came back here, and
+they seemed to watch either the mine or me,&mdash;I don't
+know which it is. Once they asked an old Mexican
+for you; he speaks their lingo. They described you
+as 'the man of the ring.'"</p>
+
+<p>"That's queer."</p>
+
+<p>"Did the girl tell you what the ring meant?"</p>
+
+<p>"Meant?" repeated Keith, questioningly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. To the tribe, it means more than a mere
+ring. The old Mexican gathered that much. It had
+something the significance of a sceptre, and was worn
+only by one of the rulers in the old days. When that
+girl put it on your finger, the tribe thought it meant
+that she had picked you out for marriage. She didn't
+tell you?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, she didn't tell me."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it's all that saved our lives that night. You
+know the old padre is dead. It was he did the sleight-of-hand
+work in getting the girl out of sight before
+you got on your feet again. With some threat of
+eternal flames, he shut the lips of every Mexican I
+tried to bribe to find her."</p>
+
+<p>Keith took the cigarette from his lips, and looked
+at him without speaking. Teddy smiled and nodded.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>
+"Yes, I looked for her without your knowing it.
+You came nearer going 'over the range' in that
+fever than you ever realized. The English doctor
+down there asked me who the devil 'Espiritu' was,
+and said that she could probably do more to lower
+your temperature than his drugs. I tried to locate
+her, as soon as I could hobble on a crutch, but it was
+no use. The padre said she had taken the black veil:
+that shut us out."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, of course," assented Keith, absently.</p>
+
+<p>"You never mentioned her name after you got on
+your feet, so I figured that it did not really mean
+anything. Girls never did mean much to you, individually,
+Keith,&mdash;until now."</p>
+
+<p>"Until now."</p>
+
+<p>"And now it's no use, since you can't see her
+again."</p>
+
+<p>Keith puffed away in thoughtful silence before
+he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps not. Yet&mdash;<i>quien sabe</i>? A sentiment
+may be like a sunrise, lifting clouds for you and making
+you see things&mdash;things within yourself you never
+suspected were there. Our trail in these hills followed
+the light of the morning star once, and we got out
+of the wilderness to safety: that star has meant
+something to me ever since. I can't possess it,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>
+but the meaning of it is mine. I can't give myself
+to the right woman,"&mdash;and he held out his hand
+and looked at it,&mdash;"but no conventions of the world,
+no man-made walls can prevent the thought of me
+from going to her&mdash;the thought which, after all,
+is the real me. When that is so, who can say that
+even an unknown love has not its own uses? It may
+prove the illumination of a whole lifetime."</p>
+
+<p>Teddy, with wonder in his eyes, laid his hand on his
+brother's shoulder. "Old man, that kind of feeling is
+beyond me. I want my girl with me, and I want her
+mighty bad. I've lived beside you all my life, and
+never dreamed it was in you to care like that for any
+woman. It only shows how little we know, after all."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; how little, after all, until the right woman
+crosses the trail."</p>
+
+<p>"The chances are that we can never talk of it again.
+I know you <i>that</i> much! I told you this old hill
+of the temple was uncanny&mdash;bewitched,&mdash;and it is.
+You never would have mentioned this to me in
+civilized places."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps not," agreed Keith. "And you're
+right&mdash;I could never speak of it again."</p>
+
+<p>They never did. That night they talked only
+of Teddy's enterprise, and covered much paper with
+many figures, and made fine plans for the future.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>
+The next day it was that Keith, hunting in the
+hills, heard an unusual blast from the mine, felt
+the ground tremble from the shock, and turning
+back on the trail, met a Mexican with a bleeding
+hand and a cut face, who urged him to hasten. It
+was the word of the padre!</p>
+
+<p>He reached Teddy's side only in time to accept
+"Angela&mdash;poor little Angela&mdash;" as a life-long
+legacy. There had been an explosion. Graves were
+made for the young engineer and three of his Mexican
+miners on the side of the mountain. When
+it was all over, Keith Bryton climbed to the heights
+above, where the broken walls of stone showed white
+and gray among forest growth on the temple terrace.
+Below, and beyond the ranges, lay the world. In
+his isolation of grief, he felt as alone as the solitary
+mountain rising from the plain below, through which
+a river ran. Far down the river, miles away, gleamed
+a cross on the chapel of a convent. It was the old
+Mexican pueblo of which he had told Alvara. He
+remembered saying to the old man that he would
+never come back; yet here he was. How useless
+to say what one will or will not do in this world!
+One must make allowance for the moves fate insists
+upon in the game of life.</p>
+
+<p>Back of him, on a slight elevation, stood some
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>
+broken columns, and half an arch yet showed where
+an entrance had been, and under a dwarfed and
+twisted oak half covered with tropical vines a bench
+of marble gleamed. Two birds fluttered to the
+ground near him and turned inquisitive eyes on the
+intruder. He watched them carelessly, until one of
+them perched on a fallen block of stone ornamented
+with the sculptured sun of the Aztecs. It brought
+back like a flash that other day when he went from
+the presence of death to a ruined altar-place, where
+the Aztec sun and the cactus commemorated some
+unknown Mexican sculptor who cut the symbol
+of the faith of his people into the walls of a Christian
+church.</p>
+
+<p>He closed his eyes, and the vision of that other day
+was only intensified. The wind in the oaks back of
+him sounded like the surf on San Juan's beach; and
+through it the slow, fateful words of a girl kneeling
+in her wedding-veil echoed in his ears as it had done
+a thousand times:</p>
+
+<p>"So long&mdash;as&mdash;we&mdash;both&mdash;shall live!"</p>
+
+<p>There were no weeping girls here, and no bells
+to toll out the death message; but otherwise the
+atmosphere of the place, and the illusion, were
+perfect. How&mdash;how had he chanced to enter into
+this half-pagan atmosphere of death? Unconsciously,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>
+automatically, he turned and re-turned on his finger
+the onyx ring at which Angela had laughed.</p>
+
+<p>He was still seated there when the miners who had
+filled the graves came up the path, and with them
+the priest from the plains below. The Mexicans
+halted outside the broken walls. Only one Indian,
+who had followed at a distance, crossed the line of
+entrance, and stood apart, watching and listening
+in a furtive way&mdash;watching the American especially.</p>
+
+<p>"Many times I have heard of this place," said the
+priest, "but never before have I been so far into the
+mountain. There are strange old traditions of it in
+the accounts some of the early padres left. Their
+king or chief became Christian and gave his sons to
+the Church, but the main body of the people kept to
+many of their pagan rites. And this was their temple.
+The men ask me if you continue with the mining,
+seņor."</p>
+
+<p>He noticed they all listened for the answer, and
+looked relieved when he said, "No."</p>
+
+<p>"They are all very glad, seņor. They ask me to
+tell you they have no ill will, but they say not any of
+their men will go into the mine of the temple."</p>
+
+<p>"Some superstition?"</p>
+
+<p>"It seems so. They say one man always dies
+when outsiders meddle with the mountain, but never
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>
+before have three men died at once. They ask you
+to let the company know that none of them will
+come back."</p>
+
+<p>"Very good," and Bryton arose and picked up the
+sombrero he had dropped beside him. "I will tell
+them to bring foreigners if they mean to keep on; but
+I doubt it. The cave-in down there means a fortune
+to dig out. I don't think they have the capital."</p>
+
+<p>He was turning away, when he noticed the Indian.</p>
+
+<p>"Is he a workman?"</p>
+
+<p>The others exchanged glances, and then one of
+them stepped forward.</p>
+
+<p>"No, seņor. He is one of the mountain people.
+No one knows where they live. I know a little of
+their talk. He says for us all to go away, or worse
+things will always happen. He&mdash;he wants to speak
+to you."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>The man hesitated, and then said a few words,
+and the Indian replied in a strange jargon with peculiar
+aspirated syllables.</p>
+
+<p>"He says," continued the interpreter, hesitatingly,
+"to ask if she is to come back."</p>
+
+<p>"She?"</p>
+
+<p>Bryton's face flushed, as the priest looked at him
+curiously.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>
+"You have known those people before?"</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;my brother and I were lost once in the forest
+here. We&mdash;well, we were made to feel we had trespassed;
+but some one&mdash;a sort of missionary among
+them&mdash;made them lead us to the plain. It would have
+been better if my brother had never come back."</p>
+
+<p>"And&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>The priest noticed Bryton's hesitation; so did the
+Indian, for he walked direct to him, and pointed
+to the ring he wore, and looked from the ring to
+Bryton's face.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell him," said the American, "that she is a
+man's wife, and lives in a lovely land."</p>
+
+<p>"You see her&mdash;some day?" asked the Indian.</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;not ever again&mdash;perhaps."</p>
+
+<p>The Indian bent his head, and with a slight
+gesture as of farewell, turned and walked swiftly
+away from them, around the bend of the mountain.</p>
+
+<p>"Your words have an unusual interest," said the
+priest, as they walked down toward the plain. "They
+suggest that the missionary might be the one they
+spoke of here as the Indian nun."</p>
+
+<p>"This lady was not Indian," said Keith, decidedly.
+"Her skin was whiter than either yours or mine.
+The Indians called her Doņa Espiritu! It was the
+only name they knew her by."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>
+"It was the same, and her father's name was
+Estevan," said the priest, quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know now. His name was Estevan, but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And he was the man who died the awful death
+up there." And he pointed back to the temple.</p>
+
+<p>"No!" Bryton stopped on the path and faced
+the priest, thus halting the entire procession at a
+point where a yawning gulf of a caņon reached to
+unseen depths below.</p>
+
+<p>"For the love of Christ&mdash;seņor!" screamed the
+priest, while the Mexicans in the rear clung to their
+burros and swore.</p>
+
+<p>"The man who was killed left no child," persisted
+Bryton. "I heard the story."</p>
+
+<p>"A daughter was born six months after his death&mdash;after
+the wife had taken the black veil of eternal
+renunciation of the world," declared the priest,
+solemnly. "Now, seņor, for the love of God, will
+you let us find safer footing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes. Pardon me!" and Bryton continued
+thoughtfully along the trail to the plain below.
+When they reached a broader road where it was
+possible to ride abreast, he asked one more question.</p>
+
+<p>"Father, does she know?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not unless some in the world have told her.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>
+Here, the old priest, her uncle, had power enough
+over the wild tribe to make them promise they
+would not tell her until she had lived twenty years.
+He died ten years ago, but they kept faith. There
+are some people in the world who had to know,&mdash;the
+lawyers and judges who settled the estate,&mdash;for
+Estevan was a man of wealth. He carried wounds
+here from the war for California. The child thought
+he died from the effects of those. Out in the world
+where she has gone, that wild barbaric outbreak of her
+mother's people will never be known; and of the few
+who have learned it who would tell her?"</p>
+
+<p>"True, father: who would?"</p>
+
+<hr class='chapter' />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span></p>
+<div class='framed'>
+
+<div class='figmusic'>
+<a href='music/m147.mid'>
+<img src='images/mu147.png'
+	title='Music: La Passion Funesta.'
+	alt='Music: La Passion Funesta.'
+/></a>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class='dropcap'>
+<img src='images/dc147.png' title='H' alt='H' />
+</div>
+
+<p>He did not go north for a month.
+His letter to Angela contained
+a check, which she at once
+invested in very becoming
+mourning, for which she of
+course had to journey to Los
+Angeles.</p>
+
+<p>With her went Don Eduardo Downing and his
+wife, Doņa Maria, who, with Rafael, had unpleasant
+business to transact with the bishop, and were irritable
+in consequence. Bryton called upon them at the
+home of the ex-Governor of California. After
+Angela's first emotional outburst at the details of
+Teddy's death and burial,&mdash;and regret that a Protestant
+clergyman was not to be had,&mdash;she managed to
+come back to subjects nearer home, and retail a few
+of the changes since the death of Doņa Luisa.</p>
+
+<p>There had not been time for many. Yet&mdash;well&mdash;there
+had been the marriage, of course; and the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>
+relations who thought it so fine a thing that Rafael
+married an heiress and a saint were not so sure now.
+The tone of Angela and her slight shrug of contempt
+showed that she shared their doubts.</p>
+
+<p>Raquel Estevan de Arteaga was in the city. She
+had ridden the sixty miles on horseback, and all the
+old Spanish families were entertaining her in a style
+magnificent as their means would allow; but all who
+cared to have her must invite no heretic Americans,
+and it was understood to be a promise to Doņa Luisa.
+She did not wish to meet the English-speaking people;
+not one had yet crossed her threshold; even
+Don Eduardo, sharing some business interests with
+her husband, was not welcomed, because he held fields
+of the old Mission, for which the Church was fighting
+in the courts of law.</p>
+
+<p>The bishop himself had set the pace for courtesy
+toward Raquel. He had called on her personally, had
+a long private interview (Angela's opinion of clerical
+private interviews with young wives was expressed by
+another shrug), and he made a point of calling on
+several families where she visited.</p>
+
+<p>Doņa Maria was of course justly offended. Her
+estates had been greater than those of the Arteagas,
+and her family name was older in the land than Estevan,
+which after all was only Spanish for Stevens.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>
+On this subject it was easy to see Angela agreed
+perfectly with the wife of her cousin. Each had
+built her own plan for certain social supremacies in
+the little kingdom of San Juan, but neither had
+reckoned with the fact that the girl from a convent
+in Mexico would assume a rule there such as no one
+else had ever dared attempt, and emphasize it by
+barring out heretics, even when married into Catholic
+families.</p>
+
+<p>What Rafael thought of it no one yet knew. He
+hated the old Mission, above all places. The only
+time it was worth while was when the dances were
+held in the old dining-room; and when his mother
+died he thought of course no woman would ever wish
+to live there. A town residence was assured, and thus
+closer connection with the new, progressive people.
+But the bride of a day had decided differently: when
+a home befitting their station was built for her in San
+Juan, she would move to it; until then the Mission
+rooms would serve, and they must arrange it with the
+bishop.</p>
+
+<p>To tell her that the bishop no longer had jurisdiction
+over the property was of no use whatever. She
+had listened quietly to the legal details of the auction
+sale, when it had all been bought by Eduardo Downing
+and Miguel Arteaga.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>
+"That is right, to buy it when the place was sold
+for debt; any son of the Church should do that," she
+conceded; "but to hold it,&mdash;to treat it as a quarry
+from which to mine bricks and blocks of stone,&mdash;may
+the saints intercede for your brother in his grave, who
+did such wickedness! If your mother had known that
+a son of hers was fighting in the courts of law against
+the Church, it would have killed her the day the word
+reached her. If you people value money more than
+the blessing of God, I will give you money for it&mdash;to
+you and your English partner; but not another
+blast of powder must shatter the place of the altar."</p>
+
+<p>It was in vain they told her Doņa Maria had a
+pious plan to blow down the stonework&mdash;the most
+magnificent monument of such Indian labor ever
+erected in that part of Mexico which is now United
+States,&mdash;and to build on its site an adobe chapel of
+her own design. Raquel Estevan de Arteaga listened
+quietly to all the plans, but shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"It is sacrilege; it shall not be," she repeated.
+"Since gold is the god of the English people, we
+will give them gold."</p>
+
+<p>"But you forget, beloved," put in Rafael. "Doņa
+Maria is Catholic&mdash;is Spanish&mdash;is&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Rafael," said his bride, quietly, "will you listen a
+little? Then it will be no need to speak of those
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>
+things again&mdash;we will both understand. The padre
+comes a stranger to San Juan as I do, but he comes
+from a strange land, and cares not anything for these
+different races. But I have all the names of those
+people from your mother, that I know whom to avoid
+in this life&mdash;and in the next."</p>
+
+<p>"My mother was one of the old Spanish people;
+they were slow. Times change."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, times did change when men like Alvarado
+were pushed aside and a quadroon ruled the politics
+and the Mission property. Thus California paved
+the way for American rule. In politics and business
+men must meet unpleasant people often, but it is not
+ever necessary for the ladies of any family to do so;
+and, Rafael, here before your padre, two things I must
+say. The heretics I have promised never to meet
+except as God sends them in our path. As for the
+Spanish ladies you mention, if you do not know that
+there is not a woman of noble Spanish blood in the
+length of this valley, then you shut your eyes very
+tight when you might see. The daughters of Don
+Juan Alvara have one Spanish strain in them;
+the others are mixed people of Mexican, Indian,
+and negro, and few of them care to remember their
+grandmothers. When you bring into my house
+Spanish ladies of good breeding, I shall be glad
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>
+to make them welcome, but I do not care for the
+substitutes. The Indios by the river are of more
+interest, for they need to be taught."</p>
+
+<p>This conversation had been repeated by Padre
+Andros to Doņa Maria over a game of <i>malilla</i> and a
+glass of the new American drink called whiskey,&mdash;a
+gift from the army officers, and enjoyed very
+much by the ladies of San Juan; it suggested a drink
+made of chilis, because of the appetizing burn it
+gave the throat.</p>
+
+<p>Padre Andros was frightened when he saw the
+effect of his recital. Doņa Maria was not so stout as
+most of the women of the mixed races; but as he saw
+the dark color mount luridly to her face, and her eyes
+look almost bloodshot with sudden fury, he set down
+the glass of whiskey to cross himself, and dropped an
+ace in his perturbation.</p>
+
+<p>"For the love of God! seņora," he exclaimed; and
+then it was Angela entered the room and found
+her cousin's wife ill with a fury she durst express
+only in prayers and maledictions against this girl
+brought to San Juan by Doņa Luisa to ruin them all!</p>
+
+<p>Only fragments of the cause of her fury reached
+Angela, despite all her sudden sympathetic interest
+in the wife of her cousin, to whom she had heretofore
+been rather indifferent. But she pieced the fragments
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>
+together, and as she told them to Bryton he could,
+with his own knowledge of the early racial mixtures
+in the land, get a very fair idea of the situation.
+The girl from Mexico had dared open the closet
+of a forgotten skeleton.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course she rules Rafael just now, to a certain
+extent," conceded Angela, carelessly. "He sees the
+Church and half the town at her feet here; she is
+a novelty, and he sees everyone turn to look at her.
+But at San Juan she will find no one at her feet,
+and her churchmen will be far enough away. The
+padre there detests her; she stopped him from selling
+bricks from the cloister pillars."</p>
+
+<p>"The padre and Doņa Maria should make a
+strong team," observed Bryton. "The woman need
+be strong to win against them&mdash;is she?"</p>
+
+<p>"How do I know? I've never spoken to her. She
+has nasty eyes. That's all I can remember of her."</p>
+
+<p>"Nasty?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it is the expression. I saw them once, and
+she made me nervous. Perhaps it was because she
+divined that I was one of the 'accursed heretics.'
+I understand that is the way the lower order speak
+of Protestants!"</p>
+
+<p>"But she cannot be quite of the lower order,
+can she? Her father was of the best Spanish and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>
+American blood ever joined on this coast, far above
+the Arteagas."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! So you also look up pedigrees here; I
+wonder why."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a country where you hear of them without
+question," he returned, indifferently. "The people
+are always sparring among themselves and referring
+to their ancestors&mdash;if they dare. Doņa Luisa was a
+pure-blood Spanish woman, but the Arteagas had a
+bad Indian and Mexican streak. She saw it develop
+in her own children, and it gave her a bad fright.
+She counted on this marriage bringing the last of
+them back to the old conservative manner of life."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" She shrugged her shoulders contemptuously;
+"but you forget that Raquel, the present
+Seņora Arteaga, has also a Mexican streak."</p>
+
+<p>"No, I don't forget; but there are high class and
+low of every race. Noble Indians and high-class
+Mexicans have gone into history. The American
+makes a great mistake when he judges the high
+classes by the masses. In this land one has to dig
+out the facts of each individual line, if he wants to
+know the truth of a pedigree. But the lady from
+Mexico seems to have drawn her distinctions very
+closely, and realizing her own superiority, she dares
+dictate."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>
+"Even to her&mdash;husband?" There was just the
+slightest possible hesitation at the title.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not, if she is the superior?"</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;oh, can't you see how all these marriages
+are a barter-and-sale family affair,&mdash;money that is
+married, instead of people? If she was in love with
+him as a&mdash;a real woman would be, she never would
+know she was superior, never! Not that I believe
+she is," she added with a shrug; "to me she looks
+as wooden as the saints on her own altar."</p>
+
+<p>He arose and walked to the window, staring out
+over the heads of the people.</p>
+
+<p>"She may not be wooden to those she cares
+for," he said at last.</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps not; but I'm certain of one thing: if
+she ever cared for any one, it is not the man she
+married. If she cared, she would forget that rigid
+fanatic sense of duty sometimes."</p>
+
+<p>"I came to talk of your affairs," he said, abruptly.
+"Teddy left some mining shares; they may pan out
+later on. I have talked with a lawyer about them;
+this is his address," and he handed her a slip of paper.
+"Whatever funds are procurable he will turn over to
+you quarterly. Is there anything else I can do for
+you at present?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she returned; "you might be a bit human
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>
+and sympathetic. You seem to forget," and her red
+lip quivered in self-pity, "how utterly alone I am
+among these Mexicans, and all their women jealous
+as fiends."</p>
+
+<p>He regarded her with a long, steady stare, and then
+smiled as he rose.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't blame them," he observed, quietly. "You
+have given more attention to several of their men
+than you ever gave to poor Ted. Where's your
+baby?"</p>
+
+<p>"Heavens! Do you suppose I could drag her
+on this trip, and a Mexican or Indian nurse?" she
+demanded, impatiently. "That's so like a man!
+They think a woman with a child should be merely
+a domestic animal, like those dunces of Spanish
+women. I feel as if I were in jail, hedged around
+with all their conventions. I don't dare walk on
+the street alone, or with a man; I don't dare ride in
+a carriage with a man, and it's no pleasure to go with
+those empty-headed women. Doņa Maria is as bad
+as the rest since I'm in mourning; it is a sort of
+prison, forbidding the wearer a free breath!"</p>
+
+<p>"Take it off," he suggested, so quietly that he
+quite deceived her, and she uttered a little cry of
+shocked appeal.</p>
+
+<p>"Keith! And poor Teddy&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>
+"Angela!" and his hand fell heavy on her shoulder,
+"listen to me just once. When Ted was alive I
+could bear to hear you mention his name, but now
+that he is dead I&mdash;can't. He belongs to me now,
+and I forbid it."</p>
+
+<p>"Keith!" She gasped again, but this time in
+sheer fright. "And the money&mdash;the shares you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He laughed mirthlessly, and took his hand from
+her shoulder. His moment of feeling gave place
+to amused appreciation of the real woman poor Ted
+had never known.</p>
+
+<p>"Who says women are inconsistent?" he queried.
+"You are a living illustration of the contrary. I
+have never seen you vary a hair's-breadth from my
+first instinctive feeling concerning you, you pretty
+baby kitten! You needn't look so frightened; you
+will get whatever money is in reach. Now, don't go
+to whimpering! Get on your bonnet, if Doņa Maria
+may think it allowable for me to take you both for
+a carriage drive. I promised Ted to do things for
+you, and I must make a beginning."</p>
+
+<p>"Is that the only reason?" she began, with righteous
+indignation.</p>
+
+<p>"That is the only reason, my lady," he returned.
+"Are you coming?"</p>
+
+<p>A little later they were rolling along Spring Street,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>
+past the plaza, and many heads turned to look at the
+golden-haired girlish little figure in mourning, drooping
+beside Doņa Maria, whose rigid, unsmiling, dark
+features were the best possible foil. Keith Bryton,
+sitting opposite, noticed the admiration she aroused.
+The caballeros who had swept sombreros to the ground
+at the passage of the carriage in which Raquel and
+the bishop were riding did so as a matter of reverence
+to a devotee; but the rule of the woman whom Keith
+had called a baby kitten would always be one of childish
+appeal, personal to a degree.</p>
+
+<p>Looking at her cynically, he tried to fancy her
+twenty years ahead,&mdash;the mother of a grown daughter,&mdash;but
+failed. The daughter would have to be
+guardian; the mother would always need one. She
+was watching him furtively to see the effect this open
+admiration might have upon him. He was the
+one man of them all who had ever dared treat her
+so carelessly. His attitude had piqued her to the
+point where she had a brief tigerish desire to rend
+his heart&mdash;his affections&mdash;if he had any! And
+Teddy was the weapon.</p>
+
+<p>Of course she had regretted it all&mdash;there were
+other men with so much more money. Still,
+as it had turned out, it was not so bad. She was
+installed as a member of his family, and that was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>
+better than to depend entirely on the cousinship to the
+Mexican Doņa Maria. She was really a little afraid
+of the swarthy black-browed women of the country.
+To be sure, they sat around in fat content, with their
+bits of embroidery or drawn work, and seemed to see
+nothing else; but she had seen Doņa Maria whip an
+Indian servant with her own hands one day, and the
+blind rage in the dark face had ever after made Angela
+a trifle more respectful. It was not nice to be entirely
+at the mercy of ignorant power. Don Eduardo was
+always ready with gold pieces for a pretty woman, but
+even the distant cousinhood might not be all the
+protection required for a lady of Angela's beauty, if
+any animosity should ever take root in Doņa Maria's
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>So it was all well as things stood. Keith Bryton
+would, she knew, keep to both letter and spirit of any
+promise he had made poor Teddy, and she felt sure
+the fond boy had exacted much of the brother who
+he thought could accomplish all things.</p>
+
+<p>Thus she decided, as she watched and weighed his
+apparent amused indifference to the admiration she
+excited. Fair women were at a premium in the City
+of the Angels. He had just arrived from the dusky
+tribes of Mexico; before that he had ranged the
+desert land; but she realized with resentment that no
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>
+beauty of hers would ever make an oasis for him.
+The men who did admire her he regarded as fools.</p>
+
+<p>He saw her glance from him, and she set her white
+teeth together with a little click of absolute frustration.
+She had accepted his ungracious invitation in order to
+show him the admiration her mere appearance on the
+drive would excite, and it all weighed not an iota.
+Would he ever really care for any one? Had he ever
+cared?</p>
+
+<p>Then he moved his hand, and the sun gleamed on the
+ring he wore, the Mexican onyx with the Aztec eagle.
+It recalled the adventure over which she had laughed
+at the Mission. She had never believed Teddy when
+he declared that Keith's attraction for that queer
+Mexican nun was a serious fact. Teddy knew so
+little, so very little, of the real feelings of either men
+or women. He had gone to his death buoyed for
+any sort of adventure by the absolute conviction that
+his wife adored him. Poor Teddy! Never would
+any woman be able to fool Keith Bryton like that,&mdash;not
+even the woman he would care for, if she ever did
+appear.</p>
+
+<p>While she thought so, and watched him, his face
+grew suddenly rigid and colorless. The carriage of
+the bishop came down the street, the palomentos with
+their golden coats and silver manes and tails shining
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>
+like satin in the sunlight. Rafael sat with his back to
+the horses, looking very much bored indeed, but
+beside the bishop sat the woman who had faced her
+on the hill of San Juan, and who had held her horse
+in the middle of the road.</p>
+
+<p>She was prepared for the sudden light of appreciation
+in Rafael's beautiful eyes, as he lifted his hat and
+let his glance linger and meet hers for one swift instant
+of comprehension, but she was not prepared for the
+sudden leaning forward of his dark-browed bride, and
+the quick look with which she took in the two women
+in the carriage, and then the colorless face of their
+escort.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her levelly as he lifted his hat in
+acknowledgment of her husband's salutation. If his
+glance held ever so slight a suggestion of warning, it
+was unheeded by her. Her dark eyes glowed, her
+red lips parted and lost their color as she rested one
+slender jewelled hand on the carriage frame, and stared
+at him with incredulous eyes; one could see that she
+did not even breathe as the carriages whirled past each
+other; at least Angela noted it.</p>
+
+<p>By turning her head she saw Rafael put out his
+hand suddenly to his wife, who had sunk back on the
+cushions beside the bishop. His manner suggested
+that he thought her ill. Keith could see the same
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>
+without turning his head. But even after he observed
+the lace-draped shoulders straighten themselves, and
+the head held again proudly erect under the mantilla,
+he continued to gaze after them, unconscious that the
+blue eyes opposite him were alive with curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>"One would think you were a long-lost brother,
+from the way that woman stared," she remarked.
+"One would think she would show more restraint
+when riding in state beside the bishop, and with her
+husband opposite."</p>
+
+<p>Keith recovered himself and turned his attention
+to her.</p>
+
+<p>"Was that Rafael Arteaga's wife?" he asked, carelessly.
+"I supposed it was, but have not had the
+honor of being presented."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they told me she would not notice heretics,
+but one heretic was the only person she noticed in this
+carriage. How she looked at you! I told you she
+had nasty staring eyes, like augers boring through one.
+Did you see, Doņa Maria? Did you not fear she
+would disgrace us all by leaping into the carriage?"</p>
+
+<p>Doņa Maria's black, bead-like eyes were regarding
+the young man curiously.</p>
+
+<p>"It may be a custom of Mexico for ladies to show
+attention to strange men in that way," she observed,
+guardedly. "It may be so. I had never heard of it.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>
+The new lady of the Mission is teaching San Juan
+many new things, but I do not think she will teach it
+that sort of manners. They do not compare well with
+the American ladies' manners&mdash;no?"</p>
+
+<p>"I fancy it was only as your escort she was gracious
+enough to turn and look at me; she might have fancied
+I was known to her. She looks very young."</p>
+
+<p>"You would forget she was young if you heard her
+talk to the padre," returned Doņa Maria, significantly.
+"It was enough to bring a malediction on all our heads
+to listen to it!"</p>
+
+<p>"The bishop has forgiven her; at least it looks so."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, she is clever! He thinks she is a saint, this
+bishop. But the padre knows!"</p>
+
+<p>She did not add, "and I know," but her thin cold
+lips with their satisfied smile suggested as much, and
+Bryton, observing it, felt anew that the girl from
+Mexico had a strong team to fight in Doņa Maria and
+the padre.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>
+</p>
+
+<div class='figmusic'>
+<a href='music/m164.mid'>
+<img src='images/mu164.png'
+	title="Music: The Magpie's Reveille (Indian Gambling Song)."
+	alt="Music: The Magpie's Reveille (Indian Gambling Song)."
+/></a>
+<br />
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"A'a'a'i-ne! A'a'a'i-ne!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ta'a'-ni-aine! Ta'a'-ni-aine!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bita alkaigi dike yiska ne.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Gayelka'! Gayelka'!"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">TRANSLATION.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The magpie, the magpie, here underneath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the white of his wings are the footsteps of the morning.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">It dawns! It dawns!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class='chapter' />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span></p>
+<div class='framed'>
+
+<div class='figmusic'>
+<a href='music/m165.mid'>
+<img src='images/mu165.png'
+	title='Music.'
+	alt='Music.'
+/></a>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class='dropcap'>
+<img src='images/dc165.png' title='M' alt='M' />
+</div>
+
+<p>When the night was old, and
+others slept, Raquel Arteaga
+crept in silence to the bedside
+of the old Indian woman of the
+hill tribe who had been her
+nurse, who was still her maid,
+and who was the one link she
+kept near her of the old life.</p>
+
+<p>"Tia Polonia, awake!" she said, briefly; and as the
+woman did so, frightened and full of questions, her
+mistress held up her hand and rested herself on the
+side of the pallet, regarding the dark old face with
+doubt.</p>
+
+<p>"Thy husband, beloved,&mdash;he has&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It is not my husband this time, Polonia. He is
+quite safe at the gaming-table, and will come in at
+sunrise with empty pockets. It is not my husband.
+It is&mdash;" She paused a long time, scrutinizing every
+feature of the old woman, who grew gray of visage
+under those smouldering eyes, and her hands shook.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>
+"Darling, little one, thou art so like thy mother;
+more than ever when angry, and it is night; and I&mdash;Holy
+God! It is like a ghost comes to my bed to&mdash;to&mdash;ah,
+Doņa Espiritu&mdash;mia!&mdash;what is the anger in thine
+eyes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Can a dead woman be angry?" demanded her
+mistress drearily, the beautiful curved mouth quivering
+for an instant. "And it is a dead woman they
+have made of me&mdash;all of you! You lied to me,
+Polonia, when you brought word to me he had died
+there in Mexico!"</p>
+
+<p>The old woman covered her face with her hands,
+and sank back whimpering on the pallet.</p>
+
+<p>"I trusted you, and you lied to me, all of you!"
+the girl repeated in a hopeless tone of finality. "All
+these months he has been alive, and I have not
+known. You liars&mdash;liars&mdash;liars accursed!"</p>
+
+<p>The old woman uttered a smothered shriek, and
+buried her face in the blankets.</p>
+
+<p>"Not the curse, beloved, not the curse!" she
+begged, tremulously, "the curse of your people. It
+means&mdash;it means&mdash;Ai! not the curse, little one!
+Thou hast only meant to frighten me to tell you
+how it was, and I will&mdash;I will! Only, child of the
+spirits, Doņa Espiritu, bring not the curse!"</p>
+
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a href='images/p166p.jpg'>
+	<img src='images/p166w.jpg'
+	title='You Lied to me&mdash;All of You!' alt='Doņa Angela' />
+</a>
+<p>&ldquo;You Lied to me&mdash;All of You!&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>She cowered and mumbled in a sort of palsied
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>
+fear, but the girl sat there untouched by her misery,
+looking at her drearily. Perhaps she had some slight
+hope of denial, but Polonia's gray face put that out
+of her reach.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit up," she commanded, and the old woman
+hastily scrambled into a sitting posture, but with
+her hands over her eyes, her body still rocking with
+fear. "Why did you do it?"</p>
+
+<p>Never before had Tia Polonia heard those hard
+cold tones from her "querida"&mdash;her little one&mdash;her
+nursling of other days. This girl sitting there erect
+in the glimmering light of the candle was really Doņa
+Espiritu of the tribe of the kings.</p>
+
+<p>"Excellencia," she muttered, "it is true; I did sin.
+But the padre gave me the word. He said your soul
+was lost; that the man had bewitched you as&mdash;as your
+little mother had been bewitched when she&mdash;when she
+left religion for your father, and in the end they both
+died&mdash;and so soon!&mdash;and&mdash;and I wanted you to
+live, Excellencia! and I wanted your soul to live; and&mdash;so
+it was I took the word of the padre to you, and
+told you he was dead&mdash;and wished that he was dead&mdash;but
+it was all no use at all! On his hand when the
+fever burned was your ring&mdash;it kept him alive and
+he could not die, and all day and all night he said,
+'Doņa Espiritu! Doņa Espiritu!' The padre heard,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>
+and I heard. The American brother, he heard too,
+and asked the Indios who was Doņa Espiritu, and
+where did she live, that he might send for her. But
+it was no use. The padre made them all afraid for
+your soul, so that I told you the lie. Now it is all
+said, and my life is going out of my body at the curse
+of your anger."</p>
+
+<p>In fact, the fear in the old creature had worked on
+her own nerves, so that her final words were very
+faint. She spoke as one half swooning, and put out
+her hand in pitiful plea for help.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah&mdash;the good padre," said the girl, bitterly.
+"Well, you see how it has all ended. The padre
+died, and has gone to God to answer for the lie; and
+the man he wished dead is alive&mdash;alive&mdash;alive, and
+oh&mdash;Mother of God! is happy with&mdash;with&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Her cold self-control melted in a flood of tears,
+and she flung herself face down on the pallet beside
+the frightened Indian woman, her form shaken with
+shuddering sobs of absolute despair.</p>
+
+<p>The dawn was near. All the night she had walked
+in her room alone, stunned and wordless over this
+thing she could not fight, or reason, or pray away;
+and now, having heard it all,&mdash;even of his calls for
+her when unconscious,&mdash;she had let fall for the first
+time the cold mask she had worn since the death
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>
+of Doņa Luisa, and since the significance of her vow
+had been revealed to her by the days and nights of
+Rafael's life.</p>
+
+<p>She wept in a wild abandonment of grief at the
+hopeless vista of years reaching on to the edge of the
+world where death is. It had all been dreary enough
+before; but now&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>When the birds began their welcome of the day
+she was still lying prone, but silent. The tempest
+of feeling had passed, and her Indian woman stroked
+her hair softly, and waited, and did not speak. At
+last she rose, and looked out on the yellowing light
+touching the purple of the mountains.</p>
+
+<p>"This is only a dream of the night, Polonia," she
+said, with a great sigh; "sleep again, and forget it all."</p>
+
+<p>But the old woman clung with trembling hands to
+the folds of the girl's gown, and rested her cheek on
+the silken slippers.</p>
+
+<p>"And the curse, darling? what of the curse of the
+lie?"</p>
+
+<p>"Curses come home to the people who utter them,"
+said the girl, drearily. "On my head they all lie&mdash;the
+curse by which I was made blind for a little, little
+while of life, and which now allows me to see when
+it is too late. The curse of God has followed our
+people; no blessing of the Church can wipe it out."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>
+"But I&mdash;I&mdash;beloved?"</p>
+
+<p>"The sin that is for love is not so black a sin, and
+it was your love the padre trusted to&mdash;your fear
+that I was bewitched and lost. But it is all over;
+we are in a new land, and this is a new life."</p>
+
+<p>"And&mdash;he is happy&mdash;without thee?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have seen his wife; people call her beautiful. I
+saw him almost touching her, yet I did not scream."</p>
+
+<p>"Mother of God! his wife!"</p>
+
+<p>"I heard her name,&mdash;it was enough. His I did not
+need to ask; I remembered."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;dear one&mdash;it is better that he is married.
+Pardon, beloved&mdash;I am at thy feet, and I feel thy
+heartache. But, after all, is it not to thank the
+saints that he is married?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps. Otherwise, he might say to me some
+day, 'Come!' And the witchcraft of the ring might
+hold, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Holy Mother! and then&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And I&mdash;God knows what I might do, Polonia."</p>
+
+<p>And then the old Indian woman was left alone,
+mumbling prayers and crossing herself.</p>
+
+<p>Later she got up and went to the priest of Our
+Lady of the Angels and brought a bottle of holy
+water to sprinkle on the threshold of the street door,
+and all sides of Doņa Raquel's room, that no curse
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>
+of witchcraft or bad dream of the night might have
+power over the days.</p>
+
+<p>It was broad daylight when Rafael came home
+whistling gayly a dance of melody. He had been
+gifted with unusual good luck, and his pockets were
+full of gold pieces. He threw a buckskin sack of
+coin on his wife's bed before he noticed that she was
+not lying there.</p>
+
+<p>"Hola! Raquelita mia! There is plenty to pay
+for masses; your priests always want money for that
+sort of thing. Since you look after my soul, I pay
+for the prayers when I have good luck."</p>
+
+<p>Raquel arose from where she knelt at the little
+altar in the corner.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, is that where you are? What need to pay
+the priests when you do enough praying for an
+army?"</p>
+
+<p>She smiled absently, but did not speak. He stood
+watching her as she brushed her mass of dark, slightly
+waving hair.</p>
+
+<p>"Let your woman do that," he said at last, with
+perfunctory solicitude. "It tires your arm, and I
+don't want you tired to-day. There is a picnic, and
+we should go."</p>
+
+<p>"Which of our friends make it?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is Doņa Maria Downing, who, as our one
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>
+neighbor down the country, wants to add to the
+entertainment Los Angeles gives you. It is to make
+peace with the bishop, I think; at least, so it looks.
+He is invited. You can help them to be friends. Is
+that not the duty of us both as good Catholics?"</p>
+
+<p>She halted in her task and looked at him quietly.
+He was plainly set on being very agreeable, for some
+reason; too seldom had he mentioned their faith but
+to scoff at the rigid rules of his mother and his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"You want it very much," she said; "but why?
+You do not care at all for Doņa Maria's personal
+peace with the bishop. That can be arranged without
+a picnic to the hills. It only needs that they give
+back, of their own free will, that which belongs to the
+Church, and make a confession that it was wrongly
+held."</p>
+
+<p>"If you would only talk to her of this graciously,
+instead of demanding it," persisted Rafael, gently,
+"much could be effected. Doņa Angela thinks for
+certain&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Doņa Angela?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I mean her&mdash;the relative who is with her
+now&mdash;the Mrs. Bryton who drove with her yesterday.
+The bishop asked who she was&mdash;you remember?"</p>
+
+<p>"I remember," she said, quietly, though a little
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>
+shudder touched her. "But I am tired of this town,
+Rafael. I meant to tell you so this morning. I want
+to ride home to-day. Doņa Maria's merry-makings
+do not attract me. Our business here is over; let
+us go."</p>
+
+<p>"Holy God! but you are a wife for a man!" he
+cried in sudden fury. "I weigh you down with jewels
+and silks and laces, and you would bury them all
+with yourself in that old rat-hole of a Mission. I
+wish to God the padre and Doņa Maria had blown
+down every brick of it before you saw the accursed
+place!"</p>
+
+<p>"Accursed? The Church of God? Rafael!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, accursed, since you will know!" he repeated.
+"Every old Indian of San Juan can tell you that."</p>
+
+<p>"Some Indian, perhaps, who has had to be whipped
+by the padres," she remarked, with quiet scorn.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't believe me?" he cried. "Well, you
+shall! Sit down&mdash;sit down and listen for once, and
+you will be glad to keep out of the curse-haunted
+place."</p>
+
+<p>She regarded him with a little tolerant smile, and
+drew a serape of blue around her, and curled herself
+on the foot of the bed and waited.</p>
+
+<p>"It is early for stories," she observed; "but since
+it is your pleasure&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>
+"Not any pleasure has any of it been to me from
+first to last," he retorted, "nor any pleasure will it be
+to whoever holds it! You think you are strong, your
+saints will help you! But no saint ever put on an
+altar&mdash;not even that of the Virgin herself&mdash;can take
+off the curse from San Juan till the altar is bathed in
+human blood, as the tiles of the floor have been
+bathed&mdash;that is the curse of Sahirit."</p>
+
+<p>She stared at him with wide eyes and blanching
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"Until the altar is bathed in human blood, as the
+tiles of the floor have been," she whispered. "Rafael!
+That&mdash;that is of a religion older than the life
+of Christianity in Mexico. God of Gods! Does it
+follow me here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Follow <i>you</i>!" and he laughed contemptuously;
+"it is a story older than our grandfathers. Only the
+old Indians whisper it now each time ill luck comes
+to any of us&mdash;and I've had enough! When they
+picked up Miguel tramped into the earth by the
+cattle, only the white men would help&mdash;no Indian;
+they knew it was the curse coming true."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me," she said, briefly. Her lips were white,
+and she shuddered with cold, and drew the serape
+close.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd rather hear some old Indian tell it," he
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>
+answered; "they make one chill when they count on
+their fingers and toes the things the curse has brought.
+We had a curse of our own in the Arteaga family:
+my mother was always in prayer because of that; she
+never knew that Miguel had bought an interest in
+another."</p>
+
+<p>"Go on&mdash;tell me! How comes the rule of the
+Aztec altar to this Christian temple?"</p>
+
+<p>"Aztec? I did not say Aztec. I know nothing
+of their mummeries. But it can't be that&mdash;there
+have been no Aztecs since the time of Cortez and
+the priests."</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I have heard there is one hill tribe still refusing
+the saints, and giving the sun worship," she said,
+slowly. "But go on; tell me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Sun-worship! yes, that's the thing!" he cried.
+"A man, who was a heretic of Mexico and a great
+builder of stone, killed a priest and a woman down
+there. Some say the woman was his wife. He was
+to have his head cut off for it, but word went down
+from here that such a man was needed by the priests
+of San Juan; they wished to build a stone church
+instead of adobe brick, as all the others were, if only a
+master mason could be sent to them. They had
+soldiers to guard him, even if the man chanced to be
+a convict, as many of the guards had been, and they
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>
+got the viceroy to help; and in the end the heretic
+who had killed a priest was sent to San Juan. The
+old Indios say he looked as big as two men, and he
+worked as he pleased. When the padres interfered
+he sat down and looked at the piles of stone and
+did nothing, and nothing could move him. They
+could have shot and buried him, but that would not
+build their church, which was to be the finest in the
+Californias. So they had to let him alone, and he
+built it as pleased himself. Their ground plan only
+he accepted. It was like a cross, as you see it now,
+but on no other part of the church was any symbol
+of Christianity&mdash;only stars and other things which
+some say are flowers and some say are suns and
+moons, and on the corner-stone and key-stone of the
+high altar is carved a thing no Christian can read, not
+even the padres&mdash;and somewhere in those symbols is
+held the curse."</p>
+
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a href='images/p176p.jpg'>
+	<img src='images/p176w.jpg'
+	title='R&#361;elas me fecit. Me Llama San Juan. 1796.'
+	alt='R&#361;elas me fecit. Me Llama San Juan. 1796.' />
+</a>
+<p>&ldquo;R&#361;elas me fecit.</p><p>Me Llama San Juan. 1796.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Who says? Did he?"</p>
+
+<p>"He? No; he died laughing, and refused the
+blessing of the priest. One thing only he said when
+he read the words on the oldest bell, as he built a
+place in the tower for it. The name of the maker is
+on the bell; you can see it yet; it is Ruelas. 'So
+Ruelas made you&mdash;iron-tongue,' a soldier heard him
+say, 'and your name is San Juan. Well, Seņor
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>
+Ruelas, you only have your name in this work. The
+good padres will see that my name is forgotten, but
+instead of a name, I will leave myself, and so long as
+stone stands on stone I will call louder and farther
+than your iron tongue when rung your loudest!
+When the storms of centuries shall beat out every
+star and moon and sun in the stone of the temple,
+the man from Culiacan will be remembered here in
+Sahirit.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Sahirit?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Indian name for the valley was 'Quanis Savit
+Sahirit'; you can see it on the church records."</p>
+
+<p>"And it means?"</p>
+
+<p>"No one knows, and no one cares; it may mean
+another curse, for all I know. The Indios either do
+not know or will not tell."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;" and she drew in a long breath of relief&mdash;"what
+the man from Culiacan said to the bell&mdash;the
+thing the soldier heard&mdash;was not a curse; it was
+only that the beautiful work should be remembered."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, that! But there was a prophecy years
+before, when the corner-stone was set in its place
+and blessed by the padres, and the Indios were all
+there on their knees saying a rosary, and the viceroy
+and all the dignitaries. An Indian hunter was also
+there from the south, and he was a stranger. He
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>
+looked at the thing carved on the corner-stone, and
+he looked at the builder, who leaned against the wall
+and laughed when the holy water touched it; and the
+stranger crossed himself, for his mother was a convert;
+but to the captain of the guard he said the thing I
+told you, and the captain of the guard was of my
+father's family. So it was repeated down to our time."</p>
+
+<p>"But the words&mdash;he said what of a prophecy?"</p>
+
+<p>"He said human blood, and not holy water, must
+baptize the stones and the altar of a temple with those
+signs. He was afraid the padre would put malediction
+on him if he told him that the blessing of a
+Christian saint was not so strong as the gods of the
+Indians, but he would not stand or kneel beside
+the lines where the church was to be, and he would
+not tell why he was afraid. He said he did not know
+what would happen there: it might be a tidal wave
+from the sea in sight, or it might be a pestilence, for
+the people were very wicked and very dirty, but it
+was marked with a sign for evil, and it would be well
+if the walls never went higher."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"They tried to get him to tell the padre, so that
+the builder might be whipped, but the stranger Indian
+was afraid. He said he wanted to live to see his
+children again, and they lived south in the hill country;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>
+and he ran away when they tried to keep him, but he
+had warned some old Indios, and when the first earthquake
+cracked the walls, they all remembered."</p>
+
+<p>"And&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"The mason laughed, but mended the cracked walls
+and went on at work, always singing, always working,
+even before sunrise. The old Indios who helped said
+it was at sunrise hour only that he worked on the keystones
+with the suns and star things, but they maybe
+lied. And after the dedication of the church he died
+as he lived, laughing and a heretic; and when the
+earthquake came and the tower of the bells fell, and
+the tiles of the floor were wet with the blood of the
+thirty-nine lives crushed out there, then the old Indios
+whispered and remembered many things; for the
+prophecy of the strange learned Indian of the south
+had come true."</p>
+
+<p>"And&mdash;the altar? Did&mdash;some one&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Her lips were stiff as with cold, and she could
+scarcely articulate.</p>
+
+<p>"Holy God! how white you are, Raquel!" he
+exclaimed. "I thought you were not a coward like
+the other women. Take this wine&mdash;take it! Por
+Dios, but you gave me a fright!"</p>
+
+<p>She swallowed the wine, and smiled absently at his
+excitement, and drew the serape closer. She did not
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span>
+speak again for a long time, just sat staring out toward
+the blue of the hills.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you in a trance?" he demanded. "Santa
+Maria, but you are a wife to come home to! If I
+interest you at all, I have to talk to you of things bad
+enough to scare the devil. Now you see why Doņa
+Maria blows down the walls&mdash;they were accursed
+from the beginning. She thinks maybe she is doing
+a pious thing, who knows?"</p>
+
+<p>"Selling to others the stone that is accursed?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that is a side issue. But I think truly, Raquelita,
+she is afraid of the bishop now, since you
+have come. I even think she wants to be friends;
+Doņa Angela told me. She has promised that she
+will build a chapel there of adobe, if the bishop will
+give his benediction. Much of bad luck is coming
+to them, and she is growing afraid."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; she has no sense of justice in her; she has
+only fear," returned Raquel. "Let her build chapels
+if she likes, but the blessing of God was put on those
+stone walls, as well as the curse of a heretic, and what
+she has done is sacrilege. I will do nothing to countenance
+it, or allow it to continue."</p>
+
+<p>"But, at least, you will do one thing," he said,
+emphatically. "You have heard enough of the curse
+to show you why it is no place for human beings to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>
+live. Only half the curse is carried out. The tiles
+have been baptized by human blood&mdash;but not the
+altar. You will stay here with live people, and let
+the old ruin wait alone for the curse to be lifted."</p>
+
+<p>"I will go back," she said, with sudden decision,
+dropping the serape from around her shoulders and
+beginning to braid her hair. "No, you need not
+swear like that, Rafael; God would shut His ears if
+He heard you. You have told me a fine story of fear,
+and some of it may be true, but our duty lies there.
+We may lift the curse; we can go back and try."</p>
+
+<p>Her husband sprang to his feet and flung his chair
+crashing into the low window opening on a veranda.
+The shattered glass fell in a glittering heap, but
+the noise of it did not drown his oaths.</p>
+
+<p>"It is no use at all to break the windows of our
+friends, Rafael," observed his wife; "and neither the
+saints nor Our Lady the Virgin will allow such
+curses as yours to be heard. There are dangers
+here for&mdash;for both of us, perhaps,&mdash;dangers more
+to be afraid of than the walls of the good padres.
+I ride back to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"You think of it as all past, that curse?" he demanded,
+threateningly. "Well, you think so! Priests
+have gone mad there, though the Church keeps it
+quiet. Since the year Don Eduardo and Doņa Maria
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>
+bought it, what has happened? All their land is
+slipping away. To-day she is building an adobe on
+the old Mission ranch, to hold one hundred and sixty
+acres in case they lose all the rest of their thirty miles
+of ranches. Two of her sons have been killed in the
+streets&mdash;one by a woman. All that remains is slipping
+slowly through their fingers. It is like a handful
+of wheat: the closer they try to hold it, the less
+they have in their hands. All they try is of no
+use. When they first bought those old walls of the
+Mission at Pico's auction, they were masters of
+the land, but what of that?"</p>
+
+<p>"If it is a curse, they earned it by tearing down the
+temple consecrated to God, that is all!"</p>
+
+<p>"All? Miguel, my brother, blew down no walls;
+he did no harm to anything at all. He only bought an
+interest in the Mission lands, and claimed some living-rooms
+as his share, and he is struck like the others by
+the curse, and does not die in his bed either, but is
+trampled into the earth until no one can see him!"</p>
+
+<p>"But that may be the other curse working&mdash;the
+curse on the Arteagas. You people seem to have
+earned a great many! Is it not time some of the
+family should try to live for blessings?"</p>
+
+<p>He did not answer, only stared at her with angry
+eyes and lips twitching in wrath he could not express.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>
+She looked at him an instant, and stretched out her
+arms wearily. All the glorious world of love about
+them, yet never aught of harmony in their two lives
+linked together. She had never seen the life domestic
+of young people. She did not know what it might
+mean to other women, but there were days when she
+grew sick with the dread of future years, the endless
+prison of her vow, the&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she turned to him with a little gesture
+of appeal, almost tremulous. It was such weary
+work to battle constantly; and his mother&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Rafael," she said, gently, "the blessings are in
+the world somewhere&mdash;shall not we try to find them?
+The old lives of the maledictions are gone. Ours is
+the new life, and we have done no wrong to expiate.
+And it may be, if we live as&mdash;as your mother would
+have wanted us to live, that the saints&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"To the bottom of the sea with your saints!"
+he broke in, angrily. "Por Dios! you are always
+dragging the dead out of their graves to make the
+days like a funeral. I prefer most the picnic in the
+hills, and I go to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"So do I," she answered; "but it will be to the
+hills of the south by the sea. To-night the moon
+shines, and the ride will be better than a picnic of
+your political friends."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>
+"By&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It is no sort of use for you to make empty oaths,
+Rafael. I leave this town to-day; with you if you
+are wise, without you if you are not. But I myself&mdash;I
+go!"</p>
+
+<p>He went out and slammed the door, and directly
+she heard him tell Juan Castillas that he had married
+one of the wooden saints of the Mission come to life.</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad it is not one with the broken glass eyes
+and the missing fingers," laughed Juan. "Doņa
+Raquel is the most beautiful woman in the Californias
+to-day."</p>
+
+<p>She turned from the window and looked at herself
+in the mirror. The most beautiful woman in the
+Californias! Was that so? Could it be? Yet what
+was beauty, after all, if&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Between herself and the glass another face seemed
+to arise,&mdash;the blue-eyed childish face for which she
+had been forgotten.</p>
+
+<p>"Holy Mother!" she moaned, and covered her
+own with her hands. "Of what use is beauty to a
+woman who is not beloved?"</p>
+
+<hr class='chapter' />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span></p>
+<div class='framed'>
+
+<div class='figmusic'>
+<a href='music/m185.mid'>
+<img src='images/mu185.png'
+	title='Music: El Tormento de Amor.'
+	alt='Music: El Tormento de Amor.'
+/></a>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Tormento de amor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">passion que devora,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tu marchi taste<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">la fuente de mi vida.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+</div>
+<div class='dropcap'>
+<img src='images/dc185.png' title='I' alt='I' />
+</div>
+
+<p>"I wasted the holy water on
+the doorway of the sala and
+the bedroom," grumbled old
+Polonia, ensconced among the
+serapes on the carreta; "I
+should have kept it for the
+road to the sea. She rides
+away from him alone; but it is a witchcraft, all the
+same."</p>
+
+<p>Secretly the old woman gave sympathy to the
+handsome Rafael, who loved women of gaiety and fine
+clothes. The town was a very good place to stay,
+and the band played, and there was a good circus;
+and to choose instead a nasty old Mission where
+a cross priest scolded, and smoked, and drank himself
+stupid each dinner-time! What kind of a girl
+would go back there?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>
+Still, the old Indian knew that she was not of wood,
+like the statues in the old church, let the husband
+think as he might! Last night had proven she could
+be her mother's own child in a storm of passion. It
+was perhaps for the best that she did not love her
+husband so madly; for if he should ever prove untrue,&mdash;and
+men of course were so&mdash;what might not
+happen?</p>
+
+<p>She thought of the witchcraft of the mother, and
+crossed herself.</p>
+
+<p>The moon, the beautiful moon of the month
+of Mary! shone round and silvered in the blue above
+the mountains, as the blaze of the sun sank into the
+western sea. South lay the ranch of San Joaquin, and
+Raquel, for all her thirty-mile ride, was sorry. She
+would have no excuse to ride past; it was the one
+slight of the country to pass the house of an acquaintance,
+and this family was one deserving of
+honor. The soft dusk of warm lands had stretched
+over the level. The sweet clover along the road had
+a deeper note of perfume, and the patches of mustard
+bloom added its own spicy fragrance. Gladly she
+would have ridden on alone in the perfect night, but
+it would not do. She cared little for the herd of
+people, but she always tried to keep in mind what the
+Doņa Luisa would have done in the little duties
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>
+toward the opinion of the valley, and she had no idea
+of making a scandal, or of appearing to ride in secret
+from the town where her husband was still detained.</p>
+
+<p>So, when the dogs barked, she galloped forward
+to the ranch-house, and was met with excited welcome
+from the mistress and her two vivacious daughters
+and their cousin Ana Mendez. All the news of the
+town they asked for. They had heard wonderful
+things of the courtesy shown her by the new bishop,
+who was not given to showing much pronounced
+attention to even the devout of the faith. They had
+rejoiced each day to hear of the honors showered on
+her by the families of the city. It was as if a queen
+had arrived in their valley&mdash;and to leave it all and
+ride alone in the night!</p>
+
+<p>Ana cut their queries short and bade them see to old
+Polonia, that she might be fed and rested well, and
+the driver also, and then carried her guest to her own
+room, where she put her hands on Raquel's shoulders
+and looked into her eyes, and then without a word led
+her to the shrine in the corner, where they both knelt.</p>
+
+<p>When the prayer was over and she had seen her
+guest supplied with bread, and red wine, and olives,
+and sliced beef, she regarded her sadly a moment,
+noting that only the wine was swallowed, and that the
+girl looked pale in the candle-light.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>
+"Poor little dear," she said, softly, and patted her
+shoulder and spoke with the tenderness of intimacy.
+"I think now thou wert only a child that morning in
+the wedding-veil, when she gave thee that vow and
+died. Thou hast such strength in looks, my Raquelita,
+no one remembers how young in life thou art. But I
+see now how it is. Rafael is the son of my mother's
+cousin, and I know that blood! You but give the
+word, and my uncle shall ride to Los Angeles in the
+morning and say what is right to be said to Rafael.
+We know those boys&mdash;Miguel too," and she crossed
+herself. "My uncle always look himself to the door-key
+when that Miguel Arteaga come with a serenade.
+Oh, we know those boys in this valley better than
+their mother, who thought to guard Rafael from the
+heretics. Holy Mary! No heretic in the land lived
+worse than the life on Miguel Arteaga's ranches!"</p>
+
+<p>"That does not make any difference at all," said
+the girl, wearily. "I took the vow, '<i>So long as we
+both shall live</i>.' That seems a long time, my dear
+Ana, but I must have not one other thought in this
+life."</p>
+
+<p>"And he sends thee home?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; this is not his fault&mdash;do not think it,"
+and she evaded the eyes of Ana. "He will follow,
+now that I have come; I am most certain of that; but
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>
+he was in a rage, of course, and if I would live there
+in the town he would do anything to please me,
+almost. But I feel weak some days. I&mdash;I am
+not strong enough to fight the people there whom
+his mother was afraid of. In my own house they
+will not come. In my own valley I may keep my
+promise."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor little dear," moaned Ana again. It was a
+good hope, and the girl did not seem to have much
+else to live for; but Ana had known the Arteaga men
+for many years, and had her doubts.</p>
+
+<p>"It is time that Rafael were at home," she conceded.
+"Juan Flores is around the range again;
+some say El Capitan is with him, and they are on
+this side. Last night they had supper at Trabuco
+ranch; they did no harm there, but that does not
+mean that he will do no harm elsewhere. Avila let
+him have horses once when the marshal was close
+behind; since that time Avila's house is safe, and
+his herds as well."</p>
+
+<p>"And Capitan?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" Ana's tone was carefully careless. "No
+one seems certain he is along. He does not so often
+come this way; for a year he has been somewhere in
+Sonora&mdash;only when the horses are picked for the
+government, or the Arteagas have a fine lot broken,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span>
+does he cross to this country. There is where Rafael
+needs guarding more than from heretics."</p>
+
+<p>"From Capitan? He&mdash;he&mdash;would not kill&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No," said Ana, slowly; "I never think he wants
+Rafael to die; he only wants him not to be happy;
+always he wants Rafael to remember he is not so far
+away but he can do him harm. Rafael hates the
+lonely Mission valley on account of that. In a town
+Capitan never can make him afraid so much."</p>
+
+<p>"Rafael is not a coward, I think," returned Raquel.</p>
+
+<p>"No, but he knows Capitan does not forget&mdash;there
+was a girl between them once. Rafael is the
+handsomer, so he got her. Oh, that is long ago.
+But Rafael was foolish and laughed too loud, and so
+he has to pay!"</p>
+
+<p>"But I think that is a mistake. I heard all about
+the trouble; his mother told me. Capitan fights the
+government only, and takes horses from the Arteagas
+because they go with the Americanos as friends; that
+is all. We heard it all at San Luis Rey as we drove
+north&mdash;you remember?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, I am not forgetting that," and Ana
+laughed. "I listen all the time to what his mother
+thinks she knows about that; and it is true, too, but
+not all the truth. I could tell you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She stopped suddenly, not certain it was wise to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>
+tell the girl the thing causing her amusement, for, after
+all, it was not really funny; it was serious enough in
+itself, it might frighten the girl very much. No
+other in her place would live one hour in the valley,
+or ride at night with only one man and an old Indian
+woman as guard.</p>
+
+<p>"If you know that I have been told lies, you had
+better tell me the truth," said Raquel. "It may cost
+me more to find it out alone than to hear it from a
+friend."</p>
+
+<p>"That is true," agreed Ana, after a moment of
+thought. She went to the door and looked in the
+outer room to be sure no curious ears were there.
+She could hear ecstatic cries from the girls, who were
+giving old Polonia good things to eat, and plying her
+with endless questions. She was recounting the brilliant
+worldly scenes her old eyes had lately witnessed,
+and pitying herself a little that she could not remain;
+for each day had been finer than the day before.
+And the horse-races, and the fine cavaliers, and Doņa
+Raquel always in the finest carriage&mdash;Holy Mary!
+but it was a thing to see!</p>
+
+<p>Ana closed the door tightly and came back and sat
+down beside Raquel and took her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"My aunt and the girls are over their heads in delight
+out there," she remarked, dryly; "and I will tell
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span>
+you a thing no one has been told concerning that ride
+from San Luis Rey. Rafael lost some fine horses
+that night&mdash;do you remember?"</p>
+
+<p>Raquel did not; she might have heard&mdash;but Doņa
+Luisa's death, all that sorrow, all the many and quick
+changes, had blotted out the fainter records of that
+day.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, when we stopped for coffee at the camp the
+cook told us; you may not have heard. However,
+they were taken after you went into the river. You
+have not forgotten that?"</p>
+
+<p>"How could I? Oh, yes, I remember! The priest
+told me that night. How strange it should have all
+been crowded out of my mind! He told me to give
+Rafael a message of warning. What was it? What
+was it?"</p>
+
+<p>She clasped her hands over her brows and tried to
+remember. Her first meeting with Rafael beside the
+dead body of his mother had driven out of her mind
+the message she was to have delivered. It was a
+warning, a warning of some sort; that much she was
+sure of, and&mdash;what was it about her father&mdash;her
+father's name?</p>
+
+<p>"I think," said Ana, speaking softly and watching
+her, "that he told you Felipe Estevan's daughter had
+saved Rafael Arteaga a treasure that night."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span>
+"Anita! So he did; and you know the words, the
+very words he spoke to me!"</p>
+
+<p>"I know more, Raquel mia; I know what the treasure
+was."</p>
+
+<p>"And&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is not nice to tell," and Ana hesitated. "But
+he saw you there that evening with his own eyes."</p>
+
+<p>"The priest?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, the priest. He saved you from being carried
+to the hills by the Juan Flores robbers, while Capitan
+took others of the men and secured the chests of
+wedding gifts from the old Mission. Oh, it was all
+planned for the one big revenge on Rafael Arteaga.
+But he saw you, and so&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And that priest saved me from them, Anita?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, he saved you&mdash;the priest&mdash;and sent you back
+to your friends, and sent the men across the mesas&mdash;because
+you were Estevan's daughter. But he did not
+try to save Rafael's horses; that night many of the
+finest were headed eastward and never came back."</p>
+
+<p>"And if&mdash;if the padre had not been there at the
+right moment, I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It is not a nice story, at all," acknowledged Ana.
+"They are rough men. One of them would have married
+you, and you would never have cared to see your
+friends again, and Rafael never would have found you."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span>
+"Mother of God! He hates Rafael like that, yet
+lets him live?"</p>
+
+<p>Ana laughed a little and shrugged her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Capitan is like that," she observed. "No one is
+like him. If Rafael's life were in danger this hour,
+Capitan would ride to save him. Oh, he does not
+mean that he shall die while young, and handsome,
+and rich, and beloved!"</p>
+
+<p>Her tone had a little hard ring for a moment; her
+eyes were sparkling with a certain admiration for the
+character she was describing. The story had brought
+the color back to Raquel's face, and she listened feverishly.
+What strange, strange things could be possible
+in the smiling valleys of San Juan! For the moment
+she forgot the dull ache in her heart which had driven
+her to ride alone back to sanctuary.</p>
+
+<p>"And you know all this, Anita; even the words of
+the padre! How?"</p>
+
+<p>She caught Ana's hands in hers impetuously, and
+made her look in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"He told me," said her friend, simply.</p>
+
+<p>"Then you know him? You see him sometimes?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes."</p>
+
+<p>"And he is called&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Libertad."</p>
+
+<p>"Padre Libertad&mdash;the Liberated? I never have
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span>
+heard him spoken of. Where can I find him?
+Anita, I will go alone, but this feud shall be ended.
+He will help me. And I&mdash;I never knew what he
+saved me from that night. I scarcely thanked him.
+He was so strange, so abrupt, so masterful, I accepted
+all he did, and never knew! Tell me. Anita. I will
+go to him&mdash;I will&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No one goes to him," said Ana. "He never stays
+in one place. If you see him, you see him&mdash;but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"But he comes to San Juan?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes, he comes to San Juan once a year at
+least, so they will not forget him."</p>
+
+<p>Ana's lips curled in a little smile, quickly suppressed.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Anita, that he tells you all these things, so
+that you know the reasons of Capitan&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Capitan is a sort of cousin of our family.
+Even when he is outcast, I do not want him to lose
+his soul; so I&mdash;my people do not know&mdash;but always
+I pay for a mass when I hear that the robbers have
+killed a man. I never think that Capitan would like
+to kill; still, it might happen. So I remember&mdash;as
+I remembered him when I was a little girl, and when I
+was married&mdash;and I pay for a mass, that is all."</p>
+
+<p>"I am glad to-night, very glad you tell me all this,
+Anita. Not glad that it is so, but, thanks to God, it
+is something to do&mdash;to do&mdash;to do!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span>
+"And what?" asked Ana, regarding her curiously.
+Heretofore the wife of Rafael had appeared to her
+self-restrained and cold, but to-night&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Raquel caught her hand and pressed it, and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"You are saving me to-night, Anita, and you do
+not know it," she said, with feverish intensity. "I was
+unhappy when I rode to your door; so tired of all the
+world that I could think of nothing sweeter than to ride
+on and on to the sea, and into it, and go to sleep there."</p>
+
+<p>"Raquel! That is a mortal sin!"</p>
+
+<p>"So it is, but I shall do penance, and when the
+padre comes again, O my dear Ana, you alone will not
+pay for the masses; we can do many things for good
+together, you and I. You must come to me to the
+Mission; you must! I have had many things to fight
+alone, Anita, and I never can tell you what they are.
+But this new thing we can fight together, darling&mdash;you
+for your relation and I for my husband and my
+promise; and, the saints helping us, we shall win,
+Anita, and it will all come right; and thanks to God I
+came to you this night!"</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes were alight with excitement, her cheeks
+flushed and burning. Once or twice she shivered
+slightly; and Ana, who had been reassured by the
+beautiful color so quickly replacing the pallor of the
+cheeks, grew all at once apprehensive, as she noticed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span>
+that the hands of Raquel were very cold indeed, and
+that her laugh was nervous, and that her teeth chattered,
+and that the words she tried to utter grew indistinct.</p>
+
+<p>"Holy Mary! I have given her a fever," gasped
+Ana. "That my tongue had been blistered, before I
+babbled all that to her! Raquel, for the love of God
+don't shake like that, and don't laugh at me! Stop
+it! The laugh is the worst of all! Raquel&mdash;Raquelita&mdash;darling
+mine!"</p>
+
+<p>But Ana's frenzy of fear was so irresistibly funny,
+that Raquel continued to laugh, and the laughter grew
+louder after the other women were called in, and helped
+to undress her and wrap her in blankets to smother the
+chill. That night, candles never went out in the house,
+and Ana knelt before the altar with prayers to the saints
+that they might undo the folly of her tongue. But
+old Polonia knelt instead by the couch of Raquel and
+cursed the American, that he had not died there in
+Mexico.</p>
+
+<p>In the early dawn Polonia crept unseen to the aquia,
+and of soft clay made an image of him, and thrust pins
+through every vital portion of it, that there might be
+no chance left of life in the man it represented; then,
+having finished her work, she left it where the sun
+would dry it, and crept back to the room and curled up
+on a rug, and slept the sleep of the content.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[198]</a></span>
+The good holy water she had paid money for had
+failed. But there are always two ways. If the saints
+refuse to help, there is always the devil left. If the
+padres did not get more effective holy water, whose
+fault was it that poor souls had to seek help elsewhere?
+She would do penance, of course, after the man died,
+and perhaps pay for a mass, and that would make it all
+right for everybody, and was so easy! She went to sleep
+wondering if he would die from a slow lingering disease,
+or how it would be. It was inconvenient that one was
+not allowed to select the very way the end must come.
+But the devil would know what she would like best,&mdash;that
+the foot of his horse might go down in a gopher-hole
+and pitch him on his head just so that the neck
+would break, quick, like the snapping of a finger. And
+no one would ever guess how it had been brought
+about!</p>
+
+<hr class='chapter' />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[199]</a></span></p>
+<div class='framed'>
+
+<div class='figmusic'>
+<a href='music/m199.mid'>
+<img src='images/mu199.png'
+	title='Music: El Sueņo.'
+	alt='Music: El Sueņo.'
+/></a>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">En el sueno dichoso prové&mdash;&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Delicias, rodear mi existencia.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class='dropcap'>
+<img src='images/dc199.png' title='T' alt='T' />
+</div>
+<p>Tea made of Castillian rose petals,
+and all the other little helps of
+the herb family, were brewed
+and steamed in the kitchen of
+the ranch for the saving of Raquel
+from the grasp of a strength-sapping
+fever.</p>
+
+<p>Conscience-stricken, Ana fought and argued against
+sending for Rafael. Every hour of the day and night
+she was willing to watch and work, if only Raquel's
+illness might pass without the cause of it being known;
+and she was certain that the cause was the shock of
+learning how narrowly she had escaped kidnapping at
+the hands of Rafael's enemy.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes, indeed, Raquel did murmur in her sleep
+of "Padre Libertad" and the water surging over her
+head; and then again it was "the altar&mdash;the altar&mdash;and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[200]</a></span>
+the blood on the tiles of the temple"; then "the
+ring&mdash;the ring&mdash;the ring." Sometimes she would
+moan that the beautiful one with the happiness must
+not receive the ring&mdash;never the ring of Aztec witchery!
+Then her words would trail along in inarticulate
+whispers, and sink into brief periods of slumber.</p>
+
+<p>Old Polonia, listening and watching, heard all. Of
+Padre Libertad and the dream of the water she cared
+not anything. Of the ring she understood, and was
+afraid lest a name be uttered. But when the girl
+moaned of the blood on the altar and on the floor of
+the temple, the old creature dropped in a cowering
+heap and screamed with fear, and begged with tears
+that the husband would come, and that a padre must
+come, for it was all of no use to do any more of anything;
+and that the mother of Doņa Raquel had come
+from&mdash;from death, to tell of hidden things to her
+daughter, and it meant that death was in the home
+with them, and that Doņa Raquel would never again
+sing with the birds, or gallop across the mesas!</p>
+
+<p>Ana, trembling with fright and this assurance, almost
+smothered old Polonia, that the others might not hear
+the wild prophecy, but without further delay she sent
+a letter to Rafael, and the man who bore it was to
+spare neither horses nor himself on the errand.</p>
+
+<p>The man rode well, and made only one halt to
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[201]</a></span>
+change a horse at a ranch. The sheriff of Los Angeles
+County, and many owners of ranches, were there.
+The sheriff looked at the rider and his reeking horse
+carefully.</p>
+
+<p>"From where do you come?" he asked, and the
+man jerked his thumb toward the south.</p>
+
+<p>"San Joaquin."</p>
+
+<p>"What's up there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not anything, seņor."</p>
+
+<p>It never entered his head that a woman sick at the
+San Joaquin ranch would have interest for a party of
+horsemen who looked as if out for a hunt. But the
+party exchanged glances. One of them, a farmer who
+knew him, stepped forward.</p>
+
+<p>"Where do you ride in such haste, if nothing is
+up?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"I take a letter to Don Rafael; his wife is sick."</p>
+
+<p>"Where?"</p>
+
+<p>"At San Joaquin ranch, seņor. Adios!"</p>
+
+<p>He had his foot in the stirrup, when the sheriff laid
+his hand on his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait a bit," he said, quietly. "I think it is said
+that a picnic is given to-day by Seņora Downing for
+Doņa Raquel Arteaga who is visiting in Los Angeles.
+How can she be at the same time at the San Joaquin
+ranch?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[202]</a></span>
+"I know not anything of the picnic, seņor, but I
+know a woman rode her horse into the ranch at dark
+last night, and they say it is Doņa Raquel Arteaga; and
+she has a fever, and screams and laughs all night in the
+room of Doņa Ana. I know, for I am called after I
+am asleep, to get wood for a fire. No one sleeps, and
+outside the window I hear all what she screams, and it
+is enough to freeze the blood,&mdash;all of altars where blood
+is, and a ring that she cries for; and I am glad to get
+away and ride for Rafael Arteaga."</p>
+
+<p>"Rather thin, isn't it, all of that story?" remarked
+one of the ranchmen. "Bryton, when we asked you
+to join us didn't you stop to send word to the Downings
+that you couldn't attend their little celebration
+in the hills?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>Bryton had turned from the others and was rolling
+a cigarro. He replied without looking up from his
+task.</p>
+
+<p>"And it was given in honor of Doņa Raquel Arteaga
+and the bishop?"</p>
+
+<p>"I understood so."</p>
+
+<p>"Understood? Why, that was the reason Arteaga
+gave for refusing to come along," broke in one of the
+other men. "I heard him."</p>
+
+<p>"That's so; I did too, and I thought at the time a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[203]</a></span>
+picnic for a woman and a priest was a mighty small
+excuse to give for evading&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Careful!" And the sheriff shot a warning glance at
+the speaker. "A newly married man was excused, even
+in Bible times, from going to the wars, so Arteaga's
+reason is all right."</p>
+
+<p>"Just a moment," said Bryton. "I am as certain as
+it is possible to be of anything one does not see, that
+the boy tells the truth. She is there, and she is ill. Let
+him take the message."</p>
+
+<p>"What makes you think so?" and the sheriff eyed
+him carefully. Bryton's jaw set stolidly, though his
+face flushed.</p>
+
+<p>"I know it; that's all," he said, briefly, as he turned away.</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"The boy is speaking the truth; I know it!"</p>
+
+<p>The sheriff looked after him a moment, and then
+spoke to one of the others.</p>
+
+<p>"Just keep the boy here a bit until I can see clearer,"
+he said, "if Bryton knows."</p>
+
+<p>He tramped after Bryton, who was going for his own
+horse tied in the shadow of a pepper tree.</p>
+
+<p>"Bryton, tell me <i>how</i> you know!"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't do it. Take my word or ignore it, as you like."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[204]</a></span>
+"But, hell, man! it is not your word; it is only your
+impression! Give me your word as to how you know
+it, and I'll take it quick. I suppose it's some inside
+family history you've dropped on; but the lady is at
+Los Angeles, and it is some other woman they are
+nursing at the ranch and deceiving the servants about.
+That is my theory. There are some women mixed
+up with that Flores outfit, and I happen to know that
+El Capitan, who is the brain of the gang, is related to
+the folks at that ranch. Now, is it reasonable to think
+that Arteaga's wife would ride at dark, alone, over this
+country where hold-ups are so common? Would he
+let her? Would not the Downings have known?"</p>
+
+<p>"They probably did know, and Rafael Arteaga
+certainly did," returned Bryton, impatiently. "Their
+picnic was more a matter of policy than a pleasure party.
+They wanted the bishop there, to put an end to that
+church fight. They wanted Doņa Raquel Arteaga to
+serve as an attraction and help them. She has absolutely
+refused all along to assist with any compromise;
+and to avoid it this time she has evidently ridden quietly
+out of Los Angeles, and her husband, who wanted the
+picnic very much, has kept her absence a secret."</p>
+
+<p>"But if she is as sick as this boy says, how could
+she take a thirty-mile ride on horseback?"</p>
+
+<p>Bryton made a gesture of impatience.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[205]</a></span>
+"She is there!" he insisted. "I&mdash;I feel that she is
+there. The sooner you let the boy ride for Arteaga
+and the doctor, the less likely she is to die."</p>
+
+<p>"Doctor! Did he say anything about a doctor?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"You see, if the woman was very ill, the fellow
+would say it was a doctor he was riding for."</p>
+
+<p>"No; it would be a priest. These women do their
+own doctoring. If herb teas and prayers can't save a
+life, it is let die. Good God! She may be dying now
+while we talk. Let the boy go!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'll be damned!"</p>
+
+<p>The sheriff was staring at Bryton, whose face was
+white and set. He was untying his horse, with quick
+decided movements, and cinching up the girth.</p>
+
+<p>"If you don't send the boy on that errand, I'll go
+myself," he said, curtly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;I'll be&mdash;" The sheriff broke his sentence
+midway, to stare at Bryton in amazement. "What the
+devil is it to you?" he demanded. "Arteaga is no
+bosom friend of yours, is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not that I know of. If the boy doesn't go, I go!
+The girl may be dying, and the help she wants, she's
+going to get. Speak up!"</p>
+
+<p>He was in the saddle, and the sheriff, with one look
+at him, walked back to the group.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[206]</a></span>
+"Boy, do you carry only a message to Don Rafael
+Arteaga?" he demanded, "or is it a written letter?"</p>
+
+<p>"A letter," said he, sullenly, "and Doņa Ana raise
+the hell if you don't let me take it."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! The Doņa Ana! I thought so. Doņa Ana
+is an interesting little lady. Let me see the letter."</p>
+
+<p>The man hesitated, but finally pulled the letter from
+his pocket. The sheriff took it and walked back to
+Bryton.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm humoring your queer notion all I know how,"
+he observed; "for I want you south with us instead of
+taking the back trail. You read Spanish; the letter is
+not sealed. Read it."</p>
+
+<p>Bryton read it aloud, slowly. Ana had not minced
+her words.</p>
+<div class='blkquote'>
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Rafael Arteaga</span>:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"For the love of God, come quick to Raquel.
+Among us, some way, I think we have killed her.
+That she is too good for you is no reason that
+you should let her ride alone with a heart-break.
+I think myself she does not want to live any more,&mdash;and
+no medicine cures that. Maybe you cannot
+cure it either, but it is your place to be here if she
+dies.</p>
+<p style='margin-left:6em;'>"Your cousin,</p>
+<p style='margin-left:9em;'>"Ana Carmencita Mendez."</p>
+</div>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[207]</a></span>
+"You see," said Bryton, handing it back. "I told you."</p>
+
+<p>"I see," conceded the sheriff. "It reads all right,
+but there is always a chance of&mdash;" He folded the
+paper thoughtfully, and stared hard at the ground.
+"This is all a ticklish business, Bryton, and if
+Flores's friends have got wind of this little <i>pasear</i>
+of ours, they may send all sorts of scare messages
+where they will do most good. These greasers have
+tricks of their own, and most of them are cousins&mdash;see?"</p>
+
+<p>"I see; but that is not a message of that sort.
+Does the boy take it, or do I?"</p>
+
+<p>"The boy takes it, and I'll send a man with him
+to be sure he takes that message and no other; and
+you, if you are so keen for the road, can ride south
+and investigate before Cousin Ana can expect any
+reply to her message."</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;ride alone to San Joaquin ranch?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's it! You've got the best horse in the
+bunch. If the whole outfit rides in, they'll get scared,
+but one man alone on his way to San Juan, that
+looks all right. You may chance on things worth
+while, when we finally catch up."</p>
+
+<p>"But there are other men&mdash;men who know the family better."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[208]</a></span>
+"Not one would be so apt to note the points we
+need. The family is square, but of Cousin Ana there
+have been some curious things said. She is the one
+of the lot who openly claims El Capitan as cousin.
+That's all we really know, but keep your eyes open."</p>
+
+<p>"Let me see the letter again."</p>
+
+<p>The sheriff handed it to him and looked at him
+curiously as he half turned away to read it, and his
+eyes sought out the one statement: "I think myself
+she does not want to live any more, and no medicine
+cures that. Maybe you cannot cure it either, but it
+is your place to be here if she dies."</p>
+
+<p>He pulled his hat low over his eyes and gathered
+up the reins.</p>
+
+<p>"All right," he said, briefly. "I will go. Adios!"</p>
+
+<p>A little later, and only a cloud of dust marked the
+way in the south that he had gone; and the mist in
+his eyes, hidden so well from the sheriff, was dashed
+away by his hand, but came back again and again.</p>
+
+<p>"It is your place to be here if she dies," he
+repeated, grimly,&mdash;"my Doņa Espiritu&mdash;my beloved!
+The message was written to him, but fate sent it first
+to me, and I&mdash;I will be with you to-night. You will
+not be again alone with the heart-break."</p>
+
+<hr class='chapter' />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[209]</a></span></p>
+<div class='framed'>
+<div class='figmusic'>
+<a href='music/m209.mid'>
+<img src='images/mu209.png'
+	title='Music: Indian Torture Chant.'
+	alt='Music: Indian Torture Chant.'
+/></a>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class='dropcap'>
+<img src='images/dc209.png' title='T' alt='T' />
+</div>
+
+<p>Toward evening Raquel grew
+more quiet, and Ana, seeing
+that the fever was abating, gave
+herself much blame for sending
+in such haste for Rafael; and
+what she had written to him
+only the good saints could
+tell, for she had been so frightened she had possibly
+told him unpleasant things!</p>
+
+<p>However, all things could be endured if only
+Raquel would open her eyes in reason once more,
+and lift the load of self-blame from the heart of Ana.</p>
+
+<p>Not only the young girls, but the mistress as
+well, kept a respectful distance from the room where
+Raquel lay, adjoining the hall. Her moans and
+strange words had filled them with dread, but no
+more so than had the grovelling fear of the old
+Indian woman. All day she had crouched at the door
+like a patient animal, waiting the end. Sometimes
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[210]</a></span>
+she muttered to herself in queer Indian words, sometimes
+she crept to the couch of Doņa Raquel for a
+little while, and then back again to the door, always
+mumbling or praying, and always insisting that the
+mother of Raquel had come from the grave to tell
+things, and that the last of the kings was gone now
+for always!</p>
+
+<p>Any attempt at a question, any interpretation of
+her mutterings, would arouse her to a realization
+that she was among new people in a strange land,
+and her lips would shut in a straight line, to be kept
+shut so long as she was conscious of their presence.</p>
+
+<p>The Indian servants crept past the door, with
+fearful eyes fixed in dread. She was of another race
+and another tongue than their own forebears, straight
+and slender even in her old age; darkest reddish-bronze
+in color, while a San Juan grandmother was
+always fat, and nearly always black. Beside them,
+Polonia looked almost Caucasian. Yet she proudly
+denied any white blood; she was an Indian of a hill
+tribe of the south, the name of which she would not
+utter.</p>
+
+<p>All this, and her mutterings, and the wild words
+of her mistress, put terror into the heart of the San
+Joaquin household. The girls huddled together and
+whispered tales of witches and ghosts, and thought
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[211]</a></span>
+she looked like each in turn; and Doņa Ana got
+great credit for courage in staying in the room with
+her in the night-time.</p>
+
+<p>But all their vague fears were changed to a
+definite terror when one of the Indian children
+found the clay image by the aquia, and in its yet
+moist members all the pins, for the stealing of which
+half the children around the ranch had that morning
+received a taste of the rope's end.</p>
+
+<p>Such a gray-faced, wailing lot as scampered up
+from the aquia! Girls screaming, old women wailing,
+and the mothers herding the children out of
+reach of the accursed thing!</p>
+
+<p>All was explained now, about the sudden awful
+sickness of the Doņa Raquel! The Indian woman
+from the south was a very devil! Doņa Raquel
+had perhaps had to whip her some time, and she had
+waited until she was with her in a strange house to
+do this thing: that was why she crouched at the door
+as if on guard; she was afraid some one might
+enter to pray, or with holy water, or any of the
+helps of the saints. And after the life had gone from
+Doņa Raquel, who could tell that she might not kill
+others, even all of them on the ranch? Since she had
+in one hour's time changed her mistress from a well
+woman to a crazy woman who laughed, how long
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[212]</a></span>
+would it take to do the same for a dozen? Not a
+day! In a week she could kill them all!</p>
+
+<p>Panic seized the entire herd. They raced in terror
+for the ranch-house and overwhelmed the mistress
+with their fears. Her daughters clung together, white-faced
+at the frenzy facing them. The men were out
+on the ranch and ranges; Don Enrico was with them,
+and there was no one to control the dark mob of
+fanatic faces, any more than one could head a stampeding
+herd of cattle: that was what terror developed
+in them&mdash;the mad, unreasoning rush of animals to
+trample underfoot, or tear to pieces, the thing they
+feared.</p>
+
+<p>The mistress could only gasp, "Pray to God&mdash;pray
+to God!" but her voice was lost in the tumult
+of the wild chorus. It was too late for prayers;
+prayers were no good after a devil had got hold
+of any one! Then there was only one thing to do,
+and they had the knife for the meat and the axe
+for the wood! A devil could be burned out, or
+drowned out, and there was not water enough this
+side of the sea for the drowning; therefore&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>In vain their mistress screamed, and her daughters
+clung to the bare brown arms of their serving-women.
+They were thrown aside in the stampede of the savage
+herd. Let the lady say what should be done with
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[213]</a></span>
+white blood; but this was an Indian, and an Indian
+of a strange tribe and country!</p>
+
+<p>Even in their panic the bovine cowardly herd
+remembered that fact; there would be no Indian
+relatives of the witch to wreak vengeance on them;
+she was the devil's own, and she had no other
+kindred!</p>
+
+<p>They tore across the hall, sacred at other times to
+the family, and Ana, rising in wonder at the tumult,
+was met at the door by the mob. She retreated to the
+couch of Raquel, with outstretched arms to protect
+her guest, as she commanded that they be gone.</p>
+
+<p>Her words were scarcely heard. At the door,
+crouching, and with covered head, they found her
+they wanted, and dragged her unresisting through the
+hall and out into the open.</p>
+
+<p>The mistress, sick and half fainting, stumbled to
+her own room, and cowered at the altar, with one
+daughter clinging to her and sobbing, while the other
+stood at the portal of the patio and called for some
+of the boys, or a man, or horse for any one who could
+ride for help and stop the horror.</p>
+
+<p>"Mother of God! They make the fire!" she screamed.</p>
+
+<p>It was true. They were dragging the wood and
+making ready for a fire. Children followed their
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[214]</a></span>
+mothers, gathering leaves and straw. One black-skinned
+creature had brought a shovel of coals, and
+was lying prone on the ground beside it, blowing it
+with her breath until it glowed and sent demoniac
+lights into her heavy-lidded eyes. One old hag held
+the devil's witness, the clay image, before the accused,
+and after one brief look Polonia made no struggle.
+It was fate; she had known from the feverish words
+of Doņa Raquel that some one must die as sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>Then she began to croon a strange whining chant,
+and the hands of those holding her fell away in sudden
+terror of even the touch of her. Slowly she
+stumbled to her feet, and looked at the sun, and
+raising her old hands toward its lowering light, waved
+them to and fro in weird salutation, never checking
+the strange song or chant.</p>
+
+<p>Ana had a pistol, and stood in wavering uncertainty
+as to whether she should run out, or stay on
+guard beside Raquel; but to the final adjuration she
+responded as one suddenly aroused from a stupor of
+fear, and rushing to the little plaza she screamed
+loudly and then fired two shots in quick succession;
+then after a deliberate little pause she fired once
+more, and with pale cheeks turned toward the door,
+trembling, and waiting.</p>
+
+<p>"God be praised! See, help is coming," gasped
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[215]</a></span>
+Juanita, pointing northward. "Good! The dust&mdash;the
+man on the horse&mdash;and how he rides&mdash;how he
+rides!"</p>
+
+<p>Ana watched the rider, fascinated and weak with
+terror. Juanita was laughing and crying with joy, but
+her cousin stood pale and motionless, and said not a
+word as the horseman swept past the garden to the
+back of the house, where smoke was rolling up in a
+white cloud.</p>
+
+<p>He was none too soon. The fire was leaping in
+long tongues from the crackling sycamore boughs.
+The dark faces of the fanatics were alight with frenzied
+eagerness for their pious task of destroying a witch
+before they might be interfered with. They had
+heard the screams and shots, and knew what they
+meant, and the log they were tying the witch to was
+held upright by many willing hands.</p>
+
+<p>Her hands were already tied together; there was
+nothing left to do but fasten a rope around her at the
+waist, and toss both log and witch into the hottest
+corner.</p>
+
+<p>And then Juanita ran screaming toward the group,
+and back of her rode a man on a fiend of a horse,
+knocking the pious devotees right and left, and caught
+up the limp figure of old Polonia and flung it on the
+saddle in front of him.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[216]</a></span>
+She opened her eyes and looked at him once as he
+raised her from the ground, and then closed them
+and looked no more. It was all of no use&mdash;neither
+the holy water to keep away the thought of him,
+nor the witchcraft to take the life from him. It
+was the accursed Americano, and the charm had only
+served to bring him more quickly!</p>
+
+<p>After the first staggering blow from the stranger's
+horse, some of the stronger spirits rallied, and lunged
+forward to drag the woman from her rescuer, while
+others lashed his horse that it might become uncontrollable.
+Two able-bodied wenches held on like
+grim death, despite the quirt which he brought down
+across their shoulders again and again, while he held
+the horse and Polonia with one arm.</p>
+
+<p>The animal, between the lashing of the mob and
+the roaring of the flames, was leaping madly, and the
+rider had all he could do to control its terror. Any
+moment a shot, or a club, or a stone thrown at his
+own head might give them two victims instead of one.
+That was Juanita's one wild fear. She screamed for
+Ana with the pistol, but Ana had sunk down, white
+and trembling on the doorstep, as she saw a black
+form suddenly appear in the midst of the howling mob
+of savages. An instant she saw him on the outer
+edge of the leaping, struggling circle, and the next he
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[217]</a></span>
+was by the head of the horse, and a strong arm struck
+right and left until there was space enough to show
+he was a bronzed, bearded man in a priest's habit.</p>
+
+<p>"Back to your kennels, dogs!" he cried, sharply.
+"Since when have ye dared strike at gentlemen? On
+your knees, every one of you! On your knees!"</p>
+
+<p>The younger girls and children dropped in the dust,
+but some of the older were less willing to give up.</p>
+
+<p>"She is a witch, father; she is killing a woman,"
+cried one; "it is right a devil be put in the fire!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then how hot must the fire be made when your
+day comes!" he replied, and raised his hand and spoke
+slowly, solemnly, "Thrice heated will that fire be
+for the thrice-accursed! To your knees, in the name
+of God!"</p>
+
+<p>With sullen, shamed, disappointed faces, they
+obeyed. A white man who is a stranger they dared
+attack, if enough of them were together, but not a
+priest&mdash;a priest who could hit hard enough to knock
+a bull down.</p>
+
+<p>"That was a close shave, padre," observed the
+American, with a breath of relief. "They had this
+poor old wretch almost pulled in two&mdash;will you take
+her?"</p>
+
+<p>The priest made a step forward, and then halted
+and smiled, as in vague perplexity.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[218]</a></span>
+"I have not the pleasure of understanding English,"
+he said, gently.</p>
+
+<p>Ana arose and came forward; she was still very
+pale and still trembling; she looked at the priest
+and tried to speak, but the words were smothered in
+a half sob.</p>
+
+<p>"My daughter," he said, quietly, "take courage."
+Then he glanced at the pistol still in her hand. "It
+was you who fired? That was right. I was on the
+hill in the edge of the wood, and it is well you sent
+that warning. Your American friend said&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I speak a little Spanish too," remarked Bryton,
+in that tongue; "it is the woman with the tied
+hands I wanted you to take."</p>
+
+<p>The padre did so, untying the rope deftly, and
+steadying her wavering figure, while Bryton slipped
+from the saddle, and spoke to Juanita, who had the
+one welcoming face he had seen.</p>
+
+<p>"I know you," she said, eagerly. "Did I not see
+you at San Juan Capistrano, at Alvara's and at the
+Mission? I was sure of it. This is my cousin
+Doņa Ana and Father&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Libertad," the padre interrupted, briefly, and spoke
+directly to Bryton, "from Mexico."</p>
+
+<p>"You will think us all savages to allow this,
+father," and she pointed to the huddled Indians
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[219]</a></span>
+and the leaping flames; "but it was all so quick&mdash;like
+that&mdash;no one could think! My mother is in
+hiding from it, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Father," said Ana, speaking for the first time, "a
+priest is needed in the house. We have a woman
+who may be dying. Will you come quickly?"</p>
+
+<p>She was eager to separate the priest from the others,
+and, her speech was nervous and eager.</p>
+
+<p>"Dying?" he repeated, "is that what they meant
+when they said the Indian had killed a woman?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, father," broke in the quavering tones of old
+Altagrazia, "here it is&mdash;the devil she made!" and she
+held up the clay image, from which the head had been
+broken in the <i>męlée</i>. "One day ago the lady is well
+and rides like a caballero, and this day the sun goes
+down and she dies. The Indian from Mexico put on
+the curse!"</p>
+
+<p>Old Polonia understood, and screamed denials in
+her native tongue, and then turned to the padre and
+pointed to the American.</p>
+
+<p>"It is that man!" she cried, shrilly, "he is a
+devil! He does not die&mdash;not for anything! And
+while he lives he breaks the heart of my mistress. It
+is he; that is the man! Put on him the curse of the
+Church, father! Put on him the curse to send him
+to a desert where he never can find a road again!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[220]</a></span>
+The padre smiled grimly. "That is all they use
+their religion for after a century of Christianity," he
+observed. "They still stick to their devil-worship,
+and call on the Church only when they want maledictions
+or absolution. Woman, you talk like a fool.
+Did you do this?"</p>
+
+<p>He took the headless clay pin-cushion and held it
+before him. Polonia flashed one vindictive glance at
+him and then nodded her head sullenly. It was bad
+luck to lie to a padre.</p>
+
+<p>"It was to save her," she muttered, "but the Americano
+is a devil, and nothing kills him."</p>
+
+<p>She turned one glance of hate and fear upon her
+rescuer, and moved toward the house.</p>
+
+<p>"She means you?" asked the padre.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, she is crazy, that old Indian," cried Juanita;
+"always she makes me afraid. The Seņor Bryton
+she never perhaps has seen until this minute. That
+is her thanks that he pull her from the fire!"</p>
+
+<p>The padre turned for one level look at the pale
+face of Ana.</p>
+
+<p>"Your name is Bryton?" he then said, quietly.
+"Will you, Seņor Bryton, see that these savages do
+not attempt another roasting, while I look to the
+woman who is dying?"</p>
+
+<p>Bryton turned to Juanita.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[221]</a></span>
+"Is it so bad as that?" he asked. "The Doņa
+Raquel&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"We think she is better this evening; still, it may
+be a fever coming; one never knows. Ah! there are
+my father and the men."</p>
+
+<p>Don Enrico Cordoba and some vaqueros rode
+madly through the corral and into the place of the
+huge bonfire and the still kneeling Indians. Now
+that their white heat of passion was over, they remembered
+only the beating they would get, and crouched
+doggedly where the padre had bidden them; the
+younger ones wept with fear when Juanita told her
+father the story.</p>
+
+<p>"Holy God!" he shouted in a rage, breaking in
+on her recital. "In my house to trample on my
+family and drag a woman to the fire! Tomás, count
+every head and remember every name. In three
+days every one shall be tied to a tree and whipped; if
+one runs away, she shall be caught and whipped twice,&mdash;once
+here on the ranch, and once on the Mission
+plaza of San Juan, on a Sunday after mass. You
+cattle, you dogs, you devils, begone from my sight!"</p>
+
+<p>He struck right and left with the green-hide reata,
+spurring his horse after those who stumbled along too
+slowly to suit him, striking old and young alike as
+they ran wailing with terror at the promises he had
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[222]</a></span>
+made them, and which they knew would be kept.
+The Mexican master was quite as prone as the Indian
+servants to find acute methods of torture or punishment.</p>
+
+<p>When all were despatched he rode back, puffing
+and laughing, to his daughters and guest, with whom
+he shook hands heartily.</p>
+
+<p>"Holy saints! but we did ride when we saw the
+smoke; it looked like the house on fire. It winds a
+man, a ride like that at my age," and he shook his fat
+sides with laughter. "Come inside and have a glass
+of whiskey, Seņor Bryton. We met at the alcalde's
+last year when the army officers were in San Juan?
+Yes, I thought so. I am glad you have come to
+my house, and&mdash;who knows&mdash;you maybe saved my
+wife and my daughters as well as the old woman.
+When these savages get the taste of blood, they
+are crazy wolves, never fighters in the open, brave
+only when there is a mob like that. Come in, come
+in! Juanita, go tell your mother we have a guest
+who has saved you all. What was it you said of
+a padre? where is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"With Doņa Raquel, father."</p>
+
+<p>"She is worse?"</p>
+
+<p>"We do not know, but thanks to the Virgin, she
+no longer laughs or cries. Ana is there. If she live
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[223]</a></span>
+or die, we all feel the padre has come if the husband
+do not."</p>
+
+<p>"Humph! Oh, yes, yes, always the priests!" he
+grunted. "Women can't keep house without the
+padres. I think I build a chapel for my women;
+then they can pray all the time to be sure they save
+my soul," and he laughed skeptically; then he tossed
+aside his sombrero, and brought bottles and glasses to
+a little table of marble on the veranda. "Will you
+have whiskey, or the bottle of wine?"</p>
+
+<p>"I prefer your own wine of the ranch, Don Enrico,"
+and Bryton poured out the white moselle, of
+which the Cordoba family was justly proud; "I think
+the padre was also off a journey, seņor; perhaps a
+swallow of this fine wine&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, let the women alone to look after the wants
+of the padre," laughed his host. "They own my
+house when they are in it, though sometimes I never
+see them. 'How much money do you want?' I
+say when they come, and that ends my business with
+the padres! I buy and sell with them and get beaten
+at <i>monte</i> or <i>malilla</i>, but I let women do the praying
+with them! Here comes my wife. Refugia, this
+is the preserver of your house, the Seņor Bryton.
+Have some whiskey, dear; you are still pale."</p>
+
+<p>"Pale! Never shall I get over this day. Think
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[224]</a></span>
+of the shame of it! Doņa Raquel Arteaga has been
+entertained like a queen by the bishop, and when she
+honors our home, her servant is dragged out to be
+burned! The word will go out that we are savages.
+Enrico, never so long as you live do you leave this
+house again without a man in it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Surely not. Drink the whiskey, dear, and be
+composed."</p>
+
+<p>Doņa Refugia drank the fiery liquor, and appeared
+to enjoy it very much, but it had not a quieting
+influence. It rather helped her to remember and
+recount all the details of her own stages of fear during
+the stampede of the self-appointed executioners.</p>
+
+<p>"After the night we all had," she lamented, "to
+have it followed by such a day! God grant that
+Doņa Raquel slept or was unconscious through it all.
+Had she seen those fiends, it might have killed her
+or brought back the fever. Juanita says a padre has
+come, which is the one lucky thing."</p>
+
+<p>"Seņor Bryton came first, which was a more lucky
+thing," said her husband; "all the saints could not
+have saved the woman from the fire if he had not
+come when he did. Such a thing has not happened
+here in this valley since I was a boy. Have some
+more of the wine; it will give you an appetite for
+supper."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[225]</a></span>
+At the mention of supper his wife remembered that
+all the help of the kitchen might have deserted the
+premises under the scourging of Don Enrico's reata,
+and calling the girls to help, she left the gentlemen to
+their glasses.</p>
+
+<p>At the hall she halted to ask after Raquel, and in the
+shadow saw her niece and the padre talking softly.
+Ana's head was bent as though weeping, and the hand
+of the padre was smoothing her hair, and his words
+were reassuring.</p>
+
+<p>"There, there! it is not so bad, after all," he was
+saying. "You did the best you knew; and now that
+I am here, there is nothing to do but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I know," broke in Ana; "you say all this so
+I will not blame myself. You would do the same
+if the worst, the very worst, happened."</p>
+
+<p>"It is not going to happen," he said, quietly;
+then, as he saw Doņa Refugia in the hall, "Your
+friend is surely not so dangerously ill as you fear;
+by to-morrow&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Ana looked up quickly at his change of tone, and
+arose to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Here is my aunt," she said. "Aunt Refugia,
+this is a padre journeying south to Mexico. He&mdash;he
+came at the right moment to help Seņor Bryton,
+and I have asked him to stay&mdash;and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[226]</a></span>
+"Of course," said Doņa Refugia, promptly. "Thanks
+to God you are here this night! Show him to the
+padre's room, Ana, while I see to supper. Is she
+sleeping?" she asked, nodding toward the couch.</p>
+
+<p>They did not know; she lay with closed eyes most
+of the time, and they received no replies to queries,
+but Ana felt that she only slept fitfully, and then
+her own muttered words were certain to arouse her
+to a sort of half wakefulness in which she was simply
+conscious of the presence of some one without caring
+in the least who it was. The entrance of the mob
+had not impressed her mind more clearly than the
+visionary pictures of the night before.</p>
+
+<p>Old Polonia had again crouched outside the door, in
+the hall, wordless as before, and, except for some slight
+disarrangement of her clothing, showing less sign than
+might have been expected of the horrid scene she had
+been a part of. She had gone in to look at her mistress,
+had swallowed some wine offered her by Juanita, and
+with a short guttural laugh had settled herself outside
+the door as a sentinel&mdash;or near enough to hear the
+slightest call from Raquel.</p>
+
+<p>The priest regarded her sharply and turned to Ana.</p>
+
+<p>"You are certain it was not Estevan's daughter she
+meant to harm?" he asked, quietly, but not so low but
+that the sharp ears of the Indian caught the name.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[227]</a></span>
+She pulled a corner of the mantilla from across her eyes
+and looked at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Sure," said Ana, "why, she was her nurse, and
+the nurse of her mother before her. She would make
+a carpet of herself for Raquel's feet."</p>
+
+<p>"The nurse of her mother before her," said the
+priest, slowly. "Then she is of that strange hill
+tribe of the temple mountain, and she herself is
+not a common Indian. To have been nurse to
+that family of the priests, means that her own family
+was entitled to notice. Yet she has followed, in her
+old age, to a strange land. Yes, it must mean devotion.
+But why does she dislike the American?"</p>
+
+<p>"God knows! She could not have ever seen him
+before. I thought she lied."</p>
+
+<p>"The hate in her eyes was no lie," observed the
+padre. "His presence here was lucky, but it is not
+explained, any more than is my own. To me it
+looks&mdash;well, as I said, he is in with the officers."</p>
+
+<p>"And it is my fault he has seen you&mdash;my fault,"
+murmured Ana. "If you would only go at once&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I think not; it is a good chance to watch the
+gentleman. If I were sure that old woman meant
+her hate for him&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He stared at Polonia a moment, and then nodded
+his head.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[228]</a></span>
+"I'll take the chance," he decided, and went alone
+to her and pulled the cover entirely from her face.</p>
+
+<p>"Friend of a daughter of many kings," he said,
+slowly.</p>
+
+<p>She stared at him, and stumbled to her feet in salutation.</p>
+
+<p>"It is true, my father, but the kings of the hills are
+dead; and now," pointing toward Raquel, "there will
+be no more in the land."</p>
+
+<p>"Who knows?" said the strange padre. "There
+still lives a daughter; guard her better than you did
+her mother when I carried love messages from
+Estevan."</p>
+
+<p>"Ai! I know you now. You have become padre,
+and you guard her from the heretics&mdash;the heretics,
+father," and she pointed toward the veranda where
+Don Enrico and his guest could be heard in conversation.
+"That accursed Americano&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Sh&mdash;h! quiet, you!" and he placed a hand on her
+arm authoritatively; "make no noise, say no words,
+but watch him all the time&mdash;every time when I am
+out of sight. Understand?"</p>
+
+<p>She glanced from the padre to Ana, who nodded
+her head, and at once the dark old face was illuminated;
+at last she was not alone in this strange land! Others
+were here who hated the Americano, and that made
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[229]</a></span>
+them her kindred. She caught the hand of the padre
+and pressed it to her forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"I watch always," she promised, fervently; and
+to herself she thought, "After all, we get him killed
+some way, if the padre, who was a soldier, helps."</p>
+
+<p>They left her in her chosen place, crouched in the
+hall just outside the door of Raquel, content at last
+that she was not alone in her hatred of the man whom
+she blamed for the weary hours of wretchedness lived
+through by her mistress.</p>
+
+<p>Ana showed the padre to the room set aside always
+for the use of such priests as travelled from San Gabriel
+to San Juan. They were not so many of late years,
+but in this house they were always honored guests, no
+matter what their order, or land, or language.</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid&mdash;afraid!" said Ana, as she opened the
+door; "if some one should come who knows&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No one will," he said, reassuringly, "and this may
+be a good chance to learn much. Go, help your aunt,
+and forget to fear."</p>
+
+<p>Ana sighed, but went as he bade, to the kitchen,
+where Doņa Refugia was doing her best to make
+amends for the distraction of the cooks. They were
+like big, fat, frightened children, not one of them of
+any use that night.</p>
+
+<p>Still, there chanced to be enchilladas made the day
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[230]</a></span>
+before, and the tortillas took but a little while to bake,
+and the bonfire in the yard had settled to a bed of
+gleaming coals where the beef could be barbecued with
+no delay but the sending of some girls to the creek for
+spears of peeled willow. Ana glanced out and saw
+them squatted peacefully around the red heap, turning
+the poles on which the strips of beef were hung, as
+phlegmatic as though they had not howled for a human
+roasting there not an hour ago.</p>
+
+<p>Juanita had made the table look very nice, in honor
+of the strange American guest who had followed her
+call and saved the family from the disgrace of such a
+killing.</p>
+
+<p>He filled her girlish ideal of the heroic, and she
+was not like some women who thought that California
+girls should marry only their own race: a big American
+husband seemed the finest thing in the world to
+Juanita.</p>
+
+<p>So there were red geraniums on the table, and yellow
+poppies, and the best new plates brought from a
+steamer at San Pedro but a month before; they were
+a bright blue, and Juanita thought the color combination
+very fine indeed. She ran to put on a new dress,
+that the stranger might not think they all looked as if
+the house had been wrecked. Ana, for a wonder, was
+indifferent to her own personal appearance, and kept
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[231]</a></span>
+on an old black dress with not even a collar of lace to
+break its severity.</p>
+
+<p>Don Enrico showed Bryton to a room where he
+could wash and brush a bit, but so interested was he in
+his chance guest, that he remained at the door chatting
+affably, and recounting the word he had received that
+day that Flores and his men had made a big fight with
+some cattle people over in Sonora, and had either got
+a boat at San Onofre and gone out to sea, or else they
+were somewhere in the San Juan mountains, and of
+course had spies on the outlook for the marshal or the
+army men. Don Enrico himself thought it time for
+the army men to interfere&mdash;there were many army men
+in Los Angeles, and this was no longer a county affair.</p>
+
+<p>"But the devil of a trouble in this country is that
+too many Mexican men, and women too, will help to
+hide Flores's men because of Capitan, who has never
+yet taken a peso from a Mexican, except the Arteagas,
+and who never fails to strip an American if he starts
+on his trail. They like that, these Mexicans, whose
+men fought the Americanos; they are not strong
+enough to fight in the open, but they like to help
+this vagabond Capitan, who should have been priest
+instead of bandit, and who keeps up their fight for
+them under cover."</p>
+
+<p>He had entered the dining-room while talking, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[232]</a></span>
+so interested was he in his pet complaint against the
+troublesome outlaws, that he did not notice the tall
+black figure by the side of his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle, this is Padre Libertad," said Ana, almost
+timidly. Don Enrico did not like priests in general;
+he made the mistake of classing them all with the
+Catalonian padre of San Juan, whom he disliked so
+much that he would not eat at the same table. His
+women folks never knew how he would receive a man
+of the Church until he was proven to his taste.</p>
+
+<p>However, the good American whiskey had put him
+in a cordial mood, and he nodded amiably as he took
+his seat.</p>
+
+<p>"A good day to you, padre," he said. "You tramped
+a long way in the dust to find trouble, did you? Well,
+the women are thanking the saints you came at the
+right time, you and Seņor Bryton. So it is all very
+well, and God send that the fight gave you an appetite."</p>
+
+<p>And evidently something did, for the priest ate like
+a vaquero off the ranges. Don Enrico felt a growing
+respect for the man who could eat more barbecued meat
+than himself, and drink as much red wine. In fact,
+all did ample justice to the beef of the bonfire built for
+old Polonia,&mdash;all except Ana,&mdash;who still looked pale
+and uneasy, and Bryton, who made a pretence of eating,
+but who refused a second glass of wine, a thing
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[233]</a></span>
+the padre noticed with a smile, and their host commented
+on vigorously.</p>
+
+<p>"You can't drink&mdash;you Americans," he insisted;
+"and look at your plate,&mdash;not half empty! It takes
+students and brain-workers like the padre and me
+to spoil a side of beef! You are Spanish and of
+Mexico, padre?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, not even my grandfather came from Spain; so
+I cannot claim to be Spanish," said the padre. "I
+claim only to be Mexican."</p>
+
+<p>"And good enough too! Across the line, do these
+bandits of ours make much trouble these days?"</p>
+
+<p>"No one has complained to me of them. You
+say they take most from the Americano, but in our
+country there are no Americano ranches yet; we do
+not expect to find them there for many years."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Capitan does go down there sometimes,"
+insisted Don Enrico; "I've heard of it. His family
+meant him for the Church, but the young devil ran
+away and joined the army with his elder brother.
+The Americans shot Roberto; this one was only a
+boy then, light-weight to ride, and he carried despatches,
+and never went back to the Church. Oh,
+he is Californian, all right,&mdash;is cousin to half the
+country. He is&mdash;what relation should he be to us,
+Refugia?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[234]</a></span>
+"He is second cousin to me," said Ana.</p>
+
+<p>"So if you hear of him being in trouble for his soul,
+say a prayer for him, padre, on account of his loyal
+cousin," said Juanita, and laughed teasingly; but Ana
+lifted troubled, dark eyes to the padre's face.</p>
+
+<p>"Do so, father," she said, simply; "for the sake
+of his soul, remember me!"</p>
+
+<p>"These women!" laughed her uncle; "they are
+always troubling us about our souls, padre. Don't
+let them spoil your supper with a list of prayers!"</p>
+
+<p>"And what would become of some of your souls if
+we women did not say the prayers?" retorted his
+wife. "God knows, Capitan needs them."</p>
+
+<p>"We all need them," said the priest, quietly.</p>
+
+<p>"Still, I always have understood that he is the
+whitest of the bunch," observed Bryton.</p>
+
+<p>"There are, then, different shades of blackness?"
+asked the padre. "I believe the law holds all equally
+guilty."</p>
+
+<p>"El Capitan's motives, at least, have been different,
+and it has come to be understood that when
+extremely brutal things have occurred on their raids,
+Capitan is never of the party."</p>
+
+<p>"Is it so? I did not know you Americanos gave
+Mexicans credit for such negative virtues?"</p>
+
+<p>Bryton looked up quickly. There was a mocking
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[235]</a></span>
+light in the eyes of the padre, and he was smiling
+across the table. The smile puzzled Bryton as much
+as the quick alarm in the eyes of Ana. Was she
+afraid of controversy over the still warm question of
+Mexican and United States rights?</p>
+
+<p>"I think that, individually, we give each other
+credit," he replied, "especially to the fighters. It is
+only the political schemers who make the troubles
+between the two factions. As for Capitan, he has too
+much daring not to force admiration even from the
+people he dislikes."</p>
+
+<p>Ana flashed a grateful glance at him, and a slight
+flush crept to the forehead of the padre; he gulped
+down the contents of his glass, and pushed back his
+chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you fear any trouble with those Indians
+to-night?" he asked, abruptly. "Had I better speak
+with them?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is better, perhaps, that we say a rosary, and
+bring them together that way," observed Doņa
+Refugia; "it is the best way. I will have Pedro ring
+the bell&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Ana slipped out of the dining-room beside the padre.</p>
+
+<p>"You will?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Surely; a rosary is easy. Why do you look so
+frightened? Your Americano will not eat me."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[236]</a></span>
+"But you don't like him?"</p>
+
+<p>"What does that matter? At least, he says no
+harm of a man behind his back, and it is true what he
+says of the politicians. Oh, if he keeps up the compliments,
+who knows but that we may be good friends
+yet&mdash;after he has paid for the horses he took
+north? Chut!&mdash;that is only jest! Smile a little and
+help to corral the Indians."</p>
+
+<p>Bryton, with Juanita beside him, had sauntered
+again to the veranda. Passing the door of the hall,
+he noticed Polonia still crouched there, and Juanita
+shuddered and drew away.</p>
+
+<p>"I am always frightened at her," she confessed;
+"not alone would I go in a room where she is at dark
+for all the gold they say there is in Trabuco Mountain.
+It is not so strange to me that the poor
+creatures were afraid and thought her a witch. If
+you had heard the Doņa Raquel all last night, you
+also would have thought only witchcraft could make
+her so suddenly fall sick with a heart-ache for a ring
+that would save her, and a temple where a sacrifice
+was. Truly, it was pitiful&mdash;her cries. I pulled the
+pillow over my ears. Only Ana was brave enough to
+stay close to her,&mdash;Ana and the old mummy."</p>
+
+<p>"And Doņa Ana&mdash;she thought what of it all&mdash;the
+madness&mdash;the&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[237]</a></span>
+"Oh, Ana has no love for Rafael; she blames
+him in some way; and it may be that he does make
+trouble for his wife&mdash;he would not be an Arteaga
+else. But she never mentioned his name in all her
+cries, never once. She called always&mdash;always for the
+ring, and laughed that some one who wore the ring
+was again alive. Oh, it was all of queer crazy things
+like that&mdash;ghostly things&mdash;she made laments for.
+It was like purgatory to hear her, yet Ana was not
+afraid. She has courage, that girl!"</p>
+
+<p>"She is asleep now?" he asked, suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"Who&mdash;Ana? why&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, I mean Doņa&mdash;I mean the sick lady.
+She is better&mdash;or&mdash;how?"</p>
+
+<p>"She notices nothing, and says nothing, but she
+does not scream for some one who was dead and is
+now alive, as she did last night, when she laughed
+and wept; so I think that means the herb teas have
+checked the fever. Do not you?"</p>
+
+<p>Just then the bell rang in the patio for the rosary,
+and Juanita, with a word of apology, slipped away,
+saying diffidently, "Though you are welcome to come
+and pray with us,"&mdash;divided between her wish to have
+him, and her reluctance to make it obligatory on a
+heretical guest to attend their services.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall pray with you," he said, simply, "but
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[238]</a></span>
+I shall remain here. My presence might not have
+a soothing effect on your servants. I shall smoke a
+cigar here on the terrace until you return."</p>
+
+<p>Juanita blushed. She would rather have lingered
+there herself than joined the others. The dusk was
+coming on; a few last bars of red lay along the sky
+line to the west where the sea was, and at that hour
+there was no corner so delightfully appealing as the
+great veranda where the gold-of-Ophir roses made
+a lattice of green and yellow against the warm sky.</p>
+
+<p>Ana entered and lit a candle in the hall and another
+in the room of Raquel, and went out again with a quiet
+nod to the American guest pacing the veranda aimlessly,
+and smoking one of Don Enrico's prime cigarros.</p>
+
+<p>When she had disappeared, he sauntered as aimlessly
+through the hall to the patio where the dark
+people were gathered with bent heads, murmuring
+responses sullenly, scarcely daring to lift their eyes
+to the group on the veranda.</p>
+
+<p>A few candles had been lit along the wall where
+the shadows were deepening, and in their soft light
+Bryton could see Don Enrico and all the men of
+the ranch&mdash;vaqueros and ploughmen alike&mdash;kneeling
+back of the women, and the red light yet showing
+through the gray of the ashes where the flames had
+leaped so lately.</p>
+
+<hr class='chapter' />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[239]</a></span></p>
+<div class='framed'>
+<div class='figmusic'>
+<a href='music/m239.mid'>
+<img src='images/mu239.png'
+	title='Music: El Campo.'
+	alt='Music: El Campo.'
+/></a>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ya me voy de esta campo querida,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Donde tiernas caricias gocé<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Y me voy con el alma partida,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Campo ingrata por ti llovaré!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class='dropcap'>
+<img src='images/dc239.png' title='O' alt='O' />
+</div>
+
+<p>Only an instant he gave to it all,
+but in that instant he made certain
+that every man and woman
+on the place was at prayers,
+except the old Indian woman,
+who squatted with covered head
+in the hall, and himself. His
+movements were no longer aimless. He retreated
+swiftly to the veranda, and tossed the cigarro into
+the garden. One glance he gave the wooden-like
+figure of the old Indian. Only as a last resort would
+he attempt to pass that way, but if the windows
+were not barred&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>They were not. Ana had gone against her aunt's
+Mexican rule, which was that all fresh air should
+be excluded from a sick-room; and while that lady
+and all her servants exclaimed against the admission
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[240]</a></span>
+of air, they let the blame lie on the shoulders of Ana,
+and no one closed the window. It swung wide to the
+wind of the west, and on the couch within, Bryton
+could see Raquel's face.</p>
+
+<p>The lids were closed over the violet eyes, and the
+lips were apart, showing the white teeth. It was still
+so light that he could see the little flush on the cheeks
+against the white pillow, and on her right hand one
+little old ring of plain gold. On the left hand shone
+the red gold of her new wedding-ring.</p>
+
+<p>She looked so pathetically young and so utterly
+alone, as she lay there, that all the man in him arose
+in protest, and a mist of tears blinded him for a
+moment to the beauty of her face.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor little one," he whispered, "my poor little
+broken Doņa Espiritu&mdash;my one lady of the spirit!"</p>
+
+<p>The sound of the words did not wake her, but
+the sense of them reached her some way; for she
+opened her eyes suddenly, and without any shadow
+of wonder they rested on his face.</p>
+
+<p>"I waited a long time," she said at last, "then I
+heard your voice, and I knew you were coming
+to me."</p>
+
+<p>He set his lips tightly, and nodded, but did
+not speak.</p>
+
+<p>"I waited a long time," she repeated, as a child
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[241]</a></span>
+appealing for understanding. "Did they tell you
+I thought you were dead?"</p>
+
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a href='images/p240p.jpg'>
+	<img src='images/p240w.jpg'
+	title='Then I Heard Your Voice' alt='Then I Heard Your Voice' />
+</a>
+<p>&ldquo;Then I Heard Your Voice&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>He nodded assent. No one had told him so, but
+the words explained much.</p>
+
+<p>"You said you would come back if you lived,
+and you never came, and they told me&mdash;the padre
+told me&mdash;that you were dead!"</p>
+
+<p>"So I am," he said, gently; "and they told me,
+my lady of the spirit, that you had taken the final
+vow of the convent&mdash;that the night, our one night,
+was a thing you were forgetting under a black veil.
+Child, child! they lied to us, and now&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Forgetting?" she said, slowly. "How does one
+forget a night like that, when we walked out of the
+wilderness into the day together? You never came
+back; and I&mdash;I wanted to be in the world where
+you had been, so I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I know," he whispered, gently; "I know, my
+doņa of the spirit."</p>
+
+<p>He had not meant to touch her,&mdash;only to look
+at her and speak to her once, and then ride wherever
+fate might take him.</p>
+
+<p>But she reached her hands to him, and with a
+smothered groan he knelt by her couch and his arms
+were around her.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't weep like that!" she whispered, and laid
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[242]</a></span>
+her hand on his head. "I have wept enough for two,
+since our carriages passed and I found you had not
+died. And you&mdash;you knew all the time."</p>
+
+<p>"I knew when I saw you kneel in your wedding-veil
+and take that oath&mdash;not until then. I heard his
+mother say that he was the man you loved; and, soul
+of mine! you had not said as much as that in words
+to me. So I&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You heard that? Then you know the life I have
+to live." He nodded, without lifting his head from
+the pillow of her arm. There are some things hard to
+face with open eyes, but she felt the shudder that
+passed over him. Through the opened window came
+the rise and fall of many murmuring voices repeating
+the rosary. In the gold-of-Ophir rose-tree two birds
+fluttered and called to each other in the very whisper
+of bird notes. The soft lavender-grays of a Californian
+nightfall were sifting through the warm light of
+the afterglow, and away there in the west stretched bars
+of blood red, the last trace of the dying day. All the
+sequestration of the hour was about them, all the hush
+of the pause, before the final plunge of their day into
+the shadows, and the two souls were enveloped by
+the atmosphere of that ever-recurring tragedy of the
+hours, and of lives.</p>
+
+<p>How long he knelt there he did not know. She felt
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[243]</a></span>
+his lips on her wrist, and felt rather than heard the
+broken words he was whispering&mdash;the wild, mad words
+he had meant not to say, as he had meant not to touch
+her; then her eyes grew bright as the stars picking their
+way through the vault of blue, and the golden-haired
+woman of the carriage belonged to a feverish phantasy
+of the past hours. She might exist, that golden-haired
+creature of beauty, but the real life of the man who
+knelt there in the dusk belonged only to her, to her always,
+through the bond of one starlit Mexican night
+of witchery, and this last hour of the California day.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing made any difference now; though she lived
+in a hell of purgatory all her waking life, the bonds of
+their dream life would be closer than all else&mdash;always,
+always!</p>
+
+<p>She felt suddenly well and strong. Ah, there was
+so much in the world to live for! Though they never
+met, never spoke again, this hour of the tryst would
+be his through all her life&mdash;her hour of a rosary of
+the heart.</p>
+
+<p>A girl's voice in the patio came softly through the
+dark in an old Spanish hymn. It was Juanita, and the
+service of prayer was ending in the usual duo; one of
+the vaqueros with a fine barytone voice was singing
+the echoing stanzas of praise.</p>
+
+<p>It was the signal for dispersing, but the man at the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[244]</a></span>
+couch did not know that. Neither did he know that
+the crouched form of the Indian was no longer in
+the hall. She was waiting in the dusk at the door,
+and she was clutching with a claw-like hand at the
+robe of the padre, and muttering, "He is there&mdash;it
+is true. He is there&mdash;and she is again bewitched.
+Now you will help me to kill the American?"</p>
+
+<p>The padre looked at her sharply, and then motioned
+to Ana, who was close behind.</p>
+
+<p>"Remain with the others. Make some excuse to
+keep them there&mdash;another hymn&mdash;anything. And
+be quick&mdash;quick!"</p>
+
+<p>Startled though she was, Ana obeyed, and from the
+door of the hall he heard again the voice of Juanita;
+this time it was in a favorite known to all, and the volume
+of sound told him that Don Enrico himself was
+joining in the refrain, and that no one would leave the
+patio until the finale was reached.</p>
+
+<p>No candle burned now in the hall. Polonia had
+blown it out, that no ray might enter the half-open
+door of the inner room. She would have gone with
+the padre, but the sudden vigorous grasp of his hand
+on her shoulder stopped her where she stood, and
+without a word being spoken, she knew better than
+to follow.</p>
+
+<p>Quickly as a cat of the hills, the padre crossed the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[245]</a></span>
+hall and stood where he could see the open window
+and the kneeling man, and the hand of Raquel on his
+bent head.</p>
+
+<p>"Every night when the dusk comes it will be our
+time of the day," she was saying. "They told me
+you were dead, else&mdash;but you know. I think the
+mad hours have gone by for me; I can go on living
+if&mdash;if you do not forget."</p>
+
+<p>The listening priest could not hear what the man
+said, but she heard, and smiled, and sighed.</p>
+
+<p>"There is one thing," she said, hesitatingly: "the
+ring, you have worn it a year&mdash;and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I know," and he lifted his head. "We need no
+visible emblem, you and I. I put it back on your finger,
+my lady of the spirit,&mdash;Doņa Espiritu;&mdash;a pledge of
+renunciation, and a reminder of the rosary of the dusk."</p>
+
+<p>She took from her right hand the little gold band
+and gave it to him, and in its place he slipped the
+onyx ring of the Aztec eagle and serpent.</p>
+
+<p>"I did not tell you what that ring means to my people,"
+she said, as he kissed it in its new resting-place.
+"Maybe I never can tell you. I&mdash;I thought I could
+be stronger if I wore it on my own hand, for&mdash;for the
+reason that my heart went out of my bosom to follow
+it, and&mdash;and I rode my horse as fast and as far as I
+could from you, because I&mdash;was afraid."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[246]</a></span>
+"Good God!" whispered the man. "You don't
+know what you are saying. Remember that I dare
+not touch your lips, and that I love you&mdash;love you&mdash;love
+you!"</p>
+
+<p>Then the nestling birds in the gold-of-Ophir rose
+were startled from their repose by the man who
+strode through the open window and walked blindly
+out into the garden.</p>
+
+<p>The padre watched the girl's face on the pillow for
+a moment, and heard her sobs, and retreated softly to
+the hall, where he met the others; and at Doņa Ana,
+when they were alone a moment, he smiled with a
+certain elation.</p>
+
+<p>"Look distressed no longer, little one," he said,
+reassuringly. "You have helped me to a good day's
+work, very good. Listen! I like your new American
+friend very much, and when you go to San Juan I
+count on you to help to make him welcome there.
+He is going to do me a good turn with Rafael
+Arteaga, and I forgive him all the horses he helped
+to save for the army men. He does not know it,
+but he is going to be my good friend, that fine
+Americano. He is so fine and so strong, Ana, that
+he thinks he can put a woman he loves in a niche of
+the memory, as we put statues of the saints in the
+niches of the altar-places."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[247]</a></span>
+"What do you say?" she queried, perplexed by his
+smile and words.</p>
+
+<p>"And that though the woman loves him so much
+that she kisses her own hands where his lips have
+been, and though he loves her so much that he is half
+mad at denial, yet he will leave her always there in
+the little niche of the altar,&mdash;just above his head, but
+in reach of his hands; and the hands will never try to
+lift her down, Anita. He will only look at her as he
+rides past, and leave her there to remember."</p>
+
+<p>"I think you have gone mad," said Ana, sharply.
+"What did the Indian witch tell you in the hall?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ask her!" he suggested. But when Ana did so,
+she met only scowls and gutturals. And even the
+sound sleep of Raquel, and the absolute freedom from
+delirium, brought nothing but suspicion to the heart
+of old Polonia. It was witchcraft, like all the rest,
+and the padre should have put the malediction on the
+Americano when he had so good a chance. Above
+all, he should not have let him ride away in safety.</p>
+
+<hr class='chapter' />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[248]</a></span></p>
+<div class='framed'>
+<div class='figmusic'>
+<a href='music/m248.mid'>
+<img src='images/mu248.png'
+	title='Music: Indian Reveille.'
+	alt='Music: Indian Reveille.'
+/></a>
+</div>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+</div>
+<div class='dropcap'>
+<img src='images/dc248.png' title='T' alt='T' />
+</div>
+
+<p>The padre himself rode away
+very early. Don Enrico lent
+him a horse to ride to San Juan,
+and wondered a little that the
+San Gabriel people had not
+done as much; but times were
+changing in the land. One
+could not expect the old customs to live when so
+many strangers were crowding into the country.</p>
+
+<p>The offered horse was accepted gratefully, and the
+padre breakfasted with the vaqueros, and left for the
+south before the family were astir. Bryton watched
+him go, but lingered for a sight of Ana, that he might
+hear how the night had passed inside the window of
+the golden rose.</p>
+
+<p>And Ana was the last to join the party at breakfast,
+but was a very happy creature, compared with the
+nervous, pale woman of the night before. All were
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[249]</a></span>
+astonished at the fact that Raquel announced that she
+had slept like a child and all the illness and fever were
+forgotten. She was not sure but that she could ride
+to San Juan, and above all things she was grateful to
+Ana, and wished both the girls to go with her and
+visit in the old Mission.</p>
+
+<p>The servants were again the quiet listless folk they
+had been before the finding of the witch charm. But
+as Bryton rode out of the patio after many farewells
+and blessings from Doņa Refugia, and cordial invitations
+from Don Enrico to ride back that way, and
+consider the place as his own home, there were sullen
+scowls among the dark people.</p>
+
+<p>On the veranda Juanita stood alone and waved an
+adios to him. Back of her was the open window of the
+golden rose, and a slender girlish figure swayed toward
+him for an instant and then stood erect, and their eyes
+met and lingered, while he swept his sombrero to the
+stirrup.</p>
+
+<p>Juanita wondered, since he saluted so gallantly and
+rode with his face turned toward her veranda until the
+hedge intervened, why he did not smile; she was
+accustomed to gayer caballeros. She realized that she
+must have looked very pretty in her pink gown
+framed in the blossoming vines, and she turned away
+with a pout and a shrug. After all, Fernando was
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[250]</a></span>
+right: American men did not know how to make
+love.</p>
+
+<p>Raquel was rather pale and very quiet that morning,
+but insisted upon staying up; she even remembered
+to ask what the loud calling and running of many feet
+had meant the evening before; or had she dreamed it?
+She supposed it was a stampede of horses&mdash;was
+it? Was any one hurt? She had heard the voices
+of women.</p>
+
+<p>Ana told her it was only the breaking loose of part
+of a wild herd, but that no one was injured. Old
+Polonia heard, and blinked and scowled at Ana, but
+said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>It was noon when Rafael reached the ranch and
+caught sight of Raquel in a porch-chair under the
+vines. She paled slightly at sight of him, and turned
+the onyx ring so that the carving did not show, and
+by the time he had crossed the patio and walked to
+join them, her face was a serene mask. The only
+surprise she betrayed was at the dark look he cast on
+Ana.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you two in a politician's pay, that you bring
+me from Los Angeles in a fright of life and death,
+when I am needed every minute there for the business
+matters?" he demanded, and saw in a moment
+that his wife did not understand. Ana only laughed.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[251]</a></span>
+"I did it," she acknowledged. "I sent the boy
+with some truths for you. Your wife was like to die
+the first night she came. It is by the grace of God
+she has been saved from a siege of fever. She does
+not know in the least how ill she was, but if you had
+heard her gabbling of blood-stained altars and strange
+wedding-rings, and floods sweeping over her until she
+screamed to be saved from them,&mdash;well, Don Rafael,
+you might well have forgotten to spare your horse.
+Three hours would have brought a lover here, but it
+takes thirty for the husband."</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you two quarrel always?" asked Raquel,
+indifferently. "I did not know she had sent for you.
+I was very tired, and the hot sun&mdash;something&mdash;oh
+yes, I was ill, and wakened myself screaming. But it
+is all gone. I can go home."</p>
+
+<p>Rafael tramped the veranda and sulked.</p>
+
+<p>"A fine laugh you have made for me in Los Angeles!
+They will think you were sick, that I follow
+my wife!" he said, frowning at Ana. "God of my
+soul! Why do you not get another husband to
+worry into the grave, and let your neighbors alone?"</p>
+
+<p>She only laughed again, and bent over her embroidery
+frame, where white butterflies were being
+woven on the drawn threads of linen.</p>
+
+<p>"Because no fine, manly, handsome caballero like
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[252]</a></span>
+yourself rides this way to ask me," she retorted.
+"All the most desirable men are always married."</p>
+
+<p>"The Seņor Bryton was here for the night," remarked
+Juanita.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he was? Alone?" asked Rafael.</p>
+
+<p>Juanita nodded. "And a priest," she added.
+"They both rode south."</p>
+
+<p>"Bryton alone?" mused Rafael. "I thought perhaps&mdash;Did
+any strangers ride south last night,&mdash;a
+large party?"</p>
+
+<p>No one had heard of any one passing.</p>
+
+<p>"Doņa Maria comes in a carriage by this morning,"
+he remarked, "and Mrs. Bryton. I suppose
+they will want you to travel in their carriage, if you
+feel equal to the drive to San Juan."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, she must not go to-day&mdash;not for anything!"
+decided Doņa Refugia, who had come from the hall
+and overheard. "Doņa Maria and her friend can
+stop here a few days, and then perhaps if your wife is
+strong enough&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, that is the best, the very best," assented
+Rafael, with a smile of relief. Doņa Refugia
+was making it necessary that Raquel should at least
+meet the friends of Doņa Maria. All was turning
+out well, after all.</p>
+
+<p>Raquel made no remark, only looked out idly
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[253]</a></span>
+across the garden to the fields, yellow where the mustard
+bloom glowed. She knew she could not bear it
+just yet. Later, perhaps, she could grow strong
+enough to see Bryton's wife, and hear her voice cut
+across the days and the dusks here, where his whispers
+had awakened her to life&mdash;some day, perhaps;
+but she knew it could not be either to-day or to-morrow.</p>
+
+<p>Her husband watched her curiously. If she would
+only give some sign of what she felt, as another
+woman would do! How was a man to read a woman
+who stared out on life like a sphinx, seeing nothing
+and hearing nothing?</p>
+
+<p>In the same way, she had seemed a bit of wood
+over that old legend of the curse on San Juan: it had
+not changed in the least her determination to go back
+there; yet, since she had screamed of it in a fever,
+who was to know what feeling it had awakened back
+of those fathomless violet eyes?</p>
+
+<p>Rafael turned this theory over in his mind, and
+smoked several cigarros to help to solve the problem,
+but it was of no use. It had been a very fine marriage
+for him. Her visit to Los Angeles had further
+emphasized that fact; but he had the galling feeling of
+being only prince-consort to the queen, and it was not
+so pleasant to a man who had been shown favor of a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[254]</a></span>
+different sort by many women who would have been
+glad to give him the king's place.</p>
+
+<p>To marry a girl who is like a wooden saint in a
+church may be a victory; it may be even romantic
+when she is half a nun; but it is not comforting to
+a husband who expects only a wife, a home.</p>
+
+<p>Then across his thoughts came the blue eyes and
+yellow hair of the woman he had said a reluctant
+good-bye to in Los Angeles. There was a woman
+who would have met all his friends half-way, would
+have promoted his interests, instead of closing doors
+and refusing to entertain any but the slow old Spanish,
+who were letting all the money slip out of their
+hands. In a few years their names would be forgotten
+in the new world of commerce building, through
+the Americanos in Los Angeles,&mdash;the Americanos
+whom his wife disdained, but whom the clever little
+woman of the blue eyes would have won to his interests
+in so many ways that her influence would have
+weighed down all the gold of the Estevan heiress,
+who did not know how to use it. It is only a trick
+of fate that the money always goes to the wrong people.</p>
+
+<p>So he thought, and smoked, and looked at Raquel
+Estevan de Arteaga, and wondered by what man&oelig;vre
+or stratagem he could break down her prejudices;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[255]</a></span>
+he wondered, also, how a woman with such eyes and
+such lips could be so cold. He supposed it was inherited
+from the nun, her mother.</p>
+
+<p>Rafael had never heard the story of the love, and
+revenge, and widowhood of that nun. One or two of
+the older people of San Juan had heard of it at the
+time of Estevan's death, but none knew how true it
+was. It seemed too much a bit out of the dark ages
+of the Indian records to be true of the debonair
+Felipe, who had ridden and fought to the admiration
+of all Californian Mexico, who had found women
+wherever he rode, and had made love as a caballero's
+duty. It seemed scarcely credible that he, of all men,
+should have met death in that way on the far southern
+mountain; and the older men crossed themselves and
+tried to forget it, and the younger ones never heard
+of it.</p>
+
+<p>Rafael, smoking on the veranda and watching the
+serene face of his wife, and ascribing her coldness to
+the chill of convent walls, understood her no more
+than had Felipe Estevan understood the nun who had
+stepped down from her saint's niche for him; and old
+Polonia, sitting in the shadow, watched them both,
+and in her dull brain was also a query: Would he
+ever discover that she was not cold? And would
+he find out in the same way? Both God and the devil
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[256]</a></span>
+would be needed to help them all on that day, for
+California was not the hill of the temple, where the
+Indian still ruled!</p>
+
+<p>Rafael at last rode out to the range to see Don
+Enrico about several matters. He did not care to
+alarm the women concerning the rumors of the bandits,
+but now, since he had left Los Angeles behind, he
+would just as soon ride with the vigilantes as not, and
+Don Enrico could be trusted. It would be five long
+hours before the carriage with Doņa Maria and her
+bewitching guest reached the ranch, and one must kill
+time some way.</p>
+
+<p>He killed more time than he had counted upon.
+As the sun began to lower, and he and Don Enrico
+turned their horses for the ranch-house, the dogs
+started a coyote, and with one accord the Don, his
+guest, and his vaqueros, took up the trail, following
+the howls with hue and cry over mesa and along
+creeks, and by the time the dark had fallen, they were
+far toward Trabuco. They rode back laughing and
+singing, and making little dashes at racing, under the
+early stars.</p>
+
+<p>But their laughter was changed when they rode into
+the corral. News had come from the south, and a
+bad thing had happened there. The sheriff from Los
+Angeles had been ambushed by the Flores men at
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[257]</a></span>
+Niguel Rancho, and nine men were lying dead there.
+Carts were on the way to take them to San Juan for
+Christian burial, and Bryton had sent a messenger to
+Los Angeles with the word; the man had only checked
+his horse at San Joaquin ranch to shout out the news;
+that was hours ago. The Indian who had searched
+the ranges for Don Enrico had come back and said
+he was not to be found. Doņa Refugia had thought
+it possible that they had heard the word on the ranges
+and ridden direct to San Juan, and thanked God they
+had not done so.</p>
+
+<p>She went on to recount to Rafael her terror of the
+night before, and the awful scene from which she had
+by no means recovered, and now for this horror to
+follow so close, and the dread that they might be left
+alone on the ranch&mdash;well, she was having chills at
+the thought. Ana was the only one not afraid, but
+with Ana gone to San Juan Capistrano&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Rafael grasped her arm so tightly that she gasped.</p>
+
+<p>"To San Juan?" he demanded. "Alone?" But
+he was certain of the answer before she spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Holy Maria! What a grip you have! No. Did
+I not tell you? Well, we are crazy over it all; we
+forget. No; she went with your wife, and wild horses
+could not have held either one of them."</p>
+
+<p>"A malediction on the pair of them!" burst out
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[258]</a></span>
+Rafael. "God curse the horses they ride, that they
+break their necks on the way!"</p>
+
+<p>"Rafael, for Jesus' sake, not so loud!" and Doņa
+Refugia tried to put her hand over his mouth, but he
+dashed it aside in fury.</p>
+
+<p>"Loud! Holy God! What do I care?" he demanded,
+wrathfully. "Do you know why they go
+like that? It is all a lie, that ambush story. That
+devil Ana Mendez has schemed to have some one
+ride past and call that out to you, so that they could
+pretend an excuse to ride anywhere away from here;
+and do you know why?"</p>
+
+<p>Doņa Refugia was past speech, and could only
+shake her head dumbly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I will tell you. It is because Raquel
+Estevan did not mean to meet the friends you said
+you would be pleased to entertain on their arrival
+from Los Angeles. Doņa Maria she will speak to,
+but Doņa Angela is one of the heretics she vows her
+doors will not open to. That is the reason."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Rafael&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Now listen to me," and he turned his fierce stride
+across the hall, "and God curse me if I do not keep
+my word!"</p>
+
+<p>"Rafael!" she gasped, frightened at the white fury
+of his face; but he held up his hand.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[259]</a></span>
+"I swear she shall open her door to admit the
+women she slighted, first at Los Angeles and again
+in your home. She will find she has an Arteaga for a
+master. She shall open her door; she shall receive
+her; she shall make up for the insult to your home.
+By God, she shall make up, with interest!"</p>
+
+<p>Then he strode out of the door, leaving Doņa
+Refugia in a cold terror lest the guest of whom he
+spoke had heard his words through the closed door
+of Ana's room. It had been given to Mrs. Bryton
+on the arrival of the party an hour before, and though
+the door was closed, who could tell that his words
+might not have been heard there?</p>
+
+<p>But the window on the veranda was open, and
+Doņa Refugia breathed a sigh of relief when, a few
+minutes later, she saw Mrs. Bryton's fair face emerge
+from a bower of clematis in the garden. She had
+been admiring the beauty of the lilies out there, and
+looked like one herself,&mdash;so cool, so sweetly childish
+in her little appeals for admiration of the beautiful
+blooms she loved. Rafael met her there, and was
+enslaved anew by the blue eyes, as he bent over her
+tiny hand and kissed it furtively, and walked with her
+to show her Doņa Refugia's carnation-beds, and
+under the starlight help her to see the beauties of
+the San Joaquin garden.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[260]</a></span>
+But old Polonia, who had heard his words to Doņa
+Refugia, and who watched the two walking in the
+starlight, muttered in her Indian jargon, "Have a
+care, Don Rafael; have a care!"</p>
+
+<p>Despite Rafael's doubt, it was all true about the
+ambush. It was quite true, and very awful. It had
+occurred in the morning, and Bryton had missed it
+only by his stay that night at the ranch. But he was
+also quite right when he said the two girls had left
+the ranch for other reasons. Raquel was quietly preparing
+to leave, when the word came warranting her
+in taking Ana. The two rode south with few words,
+each so wrapped in her own reasons for going that she
+gave no thought to the reasons of the other.</p>
+
+<p>They found the town panic-stricken. Don Juan
+Alvara was ill, and Padre Andros absent at San Luis
+Rey. Raquel rode into the plaza white and weak
+from the long ride, but sat erect to hear of the things
+done and the things needed for the dead.</p>
+
+<p>It was almost dark. While Ysadora the cook prepared
+supper, Ana questioned concerning a padre who
+had ridden a San Joaquin horse to San Juan that
+morning, but no one had seen him. Later, the animal
+was found grazing along Trabuco Creek. Evidently,
+some one had passed with a wagon or a herd going
+south, and had given the padre help on the way;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[261]</a></span>
+beyond that, no one thought, except Ana, and what
+she thought she did not say.</p>
+
+<p>Raquel walked through the little hall of the
+Mission into what had once been the garden of the
+padres, the little enclosed bit at the back of the belfry
+built after the falling of the tower. It was the one
+little corner from which the world seemed shut out.
+Under the carved doorway she passed into the old
+domed vestry with its stone centre cut, or worn
+by the dripping water, into the semblance of a leering
+face; "the devil's face," it was called, and people
+looked from its queer smile to the twisted serpent-like
+carving over what had once been the arch to the
+church itself, and wondered what the strange carvings
+meant, and found no one to answer. They were
+only a sign left by an unknown Mexican sculptor a
+half-century ago.</p>
+
+<p>Raquel glanced at them and shuddered, and passed
+out into the great unroofed, beautiful place of fluted
+pillars and carven cornices.</p>
+
+<p>The pink reflection of the sunset yet lingered on
+the mesa and the highlands above the sea. The
+world of the strange new town to the north was left
+behind. Here among the ruins consecrated, she
+breathed the air of home-coming, and paced the old
+altar-place with noiseless step, and with closed eyes
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[262]</a></span>
+and hands clasped she murmured prayers not in the
+book, taught by the good nuns; and she drew great
+breaths of strength from the wine-like air, and
+knew that somewhere, riding the mesa, a man was
+remembering this hour of the rosary.</p>
+
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a href='images/p260p.jpg'>
+	<img src='images/p260w.jpg'
+	title='Here among the Ruins Consecrated'
+	alt='Here among the Ruins Consecrated' />
+</a>
+<p>&ldquo;Here among the Ruins Consecrated&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Ana found her later on the altar steps, with
+head bowed over her knees. Gaining no reply to
+questions, Ana felt that she had been weeping. She
+undressed her and put her to bed in the little chamber
+of the barred window facing the sea, and gave her all
+the care a devoted friend could in the grim isolation
+of the old walls.</p>
+
+<p>And that was the home-coming of Raquel after her
+half-royal reception in the City of the Angels.</p>
+
+<hr class='chapter' />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[263]</a></span></p>
+<div class='framed'>
+<div class='figmusic'>
+<a href='music/m263.mid'>
+<img src='images/mu263.png'
+	title='Music: El Capotin.'
+	alt='Music: El Capotin.'
+/></a>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Con el capotin, tin, tin, tin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">que es ta noche va llover.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Con el capotin, tin, tin, tin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">que sera al amanecer!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class='dropcap'>
+<img src='images/dc263.png' title='W' alt='W' />
+</div>
+
+<p>When Andres Pico and his men
+rode into San Juan with the
+doubtful decoration of necklaces
+of human ears strung on rawhide
+strings, there was a breath
+of relief from the natives: it
+meant that the bandits had been
+"confessed," according to the General's naive explanation
+of the absence of prisoners they knew he had
+taken; the backbone of the bandit gang was broken.</p>
+
+<p>The vigilantes were the heroes of the hour. As
+the band of outlaws divided and fled in various directions,
+they were waited for at every pass and hewn
+down by the dozen. Only two&mdash;Fontez, who had
+shot the sheriff, and El Capitan, who had not been
+seen by any one at any time of the raid&mdash;were still
+missing. One of the prisoners, on being questioned,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[264]</a></span>
+stated that Fontez had taken his share of the plunder
+and started for Lower California; and when questioned
+as to El Capitan, swore wrathfully, because El Capitan
+had disagreed with Flores over the raid, refused to be
+counted in, and in consequence they would all go to
+hell! If El Capitan had helped, things would have
+been different, very different. He had voted against
+starting out with fifty men to drive the gringos from
+Southern California; he had fought them before in the
+open, and knew them. He had told Flores he was a
+fool, and left them in Santiago Caņon, and ridden
+away, and after the slaughter of the sheriff and his
+men he had ridden out of the mustard on a horse of
+the San Joaquin brand, and told them to ride south
+and stop for nothing; and no one had seen him since.
+They had not taken his advice&mdash;and now it was all
+over! A little later, it certainly was over for that particular
+unfortunate, and his ears were added to a string
+decorating a swarthy ranchman, who was especially
+lionized because of his gruesome trophies.</p>
+
+<p>In the plaza of San Juan Mission, Ana listened to
+the hero of the necklace reciting all the glories of the
+campaign, and shuddered at the ghastly witness of its
+veracity. Raquel, standing beside her horse, listened
+also and felt a loathing of it all. Regular war, such
+as she had heard of, had never appeared so awful as
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[265]</a></span>
+this series of slaughters from ambush, where the victors
+of either side decked themselves like savages.</p>
+
+<p>"It is bad that we have no soldiers left who are
+hidalgos," she remarked. "The wild Indians carry
+scalps at their belts; I did not know people did so
+who had learned their religion from the padres."</p>
+
+<p>She mounted and rode toward the sea, the only
+woman who dared venture alone out of sight of the
+protecting walls of the Mission in those days. The
+man with the necklace looked after her, and then up at
+the line of grain-sacks still left as a barricade along
+the roofs of the corridor. Behind them, men with
+rifles had lain through the days and nights when the
+panic was at its worst, and women and children had
+huddled in dread of massacre in the inner court.</p>
+
+<p>"Does the seņora forget all that," he asked, "or is
+there a caballero to guard her where she rides?"</p>
+
+<p>Ana turned on the hero, glad of an outlet for her
+pent-up anger. "You&mdash;you butcher!" she said between
+her little white teeth. "You know Rafael
+Arteaga is not here. What other man would ride
+with his wife?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who knows?" he laughed, easily. "The lady is
+not afraid, that is clear; and El Capitan is somewhere
+in the hills, or the willows."</p>
+
+<p>She said nothing, realizing that he was watching her
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[266]</a></span>
+closely, for all his apparent carelessness. When she
+continued silent, he laughed and swept his sombrero
+to the ground and sauntered away. She knew then
+that he had simply tried her, to see if by any chance
+she showed knowledge of, or fear for, the outlaw she
+had never disowned as cousin.</p>
+
+<p>Teresa, seated beside her, saw her changing color,
+and reached over, patting her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Even when thou wert little the Capitan made a
+pet of thee," she said, kindly; "and now every friend
+he ever had is being watched. If&mdash;if&mdash;in any way
+you could warn him&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Warn him? How can we, when no one
+knows? I would walk barefoot across San Juan
+Mountain if I knew where he was hidden. He may
+be dying, or dead."</p>
+
+<p>"That is so," decided Teresa, placidly; "and it
+would be better. They will always hunt him if he is
+alive."</p>
+
+<p>There was silence between them for a little while,
+and then she added, "Well, there will be no mourning
+for him in the Arteaga family. Rafael will be glad."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he!" muttered Ana, with impatience. "He
+is hanging on the skirts of Doņa Maria these days,
+when he should be here with these other fine gentlemen."
+She pointed to the plaza where the vigilantes
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[267]</a></span>
+and their friends were gathered preparatory to starting
+on a new trail suggested by an Indian who had seen a
+white man without a horse somewhere in the hills.</p>
+
+<p>"On the skirts of Doņa Maria," repeated Teresa,
+her little eyes twinkling with interest. "It is true,
+then&mdash;it is that English woman still?"</p>
+
+<p>"Still? How you talk! Is it so long since Los
+Angeles?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it was long, long before that! I was&mdash;Santa
+Maria!&mdash;I had a fright for a while! I thought there
+would be no wedding. He was crazy as a boy over
+her. It started, oh, with only a pin-point of a chance;
+for the Americano Bryton was here, and her eyes were
+for him! And then&mdash;Basta! All at once things
+changed, and Doņa Angela and Don Rafael were never
+apart; and if she had not been married, I think always
+Raquel Estevan would have had no husband here in
+San Juan Capistrano."</p>
+
+<p>"Raquel&mdash;does she know?"</p>
+
+<p>"Raquel Estevan is too proud to show if she knows,
+just as she is now! Never will she go along or follow
+him when he rides abroad, but if she knew his time
+was with that heretic&mdash;she hates the heretics!"</p>
+
+<p>"She is patient with him."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, sure; she is a good wife. But if she cared
+more, would she do as she did when the girl Marta
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[268]</a></span>
+came to the Mission with her child? On my soul, I
+think Rafael was afraid when she gave to Marta the
+bed and the clothes, and counted out how many
+cattle she could have,&mdash;to say no word as to how
+she stood herself as godmother at the baptism! The
+padre laughs over that!"</p>
+
+<p>"And Rafael&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"Rafael&mdash;God knows what he said to her! He
+tried to make her send some one else as godmother, and
+she would not. Ysadora heard her say 'It is for your
+soul's sake, and the souls of your children, Rafael,'
+and he turned white and walked away."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Rafael," mocked Ana, "I do not think that
+he has much of a soul. It is as when a man sees
+he is beloved for his bravery, and all the time he
+is afraid of his own shadow, and hopes the one who
+loves him will not discover his weakness: that is
+how Rafael feels when his wife does penance, and
+prays for the soul he has not."</p>
+
+<p>"How you talk! We have all a soul; the padre
+says so."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, the padre! The soul of our padre is also
+like a grain of mustard seed&mdash;so small, and no soil
+to grow in! Never could I confess to him. I wait
+until Padre Sanchez comes; no one but a Franciscan
+priest do I believe in."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[269]</a></span>
+"Ai! and if you should get sick and die, and Padre
+Sanchez on some other side of the world? He is
+always travelling; never will he settle and gather
+'dobe dollars like our padre. Suppose he should not
+come; you would die without confession?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; I would hang on to the edge of life by some
+thread of prayer until he came."</p>
+
+<p>"Padre Pedro of the north was here last month:
+that man makes me afraid. He tries to be a saint,
+and is so often under vows. This time it was a vow
+not to speak, and Padre Andros was glad when he
+took to the road. It was like a black ghost to see
+him walk the plaza with a black hood over his head,
+and never a word or look up from the ground.
+You would think the saints he prayed to lived somewhere
+in the roads. We thanked God and emptied
+some bottles with the padre when he was out of
+sight."</p>
+
+<p>"But he is a good man."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he is a saint; but we can't feel easy with saints
+in San Juan. That is why your Raquel Estevan will
+always be outside."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean above," retorted Ana. "The devil's
+face in the stone of the Mission dome fits better this
+place of the necklace of ears."</p>
+
+<p>Teresa shuddered.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[270]</a></span>
+"It is bad luck to say things of that face," she
+warned. "Some think maybe it was an Indian god,&mdash;I
+heard an old Indio say so once. Never will I go
+under the dome of that old vestry since that day."</p>
+
+<p>"How would an Indian god be put in a Christian
+church?"</p>
+
+<p>"No one knows," and Teresa crossed herself.
+"The old Indios say it is bad luck to talk about it;
+so whatever the story is, it has been forgotten, and
+that is better. When I was a little child the
+old Indios told strange ghost and curse stories, and
+we were all much afraid; now the old Indios are
+mostly dead, and no one else remembers, only all are
+still afraid of the earthquake ruin at night."</p>
+
+<p>"They are sheep; they are afraid of their shadows
+at night," retorted Ana; "that is why Raquel will
+always be, as you say, 'outside'!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, she goes against the padre, and that is
+always bad. It is bad luck to fight a padre; he can
+refuse absolution."</p>
+
+<p>Ana made no reply. She was very weary of the
+endless, endless stories of Raquel's unlikeness to the
+other women; and what they did not understand they
+would like to condemn. She knew so well that in
+Mexico the Doņa Luisa and the Doņa Raquel had
+met only the hidalgos when they went for a brief visit
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[271]</a></span>
+to the world of people, but in San Juan there were
+no hidalgos; only the mixed races without pride of
+birth or distinction, apart from the lands and cattle
+around them on the ranges. Ana could feel, better
+than any other, why the wife of Rafael rode alone to
+the cliffs above the sea, seeking kinship there in the
+isolation.</p>
+
+<p>In vain Ana had tried to solve the problem
+given her by the padre at the San Joaquin ranch
+that strange evening: his quick change of attitude
+toward the Americano,&mdash;even asking her friendliness
+and her welcome for him if he crossed her path. The
+queer idea of the Americano's love affairs was the
+most puzzling of all: it never occurred to her that he
+meant Raquel&mdash;Raquel, who avoided all heretics!
+Still, it was strange that she never thought of the
+Americano's love affair without involuntarily trying
+to picture a woman who would look like Raquel. And
+she did not dream those two had ever met.</p>
+
+<p>As Pico and his men got into the saddles and
+started north she heard him mention Bryton's name.
+The latter had evidently tired quickly of vigilante
+work; at any rate he had disappeared as effectually
+as El Capitan,&mdash;no one had seen him for over a week.
+And of course no one had time to hunt him up.</p>
+
+<p>At Trabuco Creek the vigilantes passed an Indian
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[272]</a></span>
+boy loping easily along the valley road. When
+stopped and questioned, he stated he was going to the
+Mission from San Joaquin ranch. The brand on the
+bronco corroborated his story, and he was let pass
+with slight attention; yet they would have found him
+quite worth while.</p>
+
+<p>Ana had gone with Teresa to make a little visit to
+Don Juan Alvara, who was still ill, and very impatient
+at being housed up when all the world of San Juan
+was astir to see the cavalcade of avengers. He was
+asking sharply why Rafael Arteaga was following his
+English partner's example, and keeping out of the
+work of search or battle. It was to be expected that
+Don Eduardo Downing, after being forced by El
+Capitan to pay over a thousand dollars as tribute to
+the Flores bandits, would feel that he was exempt
+from active service in pursuit of them; they had cost
+him quite enough. And of course he had never anything
+but an alien's interest in the country, the interest
+of dollars; but with Rafael Arteaga it was different.
+What was he doing these days, when every man who
+held stock and could fight rode abroad?</p>
+
+<p>The women exchanged glances. Of what use to
+tell Alvara it was a woman? He would only be more
+disgusted, and might say things to Doņa Raquel, and
+that would never do.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[273]</a></span>
+Teresa's curiosity as to results led her very close to
+it, for her new sister-in-law was a thorn in the side
+of the bovine ponderous Californian, by whom the
+"brown girls" had been accepted as a part of domestic
+life. Ever since she had listened that day to the story
+of vengeance in Old Mexico, she had resented everything
+about it, even the child of that strange marriage,
+the child who had inherited&mdash;who knew how
+much?&mdash;of the blood and instincts of that saintly,
+half-Indian nun.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, Teresa would have dearly loved to watch
+Raquel Estevan when the story was told; also the
+story of Rafael's latest infatuation; yet, all the Arteaga
+boys had died violent deaths, and she had no wish to
+see the last one of them murdered. She was certain
+that if it did happen, the ghost of Doņa Luisa would
+be at the foot of her bed every night, and she would
+have to pay a lot for masses. They cost thirty-five
+dollars since the padre was building new fences around
+his orchards. So she contented herself with wishing
+as much as she dared without being held liable by the
+ghost of Doņa Luisa in case of accidents. And then
+Ana was always there with her eyes, and if any one
+did tell Alvara, Ana would ferret it out, and she had
+such a tongue!</p>
+
+<p>While they reassured the old man, and told him
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[274]</a></span>
+the troublous days of San Juan were nearly over, the
+Indian boy from the San Joaquin ranch stopped at
+the gate.</p>
+
+<p>"There is a letter for Doņa Ana Mendez," he
+said. "It came last night. Doņa Refugia sent it."</p>
+
+<p>"Doņa Refugia?" Ana knew that her aunt could
+not write, and that the accomplishments of her daughters
+in that line extended to the ability to inscribe
+their own names. She glanced at the message, and
+her lips grew suddenly white as she noted the writing.</p>
+
+<p>It was in pencil, written very plainly. The envelope
+was folded from a page of letter-paper and sealed
+with gum of some sort. When she opened it, she
+found the written page was a communication to Mr.
+Bryton concerning saddle-horses. But a pencil was
+drawn through the lines, and around the Bryton letter
+was written the real message, and it was very brief:</p>
+
+<p><i>"A man is hurt here. Can you in quiet help him
+to San Juan?"</i></p>
+
+<p>An arrow and a cross were the only signature.</p>
+
+<p>Teresa watched Ana questioningly. Letters to
+women were rare in San Juan, where few women could
+read; it must be of a death, or something of great importance.</p>
+
+<p>But Ana told nothing, only ordered the boy to go
+to Ysadora for some lunch before he started back, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[275]</a></span>
+to tell Doņa Refugia that all was well at San Juan.
+Though Doņa Teresa listened closely, that was all
+she could hear that was said, and then she knew, of
+course, that Ana did not intend to remain a widow.
+She had a lover who wrote letters, an Americano perhaps;
+the Mexicans did not trouble themselves with
+such useless learning, now that the old padres were gone.</p>
+
+<p>Ana sat quietly on the veranda for a little while,
+speaking of matters in general, and then arose languidly
+and confessed she wished she had gone with
+Raquel. A ride to the beach was better than to stay
+shut up in the town. Now that the vigilantes had
+gone, women would dare ride abroad without growing
+gray with fear.</p>
+
+<p>"Ai! it is not far you would ride, Ana Mendez.
+You are like other women when it comes to riding
+alone these days."</p>
+
+<p>"Raquel rides alone."</p>
+
+<p>"Her mother was not of this country, or she would
+not be so bold," returned Teresa, tartly. "Men have
+little liking for women as strong as themselves."</p>
+
+<p>"Alas for me!" laughed Ana, "for I tell you now
+I am going to copy after her. She makes the other
+women look like sheep. If she would go with me, I
+would ride to the San Joaquin ranch this night and
+have no fear."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[276]</a></span>
+Teresa shrugged her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"You grow like a child, Ana, as you get more years.
+Your letter makes you young again&mdash;so?"</p>
+
+<p>But Ana was out of the gate, and crossing the plaza
+with a light springy step, as if indeed the days of girlhood
+had come back. In her eyes was a smile, but
+back of the smile was a light of new determination.
+All at once she seemed to have found herself: he was
+in danger, and had called her.</p>
+
+<p>At the Mission she found the Indian boy with a
+dish of frijolles.</p>
+
+<p>"How did the letter come?" she asked, but he did
+not know. It was found under the door, and it had
+frightened Doņa Refugia, and she wanted it out of
+the house when the men were away. She thought it,
+maybe, was a demand for money, such as the outlaws
+had sent Seņor Eduardo Downing, and she asked Ana
+for the love of God to send word back quick what
+it meant.</p>
+
+<p>"It is only from the padre who borrowed the
+horse, and he thanks her," said Ana, coolly. "Ride
+straight home, and talk to no one, or you will get a
+reata instead of frijolles."</p>
+
+<p>The Indian boy nodded silently. He knew the
+Doņa Ana always kept her promises of that sort.</p>
+
+<p>A little later, Teresa looked out at the sound of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[277]</a></span>
+horse-hoofs thundering by, and saw Ana on the road
+to the sea.</p>
+
+<p>She let her horse have his head until she came to
+the Rancho de la Playa, when she halted to scan the
+meadow and sand of the shore, and then bent her
+attention to the ground, and paced slowly along until
+she found the tracks of Raquel's horse turning to the
+right. There was only one road to be followed to
+the right; she had gone through the little caņon of
+the cactus and up to the heights above. More than
+once Doņa Ana halted to examine the ground, to be
+sure that no later tracks had been made on a return
+trip. Then, away across the mesa she saw Raquel's
+horse browsing among the sage-brush on the cliff
+above the sea. Raquel was nowhere in sight; but,
+knowing she was near, Ana rode quietly along the
+bluff, until right at the edge of the cliff she saw her
+stretched at full length in the odorous grasses,
+her chin propped on her hands, staring down the
+steeps where yellow poppies nodded to the surf below.
+A cluster of the blossoms was beside her, and her
+skirt was torn. She had evidently been down there
+after them, and was resting after her climb.</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Anita?" she asked after a brief
+upward glance. "Is there a spirit of unrest with you
+also? Some say there is sleep and forgetfulness in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[278]</a></span>
+these little cups of gold. I have gathered some and
+lain here a long time, but it is not true, Anita. There
+is no forgetting."</p>
+
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a href='images/p278p.jpg'>
+	<img src='images/p278w.jpg'
+	title='There is No Forgetting' alt='There is No Forgetting' />
+</a>
+<p>&ldquo;There is No Forgetting&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Ana slipped from the saddle and came closer.
+Never before had so much of confession been heard
+from Raquel Arteaga.</p>
+
+<p>"What, then, do you try to forget, my darling?"
+she asked, caressingly. "Your love and happiness?"</p>
+
+<p>"Love is not happiness," said Raquel, and laid her
+cheek against the sheaf of poppies. "Why do people
+say so? Do they wish to lie, or do they not know?
+The heart does not laugh with love; it aches. The
+light and the glory of it comes, and after that comes
+the earthquake; and the life is shaken out of us, and
+all we can do is to make ourselves a sacrifice."</p>
+
+<p>"Holy saints! I never knew love was all that!"
+acknowledged Ana. "It means also to dance, to
+listen to your lover's songs in the night under your
+window, and to go to sleep satisfied that he is not with
+some other girl. It means stolen looks like kisses. I
+never am sure but that they are sweeter than the
+kisses themselves, though they do not make one
+mad."</p>
+
+<p>Raquel looked at her, and smiled strangely, and
+rose to her feet.</p>
+
+<p>"Ai! you are right, Anita; it is without doubt
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[279]</a></span>
+more wise to love like that. All the girls in the
+willows think so." As she saw Ana's face flush, she
+turned in quick contrition. "Ah, forgive me! You
+do not love as they do, I am sure&mdash;those fat brown
+animals; but, Anita darling, I am a tired soul, and
+rest is somewhere far beyond the ranges, and&mdash;ah,
+well,&mdash;forgive me!"</p>
+
+<p>Ana smiled and shrugged her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I not?" she asked; "for, after all, you
+are right. All human things are much alike when
+they love&mdash;the brown girls in the willows also. They
+nurse their babies and thank the Virgin they are not
+childless, as I am."</p>
+
+<p>"And you&mdash;?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am thankful to be as I am. When I have children,
+I want to love the father of them. My people
+did not ask if I loved my husband. They made the
+marriage, and God made me a widow. I thank God
+always that when I marry again I can do my own
+choosing."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, when you marry again! Good! When is it
+to be?"</p>
+
+<p>Ana laughed and then grew grave.</p>
+
+<p>"You may help me to decide," she said, a trifle
+nervously. "I am going to elope to-night. Will
+you ride along?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[280]</a></span>
+"Anita!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is up there," and Ana waved her hand toward
+the blue mountains above Trabuco. "It is a long
+ride, but the moon shines, and&mdash;I am trusting you!"</p>
+
+<p>"And the man?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your husband hates him, and will find fault
+if you go."</p>
+
+<p>"And he does not come to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is&mdash;I think he is hurt," said Ana. "And I
+am going, though I go alone."</p>
+
+<p>"You shall not go alone," and Raquel whistled
+to her horse. "Come! I needed something of this
+sort to rouse me from poppy dreams. I ride with
+you, my Anita; and the man, whoever he is, has
+my blessing."</p>
+
+<p>They galloped together through the sweet-smelling
+grasses, and a load was lifted from Ana's heart.
+With Raquel beside her, she could ride care-free from
+danger to the man who had called her.</p>
+
+<p>"I have not been told to take any one along,"
+she confessed, "so I cannot mention names; but
+there is a man hurt, and we must manage to get extra
+horses away from the Mission, and things to eat,
+perhaps, for we go where no people live; and&mdash;I&mdash;that
+is all I dare tell you."</p>
+
+<p>"It is enough, my Anita. We will ride together
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[281]</a></span>
+like nobles of old Spain seeking adventures, only
+we will storm no castles, and wear no colors to denote
+our caballeros!"</p>
+
+<p>She was elated as a child over the secret journey
+they were to take over unknown roads. The poppy
+dreams were left at the edge of the cliff, and she
+rode lightly across the divide, where at other times
+she ever halted for the picture of ocean and valley
+stretching from San Mateo at the sea to San Jacinto
+of the ranges.</p>
+
+<p>"I knew it was love in thy heart for some one,
+Anita," she said, smiling. "Religion alone does not
+make a woman comprehend heartaches for other
+women. You are the only one of all of them who
+asks no questions, yet you put your arms around me
+that crazy night when I rode from Los Angeles,
+and all at once I felt that I need not hold with tired
+hands a mask to my face for you."</p>
+
+<p>"Holy Mary! I know, and why not? My family
+married me to the wrong man," said Ana, easily.
+"But I was lucky in one thing, and I know enough
+now to thank the saints for it,&mdash;I had not learned
+what love meant, so the other man had not come."</p>
+
+<p>"And if he had?"</p>
+
+<p>They had checked their speed to descend the steep
+ravine cut in the heart of the mesa, and giving outlet
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[282]</a></span>
+to the blue sea. Raquel was intent, apparently, on
+finding the best footing for her horse, and did not
+look up at once, but when no reply came she tried
+to laugh, and repeated the question.</p>
+
+<p>"I did not answer," said Ana, after a moment,
+"because, Raquelita, when you made me think of it,
+truly it seemed as if my heart stopped beating that
+minute. Poor José, my husband! It would have
+gone hard with him, and my relatives would have
+cursed me."</p>
+
+<p>"And why?"</p>
+
+<p>"I think I should have risked the purgatory they
+would have sent me to, but I would ride as we are
+riding now, straight to the man&mdash;the one man."</p>
+
+<p>"And suppose&mdash;suppose, Anita, you were bound
+by a vow to the dead&mdash;could you ride away from
+that? Suppose that so long as you lived you were
+set to guard one living soul&mdash;that each day when
+you awoke, your prayers were to keep worthy for the
+task; suppose&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no! I will not suppose. A woman can
+endure just so much, no more. I know you are
+doing all this, my Raquel, and I see that it is forever
+one big fight and sacrifice, and all your life it will be
+the same. But, Raquel, when you awake and pray
+each morning, thank the Virgin at the same time that
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[283]</a></span>
+the other man has not yet ridden into your heart. I
+know you do not think of men&mdash;that it is to live ever
+in cloisters! But pray God that the man may never
+come, Raquel&mdash;for a girl is only a girl, after all!"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you would argue, because you do not
+know!" burst out Ana, with impatience. "Raquel,
+you are so good you are always beautiful; but I
+tell you truly, that if it should happen&mdash;all the
+saints could not help you. Between your vow for
+the soul of Rafael and your love for the one man&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, my Anita?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you could not live through it and remain
+what you are. Any woman would go mad&mdash;any
+woman."</p>
+
+<p>Raquel touched her horse and galloped up the
+steep hill ahead of Ana. Down the longer one to
+Boca de la Playa she rode in the same reckless way,
+and it was not until they had reached El Camino
+Real that she pulled her horse in, and allowed Ana
+to come alongside.</p>
+
+<p>"Jesusita! how you ride away from me!" gasped
+her friend. "Wait until I braid up my hair. Look
+at it&mdash;all the new pins lost, the pretty ones you
+brought me from Los Angeles. We will send a boy
+back to hunt them."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[284]</a></span>
+Raquel sat silent on her panting horse, looking
+out on the wide sea and saying nothing. Ana
+glanced at her white face while braiding her hair,
+and thought it looked cold and determined, almost
+angry; and as they started on once more, she reached
+across and touched her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not make your eyes like cold agates of violet,"
+she entreated. "Truly, I meant not to anger you, and
+I know you are good always, and think only of your
+vows. But even the saints have known temptation,
+my Raquel, and some who might have been saints
+have lost souls for a man or a woman."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my own soul!" and Raquel shrugged her
+shoulders with a dreary smile. "It is the soul of
+Rafael I am set to guard. Only that must I think of
+every day of my life. My own! Only Mother
+Mary knows what my own may become."</p>
+
+<p>"His mother knew the power of the heretics; it
+was not fair, Raquelita."</p>
+
+<p>"It is judgment," said Raquel, steadily. "I asked
+God to give me some work for the Church in the
+world, instead of within the convent walls. It was
+brought to me; I accepted it on my knees. What
+any of us think now does not change that in the least.
+I must live till I die with that thought."</p>
+
+<p>"So I know," conceded Ana, "and so I thank God
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[285]</a></span>
+the other man does not come. You would know
+then how to feel sympathy for the women who fail,
+or the women who do mad things such as I mean to
+do to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"Do I not understand? Do I not go with you?
+Yes, ahead of you, for my horse beats yours," replied
+Raquel; and from that to the Mission plaza there
+was only the sound of hoof-beats on the hard road,
+and no more words of love or lovers.</p>
+
+<p>A man had come from San Diego with a message
+from Rafael Arteaga. He would be at San Juan in a
+few days, and was bringing guests for a barbecue.
+Strange word had come from the vigilantes of the disappearance
+of Bryton, the Americano. It had been
+learned that he had not returned to Los Angeles,
+neither had he gone south. To free Mrs. Bryton
+from anxiety, Rafael and Don Eduardo meant to find
+him and make a holiday while doing it.</p>
+
+<p>Raquel Arteaga listened, and Ana noticed all at
+once how white and tired she looked from the little
+gallop.</p>
+
+<p>"Get down from the saddle, my dear," she said,
+appealingly. "Lift her, you, Victorio. Mother
+Mary! Do not faint, Raquel!"</p>
+
+<p>Raquel did not faint. She thanked the muscular
+Victorio, who lifted her from the saddle as though
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[286]</a></span>
+she had been but a little child, and placed her on one
+of the long seats of brick, while Ana ran for water,
+and old Polonia crouched beside her and looked up in
+her face, but did not speak. She had heard the name
+of the hated Americano, and she had no need to ask
+questions. It was the witchcraft come over her again;
+even the sound of his name could bring it!</p>
+
+<p>"No, I am not ill, Ana. I really am not," she
+persisted. "You say I turn white. Well, it may be I
+had no dinner&mdash;I think I forgot it, or those heroes
+the vigilantes took my appetite. See! I can stand;
+I am quite well. I am ready for the San Joaquin
+ride when the sun goes down."</p>
+
+<p>"But, if harm should come?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never fear. To go will not harm me. I am
+very strong&mdash;stronger than you think. Ai! I
+shall live long&mdash;a long, long time, Anita!"</p>
+
+<p>She arose and passed through the door of the
+carved Aztec sun and little half-crescents, and Ana
+looked after her doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"It is the Americana?" said Victorio, with a shrug
+and lifted brows. "Rafael Arteaga is mad after that
+baby woman&mdash;just mad. I think it makes Doņa
+Maria afraid. It would not be well to have the
+wrong things happen in her house; so they jump at
+the chance to ride north together, for any reason at
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[287]</a></span>
+all, and bring Don Rafael to his own wife. That is
+all the reason they come: Doņa Maria is afraid."</p>
+
+<p>"But to bring them here! The Doņa Raquel is
+not fond of heretics."</p>
+
+<p>"I think myself it is the woman and not the
+religion she will think of when they come," said
+Victorio; "and she must have heard something,&mdash;what
+else made her look like that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who knows? A woman may be tired, may she
+not? You talk a great deal for a man of your years!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it is only to you, Seņora. It is as well some
+one knows who is a friend,&mdash;that pretty white baby
+of a woman has the 'money eye.' Some one should
+warn Doņa Raquel, for who knows where it will end?
+You know the Arteaga men."</p>
+
+<p>Ana nodded her head.</p>
+
+<p>"We all know them; but, thanks to God, the
+right woman has come into the family. I do not
+know what she will do&mdash;Estevan's daughter; but
+Rafael will learn what a curb-bit means if he go too
+far. Women who do not care whether they live or
+die are more reckless than the wildest man, Victorio;
+and Rafael will do well to say good-bye to heretic
+pets."</p>
+
+<p>Victorio shrugged his shoulders, and did not quite
+believe. Of course a woman could do a lot with a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[288]</a></span>
+man if he was not so foolish as to marry her, but
+after that what could she do but keep the home and
+obey? Some of them found other amusements when
+their husbands rode abroad, but what more could they
+do than that, even the most powerful?</p>
+
+<p>Of course if Doņa Raquel were not his wife, Rafael
+might be faithful: Victorio acknowledged he knew
+how that was himself. There was a woman who kept
+his house, and now after four years of content, the
+padre was at him for a marriage fee, and was putting
+the devil in the woman's head, and there was discord.
+All had been content for all those years, but when
+the marriage was even talked of, there was trouble;
+and Victorio had no use for it except, of course, if the
+woman was dying, or if he was&mdash;then the padre could
+get the marriage made. The money was saved up in
+case of such need for absolution, but otherwise&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Ana interrupted him angrily, though she knew he
+voiced the masculine opinion of the valley. She had
+heard the padre complain that the women had also
+refused marriage for the same reason; so there was
+little could be done, and she knew that if Rafael
+Arteaga should fail openly within the year of his
+marriage, there would be laughs and shrugs, and the
+marriage fees would be fewer than ever. The example
+of their superiors was all that was needed to break all
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[289]</a></span>
+the little invisible bonds told of in the prayer-books,
+but remembered so little in the everyday life.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you need not rail at me, Doņa Ana," protested
+Victorio; "I am only one&mdash;and I feed my
+children! You do not believe so much in Rafael
+Arteaga yourself; and, after all, it may come right.
+It depends most on the woman."</p>
+
+<p>"Doņa Raquel Arteaga?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never! She is only a wife; it is the other who is
+still <i>the</i> woman."</p>
+
+<p>Ana flung an angry look at the pessimistic, philosophic
+vaquero, and followed Raquel, slamming the
+door after her to emphasize her impatience with his
+all-too-true statements.</p>
+
+<p>She checked her tempestuous entrance at sight of
+the wife they were discussing, kneeling at the little
+altar in the corner of her own room. The tall candles
+were lit, and before the shrine of the Virgin Raquel
+was prostrate.</p>
+
+<p>Ana crossed herself and went out softly, half afraid
+that the argument in the corridor had been heard
+through the thick adobe walls. This new sign of
+Raquel's disfavor at every mention of the Americanos
+gave Ana several unpleasant moments. The letter
+now in her pocket had belonged to the Americano
+whom they were coming to search for: dare she
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[290]</a></span>
+mention it to the girl kneeling there at the shrine?
+Or did not the news brought by Victorio Lopez make
+more imperative the need for secrecy? In riding the
+hills for Bryton, what others hidden there might be
+discovered for death?</p>
+
+<p>Ana sent an Indian with a pack-mule of provisions
+to the sheep-herders' cabin in Trabuco caņon, with
+instructions to wait there until the men came for it,
+and in every way made smooth the details for the
+journey of the night.</p>
+
+<p>Don Antonio, the major-domo for the Arteagas,
+had ridden north with the vigilantes, so there was no
+one to oppose or question the order of Ana, given in
+the name of Doņa Raquel.</p>
+
+<p>Teresa shrugged her shoulders and said some
+things when the two mounted and rode gaily northward.
+She hoped Doņa Refugia would say some things
+to them for the good of their souls when they reached
+the ranch. Ana had always been a little rebel; it was
+well they married her when they did! No one gave
+much heed to Ana's vagaries or strange whims, but
+with Raquel it was different. The opinions of Doņa
+Luisa concerning the convent novice secured as a
+daughter were well known in the San Juan valley:
+she was a saint, no less. But Teresa watched the
+slender girlish form riding away on the black horse,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[291]</a></span>
+and hated the grace and daring of her as only gross
+creatures can hate refined ones, and had her own
+ideas of two women who were young, riding like
+that toward darkness,&mdash;the darkness where even men
+scarcely dared ride alone these days. One might be
+saintly in soul, yet do indiscreet things in this
+mundane world. And Teresa wished them a lesson,
+from the centre of her fat heart.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[292]</a></span></p>
+<div class='figmusic'>
+<a href='music/m292.mid'>
+<img src='images/mu292.png'
+	title='Music: Mi Memoria.'
+	alt='Music: Mi Memoria.'
+/></a>
+<br />
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Mi memoria en ti se ocupa<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No te olvida un solo instante,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Y mi mente delirante En ti piensa,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">en ti piensa sin cesar.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class='chapter' />
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[293]</a></span></p>
+<div class='framed'>
+<div class='figmusic'>
+<a href='music/m293.mid'>
+<img src='images/mu293.png'
+	title='Music'
+	alt='Music'
+/></a>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class='dropcap'>
+<img src='images/dc293.png' title='T' alt='T' />
+</div>
+
+<p>The dark was falling when the two
+girls reached the sheep-herders'
+cabin in Trabuco. José, the
+boy with the pack-mules and
+the led horse, had arrived before
+them, and, shaking with fear,
+had built a fire with which to
+banish the threatening shadows. No herders were
+there, and to stay in the isolated caņon with the mule
+and mustang was not to his taste. José belonged to
+the Mission garden work, or the driving of the cows to
+pasture, and had little relish for the adventurous life
+of the ranges. He appreciated not at all the confidence
+placed in him by the laughing Doņa Ana.</p>
+
+<p>But Ana had no desire to trust an older man,
+even an Indian, and when they reached the cabin she
+delighted his soul by giving him a gold piece, the first
+he had ever earned, and telling him to go straight
+back to San Juan; and unless he wanted his own ears
+to wear on a string around his neck, he was to utter
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</a></span>
+no word of having seen any one at the sheep-herders'
+cabin. His task was over when he left the provisions
+and extra horses there.</p>
+
+<p>Glad enough to escape so easily from the prospect
+of a night where wild cats and mountain lions were no
+strangers, José not only promised, but swore by the
+Virgin and Jesusita that no one at San Juan should
+be the wiser for his having seen the ladies in that devil
+of a caņon. If they never came out alive, he would
+confess to the padre before All Souls' Day, but until
+then not a word would they get from him even by
+whippings and salt water!</p>
+
+<p>Despite the fervor of his protestations, Ana rode up
+the terrace of the mesa, and sat there watching the
+trail along the creek until she saw him cross far below,
+a moving dot against the yellow stretch of sand, and
+knew that he was indeed moved by winged fear and
+had none of the courage for spy's work.</p>
+
+<p>Raquel watched the first star break through the
+blue, and knew that, if he was alive, somewhere in
+the width of California a man watched it also, and
+shut out for one brief instant any crowding humanity
+surrounding him. It seemed a very far-away thing,
+this tryst of the star, and never&mdash;never, any day of
+her life, durst she dream of bringing it closer.</p>
+
+<p>Ana found her huddled in the crooked white arm
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</a></span>
+of a great aliso tree, and regarded with dismay the
+quivering shoulders and face hidden against the white
+bark.</p>
+
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a href='images/p295p.jpg'>
+	<img src='images/p295w.jpg'
+	title='The Aliso Tree' alt='The Aliso Tree' />
+</a>
+<p>The Aliso Tree.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Raquelita!" she said, in quick contrition. "I
+have asked too much of you, to ride with me blindfold
+into the wilderness. Say so, and ride back while
+it is yet light to reach the road. It was wrong to ask
+you to share burdens of others. I am at your feet,
+darling. Do not blame me too much, for&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Raquel lifted her head and looked at her, and
+smiled through tears.</p>
+
+<p>"Anita mia, you cannot send me back, for I will
+not go. Do not fancy me unhappy because&mdash;oh&mdash;because
+of anything. I feel, here in the open, more
+at home than any moment since I came to California.
+We were of the hill folk, my mother's people, and
+out under the stars in the night all their old buried
+instincts awake in me&mdash;the pagan gladness of the
+wilderness."</p>
+
+<p>"You do not look glad," said Ana, doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"Child, child! who of us is glad with unmixed
+gladness, after the door has been closed on our youth
+and the dreams of youth?"</p>
+
+<p>She slid from her perch and slipped her hand
+through her friend's arm.</p>
+
+<p>"But to-night, beloved, we will close other
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</a></span>
+doors&mdash;the doors of the world of people. This tree shall be
+the last landmark; beyond this we ride over enchanted
+ground, and fancy all wild sweet things of our destination.
+You go to&mdash;to your lover, perhaps; and I&mdash;I
+ride to dream dreams in the open."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Raquelita&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Never fear they will lead us too far astray, the
+harmless dreams," she laughed. "If they do, I shall
+do heavy penance; be sure of that!"</p>
+
+<p>"You look like a witch, instead of a devotee, in
+this half-light," observed Ana. "Your eyes are like
+stars; and&mdash;what has wakened in you this wild
+mood? Is it the wilderness alone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not quite," acknowledged Raquel, demurely.
+"Since you will have a definite cause, I will confess,
+Anita mia, that it was the white, strong arms of&mdash;of&mdash;never
+look so frightened, dear,&mdash;of my friend the
+aliso tree!"</p>
+
+<p>They both laughed, but Ana sat a moment by the
+little camp-fire and stared at her.</p>
+
+<p>"That is all very well, and you have your good
+fun with me," she said; "but out here you are a
+different person from the lady of your cloisters. Yet
+nothing has happened to make you different&mdash;nothing,
+except that we are in the open."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing? O thou wise one!" mocked Raquel.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</a></span>
+"But a star shone out, and its rays bewitch people
+sometimes, when it shines down into the heart until
+the radiance there is too great for one little bosom to
+hold; and it trembles to the lips, and all the eager
+longings of the world are understood, and one feels
+very, very close to one's own soul; and one feels that
+just beyond that star, or just beyond the bend of the
+trail up here, one might find it. So, let us ride hard
+and fast, my Anita,&mdash;I to my bewitched fancies, and
+you to your lover."</p>
+
+<p>"And I&mdash;I thought you did not understand!"
+muttered Ana. "That was because never before
+have I seen you without the hedges of people about
+you. God forgive Rafael Arteaga, who has known
+and ridden away!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!" said Raquel; "our outer world is on the
+other side of the aliso tree. That is our plaza, and
+this the inner court. Life itself has the same divisions:
+all the world may cross the plaza, but the
+inner court of one's own soul is the sanctuary, where
+only one may kneel beside us; it is the tabernacle of
+the heart, and no word of Church or your own will
+can give to anyone the key, or&mdash;Santa Maria!&mdash;take
+it out of the hands to which it is given by divine
+right!"</p>
+
+<p>"Raquel, beloved!" cried Ana, in dismay, "you
+
+
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</a></span>
+are not laughing at me now. You make my heart
+ache with your words and your smile,&mdash;more with the
+smile, I think. And what you say is&mdash;is almost
+sacrilege. No Spanish mother teaches her daughter
+that the sacrament of the Church is not, above all
+things, binding. Those who break it are taught the
+sin of it."</p>
+
+<p>"But I had no Spanish mother to teach me; only
+a priest and an old Indian woman. The nuns never
+spoke of the worldly ties, they were so sure I should
+never know them."</p>
+
+<p>"But, Raquelita, you rode gladly north to Rafael; you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I was more a devotee than I ever shall be
+again," acknowledged Raquel, with a sigh. "I remember
+the elated, half-dreamlike way in which I rode
+over those mesas to meet him. I was riding to help
+to guard a wonderful soul and a wonderful life for the
+Church. I was upheld by the conviction that God
+desired it. If, instead of asking me to marry a
+husband for the good of a soul, they had asked me to
+ride my horse into the sea and wait for the rising tide,
+and given as convincing a churchly reason, I should
+have ridden into the sea and waited, I suppose. It is
+bad for one when the dreams go, and the clear vision
+begins."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</a></span>
+"But Rafael&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Rafael, beloved, is contented with the life of the
+plaza. He will always be; and&mdash;the inner court is
+forever this side of the aliso tree. Come! The stars
+are thick now, and if we have far to ride&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Doņa Ana untied the mule and the mustang.</p>
+
+<p>"I think they will follow; but it is best, perhaps, to
+keep a rope on the mustang. I will lead him, and I
+have a bell I will tie later to his neck; it may help in
+the dark if we should go wide of the trail."</p>
+
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a href='images/p302p.jpg'>
+	<img src='images/p302w.jpg'
+	title='An Inner Court' alt='An Inner Court' />
+</a>
+<p>An Inner Court.</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The wilder mood of Raquel in the great out-of-doors,
+where she became something besides the girl of
+the cloisters, had a sobering effect on Ana herself. A
+girl who would sacrifice herself through a temporary
+religious fervor was not one to look with favor on any
+sacrifice or risk for heretics. Again and again she
+thought of the letter to the Americano on which that
+message had been pencilled. She thought also of the
+words of friendship uttered by Padre Libertad for
+the same American, at the San Joaquin ranch. Was
+it that the latter was dead, and thus his letters accessible?
+Or was there a chance that the man whom Don
+Eduardo and his guests were to start in search of was
+held either by a friend or an enemy in the hills they
+were riding to?</p>
+
+<p>She had felt sure, without hearing it put into words,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</a></span>
+that Raquel rode from the ranch that night to avoid
+Mrs. Bryton. What other reason could there be?
+Therefore, was it fair to lead her blindfold to meet
+another of that heretic family, to whom she would not
+open her door even to please her husband? They
+had mounted their horses when the certainty that it
+was not fair came upon Ana, and she slipped from the
+saddle and stirred up the sulking embers of the little
+fire until it broke into a blaze.</p>
+
+<p>"Raquel, it is no use! I must tell you before we
+start. The man I go to see is the friend of a heretic
+whom you bar out from your knowledge. The message
+sent me is written on a letter of Bryton's. You
+heard them say Seņor Bryton cannot be found; and
+there is a chance&mdash;only a chance&mdash;that he may be in
+the mountain where we are going."</p>
+
+<p>Raquel stared at her, and did not speak. In the
+flickering light Ana could see that her eyes grew
+large&mdash;with dread, or anger, or what? Even her lips
+grew pale, and she almost seemed to sway in the saddle.</p>
+
+<p>"Raquelita mia, I was wrong, I know it was wrong
+to bring you; but oh, my beloved&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You&mdash;did not know&mdash;he&mdash;was here?"</p>
+
+<p>"I did not think. The devil put mud where my
+brain should be! It is only when we are on the road
+it commences to trouble me; and now your
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[301]</a></span>
+words&mdash;your&mdash;Oh, I know that of all women in California,
+you hate the heretics most; and now it is I
+who&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me what the letter says," interrupted Raquel,
+who now sat erect in the saddle, rigid and white.
+"You said your friend was hurt and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Some one is hurt; I do not know who. You can
+read the letter if you bend down here. Who knows?
+It may be his American friend."</p>
+
+<p>"Mother mia! It may be, it may be!"</p>
+
+<p>She covered her face with her hands, and Ana,
+looking at her, thought she was praying for strength
+to remember humanity ahead of the creeds. At last
+she spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Anita mia, never feel so badly about it. We did
+not plan this, you and I, but it happens&mdash;it happens!
+There is only one straight thing to do: I can ride
+back to San Juan when you learn the truth. If it is
+the Americano, the word shall go to his wife quickly.
+I need not see the man, but I can carry a message,
+and I will; God helping me to the strength, I will!"</p>
+
+<p>"His wife? Santa Maria! The man has no wife.
+Half the girls of Los Angeles county try to marry
+him, but it is never any use."</p>
+
+<p>"Anita!"</p>
+
+<p>"How you stare at me, Raquel! You think I
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[302]</a></span>
+mean some other American, maybe. No? I speak
+of Don Keith Bryton. You hate them all so; no
+one ever speaks of them to you; but he is not bad.
+He saved your Indian woman at the ranch while you
+slept. You did not know it all."</p>
+
+<p>"Stop, and let me think," said Raquel, imperatively.
+"Some one has lied. Who is the fair woman with
+the blue eyes&mdash;the Mrs. Bryton&mdash;the Doņa Angela
+he drove with&mdash;the&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"She is the widow of his half-brother; that is all."</p>
+
+<p>"All? Then how&mdash;why should Teresa say this
+thing? Yesterday I heard her say that Doņa Angela
+made a flirtation with Rafael only to make Seņor
+Bryton jealous. I heard it, though she did not know.
+Why should that be, if it is only his brother's wife?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, God alone knows the heart of a woman,
+Raquel! It may be all a lie. Our people do not
+understand the gringo women. They look love to so
+many men, and mean it, perhaps, for none. But it
+was thought, yes, plainly said, when she first came to
+Los Angeles, that Keith Bryton was the one man she
+wanted to marry. But that is all over now; no one
+thinks&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Teresa thinks."</p>
+
+<p>"Teresa had better be at her prayers! I could tell
+you something strange of Keith Bryton,&mdash;only you
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</a></span>
+are not interested in gringos,&mdash;something of a love
+of his, and I feel sure it is never the pretty Doņa
+Angela."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me," said Raquel, coldly.</p>
+
+<p>"A man&mdash;a priest&mdash;learned it from him some
+way. I thought the Americanos had no saints; but
+something like a love for a saint keeps Keith Bryton
+from caring much for any one else. It is as if a
+woman, instead of a wooden saint, should be in one
+of the niches of the old altar-place, and he said
+prayers there. Whoever she is, she seems to be very
+far above him&mdash;like the star he cannot reach."</p>
+
+<p>"The men who cannot reach the stars content
+themselves with picking flowers, do they not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, God alone knows how they content themselves!
+I only tell you this thing to show you that
+Seņor Bryton has not anywhere in the land a woman to
+go to him if he were dying alone in the hills; his saint
+would not step down from the niche of the altar-place."</p>
+
+<p>"Anita mia, you forget," she said, in a strange,
+mocking tone. "If Keith Bryton is a friend of yours,
+you should wish him better fortune than to kneel at a
+place like our old altar. Do you forget that of the
+eleven niches still left in the old ruin, only one holds
+a saint,&mdash;a saint where no one openly kneels,&mdash;that
+of the Maria Madalena?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[304]</a></span>
+"Raquel, what things you do fancy! Now that
+you know whom you may have to meet, will you ride
+with me, or back to the road?"</p>
+
+<p>"Back to the plaza?" asked Doņa Raquel. "Anita
+mia, all this has come to me in the inner court of
+the aliso portal: it does not belong to the outer world;
+neither do we, I think, to-night. Whatever the
+shadows of the caņon cover for us, I think, we must
+ride upward to meet them. Your friend's saint, the
+Madalena of the niche, will watch over us. When we
+go back she shall have candles and roses&mdash;red ones,
+Anita!"</p>
+
+<p>Ana was voluble in her delight, and rode up the
+valley with a great load lifted from her heart.</p>
+
+<p>But the witching spell of the aliso portal had lost
+its gay charm for Raquel, or else it had sent her another
+more potent, for she rode in silence under the stars,
+without gladness, yet so steadily, so recklessly, that
+Ana more than once had to complain that only a deer
+or a coyote could keep ahead of her.</p>
+
+<hr class='chapter' />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[305]</a></span></p>
+<div class='framed'>
+<div class='figmusic'>
+<a href='music/m305.mid'>
+<img src='images/mu305.png'
+	title='Music: Ella No Me Ama.'
+	alt='Music: Ella No Me Ama.'
+/></a>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Ella vierte la copa de amargura<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gota, gota en mi pobre corozon.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+</div>
+<div class='dropcap'>
+<img src='images/dc305.png' title='T' alt='T' />
+</div>
+
+<p>That same evening a gay party
+from the south rode along the
+sea to San Juan Capistrano.
+Doņa Maria and Don Eduardo
+rode in a carriage, but the
+Doņa Angela had received riding
+lessons from Rafael, and
+disdained now the lounging ease of the cushioned seats.
+She and Rafael galloped far ahead at times, and then
+loitered idly among the odorous grasses and chaparral,
+and watched the waves roll in, and said the gay, foolish
+things that sometimes mean only courtesy, and
+sometimes mean the ripples of thought fringing pools
+of unsounded depths. There was little doubt of the
+quality of Rafael's thought. Whatever it had been
+in the commencement, there was little now within
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[306]</a></span>
+his power to accomplish which he would not have
+done at the bidding of her smiling childish lips.</p>
+
+<p>"If we had a boat out there where the whitecaps
+are, we could go even faster than the horses," she was
+saying. "I always wanted a boat; I always wanted to
+live near the ocean, if only the right people could
+be with me."</p>
+
+<p>"You shall have a boat, any day you want it," he
+said, eagerly. "They make them at San Pedro; that
+is not far to send. A boat, and a house by the sea!
+Why not wish for a more difficult thing? Would you
+like that bluff above the river's mouth? Or Dana's
+Point, beyond there? You could watch the whales
+spouting from the quay, and all the sea and valley
+could be yours at a glance, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And a fine view, also, of your monastery walls, far,
+far away, Don Rafael."</p>
+
+<p>"I should never be far away, only as far as you bid
+me go."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! that sounds very submissive," she replied;
+"but you are not really so, not really. I&mdash;I want
+to say to you that my cousin's wife reproves me for
+your&mdash;your&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Her hesitation was very pretty. It delighted the
+man, who caught her hand and kissed it.</p>
+
+<p>"My&mdash;my&mdash;you can find no word, madama, for
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[307]</a></span>
+my madness; is that it?" he asked, softly. "You are
+right; there are no words ever coined to cover it. I
+make myself a carpet for your feet, mi corazon!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want a carpet for my feet,&mdash;at least I
+think I do not," she said, doubtfully, "not in the
+face of all the frowns of California; and we perhaps
+go to-day where we see many frowns from my cousin.
+She says she may not visit your wife. Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps she does not like a home where there are
+endless prayers," he said, briefly; "but, such as it is,
+it is for you, madama. You would light up even the
+shadows there. As for the Doņa Maria, she is&mdash;ah,
+well, she is old, and forgets many things. She has
+had her own romances, and they should teach her
+charity! The plans she makes in San Diego and on the
+road are all right for those places, but when we reach
+San Juan you all go to my home. I sent word ahead."</p>
+
+<p>"Your wife expects us to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>"She does not know what night, or what day, but
+she will expect you."</p>
+
+<p>"She does not care at all for people, does she?"
+and Angela's eyes were turned from him to the sea.
+"All this wonderful principality of a place, and a
+home like a ruined castle, and the boxes of jewels they
+say she never looks at! She must be a marvellous
+woman,&mdash;the Doņa Raquel Arteaga. I shall feel a
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[308]</a></span>
+little afraid, I think, of the magnificence she disdains."</p>
+
+<p>"A finer castle will go up on those bluffs when you
+say the word, madama mia; and the jewels&mdash;one can
+always find more pearls in the sea!"</p>
+
+<p>"How often shall I have to tell you that you must
+not make those foolish promises to me? You, a
+married man!"</p>
+
+<p>"Just so often as you make me forget the marriage&mdash;and
+that&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Adam!" she laughed. "Of course it is to be the
+woman's fault,&mdash;'She tempted me!'"</p>
+
+<p>She sprang to her feet and ran to her horse as the
+carriage came in sight over the mesa. He was by her
+side in an instant.</p>
+
+<p>"And that, madama, is every time I hear your voice,
+or look in your eyes, or feel the touch of your hand!
+Ah, beloved!"</p>
+
+<p>"If you kiss me, Don Rafael, remember I cannot go
+to the house of your wife!"</p>
+
+<p>He released her with a groan, and stared at her as
+she leaned panting against her horse.</p>
+
+<p>"You put a man in purgatory, madama," he
+said, between shut teeth. "But it must end&mdash;only
+Christ knows how! It must end one of these
+days."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[309]</a></span>
+He lifted her to the saddle and kept his arms about
+her, looking up into her face.</p>
+
+<p>"Was that about the boat all a jest? Once before
+you spoke of a boat&mdash;and us two. Perhaps it was
+only your woman's way to torture a man by helping
+him to think of that sort of heaven! But, after all,
+what is all this life here to you? You care nothing
+for the people; you will go away somewhere, some day,
+and no one will ever hear of you again. What better
+way, after all, than the boat? It leaves no tracks;
+there would be all the world before us."</p>
+
+<p>"Hush!" she said, with a little smile. "Who
+is now the tempter? You are quite mad, Don
+Rafael."</p>
+
+<p>"God!" he muttered. "If I could only have the
+happiness of knowing it <i>was</i> a temptation to you!"</p>
+
+<p>She smiled again, and touched her horse with the
+quirt; and though he caught his horse and mounted
+quickly, she was a considerable distance ahead of him,
+and perversely insisted on keeping a wide space between
+them, or else lagging beside the carriage for
+conversation with Doņa Maria, whom Rafael knew
+she loved little.</p>
+
+<p>For the rest of the ride there was no chance of a
+word alone with her. Only as they turned from the
+beach to the river valley she checked her horse for an
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[310]</a></span>
+instant, and with a little flash of a glance toward him,
+she flung a kiss from the tips of her fingers to the
+bluffs above San Juan River.</p>
+
+<p>"Adios, O castle of the air in which Love might
+have lived! Adios, O boat of beautiful dreams, for
+which there is no harbor! Don Rafael, you sing so
+well&mdash;could you not put the castle and the boat in a
+Spanish song! It would sound pretty in a love-song,
+and it is much too romantic for every-day life; for,
+after all, there is no harbor here."</p>
+
+<p>He devoured her with sombre eyes of desire, and a
+glint of rage showing through their ardent depths.</p>
+
+<p>"There will be a harbor, madama mia," he muttered.
+"By the God and all the saints, there will be a harbor
+here on the San Juan shore, and there will be an embarcodera!
+And the boat will&mdash;will not be a boat in
+a song or a dream, madama mia! I swear it, I swear
+it, I swear it!"</p>
+
+<p>He dug his spurs viciously into his mount to
+emphasize the words, and the animal reared and
+plunged, and gave him a chance to vent his feelings
+somewhat, while the Doņa Angela tried to laugh, and
+failed. A passion like that was a very masterful force,
+and there had been times when she dared not treat it
+as a jest.</p>
+
+<p>The shrewd, red-faced ranchman, riding in the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[311]</a></span>
+carriage beside his swarthy wife, noted the little pantomime
+and nodded to Doņa Maria.</p>
+
+<p>"It is as you say, dear. It is better that Don
+Rafael be with his own wife. If anything should
+happen&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"If one thing should happen, we should be
+blamed; even the bishop might blame us," said Doņa
+Maria, fretfully. "She could marry with other men:
+what white devil in her turns her to that mad Rafael?
+The Arteaga men always have their own way. She
+should be married."</p>
+
+<p>Her husband grunted assent, and regarded the fair
+figure of his kinswoman riding sedately along the
+green. She was such a fragile, childlike creature,
+he thought of her as a little yellow canary, pretty to
+see around the home after the many years lived
+among the dark people; but he never was certain in
+the least that he knew her, and he was beginning to
+consider some arrangement by which, for the good of
+the doll-like child asleep on the carriage cushions, he
+could suggest that she return to the land of the
+Briton and abide there&mdash;with, of course, a comfortable
+little sum for maintenance. Don Eduardo was too
+much of a politician not to see the wisdom of buying
+off embarrassing friends; the Doņa Angela in her
+amusements might prove not only embarrassing, but
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[312]</a></span>
+dangerous. He had plans concerning certain Arteaga
+holdings, and could not have even a charming woman
+enter into his scheme of things, if she suggested
+discord. And watching Rafael Arteaga's face and the
+reckless passion in it, Don Eduardo decided that his
+fair countrywoman not only suggested discord, she
+was a living, breathing, alluring promise of it!</p>
+
+<p>A sunset in San Juan is truly worth crossing either
+a continent or an ocean to witness, when the ranges
+toward La Paz are purple where the sage-brush is, and
+rose-color where the rains have washed the steep
+places to the clay, and over all of mesa and mountain
+the soft glory of golden haze. All that radiance
+touched the land and sea as the carriage of Don
+Eduardo, preceded by Rafael and Doņa Angela, and
+followed by Fernando and Juanita, who had been a
+guest of Doņa Maria, and back of all the rest the
+Indian servants and the nurse for the child on the
+carriage cushion. Amid the shrill calls of greeting,
+and gay exchange of words and laughter, the cavalcade
+passed the Casa Grande of Don Juan Alvara, and
+drew up before the portal of the great white Mission.
+Rafael lifted Angela Bryton from the saddle first of
+all, and then with his own hand opened the door of the
+carriage for Doņa Maria.</p>
+
+<p>"My house is your own, seņora," he said, with the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[313]</a></span>
+debonair grace so charmingly his own. "I claim the
+privilege of carrying the child through the door myself.
+Doņa Raquel will be here on the instant, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a href='images/p313p.jpg'>
+	<img src='images/p313w.jpg'
+	title='Vengo a tu ventana' alt='Vengo a tu ventana' />
+</a>
+  <div class='figmusic'>
+  <a href='music/p312.mid'>
+  <img src='images/mu313.png'
+  	title='Music: Vengo a tu ventana.'
+  	alt='Music: Vengo a tu ventana.'
+      />
+  </a>
+<br />
+  <div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+  <span class="i0">Vengo a tu ventana para<br /></span>
+  <span class="i0">decirte mi amore!<br /></span>
+  </div></div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>The padre, pipe in mouth, had been watching the
+arrival from his own door, but he drew nearer, and
+smiled grimly at Doņa Maria as he interrupted
+the young man.</p>
+
+<p>"Not quite on the instant, Don Rafael," he
+remarked. "The Doņa Raquel is well on her way to
+San Joaquin ranch with Doņa Ana Mendez. They
+rode good horses, and they started this evening, a few
+minutes before my own return."</p>
+
+<p>The child in Rafael's arms uttered a little cry. He
+had suddenly gripped her very tightly indeed, and a
+strange Spanish oath broke from his lips. The priest
+smiled, and the florid face of Don Eduardo flushed
+angrily.</p>
+
+<p>"You&mdash;you sent Victorio Lopez&mdash;" he began,
+but Rafael gave him one silencing look, and stepped
+forward, offering his hand to Doņa Maria.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you honor my house by accepting it during
+your stay, seņora?" he asked, smilingly. "My
+wife has not received the message that you would
+arrive this week. Sickness at the ranch, or some
+accident, has no doubt called the Doņa Ana there,
+and Raquel would not let her go alone. But our
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[314]</a></span>
+house and my service are at your feet. Will you
+enter?"</p>
+
+<p>There was not a moment's hesitation on the part
+of Doņa Maria. Let her English husband feel as he
+might, she meant to enter the doors where only the
+most exclusive had been entertained, since the day of
+the new chatelaine had dawned. Raquel Estevan de
+Arteaga was too well bred to make a scene when she
+returned and found them there, and Doņa Maria had
+too much of the blood of Mexican gamblers in her
+veins not to be willing to take all chances when
+she wanted a thing very much.</p>
+
+<p>As to the fact that her host and her charmingly
+troublesome guest would be thrown together even
+more than in the south, it did not trouble her in the
+least. Even the bishop could not blame her for what
+occurred in the house of Raquel Arteaga! Let that
+lady stay at home and guard her own husband. And
+if she failed,&mdash;well, it might be well to have some of
+that cold, Indian-like pride of hers lowered.</p>
+
+<p>The Doņa Angela said nothing, only smiled a little,
+and pretended to understand none of the Spanish
+spoken, but the padre, watching her wide childish
+blue eyes, and her rosebud of a mouth, noticed also
+the one quick birdlike glance she flung toward Rafael,
+and felt, like Doņa Maria, that the stubborn pride of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[315]</a></span>
+Raquel Arteaga was at last to be lowered a little. She
+had been as an eagle swimming in the blue above all
+their heads, but this petite, golden-headed ladybird
+would sip more of honey from the blossoms of life,
+and touch more closely an Arteaga!</p>
+
+<p>And when, after the very gay supper in the old
+refectory, Rafael brought a mantilla for Doņa Angela,
+that its lacy film might protect her from the soft air of
+the starlight, the padre poured an extra glass of wine
+for the Doņa Maria, the Don Eduardo, and himself,
+and held them in discussion. Fernando and Juanita
+and the other young people could go along and show
+the Doņa Angela how beautiful were the arches and
+corridors after the sun was gone, but they, the older
+people, were content with the shelter of adobe walls
+after the night fell.</p>
+
+<p>So they wandered forth, Fernando with a guitar,
+that the end of a perfect day should be celebrated in
+love-songs; and as he protested that they sounded
+better at a distance, he and Juanita strayed off into
+the night.</p>
+
+<p>Doņa Angela and Don Rafael, from a throne of
+sculptured stars and circles, suns and crescents,&mdash;all
+the Aztec symbols of light,&mdash;listened to the passion
+expressed in "El Tormento de Amor" floating
+down to them from the tiled roof of the corridors,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[316]</a></span>
+and later, when the doors were closed on the girls for
+the night, those two still listened together to the
+musical cadence of "Vengo ā tu Ventana" sung under
+barred windows, and to other harmonies never written
+in music, but known as a compelling power to the
+tempestuous heart of the Mexican. Under the stars
+of that night, the butterfly was made to feel that the
+beautiful tiger she had at first paraded as a trophy
+was not to be laughed at,&mdash;never any more! And
+even when the dawn broke, she lay wide-eyed behind
+the iron bars of her window, wordless and frightened,&mdash;a
+magician who had raised a spirit stronger
+than her power to subdue. What a trifle it had been
+at first,&mdash;a mere flirtation for the sake of his handsome
+eyes, and now&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>She told herself over and over that it was Keith
+Bryton's fault, and that wooden Mexican woman's
+fault. Why had she barred her out and raised the
+aggressive spirit in her? It was not in the beginning
+that she really meant to take her husband. And why
+should Keith betray his indifference in the way he
+did? It was so easy to show him that other men were
+not indifferent. And oh, the awful dismal tragedy of
+it! To think that by such a little, little chance she
+had missed being legitimate queen over this most
+royal domain!</p>
+
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a href='images/p316p.jpg'>
+	<img src='images/p316w.jpg'
+	title='After the Very Gay Supper' alt='After the Very Gay Supper' />
+</a>
+<p>&ldquo;After the Very Gay Supper&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[317]</a></span>
+But that other woman, the Mexican, would hold it
+all, always! Another woman might win Rafael's smile
+and his love-songs, but the acres, the herds, the coin,
+and the jewels (he had allowed Doņa Maria to show
+the latter to her guests that evening), all those things
+would be held always in the slender strong hand of
+Raquel Arteaga&mdash;Raquel Arteaga, who stood guard
+over even his soul, lest the heretics&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Then she smiled a little to herself, an involuntary
+smile of triumph. Had he not said in the dusk of
+the corridor last night that his soul was at her feet?
+With that battle won from the intolerant Mexican
+girl, were the jewels and the coin out of reach? Had
+he not said a boat left no track on the ocean,&mdash;the
+boat he had sworn to find a harbor for,&mdash;sworn to?</p>
+
+<p>Of course it was only a fleeting fancy, but it drifted
+across her brain as a sort of solace for her fretful,
+feverish rebellings against the uneven division of
+things, and it served its purpose, for she was at last
+lulled into slumber by the dream, though of course
+it was only a dream.</p>
+
+<p>But dreams, when dreamed by two, suggest such
+alluring possibilities!</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[318]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='figmusic'>
+<a href='music/m318.mid'>
+<img src='images/mu318.png'
+	title='Music: Mi Corazon de Fuego.'
+	alt='Music: Mi Corazon de Fuego.'
+/></a>
+<br />
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Mujer! Mujer! Mi corazon de fuego,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Te adore con delirio y con ternura,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Porque eres bella angelical criatura,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Como los flores que adoran a' Dios;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Lejos de ti no me importa la existencia<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">El mundo todo y sus mentidas glorias.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lejos de ti la vida es ilusoria,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Porque tu eres mi vida,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Tu eres mi amada,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Tu eres mi Dios!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class='chapter' />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[319]</a></span></p>
+<div class='framed'>
+<div class='figmusic'>
+<a href='music/m319.mid'>
+<img src='images/mu319.png'
+	title='Music'
+	alt='Music'
+/></a>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+</div>
+<div class='dropcap'>
+<img src='images/dc319.png' title='I' alt='I' />
+</div>
+
+<p>It was two days later, before the
+sun was high, that Raquel Arteaga
+rode into the plaza, and,
+slipping from her horse, walked
+directly into the little private
+chapel and closed the door.
+From the other wing of the corridor
+Doņa Maria and Doņa Angela saw her, and exchanged
+startled glances. Their hostess had arrived,
+and had not even cast her eyes in their direction.
+They were both relieved when Rafael and Seņor
+Downing emerged from the portal of the patio.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, she has arrived&mdash;my wife," remarked Rafael
+as he noticed her saddle-horse nibbling at the geraniums.
+"I sent an Indian messenger this morning.
+He has been quick; and, Santa Maria! so has she.
+Look at the horse!"</p>
+
+<p>The animal was dripping, and as an Indian boy removed
+the saddle the water ran down his sides and
+made little pools in the dust.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[320]</a></span>
+"That will do him good," said Rafael. "Rub him
+well, and he will look like black satin. And the
+Doņa Raquel is&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Your wife went to her own chapel; she saw no
+one," observed Doņa Maria. "I should go in, but if
+she is at prayers&mdash;"</p>
+
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a href='images/p320p.jpg'>
+	<img src='images/p320w.jpg'
+	title='Their Hostess had Arrived' alt='Their Hostess had Arrived' />
+</a>
+<p>&ldquo;Their Hostess had Arrived&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>If she had been, her prayers were ended, for as they
+spoke she opened the door and came out on the corridor.
+She was more pale than Rafael had ever seen
+her, and without greeting to anyone, she spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Rafael, two men have been hurt in the mountain,
+a priest and&mdash;the American who was missing from the
+vigilantes. I think&mdash;I understand that he saved the
+life of the padre&mdash;and both were hurt, and&mdash;they are
+bringing him here."</p>
+
+<p>"The American? You mean Keith Bryton?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I mean Keith Bryton," she said, steadily.
+"I rode ahead. Ana is coming with them; she thinks
+he is very ill&mdash;and the padre also was hurt&mdash;and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Keith!" cried Doņa Angela, sharply. "He is
+hurt&mdash;and coming here&mdash;<i>here</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>"There was no place else to send them," said
+Raquel, quietly. "There has always been room in the
+Mission for the sick or wounded&mdash;and in this case&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"That is right," exclaimed Rafael, with nervous
+approval; "that is all right. Where should Seņor
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[321]</a></span>
+Bryton go but where his friends are? This is his
+sister, Seņora Bryton. It is well she is here; sick men
+need their own women folks about them. Raquelita,
+thou art white as the lilies in the garden! Get you
+some wine while I see to beds for the sick. It was
+lucky you and Ana chanced to meet them. When
+did Tomás reach you with the letter?"</p>
+
+<p>She did not reply. Doņa Maria was also asking
+questions, and telling her the Padre Andros had gone
+again to San Luis Rey for a week, and the three
+women entered the dining-room, leaving Rafael's
+question unanswered. He supposed that Raquel
+and Ana had ridden south at his bidding, and was
+elated that she had received the Doņa Maria and her
+guest as she had&mdash;without gladness, of course, but
+without signs of displeasure. He divined there was
+a white devil of rage under her calm exterior, but that
+made no difference so long as she showed no outward
+sign of it. Evidently she had accepted the fact that
+he meant to be master; after that, life would be easier
+in Capistrano. He had always been a bit resentful of
+Keith Bryton's attitude toward himself. Never since
+that dictatorial letter to San Pedro had he felt easy
+with him, and there was no doubt whatever that Bryton
+had avoided him since his marriage. But he forgot all
+that in the satisfaction of the news Raquel brought.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[322]</a></span>
+With Bryton ill in the house, there was every reason
+why the one woman of his family should remain under
+the same roof indefinitely. It would mean the breaking
+down of barriers against heretic invaders, and so
+well content was Rafael over all this that he meant to
+nurse Keith Bryton as the most valuable friend the
+fates could send him. Elated with this idea, he called
+Don Eduardo, and together they rode out to meet
+them, and at sight of them wondered that even
+Raquel's cool exterior had not been more ruffled at the
+situation: she had given them no idea of what to expect.</p>
+
+<p>"Your wife, in the cause of humanity, will allow
+dying space for a heretic," observed Don Eduardo,
+dryly, "but she evidently thinks them worth little
+attention. The man looks worse than she led us to
+think. We should have brought Indios and a litter
+to meet them."</p>
+
+<p>Keith Bryton, with his head bound up so as to be
+almost unrecognizable, was tied on his horse and supported
+by the left arm of a bearded priest who rode on
+one side; while Doņa Ana rode on the other, white-faced
+and tremulous, as she recognized the two men
+approaching.</p>
+
+<p>"For the love of God, be cautious&mdash;cautious!" she
+whispered to the priest. And the latter drew the hood
+of his habit lower over his brows, to shut out the sun.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[323]</a></span>
+"Softly, Anita mia! From this moment I am under
+a vow of silence. This heretic and I have come out of
+the shadow of death together, he with a broken head
+and I with a broken arm. You can send your friends
+to see where three men are still unburied in the
+Trabuco hills. I ask of the Mission only time for
+silent meditation until my preserver, here, is better&mdash;or
+dead. I leave the words of it to you. From the
+moment help comes I have vowed silence. Come,
+come, Anita, girl. When we have blinded a woman
+like Raquel Arteaga for two days and nights, we need
+fear no eyes of men."</p>
+
+<p>And it was so. The condition of the two men was
+warrant of Ana's recital that three refugees of Flores's
+bandits had assaulted the priest, with the idea that he
+was of the vigilantes. When the Americano, by some
+chance, had taken a short cut across the ranges, and,
+hearing shots, had gone to the rescue, he found one
+man with a broken arm keeping his enemies at a
+distance with one of their own guns. He had
+stumbled on their camp while they slept. For the
+rest, Ana asked Rafael to send some one to bury
+the three bodies. They were too near the trail to be
+left like that, and would frighten horses when one
+rode that way.</p>
+
+<p>Of the padre, who, relieved of his burden, had
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[324]</a></span>
+quietly fallen in the rear, Doņa Ana told that he was
+a travelling monk from Mexico, who had been
+entertained at the San Joaquin ranch, and had assisted
+the Don Keith to quell a crazy uprising there. He
+was under a vow of silence from the moment God
+sent help; and&mdash;and of course there was room for
+him at the Mission, not with the crusty old Padre
+Andros, but if Rafael and Raquel would allow him a
+private corner, undisturbed! He did not appear to
+be the sort of man for Padre Andros's game-cocks
+and monte games.</p>
+
+<p>Rafael, glancing at the sallow, bearded face under
+the monk's hood, decided that she was right. The
+padre looked like a man given to vigils and fasts, one
+living the life of renunciation such as one heard of
+from the older records of the valley, before the secular
+priests had been let loose upon the land to fatten,
+while the parish drifted from faith.</p>
+
+<p>"Padre Andros has been called to San Luis Rey;
+it will be a week until he returns. This man&mdash;what
+is his name? Libertad? That is very Mexican.
+Well, the Mission is his; he can pray where he
+chooses. God send he prays Don Keith well again.
+Santa Maria! but he has a fever! Does he know
+one?"</p>
+
+<p>Ana shook her head. He certainly did not know
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[325]</a></span>
+her, and he did not know the padre, and she felt a
+hesitation in telling him that the only one whose voice
+or hand quieted the occasional ravings of the American
+was that of his own wife. If she had done so, Rafael
+would have only thought it a great joke on Raquel,
+who avoided heretics. All the hours of the days and
+nights in the hills, Raquel Arteaga had moved like a
+woman in a dream, walking alone when she was not
+praying beside Keith Bryton's couch of pine boughs.
+While Ana slept the sleep of exhaustion that first
+night, the silent priest had gone again and again to
+see Bryton and hear if there was aught to do, and
+each time that girl was crouching there, white-faced as
+a spirit in the light of the waning moon, while the
+man on the couch moaned "Espiritu! Doņa Espiritu
+mia!"</p>
+
+<p>That was the one moan he had made since the
+fever had struck him, and there had been no way of
+quieting him. But that night, when the moans grew
+into cries, the silent priest saw the girl listen until she
+could bear it no longer, and then she went closer to
+him and knelt there, her hands clasped tightly behind
+her, and in them the golden beads of a rosary shone
+against her black dress.</p>
+
+<p>"I am here, close beside you," she said, lowly,
+"always beside you in spirit&mdash;always!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[326]</a></span>
+"Espiritu mia!" he muttered, and then with a
+great sigh of relief sank into slumber.</p>
+
+<p>The priest watched the girl to see what manner of
+woman might be this daughter of a nun, whose father
+had been the gay, lawless, debonair Felipe Estevan,
+of whom wild stories had been told in the old days.
+When had he ever resisted a love appealing? The
+man watching her knew the girls of Mexican California
+too well to doubt what the result would be: the
+lover first, and the rosary and the prayers afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>But the night waned, and the pale moon, facing the
+morning star, saw her still crouching there against
+the tree trunk. Ana thought she slept, but her
+husband's enemy, who had watched her through the
+night, knew better. He drew Ana aside, and gave
+her warning.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell Felipe Estevan's daughter nothing. I am
+the priest; that is all. She is not the woman to think
+this justified," and he touched the monk's robe.
+"This night I heard her prayers when she thought
+no one listened; and, Anita, girl, forget all crazy
+things I said about Rafael's wife helping me to
+revenge."</p>
+
+<p>"You said nothing about Rafael's wife," and Ana
+faced him with startled eyes. "You said&mdash;what was
+it you said? Oh, that Keith Bryton should help
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[327]</a></span>
+you&mdash;Keith Bryton, and his love for a woman who was a
+saint."</p>
+
+<p>As she spoke, the full meaning of his words burst
+upon her, and she uttered a low cry of dismay.</p>
+
+<p>"Barto! Holy God!&mdash;<i>Barto</i>!" she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>But he caught her wrist, and his voice had a note
+of command in it.</p>
+
+<p>"Silence! She may hear you. Forget the fool
+things I said there at the San Joaquin ranch. I
+thought I knew something of Keith Bryton, but
+I was mistaken. I thought I knew much of woman,
+but one girl at her prayers last night changed all that.
+We will nurse him well again, if your friends do not
+murder me, and then I will get him away. Some day
+when you and I have left all this behind us, I may
+tell you what I thought I knew, but not now."</p>
+
+<p>"But Raquel&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Raquel will always be first of all the wife of
+Rafael Arteaga; after that she may show kindness to
+other human things, even the heretics. But this one
+heretic we will take the care of off her hands all that
+we can, Anita. She is not the girl to drag into a
+man's schemes of revenge."</p>
+
+<p>"I think she bewitches you each time she comes
+near you," flashed Ana, resentfully. "On all other
+things you talk to me sense, but when it is Raquel,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[328]</a></span>
+my one friend, you talk riddles always, and you make
+me feel as if I were walking beside her in the dark or
+blindfold. What is it you mean? That Bryton
+thinks of her? How could that be, when they have
+not met? She thought until last night that he was
+married, so little interest in him has she. How do
+you get such crazy things in your head?"</p>
+
+<p>"That is true. I find they are crazy things; I
+confess it to you, and ask you to give no heed to my
+mistakes."</p>
+
+<p>"It was a mistake, then, that he cared?" persisted
+Ana. "You were so sure&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It was another woman," broke in the priest,
+curtly. "Oh yes, there was a woman; but I was the
+fool when I thought I knew who the woman was;
+that is all."</p>
+
+<p>"And Raquel is not&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Raquel Estevan de Arteaga is a woman men
+should cross themselves when they mention," he said,
+quietly. "She has a strength in her that is of God or
+the devil; she brings it from her Indian hills of
+Mexico, and I for one will be on the safe side and
+treat it with respect."</p>
+
+<p>"She has bewitched you, that is all," declared Ana;
+but the man in the priest's robe drew her behind a
+giant aliso tree and kissed her on the mouth.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[329]</a></span>
+"Perhaps so," he agreed; "but, my Anita, it is
+only enough to make me pity the man she would
+bewitch in a different way. God! If he knew that
+she cared like that, his life would be a hell."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not a heaven?" asked Ana, turning to the
+care of the breakfast. "Raquel spoke beautifully of
+a love like that last night,&mdash;a love in the inner court
+of life, in sanctuary, where only one other soul could
+kneel beside one; it was a love spiritual only."</p>
+
+<p>"Only!" said the man, glancing toward the girlish
+figure in the serape curled against the white bark of
+the tree. "Only! Anita, girl, let us get the breakfast
+and leave love to people who have not a price set
+against their heads. As for that love of the inner
+court of life, the sanctuary, Raquel still dreams the
+dreams of a nun. Men and women of California are
+of flesh and blood, and they do not love in that way."</p>
+
+<hr class='chapter' />
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[330]</a></span></p>
+<div class='framed'>
+<div class='figmusic'>
+<a href='music/m330.mid'>
+<img src='images/mu330.png'
+	title='Music: La Tempestad.'
+	alt='Music: La Tempestad.'
+/></a>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+</div>
+<div class='dropcap'>
+<img src='images/dc330.png' title='T' alt='T' />
+</div>
+
+<p>Three days later, Keith Bryton
+opened his eyes within the white
+walls of a little room in the Mission.
+The wooden shutters of
+the barred window were open,
+and all was still. A meadow-lark
+called somewhere without,
+and he could hear down the valley the beat of the surf
+against the cliffs. A bearded priest sat in the window
+reading a book, and a woman coming from the dining-room,
+through the quaint old Moorish doorway stopped
+suddenly with a quick-caught breath of fear as
+his eyes opened at the rustle of her dress, and he
+smiled at her with a great sigh of relief.</p>
+
+<p>"Doņa Espiritu!" he murmured. "I knew you
+would come if I waited. Such a bad dream has been
+with me! I thought I was back in California, and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[331]</a></span>
+you&mdash;ah! there were higher barriers around you than
+the convent walls, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Doņa Raquel stood motionless, with the little
+earthen olla of spring water in her two hands. Her
+face grew white, and she glanced at the man in the
+window-seat. He raised a finger of warning to his
+lips, and arose and came forward.</p>
+
+<p>"You must not talk, Don Keith," he said, quietly.
+"One cup of water, since the lady brings it to you,
+and then to sleep again. Sleep is best."</p>
+
+<p>"You were of the dream, too," muttered Bryton,
+fretfully, "the bad dream. Espiritu mia! tell me it is
+not true. I cannot think; my head&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Tell him, Doņa Espiritu," said the man with the
+book. Then he gave her a glance of warning and
+touched his temple significantly. She crossed the
+room and placed the water beside him.</p>
+
+<p>"What shall I tell you, Don Keith?" she asked,
+softly. "I am sorry you have been so ill and the bad
+dreams have come. This is Padre Libertad; he has
+nursed you very well. We must all obey him and let
+you sleep."</p>
+
+<p>"But not to dream again," he protested. "Be
+kind, as you were in the hills of the temple,&mdash;give me
+your hand again,&mdash;then I will sleep without the hell
+of dreams."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[332]</a></span>
+At the command of the padre, she obeyed, and he
+took her one hand in both of his and drew it across
+his lips. A shudder passed over her at his touch,
+and she rested her other hand against the whitewashed
+wall for support.</p>
+
+<p>"Courage, my daughter," said the man with the
+book, gently; and the man on the bed looked at him
+and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Courage?" he said. "You should have seen her
+when she faced that mob of Indians and saved us.
+We had not meant to spy on their ceremonies, and
+we paid dearly for getting lost in the wilderness.
+Still, it was worth it, Doņa mia! It was worth going
+through it all, even the hell of dreams, to find you
+again like this, and your hand in mine."</p>
+
+<p>She did not speak, only turned imploring eyes on
+the padre.</p>
+
+<p>"You need not mind him," continued Bryton. "I
+like him better than the old padre, and he shall marry
+us when I come back. Now I can go to sleep."</p>
+
+<p>He held her hand in his, and when she tried to draw
+it away, he smiled with closed eyes, and whispered,
+"You remember how we watched all the stars cross
+the sky? And then the morning star, the star of the
+Holy Spirit, that was yours, Doņa mia; and then&mdash;then&mdash;you
+remember all&mdash;all of our one night?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[333]</a></span>
+"All of it&mdash;always!"</p>
+
+<p>He smiled with his eyes still closed, and released
+her hand, and did not see her as she swayed toward
+the door and was caught in the strong arms of the
+man she called Padre Libertad. When she knew
+where she was again, she found her face and hair wet
+with cold water, and all the women about with cordials
+and cures.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a fever; she will get it next," prophesied
+Doņa Maria. "A woman who neither eats nor sleeps
+gets ready for the graveyard."</p>
+
+<p>But Raquel waved aside all their cures and sent for
+Padre Libertad.</p>
+
+<p>"You broke your vow of silence there just now for
+him," she said, abruptly. "Break it now for me. You
+know?"</p>
+
+<p>"God help you, Raquel Estevan! I know. No one
+else ever shall, and whatever you want done shall be
+done."</p>
+
+<p>"God help me, indeed!" Raquel moaned. "To
+the soul of Rafael I am bound all the days of my life.
+I want nothing done. I dare want nothing."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>Raquel went no more into the room where Keith
+Bryton awoke to a hold on life and reason,&mdash;that was the
+one thing perplexing to the man in the priest's gown;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[334]</a></span>
+and not even Ana was allowed to hear the constant
+demands for Doņa Espiritu, or the girl of the temple,
+or the lady who had led him out of the wilderness
+under the light of the morning star! All those things
+would have seemed like maddest ravings to any but
+Padre Libertad, who carefully excluded all visitors
+from the room, despite the protests of Doņa Angela,
+who claimed the privilege of relationship,&mdash;a claim
+denied by a shake of the head of the silent, book-reading
+padre.</p>
+
+<p>Raquel moved almost as silently about the corridors
+of the Mission, serene, quiet, and busy, always busy
+with the entertainment of her numerous guests. The
+people of the country rode on any pretext to San Juan
+in those days, to meet the Downings and talk by the
+hour in the cool shadows of the patio concerning the
+tragedies of the bandits. The beautiful old Mission
+town had gained a new sort of fame through them.</p>
+
+<p>Rafael arranged barbecues and picnics to the caņons,
+where the wild-rose thickets were yet odorous with
+bloom. Even a dance was arranged by some of the
+gentlemen in the old wing of the Mission, called the
+travellers' room,&mdash;a Spanish dance at which only
+those wearing the old Spanish costumes dared keep
+time to the music, and the Mexican serape was discarded
+for the velvet cloak or cape of grander days.</p>
+
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a href='images/p334p.jpg'>
+	<img src='images/p334w.jpg'
+	title='And&mdash;He was an Arteaga!' alt='And&mdash;He was an Arteaga!' />
+</a>
+<p>&ldquo;And&mdash;He was an Arteaga!&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[335]</a></span>
+The younger men rode fifty miles for costumes.
+Don Juan Alvara, who still wore knee-breeches,
+stockings, and buckled shoes, had promised to go to
+bed earlier that night because of the demand on his
+wardrobe. Raquel delved in old chests of Doņa
+Luisa Arteaga's belongings, and brought out treasures
+of embroideries and brocades enough to turn the heart
+of Angela Bryton bitter with envy. She knew
+Raquel would look a barbaric queen in the jewelled
+bodices where topazes formed the hearts of yellow
+roses, or real pearl-embroidered lilies, and in laces&mdash;laces
+to wrap her like a mummy, leaving only those
+great violet eyes of hers visible to gaze in that serene
+haughty way at one, and through one!</p>
+
+<p>But once having been forced by circumstances to
+take the hand of a guest in hers, Raquel Arteaga
+raised no material barriers to hospitality.</p>
+
+<p>"They are at your pleasure, Seņora Bryton," she
+said, graciously. "After you have selected what you
+would like, Carmella and Juanita may care for some
+of them. The white brocade of the lilies would
+become you. There is a white mantilla of lace to go
+with it, and pearls&mdash;plenty of pearls."</p>
+
+<p>Doņa Maria and Teresa Arteaga exchanged glances.
+They had never objected to the favorites of their
+husbands,&mdash;no good wife did,&mdash;but even the most
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[336]</a></span>
+devoted of Mexican wives had never opened her
+jewel-box for her rival.</p>
+
+<p>However, they decided in confidence that Raquel
+had appeared strange and indifferent since the day of
+the fainting spell. She was more kind and gentle, if
+anything, to Rafael himself, even tender in little cares
+for his comfort, as his own mother might have been.
+But beyond the tender, conciliating, half-maternal
+attitude toward her husband, she walked as in a dream
+of indifference toward the rest of the world. Full of
+care as a hostess, she yet spent no moment alone with
+any guest except the silent padre, who paced the
+corridors, his eyes on a book, and always on guard at
+the door of the American, who had almost given his
+life that an unknown priest might live.</p>
+
+<p>Rafael himself did not understand Raquel's gentle,
+devoted attitude. Once, as he smoked in the corridor
+facing the sea and commented aloud on the charms
+of a pretty girl who crossed the plaza, some man,
+standing there, took up the subject and spoke of his
+wife&mdash;Rafael's&mdash;and the lucky fellow he was to get
+her,&mdash;that girl of the South with her strange, alluring
+beauty not to be defined, but so surely felt by all
+who had the happiness to meet her. As Rafael
+listened, he, for a moment, felt again a delight in the
+barbaric sense of possession of her. It was true; she
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[337]</a></span>
+was of strange beauty, and he knew every man envied
+him. The thought of it brought back the remembrance
+of the fitful passion she had aroused in him
+there in Mexico, where the bars of the convent had
+made more keen his desire for victory. Some echo
+of that fitful passion sent him from the man in the
+plaza to the door of her room. It was not love;
+but she was his, and&mdash;he was an Arteaga!</p>
+
+<p>The shadowy room was lit by the soft glow of
+candles on the altar of the Virgin. She had knelt
+there until some wave of feeling swept over her,
+leaving her prostrate at the feet of the serene, tender,
+changeless Mother of Sorrows. For a moment he
+halted, but the brandy he had been drinking was
+of the best. The Doņa Angela had gone bathing
+with the others on the beach, while he had been kept
+in the town by some business, and a man must console
+himself. He remembered that he had won this girl,
+whom others found beautiful, from one altar there in
+the South; it gave a certain zest to his present determination.
+A woman could pray at any time; but
+just now&mdash;well, she should remember she was his!</p>
+
+<p>What he said he did not clearly remember afterwards;
+but he was strong, and he had been silent, and
+she was gathered in his arms and lifted to her feet,
+and he was seeking her lips with his, when, with a cry
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[338]</a></span>
+that was terrible in its smothered rage, she wrenched
+herself free and darted to the table where the jewel-box
+lay open, and on the top of strings of pearls
+shone the glittering steel of a dagger. What she said
+to him turned him, sullen and cowed, toward the door.
+But there she stopped him.</p>
+
+<p>"Your child, and the mother of it there in the
+willows, are my care, Rafael Arteaga, as they would
+have been the care of your mother, had she lived. I
+have sworn to that dying mother to live beside you,
+and guard you from what harm I can, but if you still
+take your marriage vows to the willows, you put aside
+the sacrament of your marriage to me. Never again,
+while you choose to live like that, must you cross to
+me where this altar is. I guard your soul for your
+mother, but by the Virgin, and by this cross on the
+dagger, I will send you to account there where she is, if
+you come to me like that again! I give my life to keep
+my vow; but if you drive me to it, my soul may yet
+have to pay in the other life for the loss of your own!"</p>
+
+<p>As he stumbled out of the door he met the Padre
+Libertad pacing the corridor, as usual, with his book.
+He did not lift his eyes or speak, and Rafael passed
+on sullenly, muttering an oath: each way he turned
+in the Mission he met an altar or a priest!</p>
+
+<p>Ana, coming through the portal of the inner court,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[339]</a></span>
+met him there, and heard the oath, and was filled with
+fear of a discovery so appalling that her woman's wit
+left her, and she blundered and caught his arm and
+questioned.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Rafael, he has done nothing. That he was
+at the door of Raquel is not&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Sure, it is not," he agreed, scoffingly. "But when
+a man has a wife of his own,&mdash;even Raquel Estevan
+de Arteaga,&mdash;he does not want a black gown and a
+monk's cowl forever as her shadow."</p>
+
+<p>They were outside the window of Keith Bryton,
+and the words reached the ears of the man on the bed
+there, and brought him reeling but determined to his
+feet.</p>
+
+<p>It was the first word reaching him by which he
+could grasp at the reality of the life about him; all
+the vague dreams were dashed aside by that name,
+"Raquel Estevan de Arteaga." It cleared the visions
+of the fever his nurse had feared to dispel too quickly,
+and in one staggering flash he saw the truth: the
+"dream" of the California life was no dream, it was
+the real life to be met and fought again. Where was
+he, that the voice of Rafael Arteaga dared ring with
+such imperious directions? He reached the barred
+window dizzily and leaned his head against the high
+ledge. The world whirled about him for a moment,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[340]</a></span>
+and when it stopped and stood still, he again heard
+the voice of Rafael, irritated this time into more
+intolerant speech by some eager protest of Ana.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, ho! That is the man, is it? And he saved
+her from Juan Flores that night? That is news&mdash;God
+curse him!"</p>
+
+<p>"Rafael!" and the woman's voice was full of horror.
+"You are crazy with brandy; you do not know how
+you speak. Go to your bed and sleep. That man
+saved your name and your wife from disgrace, and
+you have only curses for him in your mouth!"</p>
+
+<p>"Basta! He may win seven heavens for aught I
+care. But, name of God! sing no praises of him for
+saving Raquel Estevan for me! She is not a woman,
+Anita! Never a woman for a man who wants a wife.
+By God, I think she is the devil turned saint; and
+the man who carries her to the hills is my friend and
+earns a herd of horses!"</p>
+
+<p>"Santa Maria! You are mad over that other
+woman, Rafael Arteaga. Every one sees it but Raquel;
+and when she does see it&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"She! she sees nothing but her saints on the altar!
+She has only the heart of a nun in that white breast
+of hers. Don't you put your devil of a tongue in
+this business, Ana Mendez, or&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"You are drunk, Rafael," said Ana, untouched by
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[341]</a></span>
+the personal remark. "You are drunk. Go to
+bed."</p>
+
+<p>No other words came to the ears of Keith Bryton.
+He heard the departing steps, and the rustle of Ana's
+silken gown on the tiling, and then someway he found
+himself back in the bed, with all the cobwebs cleared
+from his brain. He knew where he was now&mdash;in a
+room of the Mission, where he had not dared set a
+foot since the day when he heard her vow made to
+the dying woman. He was in her home, then, the
+home of her husband. And that silent padre who
+had shielded him from knowing it&mdash;what did his
+devoted guardianship mean? What did it mean that
+he had approved that once she had come there and
+stood by the bed with her hands in his? That she
+had listened to his words, and&mdash;&mdash; Or was that also a
+fancy born of the fever?</p>
+
+<p>But when the silent padre came in and closed the
+door, and heard the direct rapid questions, the replies
+were just as direct. Padre Libertad observed that
+the shock of the truth had come, and there was no
+reason for further illusion. The American was weak,
+but alert to all the padre told him; and he told him
+all the truth.</p>
+
+<p>"So you see, Seņor Bryton, you saved my life, and
+there is a good price set against it. I am here in the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[342]</a></span>
+home of my cousin, who will make a fiesta of the day
+I am hung or shot. You know it, and the girl I love
+knows it. It has been a good place to hide: they think
+me in Mexico. I start there to-night, unless you&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Wait: to-morrow I can perhaps go with you.
+God! To think I have been helpless here in his
+home!"</p>
+
+<p>The other man said nothing, only watched him
+with the dark velvety eyes full now of the spirit
+of comradeship.</p>
+
+<p>"It is strange it should be you I trust," he said,
+at last. "I remember days when I planned which
+way I would have you killed when my men found
+you. You saved the government their horses last
+year. I shot at you once as you rode from Santa
+Ana ranch."</p>
+
+<p>"Was that you?" observed the other. "Yes, I
+remember." Then, after another silence, he asked
+with careful indifference:</p>
+
+<p>"Doņa Raquel Arteaga&mdash;she was in here, and I
+said things I&mdash;well&mdash;you heard! Does she know
+the truth about you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not even does she suspect. No one here has
+ever seen me since this beard is over my face. I pass
+the men on the plaza who hunted me with hounds
+and guns to the water's edge a year ago, and they bow
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[343]</a></span>
+their heads and lower their voices not to disturb my
+devotions. Madre de Dios! it has been great sport,
+but for the thought of&mdash;of a woman whose heart
+has been shown to me as a priest! The thing I have
+done is a sacrilege, and Father Andros would scorch
+me well for it&mdash;but I would rather burn than have
+her ever know the truth&mdash;I who am the lover of
+another woman!"</p>
+
+<p>Keith Bryton reached out his hand to the outlaw,
+and there were no more words spoken between them
+of the matter.</p>
+
+<p>Later Doņa Angela returned, and hearing from
+Ana that Bryton was again conscious of his whereabouts,
+insisted on seeing him; and this time the
+silent padre of the prayers offered no protest, only
+sat in the window-seat, and did not lift his eyes,
+and listened.</p>
+
+<p>"I've been wild&mdash;just that, Keith, ever since they
+brought you back. Who? oh, Doņa Raquel and
+Ana, and, of course, the padre. My! You looked
+awful. I'm glad you are better. There is to be
+a really great Spanish dance, and I should have hated
+to go unless you were out of danger. They would
+not allow me inside this door before, and I&mdash;Keith,
+there are a thousand things I want to say
+to you, and&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[344]</a></span>
+The priest arose and made a quiet movement toward
+the door. The interview was evidently terminated.
+Keith had not had a chance to say anything, and
+Doņa Angela whisked out of the room in a temper.
+She sought Rafael, but could not find him, for the
+reason that he had taken Ana's advice and tumbled
+into bed. She finally found Ana and Raquel in the
+dining-room, and smiled tolerantly at the fact that
+the latter, covered with a great apron of linen, was
+attending personally to the moulding of candles, and
+not a servant, not even Ana, was allowed to help.</p>
+
+<p>The days of Doņa Angela's stay had brought
+her face to face with many self-satisfying little scenes
+of that sort. Remembering that first meeting of the
+two as strangers, it was comforting to Angela to be
+able to look down in some way on the wife of Rafael
+Arteaga; and since she chose to make of herself a
+servant&mdash;&mdash; It seemed so incredible to the woman who
+had never, never, had all she wanted of luxury, that
+this other girl, young, and many said handsome,
+had not the natural woman's vanity for decking
+herself with the gorgeous things stacked in those
+old chests. To her it seemed a warrant to Rafael
+to seek companionship elsewhere. A woman who
+could claim a throne lessened her value by stooping
+to the cares of the kitchen. It argued low tastes;
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[345]</a></span>
+it emphasized the uneven division of things. It was
+a constant reminder to Angela Bryton that she, the
+woman who appreciated it all, who would have held
+a half-regal Court of Love in the old walls where
+only endless prayers were whispered,&mdash;she was the
+woman to whom it should belong by right. For her,
+Rafael Arteaga would have spread carpets of velvet on
+the tiled floors and cast himself, happy, at her feet.</p>
+
+<p>All these thoughts had given her a sort of insolent
+courage to comment on the girl who trod the
+Mission-made bricks, and whose eyes looked out so
+often over one's head.</p>
+
+<p>"Of all the Indian servants, have you none trained
+in so laborious a task as this?" she asked, sinking
+into one of the rawhide-seated chairs at the table.
+"It is horrid work. I wonder you spoil your hands."</p>
+
+<p>Ana flashed a glance of resentment at the languid
+blossom of a woman, always a shimmer of lacy ruffles,
+a picture of alluring, half-childish helplessness. It
+was for such a white kitten Rafael was losing all
+his sense.</p>
+
+<p>"I should be proud to use my hands for the
+same work, instead of this endless embroidery," she
+observed; "but Doņa Raquel will not hear of it."</p>
+
+<p>"To mould the candles for the altar, each woman
+of each house should make her own," returned
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[346]</a></span>
+Raquel, quietly. "You have not that custom in
+your land&mdash;no?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not. We are not taught that extra
+pounds of beef tallow will help to save our souls
+if burned in silver holders."</p>
+
+<p>"No? What, then, does it take to save souls
+in your country?"</p>
+
+<p>"Those who come here leave their souls at home
+for safe-keeping," declared Ana, thrusting her needle
+viciously into the embroideries of lawn; "they only
+bring their long purses to be filled."</p>
+
+<p>For one moment the snapping black eyes of Ana met
+the childish blue ones of Angela and carried in their
+glance an accusation and understanding. Angela's pretty
+teeth closed with a vicious click under her red lips,
+then she shrugged her dimpled shoulders, and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you see of course only the merchants here,"
+she conceded, "the people who buy hides, and tallow,
+and herds of horses."</p>
+
+<p>Then she turned again to Raquel, who had seen
+some of the little byplay.</p>
+
+<p>"And those candles of purest white, packed in scented
+cotton, for what especial purpose are they reserved?"</p>
+
+<p>"They are the candles for the dead."</p>
+
+<p>Angela shuddered, as with a passing chill.</p>
+
+<p>"How constantly you people keep before you
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[347]</a></span>
+remembrance of the tomb!" she exclaimed. "One
+needs to get out in the sun often to remember that
+the old Mission is not really a vault."</p>
+
+<p>"It is," said Ana; "there are padres of the old
+days buried under some of the floors."</p>
+
+<p>"How perfectly horrid! And you make all those
+dozens of immaculate candles to be used for whoever
+comes first," she continued, addressing herself to
+Raquel, with a slight smile of disdain as at a childish
+pastime; "and they are all duly blessed, I suppose,
+and duly insured to light the souls from the path
+of the inferno."</p>
+
+<p>For the first time Raquel perceived the touch of
+malice under the smiling query.</p>
+
+<p>"You are right," she said, quietly; "those are of the
+first I ever made with my own hands here in San Juan
+Capistrano. Padre Sanchez bestowed on them his
+blessing, and the thought of so holy a man is in
+itself a blessing."</p>
+
+<p>"But think," persisted the soft little malicious
+tones, "is it not often the story of the pearls and the
+swine? Any sodden drunken Indian beast is likely
+to be laid in state with those emblems of purity burning
+in his honor."</p>
+
+<p>Raquel paused with the last handful of them, and the
+violet eyes, dark with indignation, met the blue ones.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[348]</a></span>
+"That is true," she said, coldly. "We are taught
+that souls are all alike before God. These in my hand
+may be lit for any one&mdash;for a sodden beast that dies
+in sin, for a murderer, for me perhaps, or it may be
+they burn even for you, seņora!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ugh! how ghastly!" The blue eyes wavered, and
+she arose with a little shiver. "But I don't think I
+would want them, really," she added, as she was leaving
+the room, "any more than I would want masses
+said if I should go under a breaker some day when
+bathing, and never come up again. The fashion of
+the living praying for the dead seems a bit incongruous
+and amusing. Save the candles for those of
+the faith, Doņa Raquel."</p>
+
+<p>Her little mocking laugh made more pointed her
+intention of ridicule. The face of Raquel was still and
+expressionless, as she slowly placed the last of the
+candles in the perfumed box and closed the lid. Ana
+flung down her embroidery, and said to Raquel, with
+blazing eyes:</p>
+
+<p>"Raquelita! Some day I shall choke that pretty
+little white devil, you will see! How and why we
+endure her mocking I don't know. That she is of
+Keith Bryton's family is something, but it is not
+enough. When he is able I shall tell him some
+things&mdash;I shall tell Don Eduardo things! She makes
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[349]</a></span>
+a mock of our women, and I keep quiet; she makes
+her love to your husband, and I say nothing; but,
+Raquel, she makes mockery of your religion in your
+own house. Can you stand that too?"</p>
+
+<p>Raquel put her hands over her eyes an instant in a
+tired way.</p>
+
+<p>"Quiet, you, Anita mia," she said after a little.
+"Words are not so much use. They will go away
+soon now&mdash;after the dance to-morrow night. And I
+do not think it is true of Rafael. He is her caballero,
+as he would be yours or Juanita's; that is all.
+There is that other woman in the willows. She&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Raquelita, how little you know men! Pretty
+Marta by the river is only a servant; but our men go
+mad for these white women of blue eyes&mdash;mad!"</p>
+
+<p>"A few days more, and that will be forgotten as he
+would forget the brown girls. Have patience. At
+least, she will not mock our religion to him; and
+the rest&mdash;it is only one day and two nights more,
+Anita, and you will help me."</p>
+
+<p>"At least you will find a way to keep those pearls
+from her," insisted Ana, stubbornly. "How could you
+offer them to her? Oh, I could have screamed at you!"</p>
+
+<p>"The pearls are but a trifle to let go for a night,
+dear. Help me with the candles to the altar-place.
+Oh, yes, she may have the pearls."</p>
+
+<hr class='chapter' />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[350]</a></span></p>
+<div class='framed'>
+<div class='figmusic'>
+<a href='music/m350.mid'>
+<img src='images/mu350.png'
+	title='Music: La Viuda.'
+	alt='Music: La Viuda.'
+/></a>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Porque tu eres mi vida,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tu eres mia mada,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tu eres mi Dios!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+</div>
+<div class='dropcap'>
+<img src='images/dc350.png' title='A' alt='A' />
+</div>
+
+<p>Angela Bryton sought until
+she found Rafael asleep in a corner
+of the travellers' room.</p>
+
+<p>"Ana Mendez knows; she
+has told your wife," she said,
+abruptly. "Two nights and a
+day we have; that is all. Raquel
+says I am not more to you than a brown girl in the
+willows. You make her pay for that!"</p>
+
+<p>"Pay?" He rubbed the sleep of the brandy from
+his eyes and sat up, then caught her to him in the
+instinct of possession.</p>
+
+<p>Quickly she drew aside and eluded him.</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet," she said, with the glint of steel in
+her eyes. "Not until you make her pride pay,
+Rafael mio! She tosses a string of pearls to me as a
+queen would to a waiting-maid, to show how trifling
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[351]</a></span>
+a thing it is to her. One string! Rafael, where now
+is that boat?"</p>
+
+<p>"The boat?" He stumbled to his feet and stared
+at her.</p>
+
+<p>"The boat! You said it. Not even my hand
+shall you touch until it is in the harbor. Cousin
+Eduardo and Keith Bryton will send me away when
+she tells them; they will never let you see me again."</p>
+
+<p>"Huh!" He flung back his head contemptuously.
+He had never quite gotten away from Teresa's
+conviction that Keith Bryton's impatience with Angela
+was born of jealousy. So it was Keith Bryton again!</p>
+
+<p>"He gets you when he has killed me, not sooner,"
+he muttered. "And they all know, eh? How is that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps not, but they will. It is that Mendez
+woman and your wife! I will <i>not</i> be sent like a pauper
+back to England! Cousin Edward spoke yesterday
+of that; of an allowance for Dolly and me. Now
+I know what it means! If I go, I will go in a manner
+they don't dream of,&mdash;alone in that boat! You can
+join me anywhere you say, on the coast. How you
+stare! It is not so difficult, and there will never,
+never, never be any other way we can be together."</p>
+
+<p>"That is true; we will go."</p>
+
+<p>"You want all the coin; you want the jewels; you
+want&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[352]</a></span>
+"I want only you," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"If you want me, you must give me what I ask.
+Those women must not&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"To hell with the women! We will go, and no
+one need guess we have gone together. I will send
+Victorio with a letter to San Pedro for a boat.
+Your lips for that promise!"</p>
+
+<p>"When the boat is in the harbor, and the jewels in
+my hand, Rafael," she replied, and darted like a bird
+through the door, and out into the garden. Later
+she came into the refectory with an armful of lilies,&mdash;symbols
+of innocence,&mdash;and asked Ana for an olla for
+them, and was very demure and sweetly appealing for
+the rest of the day.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[353]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a href='images/p352p.jpg'>
+	<img src='images/p352w.jpg'
+	title='Each Way He Turned He Met an Altar or a Priest' alt='Each Way He Turned He Met an Altar or a Priest' />
+</a>
+<p>&ldquo;Each Way He Turned He Met an Altar or a Priest&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[354]</a></span></p>
+<div class='figmusic'>
+<a href='music/m354.mid'>
+<img src='images/mu354.png'
+	title='Music: La Noche esta Serena.'
+	alt='Music: La Noche esta Serena.'
+/></a>
+<br />
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">La noche 'sta serena, tranquillo el aquilon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tu dulce sentinella, te guarda il corazon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Y en alas de los zefiros,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">que vagan por doquier,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Volando van mis suplicas, a ti bella mujer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Volando van mis suplicas, a ti bella mujer!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">De un corazon que te ama, recibe el tier no amor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No anmentes mas la llama, Piedad a un trobadour,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Y si te mueve a lastima,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mi eterno padecer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Como te amo amame, bellisima mujer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Como te amo amame, bellisima mujer!<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr class='chapter' />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[355]</a></span></p>
+<div class='framed'>
+<div class='figmusic'>
+<a href='music/m355.mid'>
+<img src='images/mu355.png'
+	title='Music'
+	alt='Music'
+/></a>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class='dropcap'>
+<img src='images/dc355.png' title='W' alt='W' />
+</div>
+
+<p>What Padre Libertad saw or
+heard he did not particularize.
+But when Keith Bryton, the
+day of the Spanish dance, had
+arisen and dressed, and talked a
+little with all those known to
+him in the Mission, except the
+mistress of it, the bearded priest closed the door on
+them all, and came and sat beside him.</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow, my friend, we go," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Can I&mdash;will she speak to me&mdash;once?"</p>
+
+<p>"What is there to say to a woman like that? God!
+To think that such a one should be Rafael Arteaga's
+wife!"</p>
+
+<p>"No," agreed the other; "there is nothing to be
+said. Only I would like to see her face once, even
+though she should not know it. Could that be?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is not wise; it sends you away with more of
+a heartache; but there is one place she goes each
+evening as the stars come out. There is one saint
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[356]</a></span>
+left in one niche of the old ruin. Since she rode
+with us from the hills, flowers are always there,
+and she goes from her own chapel there&mdash;to pray,
+perhaps. She has not said so, but&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I can see her there. Will you&mdash;will you try to
+manage that no one else comes? Oh, it will be brief
+enough, even if we speak. But the statue in the
+niche&mdash;I can't remember."</p>
+
+<p>"It is in the shadow. The draperies of red are
+very faded, and so is the gilt of the embroideries now.
+Once it was very gorgeous, and it is called Maria
+Madalena."</p>
+
+<p>Keith turned on the speaker with flaming eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"She kneels there to pray&mdash;<i>she</i>? What mad
+fanaticism is that? Good God, man! <i>she</i> is the
+soul of innocence!"</p>
+
+<p>"What she knows of her own heart, she knows,
+my friend. This is not the thing to tell a man who
+is to her what you are; but there is&mdash;there may be
+some day, a thing that will leave her free; and if it
+come&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Keith had covered his face with his hands. The
+weakness of the illness was still on him; he durst not
+leave his eyes unguarded. But after a little he looked
+up.</p>
+
+<p>"You know something more?" he said.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[357]</a></span>
+"I know there is another woman who has Rafael
+tied hand and foot; I know she will take him away;
+the only thing I do not know is how long it will last.
+The bishop himself would help such a separation."</p>
+
+<p>"God himself could not," said Keith, "unless he
+kill Rafael Arteaga. When I heard what he said of
+her outside the window, I was tempted to kill him
+with my own hand. Nothing else would free her; I
+heard the oath she took!"</p>
+
+<p>"To send to eternity the soul she is vowed to guard
+would not free her from the idea. If he should die
+suddenly, unshriven, it is a lost soul, just the same."</p>
+
+<p>"It is the maddest fanaticism to bind a child like
+that to such a hell; and she accepts it, as&mdash;as her
+people in the past accepted the order for sacrifices."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you know of her people?"</p>
+
+<p>"What do you?"</p>
+
+<p>The two men looked into each other's eyes for a
+moment, and then Padre Libertad spoke:</p>
+
+<p>"I saw her mother years ago in Mexico. I was
+only a boy, and I adored Estevan. I carried letters
+for their love-making. That helps me to understand
+their daughter. It is true; it is in the blood, and
+you must go, my friend, before worse happens. And
+if ever she should be free&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Keith put out his hand.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[358]</a></span>
+"Don't tempt me with a hope like that! I want
+to be sane when I do see her!"</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>He saw Doņa Angela first, a delightful vision of
+brocades and white mantilla. She had dressed early,
+that she might help to receive the guests.</p>
+
+<p>She flinched a little under his keen glance as his
+eyes wandered from the pearl-trimmed bodice to the
+fair face.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, of course it is not mourning," she exclaimed,
+"if that is what you are thinking of! But at least I
+wear no color, and it is only for one night. I have
+not the least intention of dancing. The whole affair
+is only to show off the old costumes."</p>
+
+<p>"You succeed very well," he remarked. "Let
+Dolly come around to see me when she has had
+supper. I leave early in the morning, and can't see
+her then to say good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>"So soon&mdash;going?" She tried to keep the delight
+from her tone of surprise. He was the most unmanageable
+man she had ever known. His indifference
+had attracted her, even infatuated her, a year ago, but
+there were days since when she thought she hated
+him. "Yes, I will send Dolly. She loves you dearly,
+more even than she did poor Ted."</p>
+
+<p>"We will not discuss my brother," he said, coldly.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[359]</a></span>
+"But that will not prevent me caring for the child as
+he would have done."</p>
+
+<p>"Irrespective of her mother?" she asked, halting
+in the door and looking over her shoulder at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly."</p>
+
+<p>"Or&mdash;or of anything I might offend you in?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing you choose to do will affect my promise
+to my brother," he said, impatient at her persistence.</p>
+
+<p>"I may remind you of that some day," she said,
+gathering up her brocades. "If you do go, I hope
+that ghoul of a man, your padre, goes too. His
+silence makes him more like a spook than a man.
+The people have a holy horror of his piety."</p>
+
+<p>After she had disappeared, Padre Libertad entered
+from an inner room and smiled grimly at Bryton.</p>
+
+<p>"You are the sort of lover to be unhappy," he
+observed. "You can't console yourself with the other
+women. Half the men in the valley are mad over
+that woman, who would coquette with you if you
+did not turn ice when she comes near."</p>
+
+<p>Keith stared out of the window toward the hills
+of the sea, tinged with the warm rose of the sunset.
+And the man in a priest's robe tried to laugh, and
+ended with a sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"I admire your strength, though I doubt if I
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[360]</a></span>
+could emulate it," he confessed. "One pretty woman
+in sight is worth a dozen goddesses over the hill."</p>
+
+<p>"Talk sense if you can!"</p>
+
+<p>"I can. I shall leave to-night instead of to-morrow.
+I find I can go to Mexico, or South America if I
+choose, without touching land. I shall be running
+away with the property of a relative, and you might
+not care to mix up with it."</p>
+
+<p>"An hour ago you had no such plan."</p>
+
+<p>"An hour ago I had not confessed Victorio Lopez!
+I know an old record of his, and he thinks it is witchcraft.
+There is a lot of coin going along,&mdash;a matter
+of several rawhide sacks of it,&mdash;but it will be donated
+by a man who can afford gifts. Let me have your
+address two months ahead, and I can tell you how it
+all turns out."</p>
+
+<p>"You should be glad to get away alive, without
+weighting yourself with coin. There is a woman here
+who would care if things went entirely wrong."</p>
+
+<p>"Ana? It is for her I take the chance. I know
+a corner down the coast where fifty thousand will last
+forever. She is free, and she is of California&mdash;no
+snow of the hills in her blood! She will come to me
+after the chase is over."</p>
+
+<p>"She knows?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not yet. Women's fears upset things sometimes.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[361]</a></span>
+If I do not tell her, it will be better. I need only
+tell that I am going; she is waiting eagerly for that."</p>
+
+<p>"And Victorio Lopez?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is paralyzed by the fear that I may give some
+old proofs of things to the alcalde. Oh, Victorio is all
+right. He knows two Indian sailors who will say
+nothing. They need to get away, and want a chance.
+We will bind and gag the others and put them ashore.
+It is all settled. The saints be thanked that I know
+boats and the coast!"</p>
+
+<p>Bryton scarcely knew whether to think the plan a
+wild fancy or an actual fact. The whole scheme of
+life those days was so filled with the strange and
+tragic, that all the echoes of laughter and the tinkle
+of guitars in the corridors could not even temper it.</p>
+
+<p>At sunset Rafael Arteaga rode a dripping horse into
+the plaza, and shouted cordial responses to the chorus
+of greetings awaiting him. All the day he had been in
+the saddle. "On business," was the only explanation
+to Don Eduardo and Doņa Maria. To his wife he had
+offered none, nor spoken since the scene in the chapel.
+But he was in high good spirits, gay and eager.</p>
+
+<p>He came direct to Bryton's room with a fine air of
+delight that he was on his feet again. Even to Padre
+Libertad, whom he had so fervently cursed the day
+before, he was at last gracious. When told by Ana
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[362]</a></span>
+that the padre was on his journey south either at once
+or early in the morning, he gave her some gold pieces
+to bestow upon him for his church or his order: priests
+always had all sorts of ways to use money. Padre
+Libertad accepted the alms gratefully, and exchanged
+for them a blessing.</p>
+
+<p>The sun was gone, and men, and women too, were
+riding in from outlying ranches. The Indians and
+Mexicans were trooping to the plaza to watch the gay
+caballeros and dark-eyed ladies in the dresses of their
+grandparents. Raquel Arteaga, dressed in simple black,
+with white undersleeves and white chemisette of silk,
+stood in the corridor for a while and greeted her earlier
+guests, while her husband dressed. All the people were
+on the west side of the plaza, where the dancing was to
+be. Bryton could see her there surrounded by the gay
+people, almost nunlike with the strings of black pearls
+around her throat as sole ornament, and in the braids
+of her hair the white stars of the odorous jasmine,
+thrust there by Ana, to break the severity of her garb.
+Her eyes burned like purple stars, and the pink color
+crept, in spite of herself, to her cheeks, and stayed there.
+Somewhere, she knew, one man was watching her, and
+each moment the terror grew that some of their many
+friends would bring him to her and make it impossible
+for him to refuse to come.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[363]</a></span>
+Several times she caught the eyes of Ana regarding
+her curiously. It was the first time she had ever seen
+Raquel surrounded by men and bandying compliments,
+and looking, for all her nunlike white and black, like a
+royal creature at a puppet show. And Ana had a sort
+of triumph in noting that the eyes of Doņa Angela also
+wandered to her hostess in a sort of petulant amaze at
+the supremacy of her, when she chose to unbend and
+radiate graciousness in that manner. For Raquel jested
+and laughed at the pretty phrases of caballeros murmured
+in her ear. She refused a brooch of emerald for
+the Virgin in the chapel, in exchange for the jasmine in
+her hair. She promised two men to say a rosary for
+their aching hearts, and she allowed the older men to
+kiss her hands. One looking at her said:</p>
+
+<p>"You are Mexico come to life to-night, seņora.
+Always I have thought it. But to-night I see it with
+my own eyes. Mexico has always that glory of the opal
+fires at the heart."</p>
+
+<p>Angela Bryton saw and heard, and her own childish
+appeal appeared all at once cheap and of tinsel. The
+pearls and brocades of the woman she hated seemed to
+scorch her flesh, and she felt the truth of the petulant
+words she had said to Rafael: that the pearls had been
+tossed to her with the indifference of a queen. The
+owner of the casket could afford to stand serene and
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[364]</a></span>
+gemless, with only the jasmine flower in her hair, and
+yet dominate.</p>
+
+<p>A cold rage filled her as she realized what Raquel
+could mean to men if she cared. It would be as it was
+when they met first on the hill, always she would hold
+the middle of the road, if she was aroused to care. Up
+to that moment there had been a wild fancy of perhaps
+sailing away alone with the hastily gathered coin, and
+of stopping at no port for Rafael. She was half afraid
+of him and after all what could he do if she did elude
+him like that? But the sight of Raquel and her little
+court of admirers changed all that. The proud eyes
+should know all the humiliation one woman could
+cause another&mdash;all!</p>
+
+<p>She looked for Rafael; at once she would tell him,&mdash;now,
+while the glory of the Mexican opal eclipsed the
+woman of the royal pearls! She was blind with anger
+to every other thing. But he had not yet appeared.
+He was dressing, and a gentleman came to claim her for
+a dance. The guitars were already sending harmonies
+through the open doors, and the people were gathering
+thick along the western corridors. The rest of
+the plaza and the inner court were deserted. Not
+even a pair of lovers strayed from the crowd as yet.
+Later, when the moon came up, they would gather
+courage, but the shadows of the corridors seemed
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[365]</a></span>
+eerie retreats at night to any but souls oblivious to the
+world.</p>
+
+<p>It was not night yet. The first star glimmered in
+the western sky, and to the east a soft radiance over
+San Juan Mountain marked the path where the moon
+would come. In the warm dusk the woman with the
+opal fires of Mexico in her heart slipped away from the
+gay groups and through the stillness of the padres'
+garden, under the sculptured face and serpent, and then
+to the place of the altar, where the shadows were always
+softest. She came swiftly, silently; she had an odd
+feeling of being followed by his thoughts. The altar
+was the one place of refuge surely&mdash;the altar!</p>
+
+<p>But it was not. He stood there leaning against
+the pillar. She carried a tiny candle and a rosary.
+He watched her light other candles in the niche, thus
+outlining the carved saint with the long hair over her
+shoulders, and the draperies of crimson. Flowers
+were there, blood-red roses, and he saw it all in the
+soft glimmer of the candles; then, as she was about
+to kneel before them, he strode forward and caught
+her arm.</p>
+
+<p>The golden rosary fell on the tiled floor between
+them, and she placed her other hand over his, in
+mute appeal.</p>
+
+<p>"You shall not kneel at that altar," he commanded,
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[366]</a></span>
+his voice scarcely raised above a whisper; "that much
+of you belongs to me. I will not go away from you
+with that memory of you in my mind; I will not!"</p>
+
+<p>She was trembling, and dared not lift her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"You should not have touched me," she said,
+brokenly. "All those hours on the hill I did not
+touch you even once. Must the two of us be weaker
+than one?"</p>
+
+<p>"Weak? Oh yes, I am weak to-night, or I should
+not be here&mdash;the weakness of a sick man who cannot
+help himself. It is the last time, Espiritu mia, so
+long as we live&mdash;so long as we live!"</p>
+
+<p>She slipped the Aztec ring from her finger and gave
+it to him.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought perhaps it was the ring that gave you
+power over my thoughts," she said, simply; "but
+it was not. Your heart beats here in my breast,
+and will till I die, or till you do. Take it back,
+keep it. After all, it was not the ring!"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice was so low, so even, that he, hearing his
+own heart-beats at the mere sight of her, felt the
+sudden resentment of a sick man at what appeared
+to be her cold control of herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it so easy for you, then?" he asked. "Like
+slipping a ring from your finger or a bracelet from
+your wrist, and putting it aside to wear no more?
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[367]</a></span>
+Oh, God! If but for one minute you could know
+aught but the sweet cool love of the girl, or the nun,
+or the devotee!"</p>
+
+<p>She caught her breath in a little shudder at the
+heart-call in his words, then put out her hand and
+looked at him as he had never seen her look.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't touch me," she said, her tones tense with
+a final decision. "You think that I do not know&mdash;that
+I do not understand; yet you see me kneel
+<i>there</i>!" and she flung one eloquent hand to the
+Madalena of the roses. "It is the thought&mdash;the
+thought! That we live on different sides of the world
+will not change the fact that you live in me, and I in
+you. And it will be always&mdash;always! I do not
+understand? Yet I have locked my door at night
+and flung the key through the bars of the window,
+that I could not follow my heart and go to you
+wherever you were! I do not understand? Yet
+there have been days when I feared to mount my
+horse to ride alone, for fear the wild wish for you
+would grow stronger than I could bear, and I should
+ride to you, to you only, and&mdash;oh, Mother of God!&mdash;ask
+you to keep me there!"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice broke in shuddering sobs, and she
+covered her face with her hands, sinking on her knees
+before the Madalena of the altar, the last crowned
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[368]</a></span>
+saint left in the ruin. Her one hand was still extended
+to ward him off, but he caught it, held it, and
+drew her to him.</p>
+
+<p>"You are mine by all that!" he muttered, scarce
+knowing what he said. "Do you think I shall leave
+you here after knowing the truth? Espiritu! The
+Indians named you rightly. Spirit of mine, there are
+no bonds of earth strong enough to keep me from
+you now. Come! Our world is together; the nights
+of the evil dreams have been lived through. Somewhere
+we shall find the sunshine."</p>
+
+<p>The hand clasping hers she caught to her lips, but
+when he would have clasped her, she broke from him
+with a low moan of protest.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you this that you go away knowing that
+the real life of me is with you always," she said,
+and stood leaning against the altar of the saint. "Go
+now, and go quickly; for I tell you truly, if the day
+ever come again when I find myself like to follow
+you, I will come where I am now, and this will
+end it all."</p>
+
+<p>From the bodice of her gown she drew the little
+dagger she had taken from the jewel-casket the day
+before.</p>
+
+<p>"My life is not my own to live in my own way;
+it is bound by an oath to the dead, and there is no
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[369]</a></span>
+release, none&mdash;none! Go now. You know my heart
+and the madness of it. Forget me if you can,&mdash;but
+oh, beloved, not too quickly!"</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a href='images/p368p.jpg'>
+	<img src='images/p368w.jpg'
+	title='One Wordless Minute.' alt='One Wordless Minute.' />
+</a>
+<p>&ldquo;One Wordless Minute.&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>He caught her to him and held her there. The
+world reeled about them for one wordless minute,
+and then he released her and walked out across where
+the tower of the temple had once been, and he knew
+he was leaving her forever. A horse was waiting.
+He had said he could ride best in the moonlight,
+and a little later the hoof-beats sounded through the
+strumming guitars, and she knew it was over! It was
+her sacrifice for the oath to the dead, and she sank
+prostrate in the shadow of the altar. The tiny
+candles glimmered and went out, yet still she lay
+there. The moon in its soft yellow light flooded the
+open space without, but did not touch her. She had
+found the rosary and clasped it, her lips against
+the cold pearl figure of the sculptured Christ.</p>
+
+<p>And then two persons came toward her through
+the arch of the old sacristy, one in the velvet and
+gold lace of a Spanish grandee, and the other a shimmer
+of brocade and pearl-gemmed lilies.</p>
+
+<p>"No, I will not go without it," the woman's voice
+was saying, petulantly, "not though a dozen boats
+waited! Yes, I can slip away after the dance. Have
+a horse ready. Dolly will be sleeping; she is the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[370]</a></span>
+greatest risk. But we can be out of sight of land
+long before the dawn breaks."</p>
+
+<p>The man murmured some plea in her ear, and she
+turned away, shrugging her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"The jewels first!" she said, with pretty decision.
+"The coin is a matter of course; we shall need that to
+live on. But the jewels&mdash;why not? Half of them
+belonged to your own family, and for the rest&mdash;well,
+you leave her enough to give the Church; that is all
+she lives for. Bring me the jewels at once: when I
+see them in my own hand, I am ready to promise
+everything."</p>
+
+<p>"You are not afraid to wait here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, a little," she acknowledged. "It's a horrid,
+creepy place, but it's the one corner where no one
+else will come. I will wait for them here."</p>
+
+<p>The woman prostrate before the Madalena arose
+to her feet and stood motionless in the shadow. Her
+hands were crossed unconsciously on her heart to
+quiet its beating. Her own sacrifice, then, was to go
+for nothing; the vow she had sworn to live for was to
+count for naught because of one little white vampire
+of a creature whose god was gold and jewels!</p>
+
+<p>The crossed hands held the rosary and the dagger.</p>
+
+<p>"They are here," said Rafael, returning after a few
+minutes, "all but the few the girls wear to-night.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[371]</a></span>
+There! They are at last in your own hands, and
+now&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>She slipped her white arm about his throat and
+kissed him on the mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"And you will live in my way&mdash;not hers?" she
+said, with clinging sweetness. "You are not to be
+even Catholic with me? You have promised!"</p>
+
+<p>"Thou art my only god, O little white one!" he
+said, and pressed her to his breast. "All the world
+can go to hell, so I have you! My soul I give into
+these little hands; my heart is under these little feet,
+which I kiss thus; and thus, and thus! Though
+Christ himself stood in the way, I would have you
+for myself!"</p>
+
+<p>She laughed softly in her triumph.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall be missed," she said at last. "Go that
+way to the plaza, and I will go by the old garden.
+These I will wrap up and carry in my own hands.
+Go,&mdash;oh, there will be other nights for kisses,&mdash;go
+now, quickly!"</p>
+
+<p>She pushed him from her, and he obeyed, walking
+across the tiled floor in the moonlight, and out into
+the plaza, as Bryton had walked so short a time
+before. The woman with the casket stood an instant
+looking after him, and then raised the lid and lifted
+a handful of the gems, holding them up that the soft
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[372]</a></span>
+light of the moon might add to the glow of rubies
+and the white fire of diamonds.</p>
+
+<p>"All these, and his very soul besides!" she murmured,
+holding a necklace aloft to the moon's rays,&mdash;"his
+soul besides!"</p>
+
+<p>And then a low strangled cry escaped her as the
+woman of the rosary and dagger came silently to her
+from the shadows and halted a moment beside her.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>A little later the Padre Libertad was stopped in
+the corridor by Raquel. He had been watching the
+dancers, and was about to start south. Like Bryton,
+he meant to ride at night, instead of in the hot sun.</p>
+
+<p>"Wait," she said, imperatively; "the chapel is
+open; I would confess before you go."</p>
+
+<p>"But to-morrow&mdash;your own padre&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"To-night," she said; "and I want no other padre."</p>
+
+<p>"If you have remembered a sin&mdash;" he began, hesitatingly;
+but she interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>"I think it is neither sin nor remorse," she said,
+quietly; "but it is you that must listen to me."</p>
+
+<p>He closed the door behind them. Old Polonia
+crouched unnoticed beside it, and in perhaps ten
+minutes he came out again, and started to walk
+the road to the sea. Rafael saw him, and laughed at
+the queer crack-brained padre who preferred walking
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[373]</a></span>
+to riding a good horse. Others laughed also, and the
+dance went on, until the partners of Doņa Angela grew
+impatient, and a gay party with guitars started to
+encircle the plaza for her, singing love-songs of appeal
+as they went.</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a href='images/p372p.jpg'>
+	<img src='images/p372w.jpg'
+	title='Things Known and Never Told' alt='Things Known and Never Told' />
+</a>
+<p>&ldquo;Things Known and Never Told&rdquo;</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The white gleam of the brocaded gown caught the
+eyes of the singers, and then a great cry went up
+in the night, and the music of the dance ceased,
+and the people crowded about the dead woman on the
+altar steps, and the old Indios crossed themselves,
+and said in their own tongue:</p>
+
+<p>"It has come, after all,&mdash;the sacrifice of blood on
+the altar of the temple,&mdash;the thing our fathers told
+us has come to pass."</p>
+
+<p>The strings of pearls and other jewels were
+scattered on the diamond-shaped tiles of the floor,
+and many were red with blood.</p>
+
+<p>"Some one has tried to steal the jewels while we
+all danced there," suggested one of the guests, "and
+she has died defending them. Rafael, she has given
+her life to save the jewels of your wife!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Rafael said, at last, and stared at the speaker
+in a dazed way; "my wife. I&mdash;I will go to my wife."</p>
+
+<p>He strode through the crowd toward the living-rooms,
+and flung wide the door of her chamber. She
+was on her knees where Padre Libertad had left her.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[374]</a></span>
+"Raquel!"</p>
+
+<p>His voice sounded hollow and strange in his own
+ears. A strange buzzing in his head blurred speech
+and thought, and when she arose and faced him with
+clear eyes and quiet face, he leaned against the chair
+and looked at her strangely&mdash;helplessly.</p>
+
+<p>"She is dead," he said, thickly; "Angela Bryton
+is found dead&mdash;and your jewels&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Wait," she said, "and I will go with you."</p>
+
+<p>And turning, she lifted the lid from the perfumed
+box of candles.</p>
+
+<p>"She did not believe in these," she said, quietly,
+"but we will light them for her, just the same. None
+of us knew whom they would burn for; perhaps she
+knows now, Rafael."</p>
+
+<p>He made no answer, but moved like a man stunned
+mentally. Out beside her he walked to the altar-place,
+and the people made way for them.</p>
+
+<p>It was the hour of dawn when a fisherman rode
+from the beach to tell how he had found two sailors
+beaten and bound at the landing-place. They had
+a story of a sailing-vessel and sacks of coin, and a
+bearded man who looked like El Capitan; but it must
+have been his ghost, for it was thought Capitan was
+dead, as well as Juan Flores. At any rate, the vessel
+was gone, and the sailors were left tied on the shore.
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[375]</a></span>
+They were afraid to face Rafael Arteaga, because
+of the coin he had trusted them with, and the good
+boat, gone now straight out of sight&mdash;the saints and
+the devil only knew where!</p>
+
+<p>But they needed not to fear Rafael. The coin,
+for which he had exchanged all the cattle and horses
+possible to sell in two days' time, was a forgotten
+thing to him, or uncared for. He sat apart and silent,
+as though paralyzed by a great fear, and he ever followed
+Raquel Arteaga with his eyes, and said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>The people wondered much that the robbers who
+would kill a woman and steal a boat had not stopped
+also to gather up the scattered jewels strewn about
+her. But they had not. Not even a diamond was
+missing. They were gathered from the tiles, and the
+blood was washed from them, and the casket was taken
+to Raquel by Ana, who was almost as silent as Rafael.
+On that subject, never in their lives would they gain
+courage to speak. Raquel took the casket, and looked
+at the gems, but did not touch them.</p>
+
+<p>"And for such trifles she lost her life, perhaps her
+soul&mdash;who knows?" she said, in the same colorless
+quiet way, and handed the casket to her husband.
+"Rafael, have these put away for her child, when
+she becomes a woman. They were paid for by
+the mother!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[376]</a></span>
+From that night Rafael Arteaga was a changed man.
+Some said he had gone mad at the death of the
+woman there; others said that it was not the death of
+the woman, but the curse of the Arteagas had fallen
+upon him. No one ever heard him laugh or sing
+again; and when his wife brought pretty Marta's
+little boy from the willows, and had him educated
+to inherit after his father, the father accepted him
+almost without notice.</p>
+
+<p>Keith Bryton never came back. Letters concerning
+the child of Doņa Angela were exchanged with Don
+Eduardo, who remained her guardian, and after that
+there were long years of silence. Only one man, far
+down the coast of South America, guessed what
+Raquel Arteaga lived through. Even to Ana, who
+had left her own land to join him, there were some
+things known to him of the old Mission days, and
+never told.</p>
+
+
+<hr class='chapter' />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[377]</a></span></p>
+<div class='framed'>
+<div class='figmusic'>
+<a href='music/m377.mid'>
+<img src='images/mu377.png'
+	title='Music: Al Fin.'
+	alt='Music: Al Fin.'
+/></a>
+</div>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+</div>
+<div class='dropcap'>
+<img src='images/dc377.png' title='R' alt='R' />
+</div>
+<p>Raquel knelt no more at the
+shrine of the Madalena, but
+she went there nightly as the
+afterglow flooded the valley.
+Sometimes she rode her horse
+alone up the dusk shadows of
+Trabuco, past the portal of the
+aliso tree and into the inner court of memory. But
+always she kept the tryst of the first star of nightfall.</p>
+
+<p>When the years of the great war of the East came,
+she knew he was there. And when, after a battle
+called "Chickamauga," there came a tiny package
+from that far-away place, she stood in the dusk of the
+old temple, and slipped the ring of the Aztec eagle
+again on her finger. Then she knew that the end
+of the separation had come.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"If it were any other woman than you, Raquel
+Arteaga, men would say you rode to meet a lover,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[378]</a></span>
+when you gallop like that in the night, and come back
+looking as if you had just been kissed," said Teresa,
+with watchful malice. "The old Indios say that you
+bathe in the night dews as a charm to keep young
+always. But why do you ride alone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Alone?" The woman who the old courtier had
+said held the opal fires of Mexico in her heart smiled
+on her sister-in-law at that question, and the dusk
+shadows of night and mystery were in her violet
+eyes. "I am never alone now, Teresa. It is a
+long time since I felt alone, a very long time."</p>
+
+
+<p style='text-align:center;margin-top:2em;'>THE END</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[379]</a></span></p>
+<div class='figmusic'>
+<a href='music/m379.mid'>
+<img src='images/mu379.png'
+	title='Music'
+	alt='Music'
+/></a>
+</div>
+<div class='figcenter' style='border:none;'>
+<img src='images/p379.png'
+	title='Decorative graphic' alt='Decorative graphic' />
+</div>
+<hr style='width:66%' />
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a href='images/frame1p.jpg'>
+<img src='images/frame1w.jpg' title='decorative frame' alt='decorative frame' />
+</a>
+<p>Example chapter decorative border and large capital.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a href='images/frame3p.jpg'>
+<img src='images/frame3w.jpg' title='decorative frame' alt='decorative frame' />
+</a>
+<p>Example decorative border.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a href='images/frame2p.jpg'>
+<img src='images/frame2w.jpg' title='decorative frame' alt='decorative frame' />
+</a>
+<p>Example decorative border.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a href='images/frame5p.jpg'>
+<img src='images/frame5w.jpg' title='decorative frame' alt='decorative frame' />
+</a>
+<p>Example decorative border.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a href='images/frame4p.jpg'>
+<img src='images/frame4w.jpg' title='decorative frame' alt='decorative frame' />
+</a>
+<p>Example decorative border.</p>
+</div>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a href='images/endpapersp.jpg'>
+<img src='images/endpapersw.jpg' title='decorative frame' alt='decorative frame' />
+</a>
+<p>End-papers (inside covers).</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's For the Soul of Rafael, by Marah Ellis Ryan
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+</pre>
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of For the Soul of Rafael, by Marah Ellis Ryan
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: For the Soul of Rafael
+
+Author: Marah Ellis Ryan
+
+Release Date: June 14, 2012 [EBook #39995]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOR THE SOUL OF RAFAEL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, tallforasmurf and
+the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
+
+This etext differs from the original as follows. A few typographical
+errors that did not affect the sense have been corrected. The character
+U with tilde is shown as [~U]. The oe ligature is shown as [oe]. The
+original has musical notation at many points, indicated thus:
+
+[Music (title, when given)]
+
+Where the music also has lyrics, they are formatted as poetry below the
+that line.
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: FOR THE SOUL OF RAFAEL]
+
+[Illustration: "BECAUSE OF ONE LITTLE WHITE VAMPIRE."]
+
+
+
+
+               FOR THE SOUL OF RAFAEL
+
+                        BY
+
+                 MARAH ELLIS RYAN
+
+ AUTHOR OF "TOLD IN THE HILLS" "THE BONDWOMAN" ETC.
+
+
+     WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
+          TAKEN EXPRESSLY FOR THIS BOOK
+                        BY
+                 HAROLD A. TAYLOR
+
+               DECORATIVE DESIGNS BY
+               RALPH FLETCHER SEYMOUR
+
+                 ELEVENTH EDITION
+
+
+                      CHICAGO
+                A.C. McCLURG & CO.
+                       1920
+
+
+
+
+                     COPYRIGHT
+                A.C. MCCLURG & CO.
+                       1906
+
+         Entered at Stationers Hall, London
+
+ Photographs by HAROLD A. TAYLOR, by permission of
+             The Hallett-Taylor Company
+
+The Author is indebted to the Southwest Society of the
+       Archaeological Institute of America for the
+         Spanish Music contained in this volume
+
+               Published May 12, 1906
+           Second Edition, Sept. 15, 1906
+            Third Edition, Oct. 1, 1906
+           Fourth Edition, Dec. 5, 1906
+            Fifth Edition, Dec. 15, 1906
+            Sixth Edition, Feb. 11, 1907
+              7th Edition, Aug. 31, 1907
+              8th Edition, Jan. 12, 1909
+              9th Edition, April 30, 1909
+             10th Edition, Oct. 15, 1910
+             11th Edition, Nov. 10, 1914
+
+ M.A. DONOHUE & CO., PRINTERS AND BINDERS, CHICAGO
+
+
+    A MIS AMIGOS DE CALIFORNIA
+
+      _que siempre me han prestado su ayuda con_
+      _aquella bonded que les es caracteristica._
+
+              M.E.R.
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                  Page
+
+"BECAUSE OF ONE LITTLE WHITE VAMPIRE"        Frontispiece
+
+DONA ANGELA                                        32
+
+RAQUEL ESTEVAN                                     56
+
+KEITH BRYTON                                       62
+
+"NEVER ON ANY OTHER SHORE"                        128
+
+"YOU LIED TO ME--ALL OF YOU!"                     166
+
+"R[~U]ELAS ME FECIT: ME LLAMA SAN JUAN. 1796."    176
+
+"THEN I HEARD YOUR VOICE"                         240
+
+"HERE AMONG THE RUINS CONSECRATED"                260
+
+"THERE IS NO FORGETTING"                          278
+
+THE ALISO TREE                                    294
+
+AN INNER COURT                                    302
+
+THE SERENADE                                      312
+
+"AFTER THE VERY GAY SUPPER"                       316
+
+"THEIR HOSTESS HAD ARRIVED"                       320
+
+"AND--HE WAS AN ARTEAGA!"                         334
+
+"EACH WAY HE TURNED HE MET AN ALTAR OR A PRIEST"  352
+
+"ONE WORDLESS MINUTE"                             368
+
+"THINGS KNOWN AND NEVER TOLD"                     372
+
+
+[Music: _La Calandria_ (The Meadow Lark)]
+
+[Music: _Capitan de un Barco_.]
+
+    Capitan de un barco Me escribio un papel
+    Que si ne queria Casarme con el.
+
+
+
+
+                       FOR THE SOUL OF RAFAEL
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Over the valley of the Mission of the Tragedies, the grass was knee-deep
+in March that year. The horses galloping from the mesa trail down to
+Boca de la Playa (the mouth of the ocean) were fat and sleek and tricky
+as they ran neck and neck past the corral of the little plain, and
+splashed in glee through the San Juan River, where it ends its short run
+from the Sierras to the Pacific.
+
+Where the west trail hugged the hill, two men sat their broncos,
+watching that no strays break for the mesa above; and beyond the cross
+on Avila's hill, other vaqueros guarded El Camino Real (the road royal),
+lest in the whirl and dash of the round-up rebels might break for the
+open and a stampede undo all the riding since dawn of day.
+
+High above on the western cliff a giant head of cactus reared infernal
+arms and luminous bloom. One immense clump threw a shadow across the
+cliff road where it leaves the river plain and winds along the canyon to
+the mesa above the sea,--the road over which in the old days the Mission
+Indians bore hides to the ships and flung them from the cliffs to the
+waiting boats below.
+
+A man stood back of the cactus watching with tireless eyes the dividing
+of the herds and the quick work of the vaqueros as their excited
+mustangs raced for a stray or a rebel from the ranks. A dark serape was
+at his feet, the dust of the roads on his face, and when he removed his
+sombrero to light a cigarro in its shelter, there was disclosed a great
+shock of black hair worn unusually long, and matching in unkemptness the
+full beard covering his face almost to his black velvety eyes.
+
+They were the one youthful feature in an otherwise weather-worn visage,
+and at the sound of horse hoofs on the road, they opened wider,
+listening, alert, yet he did not turn to look whence the sounds came.
+Instead, he dropped silently to the serape, crushed the end of the
+cigarro against a cactus leaf, and waited, as still and as safe from
+detection as a lizard of the mesa in a sage thicket.
+
+He could see clearly the face of Don Antonio, the major-domo, and
+instinctively his right hand reached for his gun. Then he shrugged his
+shoulders at his own folly, and bent his head to listen. Don Antonio
+was speaking Americano to a man riding beside him, and the man behind
+the cactus frowned impatiently,--the villanous tongue was an added
+grievance. A few rebellious animals had made a dash for the cliff, and
+Don Antonio waved his sombrero and ranged his horse across the road. His
+companion did the same, and to give the vaqueros time to cross the river
+after them, the two stood guard in the shadow of the cactus, and rolled
+cigarros and smoked leisurely, while the horsemen, in jingling spurs and
+all the bravery of the Mexican riders' outfit, circled and lassoed the
+pick of the herd for the Apache work of the government in the desert
+lands.
+
+"It is quicker done than it was a year ago," the American remarked
+approvingly, "and the horses are in better condition. If you can let us
+have the five hundred from the La Paz ranges, there should be no trouble
+about making up the other five hundred from the San Mateo."
+
+"Not any, senor," agreed Don Antonio, "I send a man down to have them
+round-up for next week. You no want that they begin sooner than that?"
+
+"To-morrow," returned the other with smiling decision.
+
+"To-morrow! Holy Maria and Jose! You will cut out the fiesta and the
+barbecue always given for the army men? Senor Bryton, the Don Miguel and
+Don Rafael Arteaga will feel offend if you refuse their hospitality
+except for the little--little while, the horse herd is arranged for."
+
+"Sorry to offend the young men," observed the other. "But since Don
+Miguel is ranging in some other part of California, and your Don Rafael
+is in Mexico getting married or making love,--which is it?--I reckon
+they will not miss us much."
+
+"No, senor, it is not to marry down there, only to make it all arrange.
+His mother, the Dona Luisa, is there in Mexico since San Pascual; but
+Dona Luisa will be more old and crippled than she is now, before she
+lets Don Rafael be marry outside her own Mission."
+
+"So they come back here for the ceremony?"
+
+"Sure! Dona Luisa she marry Don Vicente, here in San Juan Capistrano. It
+is here he have the big trouble with the padre, and the padre put the
+curse on him that long time ago. It is here that he is brought back dead
+from San Pascual. And now when the sons have make much trouble, all are
+dead but two, and when Dona Luisa, who was so proud, has only Indian
+grandchildren, she wants to marry Rafael to a senorita who is half a
+nun, that the curse may be lifted. She think that girl do more to keep
+him from walking in Miguel's shoes than prayers to the saints can do;
+and it may be,--who knows? I hear you talking of the padre's curse to
+the Alcalde, so I know you hearing the story."
+
+"Um--something of church property south of here, wasn't it?" remarked
+the American. "Yes, I remember. There goes a mare that is a beauty for a
+mustang."
+
+"Some few years, and you no getting that strong, wild stock some more,"
+he observed. "Miguel and Rafael want English stallions and such other
+breeds. They will have English stock and American customs. The saints
+keep Dona Luisa from hearing them all. I mean no discourtesy, senor, but
+she is an old woman now, and left her home because she would not live in
+your government. She comes back for duty and the marriage; but the old
+never change, senor, and she is hating it till she die."
+
+The American cast his eyes northward where the heights of San Jacinto
+stood guard over the beautiful valley. Willows marked the course of
+Trabuco Creek and San Juan River, and on the plateau between them
+gleamed the ruined dome of the old mission, a remnant of beauty such as
+the ranging American meets with in Latin lands, seldom in his own, and
+admires, and wonders if it was worth while, and drifts away again, but
+never quite forgets.
+
+Yellow-white it gleamed like an opal in a setting of velvety ranges
+under turquoise skies. About its walls were the clustered adobes of the
+Mexicans, like children creeping close to the feet of the one mother;
+and beyond that the illimitable ranges of mesa and valley, of live-oak
+groves and knee-deep meadows, of countless springs and canyons of
+mystery, whence gold was washed in the freshets; and over all, eloquent,
+insistent, appealing, the note of the meadow-lark cutting clearly
+through the hoof-beats of the herd and the calls of the vaqueros.
+
+"I think I should hate it, too," he said at last. "They lived like kings
+and made their own laws in those days. After being a queen of all this,
+it would be hard to be subject to new forms."
+
+"That is it, senor, she never get used to like the American flag. That
+why she want always that Don Rafael marry South, a good Catholic, and a
+senorita of Mexico. She only living for that, they say. Now when it is
+done she die in peace."
+
+"And Rafael, how will he manage his American deals when--"
+
+Don Antonio shrugged his shoulders doubtfully.
+
+"Who knows? I glad I living my young life in other days. The fences
+have make ruin of the country in the north; after a while it is down
+here all the same. All cut up in little gardens. Who knows?"
+
+The American restrained a smile as he thought of the sixty-five miles
+they had ridden across, and only one little German colony where fence or
+hedges were in evidence. For the rest all was fenced on the east by the
+mountains and on the west by the sea. On the north the Santa Barbara
+range would perhaps serve as a barricade, and south even the Mexican
+line raised no obstacle to roving herds.
+
+"The fences will not come in our day, and it is all now to be a pleasure
+ground for your gay Don Rafael."
+
+"Not so much of a pleasure ground as it looks, senor," observed Don
+Antonio dryly. "The same curse works still. It is good he marries a
+convent girl; it takes the prayers of Dona Luisa, and a saint besides,
+to clear these ranges of Barto Nordico, el Capitan."
+
+The man on the serape shrugged his shoulders and lifted his head,
+resting it on his hands to listen better.
+
+"Nordico? Oh, yes! the man with an eye for good horses."
+
+"If it were only an eye," grumbled Don Antonio, "but the devil seems to
+have a hundred hands, and his reata touches only the first stock on the
+Arteaga ranches."
+
+"Not only the Arteagas', I suppose?"
+
+"Oh, you not hearing that?" and the older man's tone expressed surprise.
+"It going with the curse, maybe, we not knowing. Old Don Vicente have
+the brother Ramon, but Vicente buy up all Ramon's land some way. Ramon
+goes crazy mad, _loco_, on that account. And then his son, Barto, he
+study for the priest, that is when the war comes, and he is only little
+yet. He running away from school to fight; but all he can do is to carry
+the letters, he is so little and can ride so like the devil. He never is
+content to the American flags, no more than Dona Luisa, so he just
+keeping on to fight, and the government no getting him."
+
+"Do they try?" asked the American.
+
+"Do they--do they try? Since he joined Juan Flores, one dozen men in
+Capistrano have the sword cut or the bullet mark, who have gone to try
+for that reward. It is good money, but no one getting it. He is a
+devil."
+
+"But I don't understand. You make him out an Arteaga, yet he is called
+Nordico?"
+
+"Oh, he hating the Arteagas, so he taking his mother's name. He take the
+government mail sometimes, and he takes the Arteaga horses always, and
+no one ever finds him any place. While men follow his trail for the
+mountains, he is out in a boat on the sea. The saints send that he does
+not meet the marriage gifts of Don Rafael."
+
+The man behind the cactus fairly held his breath.
+
+"Whew! would he attack the Mission or the town?"
+
+"It would not be the first time," returned Antonio, "but it is of the
+bride-chests on the journey that I speak. Sixty miles of land they must
+cover from San Diego, and they cost more than a herd of horses."
+
+"Rafael can replace the gifts," observed the American, "so long as his
+bandit cousin does not kidnap the bride; but even that, I suppose, might
+be done in this land of lonely ranges."
+
+The man under the cactus nodded and showed his teeth in an appreciative
+smile. He had met good fortune for his long vigil; it was a day of luck,
+and he crossed himself.
+
+The vaqueros had circled the rebellious animals, and headed them back.
+
+"It is true, the horses are in better condition this year," conceded the
+major-domo as they watched the horses loping along the river side. "Do
+you send them all together, or by the five hundred, across the range,
+Senor Bryton?"
+
+"By the five hundred, I think the lieutenant said," replied Bryton. "It
+is not easy to feed more in one bunch on the journey."
+
+The man behind the cactus arose stealthily and stretched his arms as the
+hoof-beats grew more faint.
+
+"Senor Bryton--eh?" and he shrugged his shoulders contentedly. "The
+clever Bryton who put us off the track last year and took the stock by
+the north! This time he will not be so clever. Still, he gives a man
+ideas in the head,--may he have an easy death for that! Rafael's good
+friend who picks the good horses for the good government!"
+
+[Music: _La Viuda._]
+
+    Corre muchacho a la yglesia,
+    Dile al sacristan mayor,
+    Que repique las campanas, tan! tan!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+"Men make plans, and the devil makes other plans--and the devil's plan
+has always the luck with it."
+
+Don Antonio had expressed himself thus to the army men, who fumed and
+fretted at delays incident to the funeral ceremonies of Miguel Arteaga,
+for whom the Mission bells clanged in the gray of a morning, and the
+word went out that he lay trampled into the dust of the Santa Ana ranch.
+A thousand head of stampeding cattle had gone over him, and the younger
+brother--the handsome Rafael--was now the head of the Arteaga family.
+And with half the horses selected for the government, the work had
+stopped short. There was no head to anything now until Rafael arrived.
+In vain the army men swore, and went farther south to secure mounts
+for the regiment. They had to come back to San Juan, and then it was
+that Keith Bryton, with his knowledge of the people and of the country,
+came to their aid.
+
+He heard that the debonair Rafael had landed at San Pedro the day of the
+death, and had quietly lost himself from the dismal ceremonies awaiting
+him in his own province. Miguel could not be seen; what use was it to
+witness the howling mob of Indian retainers?
+
+Bryton, knowing something and surmising more of the situation, held the
+army men with some promise to "fix things," and secretly despatched a
+trusted vaquero with a letter to San Pedro, allowing the new heir for
+his return just the time necessary for the next ship to come into the
+harbor, and the extra day's drive from Los Angeles. In the meantime a
+personal letter giving orders to Don Antonio to hand over the stock as
+per contract was needed badly in San Juan, if Don Rafael ever cared
+again for government favors.
+
+The vaquero rode back in forty-eight hours with the order. The work of
+rounding-up began over again, and only Keith Bryton and Don Antonio knew
+how it had come about.
+
+Slowly affairs began to assume their usual routine. People began to talk
+of other things; and only Dona Teresa, the widow of Miguel, continued to
+go daily to the dark old chapel back of the Mission dining-room, and
+kneel in prayer before the wooden saints in the niches. She sat in the
+patio of Juan Alvara's house, and stared listlessly from one square of
+tiling in the pavement to another. The priest had just left her after
+the perfunctory words of solace, and was refreshing himself with a glass
+of brandy preparatory to a game of _malilla_. The week had been one of
+trial; it always is so when the death is one of accident--no one is
+ready.
+
+The Dona Teresa had been a pretty girl in the days when Miguel Arteaga
+serenaded her endlessly, and her family had insisted that the marriage
+should not be postponed to add to their sleepless nights. One year--two
+years, and the serenades were a thing of a former life, and so was fat
+Teresa's beauty. From the willows was brought again the Indian girl
+whose two children had been christened in his name. She looked after the
+servants who cooked for the vaqueros. Her manner was ever quiet and
+submissive to Dona Teresa, who accepted her as better than any of the
+others of the same class. Dona Teresa had no children, and envied though
+she was not jealous of Aguada of the smoke-black eyes and the babies.
+And it was Aguada who came to Dona Teresa in the patio, undid her
+bonnet-strings, and bathed her face and hands with cool water.
+
+Past the veranda of Juan Alvara, at San Juan, all the world of
+Southern California found its way. There was a tavern down the street,
+where the stages stopped between Los Angeles and San Diego, but Juan
+Alvara's house was the one dwelling where distinguished travellers were
+entertained, after the hospitality of the padres at the Mission was a
+thing of the past. It was up to this veranda Keith Bryton rode from the
+second round-up at Boca de la Playa. He was tired and dusty, and
+accepted gratefully the wine for which the old man sent when he saw his
+guest approaching.
+
+Alvara did not usually like "Gringos"; but at the time the Juan Flores
+bandits were holding up the town for ransom, it was Keith Bryton who had
+gathered a posse of men, including the sheriff, and headed them again
+for San Juan. Grain-sacks were piled along the roof of the Mission as a
+barricade, and behind them some riflemen guarded, as best they could,
+the several families who had fled to the walls of the church for
+protection.
+
+Only one store had been burned, and one store-keeper killed, when the
+help came--thanks to Bryton, and that one ride broke down all barriers
+for the young Gringo in San Juan. He now never rode past Alvara's
+veranda without a halt for a glass of wine, or a chat, or even that best
+test of understanding, a rest in silence together, looking out across
+the river to the blue shadows of the hills.
+
+This day as the young man sat smoking in such silence, viewing idly the
+passing Indians whose dark faces were lit by the rosy glow of the
+lowering sun, and watching the circling doves whose white wings caught
+flashes of pink from pink clouds above, the older man, regarding his
+thoughtful face, asked after a quiet interval, "What is it, my friend?"
+
+The handsome bronzed young fellow stretched wide his arms with a great
+sigh, and laughed shortly.
+
+"Foolishness, Don Juan, much foolishness. I was homesick for a something
+I never knew, so I left Los Angeles and came here to find it. Can you
+understand so crazy a thing as that?"
+
+The old man nodded slowly.
+
+"It is a girl--no?"
+
+The young man laughed again, without mirth.
+
+"Which of them?" and Bryton made a gesture toward a group of dark faces
+across the plaza. "There is pretty Lizetta, Teresa; and if one wants the
+other sort, there is Chola Martina staring at us both under her
+mantilla."
+
+"It is you she stares at. The Lieutenant danced with her last night. He
+is just off the ranges, so she is to-day crazy over the Americanos.
+No--it is not any of such girls you are for."
+
+"I reckon not," agreed the young fellow. "I think it is just the
+atmosphere, and perhaps the old monastery. The pictures of Mexican towns
+paint themselves on the memory and stay there. Were you ever in Old
+Mexico, Don Juan?"
+
+"Not I; never have I been a travelled man. But you--?"
+
+"I was down there a year ago," answered Bryton, looking hard at the
+hills. "I found a town in a valley like this,--there were just the same
+sort of 'dobes, and the same sort of big church walls,--only it was a
+nuns' cloister, instead of a deserted monastery."
+
+"And--?"
+
+"I'll never go back, but--I'll never forget it! That old broken wall,
+and Moorish chimney, and the doves--they all belong to the same sort of
+picture. I come here to sit and moon over them once in a while, that's
+all!"
+
+The old man regarded him with shrewd, kindly eyes. He had the strain of
+Spanish blood, condoning many follies of youth.
+
+"So!" he said, kindly. "Thou comest here to dance with the girls of San
+Juan, that the other girl may be forgotten? Ai--yi!--these other
+sweethearts are fellows who make much trouble!--so?"
+
+"It is something more than a sweetheart keeps me away," remarked the
+young fellow after a slight pause. "A mere sweetheart is not such a
+barricade; most of us are perverse enough to think it rather an
+incentive."
+
+"You too, my friend?"
+
+"Who knows?"
+
+The old man puffed out another cigaretto and threw the stump away before
+he spoke.
+
+"The wives of other men it is wise to go clear of, my friend."
+
+Keith laughed more than the remark called for; in fact, his amusement
+dispelled the murky thoughts by which he had been driven to the
+hospitable veranda.
+
+"True--very true; but which of us is always wise?"
+
+Alvara made no reply to this, only shook his head, and the other, noting
+the perplexity of it, chuckled.
+
+"Don't lose sleep over my depravity," he suggested. "I am no blacker
+than the rest of the sheep."
+
+"Even then thou wouldst fall far short of whiteness," remarked the older
+man. "The padre swears that San Juan will have worse than earthquakes if
+there is no reform."
+
+"That is bad," said Keith, with owl-like gravity.
+
+"It is bad, senor--and it is true. I heard him say it but an hour ago.
+He was playing _malilla_ with old Henrico and won three pesos. He says
+it is wrong to race horses on Sunday, since Jose went under and had his
+neck broke. Jose, like Miguel, had not confessed, and the padre wants
+money for a mass."
+
+"Will he get it?"
+
+"Sure. The boys will not see him stay in purgatory for thirty pesos.
+They are throwing dice at Don Eduardo's now, to see who will pay."
+
+"If it was the horse of Don Eduardo, and Jose had ridden for him ten
+years, why cannot Don Eduardo pay?"
+
+"Don Eduardo is English. The Englishmen are used to going to hell."
+
+"They would deserve to go for that, if for nothing else," commented
+Bryton, as the report of a blast shook the ground, and across the plaza
+the air was filled with flying rock and brick and plaster; and then a
+great cloud of dust drifted upward as the Mexican workmen strolled back
+to their task of tearing down the old church of San Juan Capistrano,
+whose massive stone walls it had taken the padres and their neophytes so
+many years of toil to complete.
+
+"Not a church equal to it in the Californias; not a church equal to it
+dreamed of in the States when it was being built!" and the young fellow
+stared moodily at the devastation of it. "Can't the bishop stop that?"
+
+"Ten years the Church fight to get it back. They must win some day--oh,
+yes--sure!"
+
+"But what will they have when the suit is won, if this is allowed to go
+on?"
+
+"Who knows?" queried Alvara, placidly. "We may be in our graves, senor,
+and not here to see it. When Eduardo wants foundation for an adobe, he
+blows down a stone wall; when he wants walls for a well, he blows down
+the arches of the patio, until bricks enough fall. It is quicker than to
+burn new ones."
+
+"But the padre?"
+
+"There is the man who is padre of San Juan Capistrano in these days,"
+said Juan Alvara, briefly.
+
+A man was coming up the middle of the road, his boots wet and muddy from
+irrigating-ditches, a short black pipe between his teeth. He halted to
+chaffer with an Indian woman who carried a basket of fish from the sea.
+
+Contemptuously viewing the modest sea bass, he said: "Fish only a foot
+long--what good are they? Who is fool enough to buy such?"
+
+"It is not to sell, father. Tia Concepcion, who is much sick, ask for
+these; they are to give, for she is sick."
+
+"Humph! a sick woman to eat ten fish! They will be sending for me in the
+middle of the night for prayers. You go to my cook, and leave seven of
+these with him in the kitchen for my supper."
+
+The Indian lowered her head and passed on to the Mission. The padre
+crossed the plaza to where the group of girls stood chatting at the open
+gate of a patio. At his approach they fell silent, but a few brief words
+scattered them quickly toward their several homes, and the man of the
+church tramped on, the dust of the road sticking to his wet boots.
+
+"All what brings a price and is overlooked by the Englishmen, this padre
+will dig up," said Juan Alvara. "He is getting rich from many fields."
+
+"Many fields?"
+
+"Many fields--the church, the little ranch he has picked up, and the
+game of _monte_ or _malilla_. He is the new sort of priest they send
+these days from Catalonia. No one in San Juan confesses now until Padre
+Sanchez comes past. If the church wins, the Mission will be blown down
+all the same, so long while some one pay four bits a load for brick. All
+is much changed. Father Sanchez is another kind--a holy man and of God."
+
+Alvara lifted his sombrero reverently.
+
+"The vaqueros coming with the band of horses from the beach soon," he
+observed. "We will go to the corrals, and help you to forget the
+girl--no?"
+
+"I'm not so anxious to forget, I reckon--the girl is only a sort of
+dream girl. This trip was not so much to forget a girl as to--you
+remember Teddy, my half-brother?"
+
+"Don Teddy? Sure--he was the life of the valley when he came to San
+Juan."
+
+"Yes. Well, Teddy's married; he has married the woman who, you said, had
+the face of some angel."
+
+"Not Angela, the senora who is Don Eduardo's English cousin?"
+
+The other nodded his head grimly.
+
+"But--" the old man stared at him sharply, and then suddenly recovered
+himself.
+
+"Teddy says his wife wants to come down here while he is in Mexico,"
+grunted Bryton. "What the devil can I do with her if she comes now?"
+
+"You are a relative now--is it not so?" asked the old man, with an
+affectionate smile. "She is your sister."
+
+"Sister be--" If he meant blessed, he did not look it as he tramped the
+veranda. "I start just the same for the south ranch to-morrow. If she
+comes, she can go to Mac's tavern, or to the Mission with the ghosts!"
+
+"That would not be good to do," said Alvara seriously. "The wife of your
+brother must come to my house. Teresa, the widow of Miguel, is here;
+her English is not anything, but it is good that your sister have a lady
+with her in the house. Teresa, she feel very bad. Don Teddy's wife was
+once a widow; she will understand."
+
+[Illustration: DONA ANGELA]
+
+"Will it make many changes in the business--his death?" asked Bryton.
+
+"It will lose the ranches more quickly to the English and the
+Americans," stated the older man. "Rafael will have all the money now,
+and--it is good that he gets married quick. The girl--she is Estevan's
+daughter--she likes no English--so they say."
+
+"Oh!--Estevan's daughter--Estevan's! I heard a queer story of that name
+once--a queer story!"
+
+"He left when the Americanos came to California. Always he fought
+against the Americanos. He was a strong soldier, and he die there in
+Mexico, and all his money is for the girl if she marry; for the convent
+if she not marry at all."
+
+"It was another Estevan," said Keith. "It was a story of an old Aztec
+temple that would make your hair curl! Might have been a relation of
+your soldier Estevan."
+
+"There may be the same name in Mexico, but Felipe Estevan had no
+brothers."
+
+Keith rolled a cigarro, and did not notice that the old man's hand
+trembled as he did the same, and that his eyes were striving in vain to
+appear careless.
+
+"My Spanish was pretty queer those days, and I did not grasp the details
+of the story. You find all sorts of half-buried towns and temples and
+palaces in the country--queer places no one on earth can tell who built.
+But the temple was a plain fact. Stonework cut for all the world like
+that," he added, pointing to the gray Mission ruin. "Zig-zags on the
+cornices and Aztec suns just the same over the portals. There were great
+old walls left, but no roof. Trees grew all through it, and right in the
+open was something like a bench covered with queer Indian figures of
+fight, and sacrifices, and the only one I ever saw down there carved out
+of marble."
+
+"Yes--a bench of marble!" Alvara was listening intently, nodding his
+head, and forgetting to smoke.
+
+"Well, an old miner down there told me a lurid story of the last Indian
+sacrifice offered up on that altar. He found the body and helped to bury
+it--the name was Estevan."
+
+"It is a good name," said the old man.
+
+"Fine! but wherever he had lived he was used to a different sort of
+woman from the one he met at the old temple. She was of pure Spanish and
+Aztec stock. The women in those temples don't usually appear to count,
+but she came of a long line of Aztec priests. After the Catholic Church
+got hold of them, they became Catholic priests instead of Aztec ones,
+and served the same God under a different name."
+
+"So?" remarked Alvara.
+
+"It seems Estevan drifted into the country with considerable
+money--cattle-man, I think; anyway, he had a ranch of some sort--and
+fell dead in love with the sister of one of these hereditary priests,
+and they were married. The old miner said a lot of queer old Indians
+gathered from the Lord only knew where, and had a great bonfire and
+crazy dances and ceremonies at the temple the night she was married.
+They were waiting for a new priest of their own old religion to be born
+some day and every marriage in that family was of interest."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well--I don't know how to make clear that there are wives in the world
+to whom brown girls in the willows are--well--they are absolutely taboo
+to the husbands--understand?"
+
+Alvara nodded silently.
+
+"This Estevan was not used to women like that. He was crazy over the
+priest's sister till he got her, and then he was like many other men--he
+went back to the brown girls."
+
+"And then?"
+
+"Then that old Aztec tribe seemed to hear of it on the wind--no one
+knows. A brown girl was caught by the Indians one night, her long hair
+cut short to her head; and the next day Estevan was found tied on that
+altar with the same hair plaited into ropes. The heart had been cut from
+the body and rested in a little urn or vase carved in the stone of the
+wall. There were no other mutilations or signs of cruelty--it was more
+like a pagan ceremony than anything else. The girl's hair was the only
+clue as to what the cause might have been."
+
+"And the wife and the child--what did the man tell you of them?"
+
+"Child?" Keith stared at the old man. "I did not mention a child; never
+heard there was one. The widow of Estevan entered a convent and was
+never heard of again. The old miner said the priest took charge of the
+property--for the Church, he supposed! I think of that old temple every
+time I see the cactus and Aztec sun cut in this gray-green stone of your
+church here; but I had forgotten the name of Estevan until you mentioned
+it."
+
+"It is a good name," added Alvara again. "Felipe Estevan was wild and a
+fighter, but he was not a bad man in California. He had no wife, and the
+girls all wore beads he bought--but why not? He knew we have only one
+life to live here!"
+
+"True, senor; and the story of the tragedy made me forget poor Teddy's
+comedy--one I can't laugh at yet."
+
+"Some day you ask us to a wedding, and you will forget that marriage is
+a madness," said Alvara.
+
+And then Dona Teresa came slowly out on the veranda in her many folds of
+black. There was a hard glitter in her little black eyes, but her lips
+curved ever so slightly in a courteous greeting as Keith Bryton bent
+over her hand.
+
+"I hear how you telling that story, senor," she remarked, pleasantly.
+"You think that it is good to tie a gentleman on a bench, and put his
+heart on a shelf--no?"
+
+"Good? Why, it was the most ghastly heathenish thing I ever heard of.
+But--"
+
+"But you Americanos think most of the women who do such things," she
+persisted; "you think it better than to let him live where there are the
+brown girls."
+
+"Oh--senora?"
+
+He saw that he had irrevocably damned himself in her eyes. She might
+speak to him courteously through a long lifetime, but one of the
+institutions of their pastoral life--an institution ignored by the usual
+guest in the land--had been referred to in a sarcastic manner, and he
+knew that never again could he expect the good will of Teresa Arteaga.
+The allusion had been the most distant, the most unintentional, but at
+the first word the blood of the Mexican was arrayed against the Gringo.
+
+"You think it well when that wife put the knife in the heart of the
+husband?" she continued. "(Yes, Aguada, I will have a cup of orange
+juice, and you may bring wine for the gentlemen.) You think your
+American ladies do that same thing--no?"
+
+"Oh--the old miner never suggested that it was the woman did it--the
+wife!" he protested. "It was thought to be the work of the old hill
+tribe of Indians."
+
+"It was not alone the Indians," stated Dona Teresa, with sudden insight.
+"Men would not think to tie him with girl's hair. No, it was the wife."
+
+Alvara looked at her warningly over his glass.
+
+"If there are such wives in Mexico, we hope they stay there," he said.
+"Our own Indians make trouble enough for the padre and the alcalde. The
+kind you tell of are best left with their tribes in the hills."
+
+For a little longer they talked of the new horses needed for the
+frontier warfare, and touched upon the chance of the Capitan's stealing
+them before they got across the divide.
+
+"But there is no danger even of El Capitan now, when the Senor Don
+Bryton have put himself to help guard," remarked Teresa, eyeing him with
+a cat-like glance to discover if her sarcasm was appreciated. "We all
+feel very safe now in San Juan valley."
+
+"With those brilliant army officers in town, you certainly should," he
+remarked, easily. "The women have always been the Capitan's best
+friends, and the officers are cutting him out!"
+
+"He see too much--and he talk too much," said Teresa, as Bryton left
+them and walked leisurely down the road toward the inn and post-office.
+
+"He means no harm," remarked Alvara. "The ways of the Americano are not
+our ways, but I like him better than the army men. He makes no
+scandals."
+
+"If the army men make love to the girls, they keep quiet about it,"
+returned Teresa. "But this man--he thinks himself too good for the
+'brown girls' he talks of. Men who are too good should go to stay in the
+church and pray for the sinners!"
+
+Alvara knew that no remark of Bryton's had been meant to reflect in the
+least on social conditions in San Juan. But what use to argue with an
+angry, jealous woman hunting for a grievance?
+
+The widow of Miguel had gone through the years of jealous bitterness,
+the shock of Miguel's death, the knowledge that she would inherit but a
+widow's share, the nerve-wrenching strain of a Mexican funeral, the
+sight of her husband's Indian children beside the bier; but that had all
+been in the midst of the people who understood--where house-servants
+were often legacies to the estate from brother, or uncle, or cousin. But
+this man, who told of a wife that revenged herself, had unconsciously
+flung in her face a new standard; she hated him, and hated the sort of
+women he knew in his own country,--the white-faced women who had snow in
+their blood and did not understand!
+
+Bryton tried in vain to think what he had said to annoy Teresa so
+exceedingly; could it have been his inquiring as to the estate? Surely,
+she must know that many persons were asking the same questions. Her
+brother-in-law, Rafael Arteaga, was such an uncertain quantity that
+wagers were plentiful as to his management of the several ranches. If he
+left them as Miguel had done, principally to the lawyers, it might not
+be so bad, but Rafael's disposition to make his own bargains made older
+people shake their heads. His mother, Dona Luisa, was old and ill. He
+could have time to make very bad bargains before she could make the
+journey from Mexico; and even then would she be physically able to take
+note of business details? All those questions Bryton had heard talked
+over and over. Also, the matter of the wedding,--would it be postponed
+because of the funeral? No one knew whether Dona Luisa and the bride
+were not on the way when the death occurred. Rafael had, it was
+understood, come ahead that he might make the preparations for their
+reception. A letter had also arrived saying that all things must be put
+in order at the dwelling-rooms of the Mission; it stated that the
+"donas"--the bride gifts--he had selected in Mexico might arrive any
+day. They had come by sea to San Pedro, and San Juan was in quite a
+flutter of excitement over its most important wedding in a generation.
+
+The alcalde met Bryton, and incidentally mentioned that it was a pity
+the horse deal had not been held over for the week of the wedding; there
+would be barbecues and horse races for the latter part of the week.
+
+"Sorry I can't stay," observed Bryton. "I'm keeping tab for the
+contractor on those cavalry horses, and must stay with the bunch, at
+least until they reach Los Angeles. Teddy has gone down into Mexico; if
+he stays, I may follow."
+
+"Now that one of you boys is married, you should settle down and be a
+permanent citizen of some district,--what is the matter with this
+place?"
+
+"It's the most beautiful valley I ever saw," agreed Bryton. "But for
+getting Teddy to locate sixty miles from town--never! And as to the
+lady in the case, she will insist always on an audience more--"
+
+What more it would have to be was interrupted by the clatter of the
+stage down the street, and on the seat beside the driver was a little
+woman in pale blue flounces thick with dust, and a white hat with pink
+rosebuds dancing and swaying with the rock of the stage.
+
+"God--" began Bryton, and then checked himself.
+
+The alcalde smiled.
+
+"Mrs. Ordway--or Mrs. Teddy Bryton now--looks pretty well satisfied with
+this as a temporary audience," he remarked, as he sauntered across the
+street to his own abode. Bryton's exclamation showed that he was by no
+means pleased to see her, and the alcalde did not care to witness a
+family reunion of that sort, so he walked away smiling.
+
+The lady waved her hand and flung a bright smile toward the half-brother
+of her husband. He lifted his hat, but did not move from his tracks
+until the horses came to a halt, brought suddenly to their haunches by
+the driver, who was making a showy entrance into the village for the
+gratification of the lady.
+
+"I've had a delightful trip from Los Angeles--thanks to Don Rafael," she
+called, gaily. "I never--never expect to drive so fast again. Come and
+help me down!"
+
+But the slender, handsome Mexican beside her had leaped to the ground,
+and, sombrero in hand, was ready to perform that service before the
+American reached the stage.
+
+"You are always the day after the fair, Keith," she remarked, her eyes
+narrowing in a smile. "I am a thousand times obliged to Senor Arteaga!"
+
+"It is I who am honored, senora," he returned with a sweep of the
+sombrero, and one brief yet steady look into her eyes. Mrs. Bryton
+turned away with a pleased little smile, and proceeded to shake the dust
+from the ruffles of her sleeve.
+
+Keith Bryton saw both the look and the smile, and it gave a tinge of
+coldness to his greeting.
+
+"How do you do, Senor Arteaga?" he remarked. "Thank you for looking
+after Mrs."--the word seemed hard to say--"Bryton. Are you adding
+stage-driving to your other accomplishments?"
+
+Rafael Arteaga had caused too much jealousy in his day not to suspect he
+recognized it in the attitude of the American, whom it was something of
+a victory to outrival.
+
+"Only when there is extra precious cargo on board," he said, meaningly.
+"American ladies are rare in San Juan. I was the only one present to
+show our appreciation of such a visit."
+
+"But I am not an American--never in this world!" she insisted. "It was
+only the accident of marriage took me to your Mexican America. I was
+born in London, and am a subject of the Queen! Don't ever fancy me an
+American!"
+
+"Few people will make that mistake," said Bryton, dryly. "I suppose you
+know that your cousin and his wife are not here?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I discovered that through Senor Arteaga when I was part way
+down. But he tells me the army men are here, and that there are always
+dances, horse races, and a general festival while they stay. I thought
+it might be worth while. Senor Arteaga will look after me if you are too
+busy."
+
+"With many thanks for the honor, senora."
+
+"The barbecues are over," said Bryton; "they were rather subdued this
+time, because of the funeral of Don Rafael's brother. I leave with the
+army men to-morrow for a trip farther north, and you had best return to
+Los Angeles, or go to your cousin in San Diego."
+
+She pretended to busy herself concerning a bandbox on which the cord had
+broken, but her little white teeth bit into her lip. Rafael had entered
+the post-office with the driver of the stage.
+
+"I am not interested in San Diego," she observed. "There must be
+somewhere in this row of adobes a place where a lady could stay."
+
+"There is the tavern kept by Mac. You may be able to retain a room there
+alone, if no other women stop over."
+
+"Share a room with strangers? But Don Rafael offered--"
+
+"Don Rafael has only several adobes here, where the vaqueros eat and
+sleep--neither he nor his brother has lived here as a regular thing;
+when they do, they share the house of the major-domo, who has an Indian
+wife. The only privacy Don Rafael could assure you of would be to give
+you the key of the Mission."
+
+"That graveyard! I must say you are not very brotherly, amigo--I learned
+some more words of Spanish on the way down! Well, if I must go to the
+awful tavern, I must! Do you suppose that villanous-looking
+black-and-tan in the serape will carry my boxes into the hotel? You've
+not said one civil word, Keith! Are Teddy and I to do the best we can
+without your blessing?" she asked, mockingly.
+
+He looked at her slowly from head to foot, and back to her innocent
+wide-open blue eyes.
+
+"I congratulate you," he said, briefly. "I will see that your
+belongings are taken to your room. The gentleman in the serape chances
+to be a Mexican Don, not accustomed to carting bandboxes."
+
+"You are not very cordial in your congratulations," she observed, as if
+determined to break down his cold unconcern,--to make him _say_
+something.
+
+"No, I'm not," he agreed, tersely. "If Teddy had given me any idea of
+it, you know he would not have been a married man now."
+
+"Oh, I knew you would be jealous, no matter whom he married," she
+replied; "I told him so!"
+
+"So I supposed. But if you want to secure a room alone, you'd better not
+delay. Apartments are rather at a premium in San Juan."
+
+He walked with her past the admiring group of prominent citizens toward
+the patio of the inn. Several of the men swept sombreros to the earth as
+she passed. The cousin of Don Eduardo was a lady they must show special
+deference to, even if she had been ugly, which she certainly was not.
+
+Most of them envied the tall, rather good-looking fellow swinging along
+by her side, but he did not seem as happy in the privilege as others
+would have been. Alvara, seeing himself forgotten for Don Eduardo's
+pretty blonde cousin, smiled a little, and continued his walk alone to
+the corral.
+
+"She make him forget,--but she is not the woman," he said, shrewdly.
+
+Mrs. Bryton surveyed the coarse furnishings of the adobe with disgust as
+she was led to the one room where she could secure sleeping
+accommodation. It contained three beds with as many different-colored
+spreads, queer little pillows, and drawn-work on one towel hanging on a
+nail. The floor had once been tiled with square Mission bricks; but many
+were broken, some were gone, and the empty spaces were so many traps for
+unwary feet. Names of former occupants were scratched in the whitewashed
+wall. There was no window, and but one door opening on the patio and to
+be fastened from within by a wooden bar.
+
+"But this--there must be something better than this!" she exclaimed.
+
+"It is the one home where you could make yourself understood. The
+proprietor chances to speak English. If you come without notifying
+your--relatives, you must take what you find, or go on to San Diego.
+Your cousin is there--also his wife."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders, and dropped wearily to a wooden bench.
+
+"I can't ride another mile--I'm dead tired. But you don't ask why I
+came!"
+
+"That is your husband's affair, not mine," he returned. "If there is
+nothing else I can do for you, I will go and look after my own affairs.
+I start south in the morning."
+
+"Because I came?" she demanded, with a slight smile. At sight of it his
+face flushed, and then the color receded while he regarded her steadily.
+
+"Don't make any mistake about that," he suggested. "I did leave town out
+of impatience with another friend of mine, who was wasting his time with
+you. Of course he would not listen to me, and he has evidently told you.
+I liked him, and did not want to see him made a fool of."
+
+"Oh, you are a silly!" she replied, unfastening her hat-string and
+glancing at him strangely. "It never was that man for one little minute;
+you, of all the men, ought to know."
+
+"I, of all the men, have been the one who did not guess that it was
+Teddy," he retorted. "But since it is, there is one thing to
+remember,--Teddy is the best fellow in the world, and the easiest mark,
+and you are not to forget it!"
+
+"I did not promise to honor and obey you!" she retorted, petulantly.
+
+"But if you don't in this case--" he halted abruptly and walked away.
+Her high, sweet voice called after him, but he did not turn his head. He
+evidently realized that he had come very near threatening her; and,
+after all, if Teddy chose to make a fool of himself for a pretty doll--
+
+For she was undeniably pretty, and she had created quite a flurry a year
+before when she reached San Pedro by steamer from Mexico, a girlish
+widow with one child, and waited there until the English cousin of her
+husband, Eduardo Downing, had been notified and came up in state from
+his ranches, with his Mexican wife, to receive her.
+
+One child more or less never made any difference on the ranch of
+Eduardo, and his wife rather liked the little white doll that was alive,
+for her own brown-skinned grandchildren to play with. It was better than
+an Indian baby--more of a novelty, so that the family affairs of the
+young widow were easily adjusted. She accepted invitations to visit
+friends of her cousin on ranches and in town. For a year she had earned
+the reputation of being a rather gay flirt, and she could have married
+several times. Keith Bryton's friends had more than hinted that she was
+waiting for him, and when the word went abroad that it was his
+half-brother, eyes were opened wide in Los Angeles. There were lifted
+brows, and smiles. Keith knew how the marriage would be commented upon,
+and he was filled with rage that she should assume at once her
+care-free attitude, and fraternize with Rafael Arteaga, as she evidently
+had done on the ride down. And Teddy trusted her absolutely--good old
+Teddy, who had been infatuated from the first sight of her, and had
+loved without hope until lately, very lately indeed!
+
+They had been married on the eve of his trip to Mexico. His letter,
+written that night, and given her to mail, had been held back by the
+bride until she was ready to follow it on the next stage. What mad idea
+had she in thus coming to the last village likely to be attractive to
+her? Was it to enjoy her victory?--to show him that his years of
+devotion to Teddy went for nothing when she chose to turn the light of
+her countenance his way?
+
+Something like that it must have been,--the freakish defiance of a
+spoiled child. Not innocent, despite the big baby-blue eyes, but too
+ignorant of social conditions in this Mexican town for him to leave her
+to the guardianship of Rafael Arteaga when he should ride away
+to-morrow. The only American men in the place were unmarried. For
+Teddy's sake he must see that she went too. For Teddy's sake--that was
+the devil of it!
+
+Rafael was lounging in the door of the post-office smoking, when Bryton
+emerged from the patio. There was a smile in his eyes as he noted the
+annoyed face of the American.
+
+"I was waiting for you, amigo," he said, walking beside him. "I have no
+wish to object to the hotel of our friend Mac; but I believe it may be
+possible to secure a better place for senora, your sister. The widow of
+my brother is still here, Mac has just told me. I can turn over to them
+a house of plenty of room to-morrow."
+
+"Many thanks to you, Don Rafael; but the lady will probably remain only
+until the next stage passes. It will not be necessary to inconvenience
+any of your people."
+
+He nodded good-naturedly and left Rafael at the gate of Alvara. Teresa
+was yet on the veranda, interested in the one event of the day, the
+arrival of the stage, and the lady who was its most noticeable
+passenger. Alvara did not think it could have been Don Eduardo's cousin,
+for if so, surely Senor Bryton would have brought her at once to the
+Alvara home. Teresa, on the other hand, insisted that it was the English
+cousin; she had seen her once, and was sure that no other white woman
+would look so much like a white doll.
+
+They at once appealed to Rafael to settle the question. Teresa pushed a
+chair toward him and suggested a glass of wine.
+
+"Thou art tired, of course, and choked with the dust; a desert wind
+blew to-day! And who was your pretty senorita? Don Juan Alvara and I
+could not agree; he said it could not be the cousin of Don Eduardo, or
+she would certainly have accepted the very kind invitation he gave her
+to live here while waiting for her relations."
+
+"Invitation?" Rafael looked quickly from one to the other. "I am very
+sure Senora Bryton failed to receive your invitation. She confessed
+herself in despair if her cousin should not be here on her arrival."
+
+"But Senor? Bryton was told to bring her here."
+
+"Oh--h!" He was silent a moment and then he smiled reassuringly. "I see
+how it is! He thinks she will remain over only one day and does not like
+to put you to trouble; but the poor lady down there alone is no doubt
+very uncomfortable--perhaps unhappy. If your daughters could call and
+see her--I would accompany them. In fact, for the cousin of Don Eduardo
+I will do anything I may be allowed to do."
+
+"Sure," agreed Alvara; "it is the right thing for a lady to ask her;--if
+only Dolores and Madalena have not ridden to the beach--"
+
+He went into the house to see, and Teresa looked at Rafael and shrugged
+her shoulders.
+
+"Thou hast told a part, but not all, my Rafael," she said, quietly. "Is
+the so good Senor Bryton not so good at last? Does he want his
+brother's wife to see only himself?"
+
+"You don't like him?" he said, quickly.
+
+"Well--if not?"
+
+"Then we could play him a fine trick--fine! He is jealous, that is all.
+She rode down with me, and of course, when I learned who she was, we
+talked--you saw! Well, our Americano likes to be the only man. He means
+to send her away to-morrow,--he is so angry because she marry his
+brother! Of course she goes, unless we keep her. It would be a good
+trick to play if we could walk down there, and--"
+
+"We will go," decided Teresa, promptly; "at once we will go before he
+comes back from the corral. His brother's wife--eh? I ask myself if
+those people--the Americanos--are so much better than our own men,
+Rafael. I want no scandal and will help you with none; but if you take
+from him the woman he wants, I will make you a present--a fine one."
+
+"It is a bargain!" he agreed. "I promise to earn the gift. He is a good
+enough fellow, but much too conceited; we will cure him!"
+
+As Alvara came out on the veranda to tell them Dolores and Madalena were
+away, and to ask Teresa to call on the stranger in their stead, Teresa
+and Rafael were on the street.
+
+"It is a good thing to do," he thought, contentedly rolling a cigarro
+and looking after them. "It is a kindness to Don Eduardo's cousin, and
+it is good for Teresa. For the first time since the death of Miguel she
+is smiling. Yes, it is a good thing."
+
+When Bryton left the corrals, the evening had come; the afterglow was
+flooding the hills with pale rose, and Indian boys were driving home
+cows through the village street. The more time he had to consider the
+matter, the more impatient he grew at the reckless disregard of his new
+sister-in-law for the conventionalities.
+
+Since she had married Teddy, she might at least have remained decently
+and quietly where he had left her. Or she might have continued her
+journey and joined her cousin at San Diego; but to do so mad a thing as
+to stop off here--he determined she should go either north or south
+to-morrow, if he had to carry her to the stage. He would tell her so at
+once.
+
+He had arrived at that determination as he crossed the plaza and heard
+her laugh through the door of Alvara's house. The door was open; she was
+trying to teach Alvara English, at which his daughters laughed very
+much. It was the sharp eyes of Teresa that caught sight of Bryton first,
+as he involuntarily halted in the road.
+
+"Yes, Senor Bryton, it is all true; we have robbed the Senor Mac's hotel
+of your sister!" she called to him with a new air of elation,--of
+victory.
+
+Alvara appeared and invited him to supper, which he declined for a
+previous engagement with Don Antonio. His sister-in-law came out and
+listened to his excuses, and smiled quietly at him with the baby-blue
+eyes, in which he read a certain defiance.
+
+"I would have smothered in that awful cell you took me to!" she pouted.
+"These people are charming to me; they are friends of Cousin Edward's.
+It was Don Rafael took them to me. He looks like a hero in a
+picture-book! How does it come I never met him before?"
+
+"Perhaps because during your last visit down here he was in Mexico,
+making love to the girl he is to marry very soon."
+
+"Oh! is _that_ why you are guarding him so carefully?" she said,
+laughingly. "Well, since I am married, I am willing to stay and dance at
+his wedding; but, Keith, if I had seen him first--"
+
+She broke off, laughing at the quick anger in his eyes.
+
+And Teresa, listening, understood the game of Rafael and the mocking
+laughter, and the anger of Bryton, and was as happy as she was likely to
+be, with Miguel under the ground.
+
+[Music: _Danza Mexicana._]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Many things had happened, and it had been a bad day. "A day cursed of
+God!" said Pedro Gallardo, the driver; and against such ill fortune the
+carriage of Senora Luisa Arteaga made such progress as might be, from
+San Luis Rey to San Juan.
+
+Clouds had drifted along the mountains each night for a week, and never
+the ranges a bit the better for it, until the cavalcade of Dona Luisa
+had started north from San Diego; and then--well, it was not what you
+would call a rain, it was a torrent came down. The skies had opened, and
+a deluge followed.
+
+Then, after leaving San Luis Rey, a carriage-pole must break in an
+attempt at a runaway, and two horses were lost over that, to say nothing
+of the off leader, whose "sire had been the devil, and whose dam had
+been a witch thrice accursed in the foaling!" Their joint offspring
+had demonstrated his infernal lineage by breaking his own leg as well as
+the carriage-pole, and another untamed beast had to be roped on the
+range--hog-tied, and blindfolded to get the harness on him; and because
+of him Pedro's throat was fairly blistered with curses.
+
+As the wheels sank into the sands or plunged from one ravine into
+another, Dona Luisa prayed and trusted to the saints that she might see
+her own valley again, and her companion, Dona Jacoba, protested, and
+forgetting to pray, waxed argumentative.
+
+"Raquel was right, Luisa," she repeated for the twentieth time between
+her groans; "we had been wise to wait at San Diego for Rafael. She has
+an old head on her shoulders--you will have a wise daughter when the day
+comes."
+
+"Wise! Yes--yes!" moaned Dona Luisa, shaking her head. "I thank the
+Virgin for that, every day, for Rafael is young, Jacoba; a baby of a
+wife would be his ruin. Yet--a baby might love him!"
+
+"Our boys get love enough!" grunted Jacoba, thinking of her own sons,
+and her own troubles. "They need wives with sense; and our girls all go
+wild these days about the Americanos, so--"
+
+[Illustration: RAQUEL ESTEVAN]
+
+"The girls, too!" and Dona Luisa's tones were strident with censure. "It
+is bad enough when men must buy and sell with the Americanos in the
+markets; but the girls,--the women of California,--it is in their hands
+to shut the door when the Americano knocks--is it not so?"
+
+"Oh, yes, of course--yes--it is as you say," agreed Jacoba, weakly, as
+she thought of the many girls of their relationship, who had opened
+doors very wide indeed for the Americanos, and of not a few who were to
+open also the door of the Church. But who could tell Dona Luisa that?
+
+"Rafael is all I have left, now that Miguel is killed," continued the
+mother. "My only grandchildren are half-breeds, and only Rafael is left.
+Ai! it is hard to grow old,--to let go all lines. But you know what
+makes me happy, Jacoba? No? It is this one big thing. Raquel will be
+what I was. She may suffer, but she will stand square on her feet; and
+she will fight as her father fought--and it will be for California."
+
+"You think so?" asked Jacoba, doubtfully. "It may be so, but--do you
+expect strong fights from a girl who was half a nun? I say she knows too
+little of the world to fight it."
+
+"You take from me my one hope when you say that!" and the older woman
+put out her hand appealingly. "Our men are wild--always! It is the
+women's work to save them. The death of Miguel is making me think much
+and quick. Rafael must be marry. There must be no more Indio women and
+children."
+
+Jacoba glanced doubtfully at her friend. These five years, while Rafael
+had been learning California ranch life, Jacoba had lived near enough to
+hear much that she never could repeat to the old mother, whose life was
+so nearly spent, whose weakness and prejudices could never cope with the
+new life in the changed land--and of what use to torture her with the
+truth? She wished with all her heart the exile had elected to stop over
+at San Diego or San Luis Rey, until some little glimmer of present
+conditions should enlighten her.
+
+"It is well the _donas_ came by water," she remarked, eager to find some
+straw of comfort in the situation. "Even extra baggage would be a care,
+with these roads and troubles, to say nothing of the temptation to El
+Capitan! Thanks to God, he never yet has had record of troubling women
+on the road."
+
+"He was a fine boy," said Dona Luisa, musingly. "It is not his fault
+that he is an outlaw to these States. It means only that he is patriot
+to California. He was a fine boy."
+
+"Ask thy son how fine he thinks El Capitan!" remarked Jacoba. "Rafael
+has paid him a heavy tax in his best stock. They have long ago
+forgotten they are cousins."
+
+"Raquel will make him remember," said the older woman, with certainty.
+"Did he not fight as he was able beside her father? Ai! he fought for
+California when only a boy. Do Californians forget?"
+
+"He does not let them do so," remarked Jacoba dryly. "Much has changed,
+Luisa."
+
+"I see no change, only the Indios more poor. The hills are green, as
+always after the rains. All these ranges are the same like we rode over
+them forty years ago. The hills and the sea never change, only the
+people. It is good to hear there is one of the young left who thinks in
+the old way."
+
+"But--holy Maria!--we were never robbers, Luisa!"
+
+"Well, we did not need to be," returned her friend. "But I tell you
+truly, Jacoba, I could find it in my heart to forgive a son who fought
+the Americanos as he does, even if they made him outlaw. He could not be
+outlaw to the Church, nor to me."
+
+Jacoba said no more. Of what use was it to tell her that a few such
+women would be firebrands in the land if they had youth, and that the
+American soldiers, instead of coming peacefully to buy stock and pay
+good prices, would come from Los Angeles shooting,--would come with
+torches to burn each town where rebels hid. It was no longer little
+internal wars, such as they used to have in the days they both
+remembered, when the men who smoked or played together one month would
+fight under different leaders the next.
+
+There were no faction fights now. It was one great ugly pale nation to
+the east, trailing slowly over the ranges and planting itself like the
+live-oak in the canyons. The Mexicans might hate, might curse; but the
+curses made no difference against the heretics. They had no churches,
+and they laughed at the beautiful wooden saints in the old chapel. Had
+not some of them snuffed out candles on the graves with their accursed
+rifles, last All Souls' Day? Yet the sky had not fallen, and no
+earthquake had come! What would even prayers or holy Church do against a
+people so ignored by God?
+
+But Jacoba knew there was no use to fight. She remembered what that
+meant in the other days. In an old adobe of San Juan's one street she
+had helped as a girl to nurse the wounded of San Pascual. It was years
+ago, but she had not forgotten the cruel wounds, or the young Americano
+who died in her arms there. She had never mentioned to any the reason of
+her hatred for war; for even with revenge in reach, on whom would she
+seek it?--on her brother who had killed a stranger forcing their gates?
+
+"You do not forget how the blessed Junipero Serra himself spoke from the
+altar of San Juan in the old days, Luisa; our grandfather telling us
+that many times,--how, when the Spanish guard was hard with the Indios,
+he stood on the altar and say that a new people will come and put the
+foot on the neck of the Mexican like the Mexican tramp on the Indios. He
+say it, and cry--cry for the reason that the good God no can make their
+hearts more soft to the Indios. I think of that when I see the
+Americanos come. They not put the foot on the neck--but they are here!"
+
+"Father Junipero was old then--very old--like a child, and would make of
+the Indios babies to be petted," returned Dona Luisa, leniently. "He was
+a saint--not a man; only the saints could have the patience with those
+Indios--I remember! One of the old scares of the padre's was that the
+water would fail us; yet San Juan still has its river!"
+
+Jacoba nodded. They were likely to find the river a difficulty after the
+rainfall. The ford was not a good one in high water; but the thought of
+getting across the ford was a trifle compared to the difficulty of
+impressing Dona Luisa with any idea of the change she would find in the
+land she had known.
+
+In sheer despair she returned once more to a safer subject, Raquel
+Estevan,--Raquel the wise, who was to marry with Rafael and forever
+build a wall about him from American influence; Raquel, who might not
+love, because of that dark shadow of the cloister, but who would be all
+the more wise for that! Still, who could tell?
+
+"When one is young like that, one never can be sure until the right man
+comes," said Jacoba; "and she is handsome, your Raquel. But is it true
+what they say, that there was the blood of the old Mexican Indios in her
+mother?"
+
+Dona Luisa did not commit herself; yet she realized that Raquel Estevan
+might have a few battles to fight along the line of race, as well as
+against the Americanos; for of course Rafael was a favorite; of course
+there would be burning hearts and jealousy at first.
+
+[Illustration: KEITH BRYTON]
+
+[Music: _Esta Noche_]
+
+    Esta noche voy a verte,
+    Al otro lado del rio
+    Te encargo que estes despierta ay!
+    Para quando te haga (_se silva_)
+    Ay! Paloma, daca el pico De ese rico manantial,
+    Ay! Paloma, daca el pico De ese rico manantial!
+
+[Music]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+From Las Flores, where the Indian village still held together in a
+shiftless sort of way, Raquel Estevan and her friend Ana Mendez galloped
+north mile on mile over the mesa above the sea.
+
+"Art never tired, Raquel?" demanded the older and darker of the two as
+they halted to let their animals drink where a rivulet ran full from the
+foothills. "Since we left the ranch house thou hast never lessened the
+gallop."
+
+"Tired? I should shame to acknowledge that, when Dona Luisa never rests
+on the way. She endures it all, while only the young ones complain."
+
+"Endures! What would she not endure for her beloved Rafael--now your
+beloved Rafael?"
+
+Ana was not malicious, but there was a touch of mockery in her tone and
+questioning glance.
+
+"Why should he not be beloved?" asked the other, smoothing carefully
+the mane of her horse and bending low to conceal the slight flush of
+cheek. "Is he not handsome and good?"
+
+"It is not easy to be good when a man is so handsome," laughed Ana;
+"still, I will take your word for it! But, Raquel, you always get clear
+of the question; not once have you said that you find him beloved. Are
+you going to be coquette to the wedding-day?"
+
+"You talk to amuse yourself," and the violet dark eyes were lifted an
+instant. "You learn to coquette when you marry, and cannot forget; but
+the nuns never teach us that."
+
+"What need?" and Ana showed her white teeth in a laugh. "They did not
+teach us we must breathe to live; yet some way we learned it! But
+confess! You outride all the party to reach San Juan, and Rafael; yet
+how are we sure what urges you?"
+
+"My promise."
+
+"But why the promise, if the man is not beloved? You have had no harsh
+guardian, as I had; you were all free."
+
+"Free? Oh yes, I had always the choice between some husband and the veil
+of a nun. And then--then Dona Luisa came with her love and her son, and
+her great plans of good work I could do out in the world. And so--and
+so we are riding to meet him, and I outride you!"
+
+"I never hasten to trouble," remarked Ana Mendez; "and if we should meet
+him on the way, you would send me at once to the carriage. I should put
+in hours listening to the virtues of Rafael Arteaga and peril my soul
+pretending to agree with his mother."
+
+"Why should you do that?"
+
+"Raquel, do you really see how little the ideas of Don Rafael and his
+mother agree? I know little enough--thanks to California, which keeps
+its girls from education; but I do see that every thought of Rafael
+Arteaga is for the new ways, the ways of the Americano."
+
+The younger girl drew up her horse with a cruel jerk, and faced her
+friend.
+
+"Anita, beloved," she said, sadly, "you have said the thing I felt, but
+did not know. Why not let some less dear one tell me?"
+
+"Holy Maria! Who else would? You are going among strangers, but you are
+no more a stranger to the California of to-day than is Dona Luisa. I
+hope all the time some one tell you at San Diego, or at San Luis Rey,
+but no one does; and Rafael does not meet us; and--"
+
+"The letter did not reach him, or else he has gone by boat," said the
+other, steadily. "Anita, why do you sometimes seem not quite friendly to
+Rafael? Your words--"
+
+"Never think it!" cried Ana. "We are friends enough, but--I know him
+better than his mother--that is all! He has turned the heads of many
+girls, but I do not think he has turned yours, Raquelita!"
+
+The other girl made no reply.
+
+"I do not think so," continued her friend, "because you have never once
+lost sight of duty,--the duty Dona Luisa and the padre have taught you
+to see. You are good, Raquel,--when you are not in a temper; but about
+Rafael you do not think your own thoughts. You dream of the life of your
+father and Dona Luisa when all this land was theirs. But the dream is
+gone, and to-day we wake up."
+
+"I see--the old world was too slow. You wake up to be all
+Americano--no?"
+
+"Raquel, do you hate them as much as Dona Luisa?"
+
+The girl from Mexico turned her face toward the sea, and did not answer
+at once. Then she said:
+
+"Only once in my life have I spoken with an Americano, and I did not
+hate him."
+
+"A young man?"
+
+"He--he was not old," she confessed.
+
+"On my soul, I believe you have had a lover!" cried Ana. "Oho! you can
+play Rafael at his own game, after all! Santa Maria! I thought you were
+too pretty to be the saint they think you. Tell me!"
+
+"There is not anything to tell," said the younger girl, quietly, though
+the color crept to her cheek; and then after a little she added, "He
+died. I never saw him but once; the padre said I was wrong to--to--oh,
+they said things to me about heretics! I never knew any other, and I
+promised not to. But if he had lived I should not have promised; that is
+all."
+
+"All! Rafael would think it enough! On my soul, I am glad you are so
+human--though I have no love myself for heretics!"
+
+"Human!" mused Raquel. "Is it human to remember, when one should forget
+and cannot?"
+
+She did not say it aloud, and refused to discuss the matter further.
+
+"He is dead," she said; "Rafael cannot be jealous of a man I saw but
+once; it was only the dream of a girl--like a picture in a book--and the
+page is closed. I shall marry Rafael, and work in the world instead of
+in the convent. It is for Mother Church and--it is right!"
+
+At San Onofre the surf was breaking against the cliffs. It was high
+tide, and the beach road was deep enough for a horse to swim. Raquel
+had ridden far ahead, and now stood on the brink of a torrent cutting
+its way down from the hills to the sea.
+
+The girl glanced back at the swaying chariot-like carriage on a far
+hill, and wondered what would be expected of their broncos in this
+crisis.
+
+The animal she herself rode danced and fretted with fright at the roar
+of the surf and the dash of the hill stream, but she sat the saddle with
+ease, answering to every curve or side leap as lightly as a gull that
+floated on the incoming wave.
+
+Her face held something of the power suggested by her strong right hand.
+The eyes were so soft, yet steady, and of darkest violet. The black
+lashes touching her cheeks gave them tender shadows, and the hair, in
+two thick braids reaching to her waist, framed a face of youthful curves
+and charm. But what was it made every man, and many women, turn to look
+again at the face of Raquel Estevan?
+
+Many girls were as beautiful, but something beyond the beauty of feature
+or color was in her strange half-Egyptian face,--a certain barbaric note
+held in check by the steady eyes and the mouth firm yet tender. It was a
+mouth made for love; yet--was it the shadow of the dark veil she had so
+nearly worn? Was it a hint of regret for the cloistered life left
+behind? Or was it the shadow of some future--a prophecy of the years to
+come?
+
+Ana paused at the edge of the stream, in terror at the volume of water
+barring their way on every side.
+
+"Ai! ai! And Aunt Jacoba but a moment ago declaring that she will have
+her supper in the refectory of the San Juan Mission. Neither Mission nor
+supper can we see this night--and no Rafael!"
+
+She turned dismayed though roguish eyes on Raquel.
+
+"He did not expect us when the rains came," said Raquel with quiet
+certainty. "If he received Dona Luisa's letter, he has gone by sea to
+San Diego. Did she not say so, Anita?"
+
+"Oh, he can do much, your handsome Rafael," agreed Ana, "but he cannot
+yet stop the tide, or dam La Christienita! Such a dry bed in Summer! and
+now it is a river."
+
+"But not deep?" hazarded Raquel. "Not so deep as the carriage bed."
+
+"Deep? There is one ford that is safe if one knows it; but, Holy Maria!
+on each side are pits of a depth to drown us all!"
+
+"Oh, if there is a good ford to be found--" The rest of Raquel's
+sentence was drowned in Ana's shrieks of protest, as her horse was
+spurred into the torrent in search of the roadway safe for a carriage.
+
+Ana was right; there were pits, and there were great round bowlders on
+the edges of them. The horse stumbled on one, recovered, and stumbled
+again where the current swung into a whirlpool; and then, as the water
+roaring in her ears almost drowned Ana's screams, a sharp authoritative
+voice sounded from the bank--
+
+"Loose the stirrup!"
+
+Raquel did so mechanically, just as a rope circled about her shoulders,
+pinning her arms to her sides, and with a quick, cruel jerk she was
+wrenched from the saddle; and as her horse, relieved of her weight, swam
+straight for the opposite shore, she felt herself caught by a strong arm
+and lifted across another saddle. The man with the reata had caught her
+first, lest she be dragged downward into the whirlpool, but it was
+another man who dashed through the whirl of waters and bore her to the
+shore, where half a dozen men waited. They were evidently vaqueros; one
+of them had thrown the reata, and hastened now to loosen it, to lift her
+from her rescuer and stand her on her feet. She swayed a trifle, and
+reaching blindly for support, she caught the arm of a man beside her,
+the one who had lifted her from the water. Then for the first time she
+noticed that he wore the garb of a priest, evidently a secular priest,
+for he wore a beard, and even then it struck her as strange that he
+looked so bronzed and rugged. His grasp was that of a rider of the
+range, rather than a priest of the Church.
+
+"Father, the Virgin have you in her keeping! You saved my life then. I
+shall always--always--"
+
+Then she could no longer distinguish priest from vaquero; the earth
+seemed to meet the sky, and between them she was extinguished.
+
+When she awoke she no longer could hear the screams of Ana, and the red
+rays of the lowering sun touched the face of the priest as he bent over
+her. It had more of youth than she had at first perceived.
+
+"Lie you still," he said, as one used to command. "The water was rough
+with you, and the reata rougher. Swallow some of this wine; it came from
+your own carriage, and is better than ours."
+
+"From the carriage?" The carriage was on the opposite side of the
+stream, but her horse had followed her and was tied near, shaking
+himself like a great dog.
+
+"Yes. I sent one of the boys--the vaqueros--across. Your friends know
+you are safe, but the carriage cannot come over--not yet; you have had
+good fortune to get out."
+
+"The good fortune was to find you here, father," she said, and catching
+his hand she kissed it reverently. "It is a good omen and shows me a
+blessing is on my journey to my father's land. You may have known him by
+name. I am Raquel Estevan, and it was my father Felipe who once owned
+this land from mountain to sea."
+
+"Felipe Estevan--you! But that cannot be. He is dead, and his one child
+is in religion--I was told so--I--"
+
+The color came back to her face, and she raised herself on her elbow.
+
+"It is true--I was for the Church--but I will tell you all--some time!"
+
+"Go on," said the priest, authoritatively, "tell me now!"
+
+"I was told it was better to work for God out in the world," she said,
+softly, "and so I am coming with my Aunt Luisa, father's cousin, and--"
+
+"And--" he looked at her strangely. "Then it is you--you they bring to
+marry with Rafael Arteaga. Holy Mary! And it is Felipe's
+daughter--Felipe Estevan--who sold for a song rather than live under the
+Americanos; and it is for his daughter I wait here by San Onofre--for
+his daughter!"
+
+Raquel stared at his evident agitation, not understanding. The sentences
+of the padre sank to muttering beneath the black beard, as he turned and
+strode away. The vaqueros, standing together holding their horses as if
+eager to be gone, exchanged wondering glances and eyed the girl
+curiously. Directly he came striding back and halted beside her.
+
+"Yet you marry with Rafael Arteaga," he said, accusingly. "You are
+Felipe's daughter, yet you are much Americano--eh? You are of the
+States, is it not so? Between you two, old California will no longer
+have foot-room from San Jacinto to the water out there. God!" and he
+ground his heel into the turf. "Yet are you Felipe's daughter, and we
+must let you go!"
+
+"No!" she cried as vehemently as he. "I go nowhere from the rules of my
+father in this land. The things he loved I love; the things he fought
+for I will guard! It is for that, father, I marry with Rafael. He is--he
+is not so much for old California, I know--I hear! His mother is afraid;
+she grieves over that much! But the two of us--the two of us, with your
+prayers to help, and we keep him always for our father's country--always
+till he die--with your help!"
+
+"With my--help?"
+
+"Your prayers, father! You will see I am Felipe Estevan's daughter, even
+while I am born in Mexico. I will do what a son would do for our land
+and our Church. You will see--you will see! It is a blessing from God
+that you meet me here like this at the edge of the land. Always I have
+thought these thoughts in my heart, but only to you--a priest--could I
+say them in words, and it is well you meet me here like this. Your words
+are the words I needed to make me see what I want to do. It is like a
+baptism that I went under that water a girl, and your hand lift me out a
+woman! The Virgin sent me here this day that I meet you. You have opened
+the gate of the land for Felipe Estevan's daughter."
+
+He leaned against the trunk of a young live-oak and stared at her with a
+derisive smile in the smoke-black eyes.
+
+"Yes, the Virgin sent me," he said at last, "and she came near sending
+me too late. The trail is bad along La Christienita for the night-time,
+and the night is close. The man will take you back to your friends."
+
+"But you, father? You come to the carriage and see the mother of
+Rafael--no? They wait for us. Dona Luisa is so very old; she will be
+anxious till she speak with me--and with you."
+
+She arose and held out her hand. He regarded her strangely, and shook
+his head.
+
+"The men have other work than to camp with a pleasure party. I stay on
+this side and have far to travel before sunrise. This once I talk with
+you--maybe nevermore, and to San Juan you take one message for Rafael
+Arteaga."
+
+"A message? Yes?"
+
+"Tell him Felipe Estevan's daughter has saved to him this once a
+treasure; but no woman can guard him always, for--El Capitan is never
+too far to come quickly!"
+
+"Oh--Capitan?" she said with sudden comprehension. "I was told at San
+Luis Rey how much he is the enemy of Rafael. But it must not be, father.
+Cannot we help that? I have heard of Capitan from an old soldier of the
+wars, who told me all I know of my father: he was a brave boy and--he
+fought beside my father. I remembered that when I passed his mother's
+grave at San Luis Rey--it will never be bare and forgotten again--never!
+I planted it thick with the passion-vine. Dona Luisa tells me she was a
+great woman. She prays that some day the two cousins may be friends."
+
+"Dona Luisa prays for what only the good God could make happen," said
+the priest, grimly. "But of course all things are possible to the good
+God, even in the land which God forgot. Fidele is waiting."
+
+He made a movement toward the Mexican holding her horse, and without
+further words mounted another animal himself, and galloped away along
+the fringe of trees skirting the canyon. Several of the others followed.
+Only three remained to watch Fidele pilot his charge across the ford,
+where the ford was safe though deep; and once her animal's feet touched
+the opposite bank, her attendant, with a sweep of sombrero, but no
+words, wheeled his own horse and fell in line after his comrades, who
+were disappearing one by one toward the mountains.
+
+Raquel Estevan sat her horse at the edge of the stream and stared after
+them, giving little heed to the shrill calls and exclamations of the
+women. Even after they had stripped her of the soaked riding-dress and
+wrapped her in serapes for the night, she maintained a thoughtful
+silence, and all Ana's hints of romances went for nought, so far as
+gaining replies or special notice.
+
+What treasure had Felipe Estevan's daughter saved for Rafael Arteaga?
+And why--why--that strange intensity of the priest? These questions were
+turned again and again in her mind as she lay there in the light of the
+camp-fire watching the stars move across the high blue. The other three
+women were sleeping as best they could in the carriage, smothered in
+serapes. Jacoba lamented every waking moment, because of much-feared
+rheumatism,--she was so certain it would mean a camp at the hot springs
+for a month, just at the time of the wedding!
+
+Dona Luisa made no complaint. When told the carriage could not by any
+means cross safely, she braced herself for the ordeal of the night, and
+Raquel, glancing toward her, could see her face gray-white in the
+gathering dusk. All the night that gray profile met her eyes, for she
+slept not at all.
+
+The driver had stretched himself where his horses were tethered, but the
+two Indian boys who rode with the carriage kept a fire of aliso boughs
+burning. They would nod at times with sleepiness, but the whispered
+command of the girl ever wakened them quickly, and the dying fire would
+blaze again. There was no conversation, only brief commands and prompt
+obedience; and thus the girl passed the first night in the land of her
+father, the roar of the sea and the wild calls of the coyotes keeping
+silence from the night.
+
+When the coyotes ceased and the birds heralded dawn, one Indian boy rode
+across at the ford and gauged the depth of the water on his cow-pony's
+legs. It was "muy bueno"--very good indeed, the water had gone down a
+foot, and before the dawn broke, the whole cavalcade was again under
+way. There was breakfast to ride for, and it was several miles across
+the hills.
+
+Pedro was of the opinion that there was a round-up in the canyon of La
+Paz, about half-way to San Juan. If so, there might be "carne oeco" and
+coffee to be had--perhaps tortillas. The vaqueros would be eating by
+dawn, but if it was possible to drive fast, there might be hope of
+coffee at least.
+
+So Raquel rode ahead, alert at the coming day and the promise of it. Ana
+was glad to stay in the carriage with the older women, complaining that
+she had caught cold from the sea-damp. At one bend of the road she
+noticed Raquel far ahead, bending low over the neck of her horse,
+scanning the ground. Then she turned out of sight under the live-oaks in
+a narrow canyon, and came galloping back to the main trail as the
+carriage came up.
+
+"One would think you were searching the sand for grains of gold washed
+down from the mountains!" called Ana; but the girl shook her head, and
+rode thoughtfully up the incline to the mesa above. She had been noting
+the curious fact that the party of vaqueros and the priest had left the
+trail one by one, heading toward the hills wrapped still in the mist of
+the morning.
+
+[Music: _El Charro_.]
+
+    Nescesito buen caballo,
+    Buena Silla, y buen gaban.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+At La Paz they were in time for coffee, and Raquel, who had ridden ahead
+with an Indian boy, was told a strange story by the Mexican cook.
+
+A good breakfast had been cooked, but the devil had got among the horses
+in the night; there had been a stampede--or something. Every one had got
+into the saddle and ridden that way--up the river,--no one had come back
+to tell him what it meant or to eat the breakfast that was ready. It was
+cold now, all but the coffee, but they were welcome to it.
+
+He was a newcomer in the land, and had never heard of the Dona Luisa. To
+the cholo the lady or the lord of the land is often an unknown
+personality; their representative, the major-domo, is the centre of
+their little universe.
+
+But as the carriage came lurching down from the mesa, the oldest of the
+vaqueros, a very black Indian, rode back to camp, and at sight of Dona
+Luisa's face white and drawn in the morning light, he slid from his
+bronco, and ignoring the cook's impatient questions stood with bent head
+uncovered, until the old mistress noticed him and spoke.
+
+"You are Benito, are you not?" she asked, as she brought him to the
+carriage with a gesture, and rested her hand on his to alight.
+
+"Yes, senora," said the old man with grave courtesy, though trembling
+with pleasure at the honor she chose to bestow; "I am Benito. I used to
+break all the horses you rode. No one else was let put a hand on them.
+You do not forget; I thank you."
+
+"I could not forget the things of my home. Is there coffee? I am very
+glad."
+
+She held her left hand against her side, and the women exchanged
+frightened glances at her pallor and the strange weakness of her voice.
+While she drank the hot coffee Jacoba deftly drew the old vaquero aside
+to look at a bit of broken carriage harness which Pedro was mending with
+rawhide.
+
+"Benito, is there no boy here to ride fast to the Mission?" she demanded
+when out of hearing of the others. "Our Dona Luisa is a sick woman, and
+no one dare say it. Some one must go and have a bed ready--everything!"
+
+"There is no boy here. The horses were run off last night by Juan Flores
+or Capitan--no one knows how many. All the men have gone that way. I
+ride to the Mission. Don Rafael, he go to San Diego to-day."
+
+"To-day? Santa Maria! he may have gone! Ride fast!"
+
+"He not go yet," and the old man shrugged his shoulders. "Too early.
+Army men going away. Don Rafael make barbecue yesterday, and last night
+he have a big dance for the Americanos in the Mission."
+
+"Hush! Ride fast! We will drive as slow as she will let us. But tell Don
+Rafael Arteaga I say for him to meet his mother on the road."
+
+Raquel noticed the old man cantering slowly along the level green, and
+heard the sound of his horse galloping rapidly once he was out of sight
+past the fringe of sycamores and low growths along the river.
+
+"For what is that, Jacoba?" she asked.
+
+"Oh, some bandits have run off some horses--they may send more
+vaqueros," she replied as easily as she could with the girl watching her
+like that.
+
+Raquel looked as though she thought all the truth might not be in the
+reply, but she turned quietly away.
+
+"I would have ridden with him if I had known," she said, and went back
+to Dona Luisa, who was so eager to continue the journey that she would
+wait for no breakfast but the coffee.
+
+"Cut another strap of the harness and take time to mend it," muttered
+Jacoba to Pedro; "we are not all so near to being angels that we can
+live without eating."
+
+Thus was a little more time gained.
+
+Benito made the second crossing where the river bends around the mesa,
+and there met one of the boys from the village looking for a pair of
+strayed mules.
+
+"The Don Rafael--he has started for San Diego?" demanded Benito. "Turn
+and ride with me, Jose."
+
+The boy did so, grinning.
+
+"When Don Rafael wake up to-day he much too late to go to San Diego," he
+said, and the old man uttered a sigh of relief.
+
+"He sleeping, then?"
+
+"No one sleep in San Juan last night," said Jose. "There was the supper,
+and some girls stay. The army men they all start north an hour ago, but
+maybe the others still dance in the Mission, Don Rafael say he go to get
+married, this is his last night--no one must sleep, or be sober!"
+
+Jose thought it a great joke, but Benito muttered, "Jesus and San
+Vicente!" and ordered the boy to go back for the mules, and rode on down
+the valley alone.
+
+It took Jose some time to find the mules, and when he did find them they
+were even more perverse than usual; he had got them so near home as the
+hill above San Juan, when one of them went careering along the mesa as
+though heading for San Jacinto mountain.
+
+By the time he had secured it and got back near the road an astonishing
+sight met his eyes--something one was not used to seeing at sunrise in
+San Juan.
+
+A carriage came down the valley road from La Paz canyon. There were only
+women in it, and two Indian boys rode in the rear. Where could a
+carriage like that come from at such an hour? No one who rode in
+carriages lived up those valleys!
+
+In staring at the carriage he failed at first to notice the girl on
+horseback, who had ridden alone in advance of the carriage, and had
+halted in the road, on the brow of the hill, looking down across the old
+pueblo to the sea.
+
+She was so motionless, he was very close before he noticed her, close
+enough to hear her indrawn breath of delight, to see the soft flush of
+emotion touch her face. Almost he thought there were tears in her eyes;
+he thought her the most beautiful lady he had ever seen alive,--though
+one picture of the Virgin in the chapel was as fine.
+
+Jose stopped at the sight of her and stood very still. He could not
+drive mules into the road ahead of a lady who was more lovely than even
+the wooden saints with the gold painted around the border of their
+gowns; and that is how he chanced to see a strange meeting on that hill.
+
+No one knew why the English senora had elected to take a pleasure ride
+alone that morning, when the message of Benito, shouted as he galloped
+past, had effectually banished from the minds of Dolores and Madalena
+their intended picnic at the hot springs in the mountain, for which they
+were all ready, and had actually started. But when they tumbled with
+delighted exclamations from the new American buggy, and straightway
+forgot all their plans for the day, including the entertainment of their
+English guest, she stared in ill-concealed irritation from one to the
+other as they chattered in Spanish, scarcely enlightening her as to the
+reason of the sudden change in their plans.
+
+When she finally gathered the idea that it was the unexpected proximity
+of Rafael's bride-to-be, and that all the other social lights of the
+valley must expect to be extinguished in her honor, the red lips of the
+Englishwoman straightened a trifle, and the baby-blue eyes took on a
+shade of coldness; for since her arrival in California she had been made
+the centre of many social affairs. In San Juan her one week, managed by
+Teresa and Rafael, had been enough of a triumph to cause Keith Bryton
+inward rage and to hold him there as long as an excuse to stay had
+offered.
+
+Once she said in a burst of irritated frankness:
+
+"For mercy's sake, let me be happy once! You are a dog in the manger,
+that's all! These people really live! There is an empire here for the
+right woman, and you need not tug at my chains to remind me that I was
+fool enough to marry before I found it!"
+
+And now the real ruler of the empire was about to enter into possession,
+and the temporary one was frankly forgotten! Whatever her thoughts were,
+she did not mean to assist at the royal entry of those two women whose
+rule meant the ignoring of the English-speaking people.
+
+Only Teresa, watching her out of beady black eyes, comprehended and was
+content. Rafael had earned the gift she had promised, but it had gone
+quite far enough; it was as well Dona Luisa was coming with the other
+girl!
+
+So, when Bryton's sister-in-law looked rather blank and did not descend
+from the carriage, it was Teresa who agreed that it _was_ a morning too
+beautiful to stay indoors, and of course if Dona Angela cared to drive
+alone--and would excuse them--
+
+Dona Angela would. She leaned back languidly, a picture of carelessness,
+and motioned the driver to go on, but her lips still held their straight
+hard line as they passed the great dome of the ruined chancel, where the
+birds held sovereign sway.
+
+"It looks like a place for a throne," she thought, enviously; "and a
+black creature from Mexico is coming to rule it!"
+
+They were crossing the bridge at the streamlet, when an exclamation from
+the driver caused her to glance ahead and see the erect slender figure
+on the dark horse silhouetted against the yellow flood of sunrise.
+
+No girl of San Juan rode alone like that on the mesa, and certainly not
+one would have paused like that, transfixed by the beauty before her;
+there was not one that would not rather have admired the beautiful new
+buggy and the pretty hat of the fair lady in it.
+
+But the girl on the horse did not appear to notice either any more than
+she had noticed Jose. Her horse had halted straight across the middle
+of the road. The driver of the buggy had turned aside before she brought
+her gaze back from the sea cliffs to rest for an instant on the fair
+indignant face of the Englishwoman.
+
+The road was miles wide really--since one could drive anywhere on the
+mesa, but the Mrs. Teddy Bryton had heretofore seen every native step
+aside from the beaten trail when she drove abroad, and she was furious
+at the driver for turning his horses an iota out of his way for that
+girl who looked like--what did she look like?
+
+Mrs. Bryton could not have put into words the idea of the girl's face;
+but her own angry blue eyes were caught and held for an instant by
+strange fathomless violet ones--held until she shrank suddenly, and the
+color left her face. Yet--as the carriage paused, her head was still
+turned toward the stranger, and Jose saw her put her hands suddenly
+across her eyes with a gesture of repulsion or pain, and sink back on
+the cushions.
+
+The girl on the horse had not moved a muscle. She might have been carved
+from marble, for any sign she made after she read the angry insolence of
+the blue eyes.
+
+"Don Felipe Estevan's daughter," said the Mexican driver, "and here
+ahead of the carriage of the Senora Luisa--it must be so."
+
+Mrs. Bryton gave no sign that she heard, neither did she glance at the
+occupants of the carriage as they whirled past; her mind held only one
+hateful picture.
+
+"Felipe Estevan's daughter" meant that she had looked into the eyes of
+the "black woman from Mexico" who had come back to her father's land to
+rule, and the Mexican woman had proven not so black as she had fancied,
+and had sat there on the crest of the hill with a pride that was half
+regal,--and almost half barbaric,--as though the highway was her very
+own--as though the centre of it belonged to her by divine right. Mrs.
+Bryton's vain soul was fired by a momentary wild temptation to test that
+divine right, to show her there was one man in San Juan not to be ruled
+by anyone else if she, Angela Bryton, cared to call him to her side and
+keep him there. Should she--or should she not?
+
+Teresa was quite right in her fancy that the trick against the Americano
+had been quite successful enough; it was time the other girl came to
+claim her own!
+
+[Music: _La Noche Fatal_.]
+
+    En la noche fatal que a tus ojos
+    Dirigi una mirida ardoro-sa
+    Comprendi que la dicha amorosa,
+    No me es dada en el mundo gozar.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+It was quite true that no one was allowed to sleep that night of
+Rafael's last bachelor supper. Because of Miguel's death, there could be
+no dancing, but the hours passed merrily enough, for all that. The army
+men stayed until the faint gray shone in the east, when they mounted and
+rode north after the horses, started a day ahead.
+
+Keith Bryton had ridden with the herd as far as Santa Ana, and then, to
+Angela's amusement, returned to San Juan. She was certain that his
+return had not been for Rafael's supper, but to see that she did not by
+some man[oe]uvre manage that it be a ladies' supper and graced by her
+attendance. She had in jest threatened to suggest it, and Keith felt
+very much as Teresa felt--it was quite time the bride were at hand to
+stop a flirtation bordering on the dangerous.
+
+But, after all, the ladies of San Juan were not included. It was a
+carouse instead of an entertainment. Girls were there, and guitars; and
+the big Mission doors and wooden shutters inside the deep windows barred
+the outer world from the hilarity, the songs, the shrieks of laughter
+over toasts of the old men to the groom-elect.
+
+At earliest dawn the army men, with promises and gold pieces to the
+girls, and an extra glass to Rafael and his bride, mounted their horses
+and rode north to catch up with the herd before it reached Los Angeles.
+One of the girls wept lest the one who had made her favorite might never
+ride that way again, and the wilder spirits marched around her with
+lighted candles, singing a funeral dirge, ending in a wild fandango.
+
+Don Antonio was there, and old Ricardo Ruiz, and they sat through the
+night playing with the dice, and emptying each other's pockets in turn,
+and comparing the old entertainment with the new, between the drinks.
+
+The fandango ended by Concha, the weeping one, doing the maddest
+dancing of all, and Fernando Mendez poured out goblets of wine to drink
+luck to her next lover.
+
+"It is good luck for himself he wants, Concha!" called Rafael across the
+room. "Fernando is a coyote, always awake for young chickens!"
+
+"Concha mia, he is jealous; never heed him, but drink wine with me to
+the next lover!"
+
+"He offers her a glass of wine, Antonio," grunted old Don Ricardo.
+"Huh!--that is the love-making of California to-day!"
+
+"True, Ricardo; at his age you or I would have been at her feet and our
+jewels on her breast."
+
+"Fernando has no jewels left."
+
+"I should say not. His father made love after our fashion, hence--"
+
+"The deluge!"
+
+"The deluge of poverty and Americanos," assented Antonio. "A plague on
+them both! They have changed the land!"
+
+A burst of laughter from Rafael's end of the table drowned the
+grumblings of the old men. Rafael had told a story so very funny that
+the girls had shrieked and giggled and protested behind their fans.
+
+"Fie, Don Rafael! and you to be a married man in a week!"
+
+"But a week is seven nights away, and all of them your own, Merced mia!"
+
+"Merced!" called another man from a game of _malia_ at an old table once
+used for altar service--"Merced, darling, never listen to a word he
+says! A paltry seven nights! My heart is at your feet for a lifetime!"
+
+"Of nights or days, senor?" asked the girl, laughingly.
+
+"She caught you there, Senor Gonzales," observed Bryton, who was dealing
+the cards. "Don Rafael, after all, makes the only definite offer."
+
+"You are right, Don Keith," returned the other. "With the help of the
+Americanos, Don Rafael is learning to be a good maker of bargains."
+
+"The sooner the rest of you learn the same trick, the better for
+California!" retorted Rafael.
+
+"You hear?" said Don Ricardo.
+
+"Sure," assented the major-domo. "What if his mother heard?"
+
+"All the saints! There would be murder!"
+
+"Por Dios!" exclaimed Rafael, as a servant opened a window because of
+the thick tobacco smoke; "it is daylight, and I must start for San
+Diego. My last bachelor carouse is ended, and none of us under the
+table!"
+
+"How sad that we are still able to stand on our own feet!" laughed
+Merced. "See!" and she sprang to the top of a beautiful silver-decorated
+chest against the wall; "one of us is even able to dance good-bye to
+your last night of freedom! Good-bye, O free heart of Don Rafael! On
+some to-morrow the bride comes!"
+
+"Holy Maria!" ejaculated Don Antonio, putting his glass down; "she is
+dancing on the _donas_ of the bride!"
+
+"The _donas_!" echoed Don Ricardo, aghast; "and the bride a young saint
+stolen from the Church!--the _donas_!"
+
+"What's that?" asked Bryton, while the rest applauded the dancer.
+"_Donas?"_
+
+"The gifts of the groom to the bride,--the gown, the wedding veil,
+the--holy God! it's sacrilege!"
+
+"Is it?" asked the American; "then we'll stop it. Come to coffee,
+Merced!"
+
+Without further ceremony he picked the girl up in his arms, and carried
+her, laughing and struggling, into the great refectory, where the Indian
+servants were placing breakfast on the table.
+
+"That was quick work, Antonio," observed Don Ricardo, with a breath of
+relief.
+
+"Sure; he is the best of all the Americanos. Ai! even more like the
+caballeros of other days than our own sons!"
+
+Don Ricardo did not care to commit himself so far as that. He contented
+himself with grumbling at Rafael's indifference.
+
+"And the girl a young saint--meant to live in religion!"
+
+Bryton rejoined them with a cup of coffee, and both the men hastened to
+assure him that it was not Rafael who was in fault, but the many glasses
+he had emptied.
+
+"Sure, it was the glasses," affirmed Don Ricardo. "No man of California
+would let a girl of pleasure dance on the things sacred to the woman of
+his family; eh, Antonio?"
+
+"Of course; at any other time Rafael would have thrown the girl through
+a window; truly, he would!"
+
+"No doubt of it," agreed Bryton.
+
+"Dona Luisa has given the boy a long rope. It must be that she has
+learned that it is too long--she comes back after the years to steady
+him with a wife,--and such a wife! Young, wealthy, beautiful!"
+
+"And a young nun, all but the veil!"
+
+"That seems rather a joke--or a tragedy--after all this," and Bryton
+motioned to the remainders of the night's carouse.
+
+"If there is a joke, it is the devil playing it on the saints."
+
+"Sure; and the devil wins," agreed Don Antonio. "It is all settled. The
+Dona Luisa is a wise woman. Her son wins a wife, and the convent loses a
+fortune and a nun at the same time."
+
+"Had the good son nothing to do with the arrangement?" asked the
+American, dryly.
+
+"Oh, of course, senor. Three times he have gone to Mexico, where Felipe
+Estevan's daughter visit with his mother. He has time to sing many
+dozens of serenades,--all of the burning hearts and torment of love, and
+lost souls, to make a girl have pity. Maybe she have never before talked
+with one young man, one minute of her life; who knows?"
+
+"It is good time she comes," observed Don Ricardo. "One year--two years,
+and Rafael, like Miguel, would be content with half-breed children and
+their mother. Little Marta's child is born, and they say she will not
+stay at Las Flores, where he sent her--not for the best house there!"
+
+A peal of laughter reached them from the other room.
+
+"Bravo!" called Rafael; "I take you at your word, Merced. A kiss to seal
+the compact!"
+
+"Keep it for your wedding-day, Don Rafael," she retorted, and ran from
+him through the door into the room where the three men were talking. But
+Rafael caught her inside the portal, and dragged her back, his face
+flushed and his beautiful eyes glowing.
+
+"I will have it!" he muttered, with his lips against her own. "You
+pretty devil, I will!"
+
+"And this is the home your young nun will come to from her convent,"
+Bryton remarked. "Some one said there was Indian blood in her family; it
+may prove fortunate, for she will need war-clubs instead of religion to
+quell this sort of thing."
+
+"But with the help of her saints--"
+
+"Of course," agreed Bryton; "with the help of her saints all things may
+happen."
+
+An Indian servant came in from the plaza, and closed the door and stood
+with his back against it.
+
+"The Dona Madalena, and Dona Dolores, and the Senora Bryton, stop in the
+calesha," he announced, stoically; "they come in!"
+
+"Bar that door! they sha'n't; they must not!" called Bryton, but it was
+too late. The side door opened, and the three appeared--the two girls
+plainly frightened, but Mrs. Bryton beautifully audacious.
+
+"Nonsense! Dona Teresa will not scold; we will stop only a minute. Your
+uncle and cousin are here--it is all right!" Then she saw Bryton, and
+laughed.
+
+"I told you I would at least see inside," she observed, "and it is quite
+worth while. What a magnificent chest!"
+
+Bryton walked directly to her.
+
+"I will see you to your carriage," he said, laying his hand on her arm.
+"What the devil did you mean by this bravado?"
+
+She wrenched her arm free and regarded him coolly.
+
+"Thanks. I came because I said I would come, and you said not to dare.
+'Dare' is a risky word, amigo. We will go directly. We are going to the
+hills, and only halted to wish good luck to Rafael."
+
+"Malediction!" muttered Don Antonio. "He can't be seen--he--"
+
+A burst of laughter came from the dining-room, and the two girls
+retreated toward the door.
+
+"Women!" breathed Dolores; "if Dona Teresa hears this--"
+
+"It is the servants--only the servants," said Don Antonio. "Don Rafael
+has perhaps started on his journey; he will be disconsolate that--"
+
+But at that moment Rafael and Fernando came in from the dining-room, one
+smoothing his hair and one arranging his cravat. Rafael was the less
+sober of the two, but he managed to bow with a certain grace as he took
+Mrs. Bryton's hand.
+
+"My poor house is at your service, madama," he murmured, "and I am at
+your feet. I hastened to you as soon as--"
+
+--"As soon as he could get the other girls out the back door," remarked
+Fernando, aside to Bryton.
+
+"Mr. Bryton was horribly cross to me for coming in; he thinks it too
+unconventional; he thinks I do not know the Spanish customs, and--"
+
+"I offer myself as your teacher," said Rafael, looking straight into the
+blue eyes. "Believe me, senora, there are many delightful things to be
+learned in old California!"
+
+"I shall remember your offer," she returned, smilingly. "See how sulky
+Mr. Bryton looks! He never takes time to be gallant himself."
+
+"That is true," assented Rafael. "He never looks at the girls, or speaks
+except to tell them to keep quiet."
+
+"Oh!" she replied, with a little malicious smile, "there is always a
+girl excepted!"
+
+Bryton looked at her with impatient wonder; he was about to speak, when
+an Indian came in with a tray of coffee, and Rafael offered a cup to
+Mrs. Bryton.
+
+"Honor me, madama, and let us hear of the girl who is an exception."
+
+"Bravo! The exceptions are always of interest. Don Keith is forever a
+reproach to the rest of us; he has no vices."
+
+"Or conceals them better!" put in Rafael, with a touch of malice.
+
+"You are to be unmasked, senor," murmured Dolores, with lenient eyes.
+
+Bryton glanced at his watch and then with impatience at his
+sister-in-law.
+
+"I have not the slightest idea of the lady's meaning," he said, coldly;
+"and if you want to make an early start for the hot springs--"
+
+Mrs. Bryton shut her teeth together with a little click, at his palpable
+ignoring of herself.
+
+"Oh--short memory of man!" she said, chidingly; "He has forgotten in a
+year!"
+
+"A year?" Bryton stared at her with a puzzled frown, and a slight motion
+of his hand toward the door. That, with its little suggestion of
+authority, decided her.
+
+"I shall tell it," she announced. "How many of you believe in love at
+first sight?"
+
+"All of us, after meeting you!" declared Rafael, with an exaggerated
+bow.
+
+"Sure!" agreed Don Ricardo.
+
+"My husband, you know, is an engineer, and goes on long journeys into
+queer corners of the mining world."
+
+"Bad habit for husbands with pretty wives," remarked Don Antonio.
+
+"Last Winter," continued she, slowly sipping her coffee and watching
+Bryton; "last Winter he went to Mexico."
+
+"Pardon! We do not ask for the love affairs of your lucky husband,
+but--"
+
+"But last Winter Don Keith went along; yes--he went along to look up
+some mining property in the Indian hills, and when he came back--Have
+any of you noticed the peculiar ring Mr. Bryton wears?"
+
+"Angela!" said Keith, sharply; but she looked at him with smiling
+insolence.
+
+"Oh, I know your little romance of Dona Espiritu; Teddy told me."
+
+"Damn Teddy!" he remarked, while the rest shouted with laughter at the
+color flaming in his face.
+
+"Dona Espiritu!" repeated Don Ricardo. "The lady of the Spirit--let us
+hope it was a good spirit, Don Keith--and that she was kind!"
+
+"To her health!" cried Rafael. "Pour brandy, Fernando; we drink our last
+toast of this meeting to the love of Don Keith--to the Dona Espiritu!"
+
+"I would rather see the ring than drink the toast," said Dolores. "May
+I, senor?"
+
+"There is nothing remarkable about it, except that it is very, very
+old," and he held out his hand for her inspection. "An onyx engraved
+with the Aztec eagle--now the Mexican eagle."
+
+"But given him by--"
+
+"By a lady who was of service to my brother, to an old priest, and to
+me."
+
+"See how he drags in the others," laughed Mrs. Bryton. "Teddy and the
+priest got no ring; Ted had a knife-thrust, and the priest a black eye.
+Keith had some hurt on the head, from which he had a long and
+interesting case of fever."
+
+"Let us hope Dona Espiritu nursed him through it, and the priest did not
+watch them too closely," remarked Rafael, with a meaning glance at
+Bryton. The last drink of brandy had been the one too many, and his
+smile was not nice.
+
+"Did she nurse him through the illness?" whispered Madalena in Angela's
+ear.
+
+"Oh, I could tell," said the latter, demurely; "but Keith evidently
+resents his romances being made public."
+
+"Senorita, there is no more to tell," remarked Keith, coldly; "not even
+so much as Angela would suggest. My brother and an old priest and I lost
+our way in the hills; and seeing a light, we chanced on some religious
+meeting of a strange hill tribe of Indians. They thought we were spies
+of the Church or the government, and there was trouble. A lady, whom the
+Indians and the priest called by the name you heard, saved us all that
+night. She was the one person of the Catholic Church they would allow
+to know them well, and she was a nun or a novice."
+
+"Santa Maria! and she gave you rings?"
+
+"The ring was some talisman respected by the tribe. She put it on my
+finger after I had been struck down and--well--used up. It stopped them
+when words were of no use. We made a litter for the old priest, and tied
+Teddy on a burro,--he had a leg wound,--and we walked beside them over
+the wilderness trail until dawn came, and we met help. I fainted from
+loss of blood about that time, and Teddy and I recuperated in the house
+of the old priest. We never saw the lady again."
+
+"You never saw her again after an adventure like that!" cried Fernando
+in amaze. "That is cold blood for you!"
+
+"It may be that she was ugly--or old," suggested Rafael.
+
+"On the contrary, she was so charming that he shouted for her in the
+delirium of the fever; that is how Teddy learned that she was the one
+exception among girls! But all their scheming could not learn her name
+from the priest or the Mexicans. 'Dona Espiritu' was all they ever
+heard. Teddy fancied they had shipped her to Spain for the adventure
+with a heretic that one night."
+
+"Is it all true, senor?" asked Dolores. "Dona Angela laughs at it, and
+you frown; and between the two, how are we to know how serious it may
+all be to you?"
+
+"Serious enough to make him bare his head at every old battered shrine
+for her sake," said Angela, with a little shrug; "and an old ring of his
+mother's was lost from his finger on that wilderness trail, while the
+Mexican eagle took its place. Oh, nuns are only women after all, and
+much can happen in the length of a Mexican night!"
+
+"Well, senor," said Dolores, with sudden courage, "I am a good Catholic,
+thank God! and I see no sacrilege in the sort of love for which a man
+bares his head at a shrine. Senor Bryton, the story will make us of
+California more than ever your friends!"
+
+"Sure," agreed Don Antonio.
+
+"I am at your feet, senorita," said Bryton, with kindly deference. "Now,
+Mrs. Bryton, if you have no other--romances--to elaborate and embellish,
+perhaps you will allow me to see you to your carriage, before I start
+for Los Angeles. Don Rafael is detained by us when he should be on his
+way south, and--"
+
+"Oh--I beg--" began Rafael, but Madalena interrupted.
+
+"Not another moment must we stay. Aunt Teresa will scold us well for
+this!"
+
+"For taking pity on a lonely bachelor?" asked Rafael.
+
+"Lonely?" repeated Dolores. "We will come again when the bride comes.
+Until then we leave you to prepare your soul with this--and this!"
+
+She motioned to the decanter, and picked up the scarlet fan of Mercedes.
+
+"You cruel one! You would make Dona Angela think--but do not think it,
+madama! I assure you, it is my mother's--or my aunt's--or--"
+
+"He never had an aunt," laughed Madalena. "Come, Uncle Ricardo, Dona
+Maxima wants you at home; she is at our house saying things to make your
+ears burn."
+
+"Sure!" said Don Ricardo, getting on his feet and taking the cane
+offered him. "But it is in honor of Dona Luisa Arteaga I am here. When
+her son makes gay company, it is the time for the steady friends of the
+family to stay by. So I am here, Madalena mia; and I shall say to my
+wife I was here all the evening, right here at this table as a
+respectable friend, and won seventy pesos!"
+
+"Sure, he did," assented Don Antonio. "But it is over! The sun is up, it
+is good time to go home."
+
+Rafael managed in the farewells to kiss the hand of Mrs. Bryton twice,
+and to be observed by Bryton only once. That was enough of victory for
+the moment, and when the door was closed he flung himself into a chair
+and reached again for the decanter.
+
+"Ai! she is delicious--the madama whose husband plans mines and goes on
+long voyages! How she makes our women look tame!"
+
+"Tah! She is insolent, that is all. We would lock up our women if they
+had the American way. Drink coffee--not more brandy."
+
+"To the devil with your coffee! And it is not an American way--she is
+English--the delicious lady!"
+
+"Worse still!" grunted Fernando.
+
+"How?" roared Rafael, straightening up in his chair. "You forget, senor!
+She is my friend--my very illustrious friend--she is--no matter what she
+is. Her husband goes on long voyages--and you must apologize to me--you
+hear? I have the admiration for her--I--"
+
+"You are drunk; that is what ails you, Rafael," said his friend,
+bluntly. "You think that you are in love with that woman, but you are
+only drunk."
+
+"Drunk--I? And you call her--call the illustrious lady who is a friend
+of mine, 'that woman!' Senor, there are two swords on the wall. You take
+your choice--you--"
+
+Fernando tried to avoid him, but he wrenched the sword from the wall and
+lunged at him wickedly.
+
+But for a girl who shrieked and rushed from a shadowy doorway, and flung
+herself on the arm of Rafael, it would have gone ill with Fernando.
+
+"Rafael mio!" she cried, clinging to him, "for the love of God!"
+
+"Marta!" he cried, and dropped the weapon. "I--did I not tell you--"
+
+He broke off vaguely, and avoided Fernando's eyes; that young man
+laughed good-naturedly.
+
+"Another illustrious friend whose husband goes on long voyages!" he
+said, lightly. "I leave you, my friend, until you are sober. Senorita,
+adios."
+
+Rafael stared moodily at the girl. She was a pretty bit of bronze flesh
+with passionate eyes.
+
+"I told you to stay on the ranch," he said at last; but she broke into
+tears and caught his hands.
+
+"I could not! They all know--the old woman and the priest. They thought
+I was dying, and he came and I had to tell him the name of the child's
+father; and--and when my own father comes back from the herding he will
+beat me, and I will not stay! I will not! He is not a fine gentleman,
+Rafael; he is only a herder who was a soldier in Mexico. Fine words
+would not count with him, unless it would be words before the priest,
+and you promised--"
+
+"Jesus, Maria, and Joseph!" burst out Rafael. "What an hour to come with
+a list of a man's promises! I've been up all night, and I'd fight with
+the saints if they came my way. Go, Marta; I will tell Antonio to make a
+home for you away from the crazy herder. I--I am very busy; I start
+south in an hour."
+
+"But, Rafael--"
+
+"Well--well?"
+
+"They say you are to marry an illustrious senorita--that you--"
+
+"They say a lot there is no sense in saying!" he burst out angrily. "If
+you had stayed on the ranch, you would not have heard their lies or--"
+
+"Ai! I am happy that it is not true. But that one lady--whose hands you
+kissed--Rafael--"
+
+"Oh, for the love of God, go!" he said. "You women drive a man mad!
+You--"
+
+Fernando rushed in, interrupting him:
+
+"Rafael! Your mother--she is here!"
+
+"My mother?"
+
+"On the hill--her carriage--a man brings the news."
+
+"Damnation! Coming here--now? And my head--Yes, it's true, Fernando; I
+was drunk. Help me to think! Make them clear all this away!" and he
+pointed to the tables and the dice and the cards on the floor. "Por
+Dios, how my head swims! And my mother is no fool--she will see! Think,
+Fernando! Help me to plan something. And you, Marta, let yourself not be
+seen!"
+
+The frightened girl was only too glad to slip away, while the rest of
+the group stripped the rooms of evidences of the night's orgy.
+
+"Mount a horse and ride to the beach," decided Fernando. "You will be
+gone on business, to see about--eh--to see if the vessel for hides has
+come in. Make yourself decent, and I will send a messenger after you.
+Don't be too easily found--you are likely to be drunker in an hour than
+you are now."
+
+"Curse the brandy! And Bryton was to come back to see me about--oh, God
+knows what! But don't let my mother see him--an accursed heretic
+Americano, you know! Dios! If I could only sleep for an hour!"
+
+Fernando fairly pushed him out at the door.
+
+"Take a sea bath; drink black coffee; get out of sight while I receive
+the bride!"
+
+Then, after the door was closed on the groom-elect, he took a quick
+survey of the room.
+
+"That is right, open all the windows. Some one cut lilies--the white
+ones--quick! Hide this fan for Merced. Light those candles on the
+Virgin's shrine, and put the lilies there and on the table. Whose pipe
+is this under the edge of our lady's lace robe? It smells vilely--take
+it away! Where is the key of the chest of the _donas_? Here it is in the
+chest, and that is unlocked--only Rafael could do that. Let us hope he
+has not let Merced try on the wedding-dress! Are there no more flowers?
+Get some for the room of the senorita. Tell some one to make French
+coffee. Manuel, put out the light."
+
+Dolores and Madalena ran through the open door, breathless.
+
+"Fernando, she is here--the Senora Arteaga, and--"
+
+"Already! Aunt Teresa told us to run and help; she will come also. Don
+Rafael?"
+
+"Has ridden to the harbor."
+
+"More likely to bed," remarked Madalena, skeptically.
+
+"Senorita!"
+
+"Sh--h!" whispered Dolores, with lifted hand. "The carriage; they are in
+the plaza!"
+
+She rushed out, and the others followed. Teresa was there greeting Dona
+Luisa; but all fell suddenly silent as they noticed the gray-white of
+the old face, and the frail figure as she descended from the carriage
+with the help of Fernando Mendez and Ana--his cousin's widow.
+
+Fernando cast one glance at the girl who sat her horse and glanced over
+their heads for the face she did not see.
+
+A wizened old Indian woman alighted from a cart and came to her and
+touched her foot on the stirrup.
+
+"It is your new land, little mistress," she said, in a tongue not
+understood by the others, "the land of your handsome lover."
+
+The girl looked again across the many faces gathering in the plaza, and
+then accepted the help of Don Antonio to alight.
+
+"But he is not here, Polonia--the handsome lover," she returned, and
+then walked past all the others and slipped her hand under the arm of
+Dona Luisa.
+
+"A thousand welcomes, senora," said Fernando, at the portal. "The town
+will rejoice to-day."
+
+"One welcome I had a right to expect at this door," the old lady
+answered, "and he is not here."
+
+"He will be heart-broken. He did not think you had yet reached San
+Diego. To-day he was to start for there. Will it please you to have this
+seat?"
+
+"Not yet," she said. "Raquelita!"
+
+Raquel Estevan gently disengaged her other hand from Dolores, and the
+frail old woman led her to the little shrine of the Virgin, where the
+candles glimmered. The others halted at the door, but Fernando and
+Dolores and Ana knelt also as the old woman and the girl from Mexico
+clasped hands and bent heads before the statue in the niche.
+
+The old woman rose first and kissed the girl's forehead.
+
+"My daughter," she said, faintly, "I welcome you for my son and for
+myself, to the land where you are mistress. Now, senor!"
+
+Fernando placed a chair for her, and she sank into it wearily.
+
+"My last journey, my children! You are the son of Manuel Mendez?--we
+called ourselves cousins once. I present you--all of you--to my
+daughter--Dona Raquel Estevan."
+
+"At your feet, senorita!" said Fernando.
+
+"I appreciate the honor of your acquaintance, senor," replied Raquel, in
+the conventional greeting of the day and land. Then the others crowded
+about, and spoke many pretty things of welcome. But in the midst of it
+all Dona Luisa arose, and leaning on Jacoba's arm, passed into the room
+prepared for her. The group left behind stared into each other's eyes.
+
+"How frail! How could any creature like that make the journey?" asked
+Fernando. "She has been very ill."
+
+"She _is_ ill; we dare not mention it to her!"
+
+"But Rafael--her son--"
+
+"Must not be told, so she says; not until the wedding is over. All at
+once she has gone like that. It is the heart, senor, and she is old. It
+may be months--may be days--may be only hours, and we can do nothing but
+keep her quiet and happy."
+
+"Santa Maria!" muttered Dolores, "and Rafael--"
+
+"His heart it will break--no? To not see him at the door is like a bad
+omen. She likes not the new Americanos' way of business--to be gone at
+breakfast time to look at ships! But of course he is very good!"
+
+"You are very good," replied Dolores. "Have they sent for Rafael?"
+
+"I will see," said Fernando, and went away muttering, "The so good
+Rafael!"
+
+"Oh! we have a thousand things to ask you, Raquel," said Madalena.
+"Could you have been a nun and been happy if--Rafael had not found you?"
+
+"To work for Mother Church--is not that of happiness?"
+
+"Never to dance! Never to hear a serenade! Never to watch on moonlight
+nights for a handsome caballero!"
+
+"I would as soon live in a tomb," confessed Dolores.
+
+"But if you had never seen a dance, would you miss dancing? My mother's
+people were priests; she was to have been a nun. My blood and my
+teaching have been of the church. My life has been lived in one little
+narrow strip of the world. All at once the world changed. Sometimes it
+bewilders me, this change. You say 'happy,' but I don't think I know
+that word as you know it. Maybe I never shall learn it--who knows? But I
+can find work for the Church even here in the world, and you will all be
+my good friends, and--I shall be content."
+
+Dona Luisa had entered the room while she was speaking, and nodded her
+approval.
+
+"Content? You will be happy, my child; you will be with Rafael! Have you
+seen the chest of the _donas_? Is it not handsome? If we only had the
+key!"
+
+"There is a little silver key on the shrine," said Dolores, and ran to
+get it.
+
+"Aha! On the shrine of the Virgin!" said Dona Luisa. "Is that not love,
+Raquelita?"
+
+"I am willing to believe it," she said, and took the little key, only
+to hand it back to Dolores. "You open it--and may you be the next happy
+bride!"
+
+Dolores rushed to unlock the chest, and Madalena to lift the lid, and
+Ana, as well as the older women, exclaimed at the richness of the
+contents.
+
+"Ai! Raquel Estevan, thou happy one!" cried Ana; "you have more luck
+than a queen!"
+
+They pulled out embroideries and laces and jewels, with little shrieks
+of ecstasy at the beauty and fineness of them. Raquel looked on, smiling
+at their delight.
+
+"Aha! is not that a lover, Raquelita?" repeated Dona Luisa. "Bring me
+the mantillas. Those two are for the bridesmaids; see how they look on
+Madalena and Dolores--fine--fine! And here is the wedding-veil--and the
+shoes, and the rosary--not anything is forgotten! He is so dear, so
+good--my Rafael!"
+
+The girls insisted on placing the wreath and veil on Raquel's head, but
+she broke from them at sight of a silken scarf of green and red and
+white.
+
+"Ah! more than all the jewels!" she cried, and clasped it to her bosom.
+"The flag of my own Mexico! I will love him for that--I will love him
+with all my heart!"
+
+"Ah! thou hast said it at last," said Dona Luisa, in triumph; "never
+forget thou hast said it!"
+
+"When I say it," whispered Dolores to Ana, "it will be to the man, not
+to his mother."
+
+"Come to me, daughter," said Dona Luisa, sinking back into a chair. "The
+heart feels--feels almost too happy! My dear Raquel--my dear Rafael!"
+
+"The Americanos will be crazy to see this wedding in the old California
+fashion," said Madalena, adjusting Raquel's veil caressingly. "Senora
+Bryton would give her two ears--ouch! Dona Ana, you break my arm!"
+
+"Give thanks it is not your neck, babbler!" muttered Ana. Dona Luisa
+looked at the two intently a moment.
+
+"Who is the American senora of the two ears?" she inquired; "and why
+should the wedding of my son have interest for such--persons?"
+
+"She--she was a cousin of Don Eduardo, and now she is married again--and
+she visits us, and her husband is some kind of engineer to make
+railroads, and mines, and--"
+
+A pinch from Dolores stopped her this time, but it was very clumsily
+done, Dona Luisa saw it.
+
+"Ah," she said, quietly; "and when is he to bring the railroad of the
+Americanos to the Californias, eh?"
+
+The women and girls stared at each other.
+
+"I--I cannot tell her," murmured Madalena to Jacoba; "you speak! Of
+course it is not Dona Angela's husband who does it, but--the railroad
+does come--so they say."
+
+"Why do you whisper, and not speak aloud?" demanded Dona Luisa, putting
+aside the hand of Raquel, who tried to quiet her rising resentment. "Is
+there not anyone here to speak plainly, and the truth? What is it you
+try to hide from me?"
+
+"Oh, Luisa," begged Jacoba, tearfully, "do not make of this a thing to
+trouble you! No one tries really to hide things; it is not here the
+railroad is to be first; it is only talk; it may never happen--it may--"
+
+"Where?" demanded Dona Luisa. And Jacoba, with tears in her eyes,
+confessed having heard of the impertinence of the Americanos, who meant
+to build a new road of their own instead of the wagon trail to San
+Antonio.
+
+"That was good enough for our fathers. What is now wrong with the San
+Antonio road?"
+
+"Not anything, of course; but the government--"
+
+"Ah ha!" and the old voice lifted to a shrill note of triumph in having
+at last found the key of the question. "The American government! I
+thought that would be it. What new crime do they plan against the
+Californias? This it is to grow old and lame--they would hide it from
+me! Speak, and tell me all! Does the fine new government want my home to
+quarter their pigs of soldiers in, as they did in the Mission in other
+days? And would my friends have hidden it from me until these upstarts
+were across my door?"
+
+"Luisa--chulita--you were not well. Rafael said you were not to be told;
+but since you think we mean to speak falsely, or deceive you--"
+
+"Where is it to come? How near?" Dona Luisa was not to be led an iota
+from the main question. But at her demand, Jacoba tried to speak, and
+failed, and could only weep noisily at the hardness in her old cousin's
+tones.
+
+"Why do you make Aunt Jacoba weep like that?" demanded Ana, resentfully.
+"What has she to do with the railroads--she or her family? Your good
+Rafael does more to bring them than any one else. He sells them land; he
+and Don Eduardo help them to get the rights to go where they please.
+Aunt Jacoba would not do that; her father and her husband would be
+burned at the stake before they would help these new people to use the
+graves of the holy fathers at San Gabriel as a road-bed!"
+
+"Mother of God!"
+
+Dona Luisa arose, as though to annihilate the daring speaker; but
+Raquel caught her and she sank back in her chair with one tremulous hand
+extended to the frightened Ana.
+
+"Go on!" she said, hoarsely. "Go on! Perjure thy soul with lies, since
+thou lovest them so,--lies against a son of Mother Church. Go on!"
+
+Ana shrank, and faltered, but the accusation brought back her courage.
+
+"If the truth is shameful, the shame is not mine," she retorted.
+"Through two of the Arteaga ranches in the north has Rafael sold the
+right of way for the American railroad to Monterey. That it might come
+closer to his ranch-houses, he has let it be built across the forgotten
+graves of the Mission fathers. Beneath the feet of the Americanos will
+lie the holy apostles of our Mother Church! The Protestant heretics will
+wheel their pigs to market across the gardens where Ava Marias have
+sounded all the years of religion in California!"
+
+Dona Luisa stared at her with white face, and her lips moved stiffly
+when she tried to speak. The other women and girls were clinging
+together in tears, and Raquel stood with her strong young arms about
+her, as though to guard her against the world.
+
+Bryton, who had strolled back through the patio for a final word with
+Rafael, had heard nothing of the arrivals; he pushed open the door at
+the back, and then halted at the sight of the group there,--the women
+and girls frightened and weeping, the scattered wealth of silks and
+laces flung across chairs and tables, and the three girls with
+bride-like veils.
+
+"Is it--a witchcraft?" half whispered Dona Luisa at last; but the
+whisper was plainly heard above the sobs of the girls, who scarcely
+dared to breathe. "It is a work of the fiends to snare his soul for hell
+Immaculate Mother, let it not be!"
+
+Raquel bent above her with murmured assurances of divine help, and the
+old woman suddenly caught the hands of the girl in her own and held her,
+staring in her face with questioning eyes; then she spoke eagerly,
+fiercely.
+
+"Your wish but a moment ago! You wished for some great work for Mother
+Church--to fight evil out in the world; your guardian angel heard the
+wish and has sent you a soul to save from the heretics,--the soul of the
+man you love!"
+
+Raquel stared at her, but did not speak. Her eyes looked a bit
+frightened, but she rested her cheek on the frail old hands, and
+caressed them reassuringly.
+
+Dona Luisa lifted the gold and ebony crucifix, and held it above her
+head.
+
+"Kneel!" she said; and the girls and women did so. Bryton, in the
+doorway, caught sight of the girl in the bride's veil, and made a
+movement toward her, but was checked by the voice of the mother.
+
+"It is for the soul of the man you love, Raquel mia. Never forget
+that--never forget!"
+
+"I will not forget," said the girl, gently; and at the sound of the
+voice Keith Bryton's jaw set in a tense, ugly way, and he stepped back
+into the shadow.
+
+"Then swear by the Holy Mother of God!" said the old voice, and the
+crucifix above the head of the kneeling girl was held rigidly steady.
+
+"I swear by the Holy Mother of God!"
+
+"Swear by the blood of Christ crucified!"
+
+"I swear by the blood of Christ crucified!"
+
+"To stand as a guard over the soul of Rafael!" The old voice had a
+faintness, despite the steady words; the end of her strength had come.
+
+The eyes of Raquel widened ever so little as she realized what she was
+promising. There was an involuntary pause before she spoke again, and
+then the absolute despair of the mother, and her one hope, swept over
+the girl's consciousness, and a spark of the martyr fire lit her own
+soul.
+
+"To stand as guard over the soul of Rafael," said she, steadily.
+
+"So long as you both shall live!"
+
+"So long as--we both--shall--live."
+
+Then the crucifix fell to the tiled floor, and the old face looked very
+gray, as she sank back on the chair; and Jacoba smothered a shriek at
+sight of her eyes; and Raquel, still on her knees, clasped her about the
+waist and whispered:
+
+"Dona Luisa, Dona Luisa!"
+
+The staring eyes regained a momentary glimmer of consciousness at the
+sound of the girl's voice, and she lifted her hand again as though it
+still held the crucifix.
+
+"Until--the day--of--" and then the sentence trailed along into the
+eternal silences of the unseen land.
+
+"Senora!" called Raquel, appealingly; but Ana caught her by the shoulder
+and looked in her face, and said:
+
+"God help you, Raquel Estevan! To the recording angel she has taken that
+oath."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Keith Bryton closed the door on the weeping women, and walked out
+through the old refectory to the inner court, where he met Fernando.
+
+"What is it, senor?" he asked. Bryton looked at him much as though he
+had not been there.
+
+"I--I scarcely know," he said, dully. "You had better--"
+
+"But you have the face of a ghost!" interrupted Fernando. "Something has
+happened--in there?"
+
+"I think so," agreed the American, recovering under Fernando's curious
+gaze. "Some one is ill--or--"
+
+Fernando ran past him, and Bryton walked slowly along the inner court to
+where the one-time baptistry lay roofless to the sky. Through an old
+doorway with the Aztec sun cut in the coping, he passed into the old
+graveyard of the padres, and thence to the great altar-place of the old
+earthquake ruin. Even there the cries of the girls came to him through
+an open window--a wailing chorus of tragedy. Then an old Indian untied
+the ropes of the belfry, and the toll of death sounded along the valley.
+But it seemed very far away. He stared at the half-pagan decorations of
+the old stonework--never the cross of Christ anywhere on them--and sat
+so still that two linnets lit almost at his feet and were not afraid.
+
+"I wondered why I should stray back to this little corner of the world,"
+he said at last, "and now--now I reckon I'm finding out. God! I feel
+like a bad dream. And my hands tied!"
+
+He paced back and forth on the old altar-place, until the mad clatter of
+hoofs coming from the sea cut across the tolling of the bells and told
+him the lost bridegroom--the man she said she loved and would never
+forget--had been found.
+
+He swore softly as he crossed the plaza to the veranda of Juan Alvara.
+The old man, rolling his first cigarro of the day, was sitting there on
+the bench in the early sunlight.
+
+"Don Juan," he said, holding out his hand, "I ride to catch up with the
+officers and go with them into the Indian country, and I may not see San
+Juan again for a long time. Your home has always been a pleasant place,
+and I thank you for many courtesies."
+
+The old man shook his hand gravely.
+
+"Adios! You come back to San Juan--no?"
+
+"Perhaps not," said Bryton. "If there is anything I can do for you in
+Los Angeles--"
+
+"Thanks, senor; there is nothing. My daughters go there in a week with
+the wedding party. For whom think you old Tomas tolls the bell?"
+
+When informed, he stared vaguely at the Americano. Alvara was growing
+old. Teresa had warned them all that no one should tell him until his
+breakfast was over and he had had his smoke.
+
+"Luisa! the Dona Luisa! Dead, you say?--before the wedding-day? No,
+senor, pardon, but you have not understood. I know Luisa Arteaga when
+she is still a little girl--and always. She not dying before she have
+marry the boy like she want."
+
+Still, his hand trembled as he reached for his cane. Across the plaza
+Indians and Mexicans were moving toward the Mission. It was early for
+San Juan to be astir in the street. Old Matia, who had been nurse to
+Miguel and Rafael, went past, not seeing the two men for the tears in
+her eyes. Yes--after all, there was trouble--but Dona Luisa!
+
+In his perturbation he turned, and again held out his hand.
+
+"Adios, senor," he repeated; "but you coming back for sure. To San Juan
+all people coming back some time. You go with the horses across the
+deserts?"
+
+"Yes, I am going across the deserts. Adios!"
+
+[Music: _El Corazon_.]
+
+    Yo te he de amar,
+    te he de amar
+    hasta muerte,
+    Y si pudiera--
+    Yo te a maria despues.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+He had crossed the ranges twice and returned, but the City of the Angels
+had lost its old witchery.
+
+The rose-tinted dawns, and the amethystine dusks were beautiful as ever,
+but to banish the memories he had once dreamed over there, he galloped
+alone to the harbor called "The Hell of California," and lay all one day
+on the beach, and stared moodily at the waves whipping the yellow sands
+of San Pedro.
+
+To the south there, far beyond the prosaic stretch of grazing-lands
+bordered by the sea, beyond all the tame levels where the water was
+green or yellow in the shallows, beyond all the jutting points, veiled
+in the miles of mists, he could follow in his mind each curve, until
+the one valley of beauty would gleam like a green jewel seen from the
+cliffs of San Juan.
+
+And at the foot of those cliffs there were no flat stretches of color
+such as make weary the eye; the water there held all the shimmering,
+bewitching, iridescence of a peacock's feathers,--the gold and purple,
+the greens and the blues ever changing,--the strange touch of pink
+making it all glorious in certain glints of the sunlight; and at the
+edge of it all, the fringe of foam--a string of pearls shattered on the
+brown cliffs or sandy beach, and gathered up to be dashed again and
+again and again--the endless garniture of old Ocean's robe.
+
+Never on any other shore had mere waves, running to the sand, the same
+witchery. Alvara had said that all men came back some day to San Juan.
+What witchery was it by which its mesa and its valley and its wonderful
+shore were forever set apart from other shores of California? Some
+mystery of life brooded there from sea to mountain, suggesting so much
+which was left for poor humanity to solve; it was only a whispered
+suggestion, dim and delightful, as the music of the waves heard from the
+Mission plaza, or as dreamy as the high film of fog, drifting high up
+and tempering the sun's rays until they fell softly as a benediction on
+the valley between blue sea and blue summit.
+
+[Illustration: "NEVER ON ANY OTHER SHORE"]
+
+His own life stretched before him like the brown levels and yellow
+flatness of San Pedro; and there to the south, miles across the ranges,
+was the heart of the dreamland he must not enter: another man had that
+claim under fence. He gave voice to some self-condemnation of a sort
+reserved for men who go _loco_ over a woman who forgets, and after hours
+of brooding there alone by the shore, arrived at only one decision--the
+California of the south ranges was no longer his own. All the width of
+it was now narrowed to one little valley, where the poppies flamed over
+forgotten graves and adobe walls, and the doves circled above a ruined
+chancel.
+
+He rode into town, where some kind friends mentioned that Don Rafael
+Arteaga and his bride were being _feted_ by the leading Spanish families
+of Los Angeles, and he was invited to a dinner in their honor a week
+hence.
+
+"I go to Mexico--I start to-day," he answered, briefly. Ten minutes
+before, he had not thought of it.
+
+"To Mexico? You cover ground fast these days, Don Keith. On the new road
+of iron they mean to make, you could not go so much faster than on the
+horses you ride; you have the good American luck in the pick of them."
+
+"Yes, the good American luck!" said Keith Bryton, with a touch of
+bitterness. "May your saints send you a better!"
+
+A man who stood near, and who much desired the invitation Bryton had
+refused, shrugged his shoulders as the Americano mounted his horse and
+rode away.
+
+"What better luck could a man have, than a chance to meet Dona Raquel
+Estevan de Arteaga?" he queried of any who might care to answer. "The
+bishop himself shows her honor, and they say she is working for the
+Church against Downing, the Englishman, who holds the Mission lands
+under Pico's sale. Sixteen years has the Church fought for those lands
+in the courts; if she gets them back, she deserves the pope's blessing.
+And the fool boy of an Americano rides south when he could meet
+her--perhaps touch her hand!"
+
+But the fool Americano rode south and kept on riding south for many
+dusty days. He crossed a corner of the Yaqui country, and then across
+the ranges to the old mine, called the Mine of the Temple--the one of
+which he had told Don Juan Alvara--was it so few weeks ago? It might
+have been years instead of weeks, by his own feeling and attitude of
+mind. He was riding back a different man. He evaded the few Mexicans as
+he neared the mine; no turn of the trail was lonely for him. Memory
+kept pace, and the murmur of one girl's voice spoke through the rustling
+leaves of the mountains.
+
+A travelling priest, jubilant at the idea of comradeship, hailed him in
+one of the mountain passes, and found him but a sorry companion.
+
+"This is a country," said the padre, "where the sight of a white face is
+most welcome. Six months since I was sent to this parish, and few of
+them have I seen. Now, I ride out of my way just to talk with an
+American who works a mine up here. Your brother, is it? Well, he has a
+good name with the brown folks. A lot of pagans they are! It is not a
+priest they need here; it is a missionary the bishop should send to
+teach them their religion anew. If ever they had any, it has been lost."
+
+But it was evidently the opinion of the padre that they had never really
+secured any to lose. He discoursed at some length on the failure of the
+Church to impress upon them the advantage of marriage. Few were the
+wedding fees to be obtained from the Mexicans, while the heathen Indians
+had some form of their own, arranged by the head of their clan, and it
+was a disgrace to a land held under cross and crown for two
+centuries--an endless shame!
+
+Keith assented, without heeding the list of Indian iniquities. He was
+rather glad, after all, that Teddy had a civilized neighbor, willing to
+be companionable. Teddy liked people too well to exile himself from them
+but for the one thing--to go back north, able to cover one white throat
+with pearls, or two white hands with diamonds.
+
+His greeting of his half-brother was a bit shy, though wholly glad, and
+the padre served to bridge over the first few awkward moments. Both men
+recognized the fact of a change in each since the Los Angeles days.
+Teddy thought it due only to his clandestine marriage, and Keith felt
+guilty as he realized how little, how very little, Teddy's marriage
+meant to him now. While the padre was getting acquainted with the
+Mexican, the two brothers walked apart, and talked of the chances of the
+mine's success, and the failure of the backers to see the necessity of
+using money more freely on the enterprise.
+
+"It's there, you know," insisted Teddy; "all this district is flooded
+with stories of the ore taken out of it in the first days of the
+Spaniards; then the Indians descended upon them, and there was a
+slaughter, and no Spaniard dared venture into these hills for a
+century."
+
+"Yes. We put in a good many fruitless days trailing those old legends,"
+assented Keith, "but only the Indian superstition tends to show that
+this is the real mine of that history. The rich one may not have been
+on this side of the mountain, since you have not yet struck the lode."
+
+"Don't let's talk about it, if you feel that way," suggested Teddy, "I
+hear plenty of that from the others; and you didn't really come all the
+way down here to talk mines. Say, old chap, you acted like a prince over
+the--well, the wedding. I felt pretty nearly three inches higher when I
+got your letter. I--I know I acted like a kid, but Angela wanted it
+arranged so; and--as she about filled the whole horizon--"
+
+"Cut out the explanation, Teddy. A man is never sure of himself until
+the right woman crosses his trail--or the wrong one. God knows I'm not
+fit for alcalde in the case. At least, you married your wife."
+
+Teddy stared at him an instant, and then shouted with laughter.
+
+"Married my wife? Well, rather! How else could she be my wife?"
+
+Keith avoided the frank boyish blue eyes of Teddy, and turned away,
+seating himself on a great bowlder and staring across the little
+semicircle of the canyon basin, to where gnarled century-old trees
+reached grotesque arms above some old stone ruins and fragments of
+marble. Teddy looked at him an instant, and then whistled softly.
+
+"If it were any other man than you, Keith, I'd think--but it's too
+ridiculous!"
+
+"Say it," suggested Keith.
+
+"Well, I'd say the wrong woman had crossed _your_ trail."
+
+"Not the wrong one."
+
+"Good Lord! you don't mean that by any chance it is at last the right
+one?"
+
+"At last--the right woman."
+
+"And you sit there looking as solemn over it as a wooden Mexican god!
+Wake up, old fellow, and tell about her."
+
+"There is nothing to tell. She is the right woman, and I shall never see
+her again."
+
+"Keith!"
+
+"And I've come back here to tell myself so," continued Keith, doggedly;
+"to say it over and over, and beat it into my brain, if I have any left.
+The desert didn't help me--I thought this might."
+
+"This?"
+
+"These hills, and--speaking of it."
+
+His brother said nothing, only looked at him in wonder, as he rose with
+hands thrust in pockets and walked the length of the little terrace
+formed by the refuse of the mine. The two brothers had changed places.
+It was now Keith, the cool, the indifferent, who had crossed some line
+of emotional experience where speech was a relief--Keith, of all men!
+Teddy wondered who the woman could be; she would be worth seeing.
+
+"So you see, Ted," observed the other, with a forced laugh, "you need
+not explain things to me. When the woman comes, none of us cares much
+what the other fellow thinks."
+
+"If she is the right woman, I'm mighty sorry, old man, that it's going
+to be as you say--that you are not going to see her again."
+
+"Don't waste good sorrow! I'm the only fool in the case--she doesn't
+care."
+
+"That's not so easy to believe," declared Teddy, loyally. "You probably
+only asked her once, and then hit the trail before she could change her
+mind."
+
+"Ask her. When people care, words are not so necessary."
+
+"Perhaps not, but girls do expect words; though the right girl--"
+
+"She doesn't know that she was the right girl; I may not have made it
+clear. I was a fool who dreamed dreams and believed them true. Talking
+about it doesn't help. I thought it might; that's all."
+
+He continued to walk the terrace, as though with a certain impatience at
+having let go of himself. Teddy regarded him for a few moments of
+awkward silence. Keith had never been demonstrative, and this sudden
+confidence caught Teddy unprepared. He felt ill at ease, realizing that
+it was no light sentiment, causing him to let go of himself and speak.
+
+"I reckon this particular mountain must be bewitched," he said at last.
+"The only other time you talked of a girl--any special girl--was after
+we were led across yon range by that girl of the convent. Even then you
+talked of her only when the knock on your head sent you luny. What was
+the name they called her? Spirit--Dona Spirit--Dona Espiritu! That is
+it! I really thought for a few days of your ravings that we were going
+to have a nun in the family; and now it's a new girl!"
+
+Keith regarded him for a moment, then in silence took out tobacco and
+made a cigarette. Of what use were words?
+
+"I always wondered who that girl was and what became of her," continued
+Teddy. "The old padre was as dumb as an oyster on the subject. Did you
+learn more than her name?"
+
+"Not much," said Keith, briefly.
+
+"I always meant to. Funny how those crack-brained Indians let up on the
+attack that night, when she slipped that ring on your finger and held up
+your hand for them to see. It was the last thing I noted before I
+keeled over. Those Indians have not forgotten that. They knew when I
+came back here, and they seemed to watch either the mine or me,--I don't
+know which it is. Once they asked an old Mexican for you; he speaks
+their lingo. They described you as 'the man of the ring.'"
+
+"That's queer."
+
+"Did the girl tell you what the ring meant?"
+
+"Meant?" repeated Keith, questioningly.
+
+"Yes. To the tribe, it means more than a mere ring. The old Mexican
+gathered that much. It had something the significance of a sceptre, and
+was worn only by one of the rulers in the old days. When that girl put
+it on your finger, the tribe thought it meant that she had picked you
+out for marriage. She didn't tell you?"
+
+"No, she didn't tell me."
+
+"Well, it's all that saved our lives that night. You know the old padre
+is dead. It was he did the sleight-of-hand work in getting the girl out
+of sight before you got on your feet again. With some threat of eternal
+flames, he shut the lips of every Mexican I tried to bribe to find her."
+
+Keith took the cigarette from his lips, and looked at him without
+speaking. Teddy smiled and nodded.
+
+"Yes, I looked for her without your knowing it. You came nearer going
+'over the range' in that fever than you ever realized. The English
+doctor down there asked me who the devil 'Espiritu' was, and said that
+she could probably do more to lower your temperature than his drugs. I
+tried to locate her, as soon as I could hobble on a crutch, but it was
+no use. The padre said she had taken the black veil: that shut us out."
+
+"Yes, of course," assented Keith, absently.
+
+"You never mentioned her name after you got on your feet, so I figured
+that it did not really mean anything. Girls never did mean much to you,
+individually, Keith,--until now."
+
+"Until now."
+
+"And now it's no use, since you can't see her again."
+
+Keith puffed away in thoughtful silence before he spoke.
+
+"Perhaps not. Yet--_quien sabe_? A sentiment may be like a sunrise,
+lifting clouds for you and making you see things--things within yourself
+you never suspected were there. Our trail in these hills followed the
+light of the morning star once, and we got out of the wilderness to
+safety: that star has meant something to me ever since. I can't possess
+it, but the meaning of it is mine. I can't give myself to the right
+woman,"--and he held out his hand and looked at it,--"but no conventions
+of the world, no man-made walls can prevent the thought of me from going
+to her--the thought which, after all, is the real me. When that is so,
+who can say that even an unknown love has not its own uses? It may prove
+the illumination of a whole lifetime."
+
+Teddy, with wonder in his eyes, laid his hand on his brother's shoulder.
+"Old man, that kind of feeling is beyond me. I want my girl with me, and
+I want her mighty bad. I've lived beside you all my life, and never
+dreamed it was in you to care like that for any woman. It only shows how
+little we know, after all."
+
+"Yes; how little, after all, until the right woman crosses the trail."
+
+"The chances are that we can never talk of it again. I know you _that_
+much! I told you this old hill of the temple was uncanny--bewitched,--and
+it is. You never would have mentioned this to me in civilized places."
+
+"Perhaps not," agreed Keith. "And you're right--I could never speak of
+it again."
+
+They never did. That night they talked only of Teddy's enterprise, and
+covered much paper with many figures, and made fine plans for the
+future.
+
+The next day it was that Keith, hunting in the hills, heard an unusual
+blast from the mine, felt the ground tremble from the shock, and turning
+back on the trail, met a Mexican with a bleeding hand and a cut face,
+who urged him to hasten. It was the word of the padre!
+
+He reached Teddy's side only in time to accept "Angela--poor little
+Angela--" as a life-long legacy. There had been an explosion. Graves
+were made for the young engineer and three of his Mexican miners on the
+side of the mountain. When it was all over, Keith Bryton climbed to the
+heights above, where the broken walls of stone showed white and gray
+among forest growth on the temple terrace. Below, and beyond the ranges,
+lay the world. In his isolation of grief, he felt as alone as the
+solitary mountain rising from the plain below, through which a river
+ran. Far down the river, miles away, gleamed a cross on the chapel of a
+convent. It was the old Mexican pueblo of which he had told Alvara. He
+remembered saying to the old man that he would never come back; yet here
+he was. How useless to say what one will or will not do in this world!
+One must make allowance for the moves fate insists upon in the game of
+life.
+
+Back of him, on a slight elevation, stood some broken columns, and
+half an arch yet showed where an entrance had been, and under a dwarfed
+and twisted oak half covered with tropical vines a bench of marble
+gleamed. Two birds fluttered to the ground near him and turned
+inquisitive eyes on the intruder. He watched them carelessly, until one
+of them perched on a fallen block of stone ornamented with the
+sculptured sun of the Aztecs. It brought back like a flash that other
+day when he went from the presence of death to a ruined altar-place,
+where the Aztec sun and the cactus commemorated some unknown Mexican
+sculptor who cut the symbol of the faith of his people into the walls of
+a Christian church.
+
+He closed his eyes, and the vision of that other day was only
+intensified. The wind in the oaks back of him sounded like the surf on
+San Juan's beach; and through it the slow, fateful words of a girl
+kneeling in her wedding-veil echoed in his ears as it had done a
+thousand times:
+
+"So long--as--we--both--shall live!"
+
+There were no weeping girls here, and no bells to toll out the death
+message; but otherwise the atmosphere of the place, and the illusion,
+were perfect. How--how had he chanced to enter into this half-pagan
+atmosphere of death? Unconsciously, automatically, he turned and
+re-turned on his finger the onyx ring at which Angela had laughed.
+
+He was still seated there when the miners who had filled the graves came
+up the path, and with them the priest from the plains below. The
+Mexicans halted outside the broken walls. Only one Indian, who had
+followed at a distance, crossed the line of entrance, and stood apart,
+watching and listening in a furtive way--watching the American
+especially.
+
+"Many times I have heard of this place," said the priest, "but never
+before have I been so far into the mountain. There are strange old
+traditions of it in the accounts some of the early padres left. Their
+king or chief became Christian and gave his sons to the Church, but the
+main body of the people kept to many of their pagan rites. And this was
+their temple. The men ask me if you continue with the mining, senor."
+
+He noticed they all listened for the answer, and looked relieved when he
+said, "No."
+
+"They are all very glad, senor. They ask me to tell you they have no ill
+will, but they say not any of their men will go into the mine of the
+temple."
+
+"Some superstition?"
+
+"It seems so. They say one man always dies when outsiders meddle with
+the mountain, but never before have three men died at once. They ask
+you to let the company know that none of them will come back."
+
+"Very good," and Bryton arose and picked up the sombrero he had dropped
+beside him. "I will tell them to bring foreigners if they mean to keep
+on; but I doubt it. The cave-in down there means a fortune to dig out. I
+don't think they have the capital."
+
+He was turning away, when he noticed the Indian.
+
+"Is he a workman?"
+
+The others exchanged glances, and then one of them stepped forward.
+
+"No, senor. He is one of the mountain people. No one knows where they
+live. I know a little of their talk. He says for us all to go away, or
+worse things will always happen. He--he wants to speak to you."
+
+"Well?"
+
+The man hesitated, and then said a few words, and the Indian replied in
+a strange jargon with peculiar aspirated syllables.
+
+"He says," continued the interpreter, hesitatingly, "to ask if she is to
+come back."
+
+"She?"
+
+Bryton's face flushed, as the priest looked at him curiously.
+
+"You have known those people before?"
+
+"I--my brother and I were lost once in the forest here. We--well, we
+were made to feel we had trespassed; but some one--a sort of missionary
+among them--made them lead us to the plain. It would have been better if
+my brother had never come back."
+
+"And--?"
+
+The priest noticed Bryton's hesitation; so did the Indian, for he walked
+direct to him, and pointed to the ring he wore, and looked from the ring
+to Bryton's face.
+
+"Tell him," said the American, "that she is a man's wife, and lives in a
+lovely land."
+
+"You see her--some day?" asked the Indian.
+
+"No--not ever again--perhaps."
+
+The Indian bent his head, and with a slight gesture as of farewell,
+turned and walked swiftly away from them, around the bend of the
+mountain.
+
+"Your words have an unusual interest," said the priest, as they walked
+down toward the plain. "They suggest that the missionary might be the
+one they spoke of here as the Indian nun."
+
+"This lady was not Indian," said Keith, decidedly. "Her skin was whiter
+than either yours or mine. The Indians called her Dona Espiritu! It was
+the only name they knew her by."
+
+"It was the same, and her father's name was Estevan," said the priest,
+quietly.
+
+"Yes, I know now. His name was Estevan, but--"
+
+"And he was the man who died the awful death up there." And he pointed
+back to the temple.
+
+"No!" Bryton stopped on the path and faced the priest, thus halting the
+entire procession at a point where a yawning gulf of a canyon reached to
+unseen depths below.
+
+"For the love of Christ--senor!" screamed the priest, while the Mexicans
+in the rear clung to their burros and swore.
+
+"The man who was killed left no child," persisted Bryton. "I heard the
+story."
+
+"A daughter was born six months after his death--after the wife had
+taken the black veil of eternal renunciation of the world," declared the
+priest, solemnly. "Now, senor, for the love of God, will you let us find
+safer footing?"
+
+"Oh, yes. Pardon me!" and Bryton continued thoughtfully along the trail
+to the plain below. When they reached a broader road where it was
+possible to ride abreast, he asked one more question.
+
+"Father, does she know?"
+
+"Not unless some in the world have told her. Here, the old priest, her
+uncle, had power enough over the wild tribe to make them promise they
+would not tell her until she had lived twenty years. He died ten years
+ago, but they kept faith. There are some people in the world who had to
+know,--the lawyers and judges who settled the estate,--for Estevan was a
+man of wealth. He carried wounds here from the war for California. The
+child thought he died from the effects of those. Out in the world where
+she has gone, that wild barbaric outbreak of her mother's people will
+never be known; and of the few who have learned it who would tell her?"
+
+"True, father: who would?"
+
+[Music: _La Passion Funesta_]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+He did not go north for a month. His letter to Angela contained a check,
+which she at once invested in very becoming mourning, for which she of
+course had to journey to Los Angeles.
+
+With her went Don Eduardo Downing and his wife, Dona Maria, who, with
+Rafael, had unpleasant business to transact with the bishop, and were
+irritable in consequence. Bryton called upon them at the home of the
+ex-Governor of California. After Angela's first emotional outburst at
+the details of Teddy's death and burial,--and regret that a Protestant
+clergyman was not to be had,--she managed to come back to subjects
+nearer home, and retail a few of the changes since the death of Dona
+Luisa.
+
+There had not been time for many. Yet--well--there had been the
+marriage, of course; and the relations who thought it so fine a thing
+that Rafael married an heiress and a saint were not so sure now. The
+tone of Angela and her slight shrug of contempt showed that she shared
+their doubts.
+
+Raquel Estevan de Arteaga was in the city. She had ridden the sixty
+miles on horseback, and all the old Spanish families were entertaining
+her in a style magnificent as their means would allow; but all who cared
+to have her must invite no heretic Americans, and it was understood to
+be a promise to Dona Luisa. She did not wish to meet the
+English-speaking people; not one had yet crossed her threshold; even Don
+Eduardo, sharing some business interests with her husband, was not
+welcomed, because he held fields of the old Mission, for which the
+Church was fighting in the courts of law.
+
+The bishop himself had set the pace for courtesy toward Raquel. He had
+called on her personally, had a long private interview (Angela's opinion
+of clerical private interviews with young wives was expressed by another
+shrug), and he made a point of calling on several families where she
+visited.
+
+Dona Maria was of course justly offended. Her estates had been greater
+than those of the Arteagas, and her family name was older in the land
+than Estevan, which after all was only Spanish for Stevens. On this
+subject it was easy to see Angela agreed perfectly with the wife of her
+cousin. Each had built her own plan for certain social supremacies in
+the little kingdom of San Juan, but neither had reckoned with the fact
+that the girl from a convent in Mexico would assume a rule there such as
+no one else had ever dared attempt, and emphasize it by barring out
+heretics, even when married into Catholic families.
+
+What Rafael thought of it no one yet knew. He hated the old Mission,
+above all places. The only time it was worth while was when the dances
+were held in the old dining-room; and when his mother died he thought of
+course no woman would ever wish to live there. A town residence was
+assured, and thus closer connection with the new, progressive people.
+But the bride of a day had decided differently: when a home befitting
+their station was built for her in San Juan, she would move to it; until
+then the Mission rooms would serve, and they must arrange it with the
+bishop.
+
+To tell her that the bishop no longer had jurisdiction over the property
+was of no use whatever. She had listened quietly to the legal details of
+the auction sale, when it had all been bought by Eduardo Downing and
+Miguel Arteaga.
+
+"That is right, to buy it when the place was sold for debt; any son of
+the Church should do that," she conceded; "but to hold it,--to treat it
+as a quarry from which to mine bricks and blocks of stone,--may the
+saints intercede for your brother in his grave, who did such wickedness!
+If your mother had known that a son of hers was fighting in the courts
+of law against the Church, it would have killed her the day the word
+reached her. If you people value money more than the blessing of God, I
+will give you money for it--to you and your English partner; but not
+another blast of powder must shatter the place of the altar."
+
+It was in vain they told her Dona Maria had a pious plan to blow down
+the stonework--the most magnificent monument of such Indian labor ever
+erected in that part of Mexico which is now United States,--and to build
+on its site an adobe chapel of her own design. Raquel Estevan de Arteaga
+listened quietly to all the plans, but shook her head.
+
+"It is sacrilege; it shall not be," she repeated. "Since gold is the god
+of the English people, we will give them gold."
+
+"But you forget, beloved," put in Rafael. "Dona Maria is Catholic--is
+Spanish--is--"
+
+"Rafael," said his bride, quietly, "will you listen a little? Then it
+will be no need to speak of those things again--we will both
+understand. The padre comes a stranger to San Juan as I do, but he comes
+from a strange land, and cares not anything for these different races.
+But I have all the names of those people from your mother, that I know
+whom to avoid in this life--and in the next."
+
+"My mother was one of the old Spanish people; they were slow. Times
+change."
+
+"Yes, times did change when men like Alvarado were pushed aside and a
+quadroon ruled the politics and the Mission property. Thus California
+paved the way for American rule. In politics and business men must meet
+unpleasant people often, but it is not ever necessary for the ladies of
+any family to do so; and, Rafael, here before your padre, two things I
+must say. The heretics I have promised never to meet except as God sends
+them in our path. As for the Spanish ladies you mention, if you do not
+know that there is not a woman of noble Spanish blood in the length of
+this valley, then you shut your eyes very tight when you might see. The
+daughters of Don Juan Alvara have one Spanish strain in them; the others
+are mixed people of Mexican, Indian, and negro, and few of them care to
+remember their grandmothers. When you bring into my house Spanish ladies
+of good breeding, I shall be glad to make them welcome, but I do not
+care for the substitutes. The Indios by the river are of more interest,
+for they need to be taught."
+
+This conversation had been repeated by Padre Andros to Dona Maria over a
+game of _malilla_ and a glass of the new American drink called
+whiskey,--a gift from the army officers, and enjoyed very much by the
+ladies of San Juan; it suggested a drink made of chilis, because of the
+appetizing burn it gave the throat.
+
+Padre Andros was frightened when he saw the effect of his recital. Dona
+Maria was not so stout as most of the women of the mixed races; but as
+he saw the dark color mount luridly to her face, and her eyes look
+almost bloodshot with sudden fury, he set down the glass of whiskey to
+cross himself, and dropped an ace in his perturbation.
+
+"For the love of God! senora," he exclaimed; and then it was Angela
+entered the room and found her cousin's wife ill with a fury she durst
+express only in prayers and maledictions against this girl brought to
+San Juan by Dona Luisa to ruin them all!
+
+Only fragments of the cause of her fury reached Angela, despite all her
+sudden sympathetic interest in the wife of her cousin, to whom she had
+heretofore been rather indifferent. But she pieced the fragments
+together, and as she told them to Bryton he could, with his own
+knowledge of the early racial mixtures in the land, get a very fair idea
+of the situation. The girl from Mexico had dared open the closet of a
+forgotten skeleton.
+
+"Of course she rules Rafael just now, to a certain extent," conceded
+Angela, carelessly. "He sees the Church and half the town at her feet
+here; she is a novelty, and he sees everyone turn to look at her. But at
+San Juan she will find no one at her feet, and her churchmen will be far
+enough away. The padre there detests her; she stopped him from selling
+bricks from the cloister pillars."
+
+"The padre and Dona Maria should make a strong team," observed Bryton.
+"The woman need be strong to win against them--is she?"
+
+"How do I know? I've never spoken to her. She has nasty eyes. That's all
+I can remember of her."
+
+"Nasty?"
+
+"Oh, it is the expression. I saw them once, and she made me nervous.
+Perhaps it was because she divined that I was one of the 'accursed
+heretics.' I understand that is the way the lower order speak of
+Protestants!"
+
+"But she cannot be quite of the lower order, can she? Her father was of
+the best Spanish and American blood ever joined on this coast, far
+above the Arteagas."
+
+"Oh! So you also look up pedigrees here; I wonder why."
+
+"It is a country where you hear of them without question," he returned,
+indifferently. "The people are always sparring among themselves and
+referring to their ancestors--if they dare. Dona Luisa was a pure-blood
+Spanish woman, but the Arteagas had a bad Indian and Mexican streak. She
+saw it develop in her own children, and it gave her a bad fright. She
+counted on this marriage bringing the last of them back to the old
+conservative manner of life."
+
+"Ah!" She shrugged her shoulders contemptuously; "but you forget that
+Raquel, the present Senora Arteaga, has also a Mexican streak."
+
+"No, I don't forget; but there are high class and low of every race.
+Noble Indians and high-class Mexicans have gone into history. The
+American makes a great mistake when he judges the high classes by the
+masses. In this land one has to dig out the facts of each individual
+line, if he wants to know the truth of a pedigree. But the lady from
+Mexico seems to have drawn her distinctions very closely, and realizing
+her own superiority, she dares dictate."
+
+"Even to her--husband?" There was just the slightest possible hesitation
+at the title.
+
+"Why not, if she is the superior?"
+
+"But--oh, can't you see how all these marriages are a barter-and-sale
+family affair,--money that is married, instead of people? If she was in
+love with him as a--a real woman would be, she never would know she was
+superior, never! Not that I believe she is," she added with a shrug; "to
+me she looks as wooden as the saints on her own altar."
+
+He arose and walked to the window, staring out over the heads of the
+people.
+
+"She may not be wooden to those she cares for," he said at last.
+
+"Perhaps not; but I'm certain of one thing: if she ever cared for any
+one, it is not the man she married. If she cared, she would forget that
+rigid fanatic sense of duty sometimes."
+
+"I came to talk of your affairs," he said, abruptly. "Teddy left some
+mining shares; they may pan out later on. I have talked with a lawyer
+about them; this is his address," and he handed her a slip of paper.
+"Whatever funds are procurable he will turn over to you quarterly. Is
+there anything else I can do for you at present?"
+
+"Yes," she returned; "you might be a bit human and sympathetic. You
+seem to forget," and her red lip quivered in self-pity, "how utterly
+alone I am among these Mexicans, and all their women jealous as fiends."
+
+He regarded her with a long, steady stare, and then smiled as he rose.
+
+"I don't blame them," he observed, quietly. "You have given more
+attention to several of their men than you ever gave to poor Ted.
+Where's your baby?"
+
+"Heavens! Do you suppose I could drag her on this trip, and a Mexican or
+Indian nurse?" she demanded, impatiently. "That's so like a man! They
+think a woman with a child should be merely a domestic animal, like
+those dunces of Spanish women. I feel as if I were in jail, hedged
+around with all their conventions. I don't dare walk on the street
+alone, or with a man; I don't dare ride in a carriage with a man, and
+it's no pleasure to go with those empty-headed women. Dona Maria is as
+bad as the rest since I'm in mourning; it is a sort of prison,
+forbidding the wearer a free breath!"
+
+"Take it off," he suggested, so quietly that he quite deceived her, and
+she uttered a little cry of shocked appeal.
+
+"Keith! And poor Teddy--"
+
+"Angela!" and his hand fell heavy on her shoulder, "listen to me just
+once. When Ted was alive I could bear to hear you mention his name, but
+now that he is dead I--can't. He belongs to me now, and I forbid it."
+
+"Keith!" She gasped again, but this time in sheer fright. "And the
+money--the shares you--"
+
+He laughed mirthlessly, and took his hand from her shoulder. His moment
+of feeling gave place to amused appreciation of the real woman poor Ted
+had never known.
+
+"Who says women are inconsistent?" he queried. "You are a living
+illustration of the contrary. I have never seen you vary a
+hair's-breadth from my first instinctive feeling concerning you, you
+pretty baby kitten! You needn't look so frightened; you will get
+whatever money is in reach. Now, don't go to whimpering! Get on your
+bonnet, if Dona Maria may think it allowable for me to take you both for
+a carriage drive. I promised Ted to do things for you, and I must make a
+beginning."
+
+"Is that the only reason?" she began, with righteous indignation.
+
+"That is the only reason, my lady," he returned. "Are you coming?"
+
+A little later they were rolling along Spring Street, past the plaza,
+and many heads turned to look at the golden-haired girlish little figure
+in mourning, drooping beside Dona Maria, whose rigid, unsmiling, dark
+features were the best possible foil. Keith Bryton, sitting opposite,
+noticed the admiration she aroused. The caballeros who had swept
+sombreros to the ground at the passage of the carriage in which Raquel
+and the bishop were riding did so as a matter of reverence to a devotee;
+but the rule of the woman whom Keith had called a baby kitten would
+always be one of childish appeal, personal to a degree.
+
+Looking at her cynically, he tried to fancy her twenty years ahead,--the
+mother of a grown daughter,--but failed. The daughter would have to be
+guardian; the mother would always need one. She was watching him
+furtively to see the effect this open admiration might have upon him. He
+was the one man of them all who had ever dared treat her so carelessly.
+His attitude had piqued her to the point where she had a brief tigerish
+desire to rend his heart--his affections--if he had any! And Teddy was
+the weapon.
+
+Of course she had regretted it all--there were other men with so much
+more money. Still, as it had turned out, it was not so bad. She was
+installed as a member of his family, and that was better than to
+depend entirely on the cousinship to the Mexican Dona Maria. She was
+really a little afraid of the swarthy black-browed women of the country.
+To be sure, they sat around in fat content, with their bits of
+embroidery or drawn work, and seemed to see nothing else; but she had
+seen Dona Maria whip an Indian servant with her own hands one day, and
+the blind rage in the dark face had ever after made Angela a trifle more
+respectful. It was not nice to be entirely at the mercy of ignorant
+power. Don Eduardo was always ready with gold pieces for a pretty woman,
+but even the distant cousinhood might not be all the protection required
+for a lady of Angela's beauty, if any animosity should ever take root in
+Dona Maria's mind.
+
+So it was all well as things stood. Keith Bryton would, she knew, keep
+to both letter and spirit of any promise he had made poor Teddy, and she
+felt sure the fond boy had exacted much of the brother who he thought
+could accomplish all things.
+
+Thus she decided, as she watched and weighed his apparent amused
+indifference to the admiration she excited. Fair women were at a premium
+in the City of the Angels. He had just arrived from the dusky tribes of
+Mexico; before that he had ranged the desert land; but she realized with
+resentment that no beauty of hers would ever make an oasis for him.
+The men who did admire her he regarded as fools.
+
+He saw her glance from him, and she set her white teeth together with a
+little click of absolute frustration. She had accepted his ungracious
+invitation in order to show him the admiration her mere appearance on
+the drive would excite, and it all weighed not an iota. Would he ever
+really care for any one? Had he ever cared?
+
+Then he moved his hand, and the sun gleamed on the ring he wore, the
+Mexican onyx with the Aztec eagle. It recalled the adventure over which
+she had laughed at the Mission. She had never believed Teddy when he
+declared that Keith's attraction for that queer Mexican nun was a
+serious fact. Teddy knew so little, so very little, of the real feelings
+of either men or women. He had gone to his death buoyed for any sort of
+adventure by the absolute conviction that his wife adored him. Poor
+Teddy! Never would any woman be able to fool Keith Bryton like
+that,--not even the woman he would care for, if she ever did appear.
+
+While she thought so, and watched him, his face grew suddenly rigid and
+colorless. The carriage of the bishop came down the street, the
+palomentos with their golden coats and silver manes and tails shining
+like satin in the sunlight. Rafael sat with his back to the horses,
+looking very much bored indeed, but beside the bishop sat the woman who
+had faced her on the hill of San Juan, and who had held her horse in the
+middle of the road.
+
+She was prepared for the sudden light of appreciation in Rafael's
+beautiful eyes, as he lifted his hat and let his glance linger and meet
+hers for one swift instant of comprehension, but she was not prepared
+for the sudden leaning forward of his dark-browed bride, and the quick
+look with which she took in the two women in the carriage, and then the
+colorless face of their escort.
+
+He looked at her levelly as he lifted his hat in acknowledgment of her
+husband's salutation. If his glance held ever so slight a suggestion of
+warning, it was unheeded by her. Her dark eyes glowed, her red lips
+parted and lost their color as she rested one slender jewelled hand on
+the carriage frame, and stared at him with incredulous eyes; one could
+see that she did not even breathe as the carriages whirled past each
+other; at least Angela noted it.
+
+By turning her head she saw Rafael put out his hand suddenly to his
+wife, who had sunk back on the cushions beside the bishop. His manner
+suggested that he thought her ill. Keith could see the same without
+turning his head. But even after he observed the lace-draped shoulders
+straighten themselves, and the head held again proudly erect under the
+mantilla, he continued to gaze after them, unconscious that the blue
+eyes opposite him were alive with curiosity.
+
+"One would think you were a long-lost brother, from the way that woman
+stared," she remarked. "One would think she would show more restraint
+when riding in state beside the bishop, and with her husband opposite."
+
+Keith recovered himself and turned his attention to her.
+
+"Was that Rafael Arteaga's wife?" he asked, carelessly. "I supposed it
+was, but have not had the honor of being presented."
+
+"Well, they told me she would not notice heretics, but one heretic was
+the only person she noticed in this carriage. How she looked at you! I
+told you she had nasty staring eyes, like augers boring through one. Did
+you see, Dona Maria? Did you not fear she would disgrace us all by
+leaping into the carriage?"
+
+Dona Maria's black, bead-like eyes were regarding the young man
+curiously.
+
+"It may be a custom of Mexico for ladies to show attention to strange
+men in that way," she observed, guardedly. "It may be so. I had never
+heard of it. The new lady of the Mission is teaching San Juan many new
+things, but I do not think she will teach it that sort of manners. They
+do not compare well with the American ladies' manners--no?"
+
+"I fancy it was only as your escort she was gracious enough to turn and
+look at me; she might have fancied I was known to her. She looks very
+young."
+
+"You would forget she was young if you heard her talk to the padre,"
+returned Dona Maria, significantly. "It was enough to bring a
+malediction on all our heads to listen to it!"
+
+"The bishop has forgiven her; at least it looks so."
+
+"Oh, she is clever! He thinks she is a saint, this bishop. But the padre
+knows!"
+
+She did not add, "and I know," but her thin cold lips with their
+satisfied smile suggested as much, and Bryton, observing it, felt anew
+that the girl from Mexico had a strong team to fight in Dona Maria and
+the padre.
+
+[Music: _The Magpie's Reveille_ (Indian Gambling Song)]
+
+    "A'a'a'i-ne! A'a'a'i-ne!
+    Ta'a'-ni-aine! Ta'a'-ni-aine!
+    Bita alkaigi dike yiska ne.
+      Gayelka'! Gayelka'!"
+
+            TRANSLATION.
+
+    The magpie, the magpie, here underneath,
+    In the white of his wings
+    are the footsteps of the morning.
+      It dawns! It dawns!
+
+[Music]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+When the night was old, and others slept, Raquel Arteaga crept in
+silence to the bedside of the old Indian woman of the hill tribe who had
+been her nurse, who was still her maid, and who was the one link she
+kept near her of the old life.
+
+"Tia Polonia, awake!" she said, briefly; and as the woman did so,
+frightened and full of questions, her mistress held up her hand and
+rested herself on the side of the pallet, regarding the dark old face
+with doubt.
+
+"Thy husband, beloved,--he has--"
+
+"It is not my husband this time, Polonia. He is quite safe at the
+gaming-table, and will come in at sunrise with empty pockets. It is not
+my husband. It is--" She paused a long time, scrutinizing every feature
+of the old woman, who grew gray of visage under those smouldering eyes,
+and her hands shook.
+
+"Darling, little one, thou art so like thy mother; more than ever when
+angry, and it is night; and I--Holy God! It is like a ghost comes to my
+bed to--to--ah, Dona Espiritu--mia!--what is the anger in thine eyes?"
+
+"Can a dead woman be angry?" demanded her mistress drearily, the
+beautiful curved mouth quivering for an instant. "And it is a dead woman
+they have made of me--all of you! You lied to me, Polonia, when you
+brought word to me he had died there in Mexico!"
+
+The old woman covered her face with her hands, and sank back whimpering
+on the pallet.
+
+"I trusted you, and you lied to me, all of you!" the girl repeated in a
+hopeless tone of finality. "All these months he has been alive, and I
+have not known. You liars--liars--liars accursed!"
+
+The old woman uttered a smothered shriek, and buried her face in the
+blankets.
+
+"Not the curse, beloved, not the curse!" she begged, tremulously, "the
+curse of your people. It means--it means--Ai! not the curse, little one!
+Thou hast only meant to frighten me to tell you how it was, and I
+will--I will! Only, child of the spirits, Dona Espiritu, bring not the
+curse!"
+
+[Illustration: "YOU LIED TO ME--ALL OF YOU!"]
+
+She cowered and mumbled in a sort of palsied fear, but the girl sat
+there untouched by her misery, looking at her drearily. Perhaps she had
+some slight hope of denial, but Polonia's gray face put that out of her
+reach.
+
+"Sit up," she commanded, and the old woman hastily scrambled into a
+sitting posture, but with her hands over her eyes, her body still
+rocking with fear. "Why did you do it?"
+
+Never before had Tia Polonia heard those hard cold tones from her
+"querida"--her little one--her nursling of other days. This girl sitting
+there erect in the glimmering light of the candle was really Dona
+Espiritu of the tribe of the kings.
+
+"Excellencia," she muttered, "it is true; I did sin. But the padre gave
+me the word. He said your soul was lost; that the man had bewitched you
+as--as your little mother had been bewitched when she--when she left
+religion for your father, and in the end they both died--and so
+soon!--and--and I wanted you to live, Excellencia! and I wanted your
+soul to live; and--so it was I took the word of the padre to you, and
+told you he was dead--and wished that he was dead--but it was all no use
+at all! On his hand when the fever burned was your ring--it kept him
+alive and he could not die, and all day and all night he said, 'Dona
+Espiritu! Dona Espiritu!' The padre heard, and I heard. The American
+brother, he heard too, and asked the Indios who was Dona Espiritu, and
+where did she live, that he might send for her. But it was no use. The
+padre made them all afraid for your soul, so that I told you the lie.
+Now it is all said, and my life is going out of my body at the curse of
+your anger."
+
+In fact, the fear in the old creature had worked on her own nerves, so
+that her final words were very faint. She spoke as one half swooning,
+and put out her hand in pitiful plea for help.
+
+"Ah--the good padre," said the girl, bitterly. "Well, you see how it has
+all ended. The padre died, and has gone to God to answer for the lie;
+and the man he wished dead is alive--alive--alive, and oh--Mother of
+God! is happy with--with--"
+
+Her cold self-control melted in a flood of tears, and she flung herself
+face down on the pallet beside the frightened Indian woman, her form
+shaken with shuddering sobs of absolute despair.
+
+The dawn was near. All the night she had walked in her room alone,
+stunned and wordless over this thing she could not fight, or reason, or
+pray away; and now, having heard it all,--even of his calls for her when
+unconscious,--she had let fall for the first time the cold mask she had
+worn since the death of Dona Luisa, and since the significance of her
+vow had been revealed to her by the days and nights of Rafael's life.
+
+She wept in a wild abandonment of grief at the hopeless vista of years
+reaching on to the edge of the world where death is. It had all been
+dreary enough before; but now--
+
+When the birds began their welcome of the day she was still lying prone,
+but silent. The tempest of feeling had passed, and her Indian woman
+stroked her hair softly, and waited, and did not speak. At last she
+rose, and looked out on the yellowing light touching the purple of the
+mountains.
+
+"This is only a dream of the night, Polonia," she said, with a great
+sigh; "sleep again, and forget it all."
+
+But the old woman clung with trembling hands to the folds of the girl's
+gown, and rested her cheek on the silken slippers.
+
+"And the curse, darling? what of the curse of the lie?"
+
+"Curses come home to the people who utter them," said the girl,
+drearily. "On my head they all lie--the curse by which I was made blind
+for a little, little while of life, and which now allows me to see when
+it is too late. The curse of God has followed our people; no blessing of
+the Church can wipe it out."
+
+"But I--I--beloved?"
+
+"The sin that is for love is not so black a sin, and it was your love
+the padre trusted to--your fear that I was bewitched and lost. But it is
+all over; we are in a new land, and this is a new life."
+
+"And--he is happy--without thee?"
+
+"I have seen his wife; people call her beautiful. I saw him almost
+touching her, yet I did not scream."
+
+"Mother of God! his wife!"
+
+"I heard her name,--it was enough. His I did not need to ask; I
+remembered."
+
+"But--dear one--it is better that he is married. Pardon, beloved--I am
+at thy feet, and I feel thy heartache. But, after all, is it not to
+thank the saints that he is married?"
+
+"Perhaps. Otherwise, he might say to me some day, 'Come!' And the
+witchcraft of the ring might hold, and--"
+
+"Holy Mother! and then--"
+
+"And I--God knows what I might do, Polonia."
+
+And then the old Indian woman was left alone, mumbling prayers and
+crossing herself.
+
+Later she got up and went to the priest of Our Lady of the Angels and
+brought a bottle of holy water to sprinkle on the threshold of the
+street door, and all sides of Dona Raquel's room, that no curse of
+witchcraft or bad dream of the night might have power over the days.
+
+It was broad daylight when Rafael came home whistling gayly a dance of
+melody. He had been gifted with unusual good luck, and his pockets were
+full of gold pieces. He threw a buckskin sack of coin on his wife's bed
+before he noticed that she was not lying there.
+
+"Hola! Raquelita mia! There is plenty to pay for masses; your priests
+always want money for that sort of thing. Since you look after my soul,
+I pay for the prayers when I have good luck."
+
+Raquel arose from where she knelt at the little altar in the corner.
+
+"Oh, is that where you are? What need to pay the priests when you do
+enough praying for an army?"
+
+She smiled absently, but did not speak. He stood watching her as she
+brushed her mass of dark, slightly waving hair.
+
+"Let your woman do that," he said at last, with perfunctory solicitude.
+"It tires your arm, and I don't want you tired to-day. There is a
+picnic, and we should go."
+
+"Which of our friends make it?"
+
+"It is Dona Maria Downing, who, as our one neighbor down the country,
+wants to add to the entertainment Los Angeles gives you. It is to make
+peace with the bishop, I think; at least, so it looks. He is invited.
+You can help them to be friends. Is that not the duty of us both as good
+Catholics?"
+
+She halted in her task and looked at him quietly. He was plainly set on
+being very agreeable, for some reason; too seldom had he mentioned their
+faith but to scoff at the rigid rules of his mother and his wife.
+
+"You want it very much," she said; "but why? You do not care at all for
+Dona Maria's personal peace with the bishop. That can be arranged
+without a picnic to the hills. It only needs that they give back, of
+their own free will, that which belongs to the Church, and make a
+confession that it was wrongly held."
+
+"If you would only talk to her of this graciously, instead of demanding
+it," persisted Rafael, gently, "much could be effected. Dona Angela
+thinks for certain--"
+
+"Dona Angela?"
+
+"Oh, I mean her--the relative who is with her now--the Mrs. Bryton who
+drove with her yesterday. The bishop asked who she was--you remember?"
+
+"I remember," she said, quietly, though a little shudder touched her.
+"But I am tired of this town, Rafael. I meant to tell you so this
+morning. I want to ride home to-day. Dona Maria's merry-makings do not
+attract me. Our business here is over; let us go."
+
+"Holy God! but you are a wife for a man!" he cried in sudden fury. "I
+weigh you down with jewels and silks and laces, and you would bury them
+all with yourself in that old rat-hole of a Mission. I wish to God the
+padre and Dona Maria had blown down every brick of it before you saw the
+accursed place!"
+
+"Accursed? The Church of God? Rafael!"
+
+"Ay, accursed, since you will know!" he repeated. "Every old Indian of
+San Juan can tell you that."
+
+"Some Indian, perhaps, who has had to be whipped by the padres," she
+remarked, with quiet scorn.
+
+"You don't believe me?" he cried. "Well, you shall! Sit down--sit down
+and listen for once, and you will be glad to keep out of the
+curse-haunted place."
+
+She regarded him with a little tolerant smile, and drew a serape of blue
+around her, and curled herself on the foot of the bed and waited.
+
+"It is early for stories," she observed; "but since it is your
+pleasure--"
+
+"Not any pleasure has any of it been to me from first to last," he
+retorted, "nor any pleasure will it be to whoever holds it! You think
+you are strong, your saints will help you! But no saint ever put on an
+altar--not even that of the Virgin herself--can take off the curse from
+San Juan till the altar is bathed in human blood, as the tiles of the
+floor have been bathed--that is the curse of Sahirit."
+
+She stared at him with wide eyes and blanching face.
+
+"Until the altar is bathed in human blood, as the tiles of the floor
+have been," she whispered. "Rafael! That--that is of a religion older
+than the life of Christianity in Mexico. God of Gods! Does it follow me
+here?"
+
+"Follow _you_!" and he laughed contemptuously; "it is a story older than
+our grandfathers. Only the old Indians whisper it now each time ill luck
+comes to any of us--and I've had enough! When they picked up Miguel
+tramped into the earth by the cattle, only the white men would help--no
+Indian; they knew it was the curse coming true."
+
+"Tell me," she said, briefly. Her lips were white, and she shuddered
+with cold, and drew the serape close.
+
+"You'd rather hear some old Indian tell it," he answered; "they make
+one chill when they count on their fingers and toes the things the curse
+has brought. We had a curse of our own in the Arteaga family: my mother
+was always in prayer because of that; she never knew that Miguel had
+bought an interest in another."
+
+"Go on--tell me! How comes the rule of the Aztec altar to this Christian
+temple?"
+
+"Aztec? I did not say Aztec. I know nothing of their mummeries. But it
+can't be that--there have been no Aztecs since the time of Cortez and
+the priests."
+
+"I--I have heard there is one hill tribe still refusing the saints, and
+giving the sun worship," she said, slowly. "But go on; tell me!"
+
+"Sun-worship! yes, that's the thing!" he cried. "A man, who was a
+heretic of Mexico and a great builder of stone, killed a priest and a
+woman down there. Some say the woman was his wife. He was to have his
+head cut off for it, but word went down from here that such a man was
+needed by the priests of San Juan; they wished to build a stone church
+instead of adobe brick, as all the others were, if only a master mason
+could be sent to them. They had soldiers to guard him, even if the man
+chanced to be a convict, as many of the guards had been, and they got
+the viceroy to help; and in the end the heretic who had killed a priest
+was sent to San Juan. The old Indios say he looked as big as two men,
+and he worked as he pleased. When the padres interfered he sat down and
+looked at the piles of stone and did nothing, and nothing could move
+him. They could have shot and buried him, but that would not build their
+church, which was to be the finest in the Californias. So they had to
+let him alone, and he built it as pleased himself. Their ground plan
+only he accepted. It was like a cross, as you see it now, but on no
+other part of the church was any symbol of Christianity--only stars and
+other things which some say are flowers and some say are suns and moons,
+and on the corner-stone and key-stone of the high altar is carved a
+thing no Christian can read, not even the padres--and somewhere in those
+symbols is held the curse."
+
+[Illustration: "R[~U]ELAS ME FECIT. ME LLAMA SAN JUAN. 1796."]
+
+"Who says? Did he?"
+
+"He? No; he died laughing, and refused the blessing of the priest. One
+thing only he said when he read the words on the oldest bell, as he
+built a place in the tower for it. The name of the maker is on the bell;
+you can see it yet; it is Ruelas. 'So Ruelas made you--iron-tongue,' a
+soldier heard him say, 'and your name is San Juan. Well, Senor
+Ruelas, you only have your name in this work. The good padres will see
+that my name is forgotten, but instead of a name, I will leave myself,
+and so long as stone stands on stone I will call louder and farther than
+your iron tongue when rung your loudest! When the storms of centuries
+shall beat out every star and moon and sun in the stone of the temple,
+the man from Culiacan will be remembered here in Sahirit.'"
+
+"Sahirit?"
+
+"The Indian name for the valley was 'Quanis Savit Sahirit'; you can see
+it on the church records."
+
+"And it means?"
+
+"No one knows, and no one cares; it may mean another curse, for all I
+know. The Indios either do not know or will not tell."
+
+"But--" and she drew in a long breath of relief--"what the man from
+Culiacan said to the bell--the thing the soldier heard--was not a curse;
+it was only that the beautiful work should be remembered."
+
+"Oh, yes, that! But there was a prophecy years before, when the
+corner-stone was set in its place and blessed by the padres, and the
+Indios were all there on their knees saying a rosary, and the viceroy
+and all the dignitaries. An Indian hunter was also there from the south,
+and he was a stranger. He looked at the thing carved on the
+corner-stone, and he looked at the builder, who leaned against the wall
+and laughed when the holy water touched it; and the stranger crossed
+himself, for his mother was a convert; but to the captain of the guard
+he said the thing I told you, and the captain of the guard was of my
+father's family. So it was repeated down to our time."
+
+"But the words--he said what of a prophecy?"
+
+"He said human blood, and not holy water, must baptize the stones and
+the altar of a temple with those signs. He was afraid the padre would
+put malediction on him if he told him that the blessing of a Christian
+saint was not so strong as the gods of the Indians, but he would not
+stand or kneel beside the lines where the church was to be, and he would
+not tell why he was afraid. He said he did not know what would happen
+there: it might be a tidal wave from the sea in sight, or it might be a
+pestilence, for the people were very wicked and very dirty, but it was
+marked with a sign for evil, and it would be well if the walls never
+went higher."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"They tried to get him to tell the padre, so that the builder might be
+whipped, but the stranger Indian was afraid. He said he wanted to live
+to see his children again, and they lived south in the hill country;
+and he ran away when they tried to keep him, but he had warned some old
+Indios, and when the first earthquake cracked the walls, they all
+remembered."
+
+"And--?"
+
+"The mason laughed, but mended the cracked walls and went on at work,
+always singing, always working, even before sunrise. The old Indios who
+helped said it was at sunrise hour only that he worked on the keystones
+with the suns and star things, but they maybe lied. And after the
+dedication of the church he died as he lived, laughing and a heretic;
+and when the earthquake came and the tower of the bells fell, and the
+tiles of the floor were wet with the blood of the thirty-nine lives
+crushed out there, then the old Indios whispered and remembered many
+things; for the prophecy of the strange learned Indian of the south had
+come true."
+
+"And--the altar? Did--some one--"
+
+Her lips were stiff as with cold, and she could scarcely articulate.
+
+"Holy God! how white you are, Raquel!" he exclaimed. "I thought you were
+not a coward like the other women. Take this wine--take it! Por Dios,
+but you gave me a fright!"
+
+She swallowed the wine, and smiled absently at his excitement, and drew
+the serape closer. She did not speak again for a long time, just sat
+staring out toward the blue of the hills.
+
+"Are you in a trance?" he demanded. "Santa Maria, but you are a wife to
+come home to! If I interest you at all, I have to talk to you of things
+bad enough to scare the devil. Now you see why Dona Maria blows down the
+walls--they were accursed from the beginning. She thinks maybe she is
+doing a pious thing, who knows?"
+
+"Selling to others the stone that is accursed?"
+
+"Oh, that is a side issue. But I think truly, Raquelita, she is afraid
+of the bishop now, since you have come. I even think she wants to be
+friends; Dona Angela told me. She has promised that she will build a
+chapel there of adobe, if the bishop will give his benediction. Much of
+bad luck is coming to them, and she is growing afraid."
+
+"Yes; she has no sense of justice in her; she has only fear," returned
+Raquel. "Let her build chapels if she likes, but the blessing of God was
+put on those stone walls, as well as the curse of a heretic, and what
+she has done is sacrilege. I will do nothing to countenance it, or allow
+it to continue."
+
+"But, at least, you will do one thing," he said, emphatically. "You have
+heard enough of the curse to show you why it is no place for human
+beings to live. Only half the curse is carried out. The tiles have been
+baptized by human blood--but not the altar. You will stay here with live
+people, and let the old ruin wait alone for the curse to be lifted."
+
+"I will go back," she said, with sudden decision, dropping the serape
+from around her shoulders and beginning to braid her hair. "No, you need
+not swear like that, Rafael; God would shut His ears if He heard you.
+You have told me a fine story of fear, and some of it may be true, but
+our duty lies there. We may lift the curse; we can go back and try."
+
+Her husband sprang to his feet and flung his chair crashing into the low
+window opening on a veranda. The shattered glass fell in a glittering
+heap, but the noise of it did not drown his oaths.
+
+"It is no use at all to break the windows of our friends, Rafael,"
+observed his wife; "and neither the saints nor Our Lady the Virgin will
+allow such curses as yours to be heard. There are dangers here for--for
+both of us, perhaps,--dangers more to be afraid of than the walls of the
+good padres. I ride back to-day."
+
+"You think of it as all past, that curse?" he demanded, threateningly.
+"Well, you think so! Priests have gone mad there, though the Church
+keeps it quiet. Since the year Don Eduardo and Dona Maria bought it,
+what has happened? All their land is slipping away. To-day she is
+building an adobe on the old Mission ranch, to hold one hundred and
+sixty acres in case they lose all the rest of their thirty miles of
+ranches. Two of her sons have been killed in the streets--one by a
+woman. All that remains is slipping slowly through their fingers. It is
+like a handful of wheat: the closer they try to hold it, the less they
+have in their hands. All they try is of no use. When they first bought
+those old walls of the Mission at Pico's auction, they were masters of
+the land, but what of that?"
+
+"If it is a curse, they earned it by tearing down the temple consecrated
+to God, that is all!"
+
+"All? Miguel, my brother, blew down no walls; he did no harm to anything
+at all. He only bought an interest in the Mission lands, and claimed
+some living-rooms as his share, and he is struck like the others by the
+curse, and does not die in his bed either, but is trampled into the
+earth until no one can see him!"
+
+"But that may be the other curse working--the curse on the Arteagas. You
+people seem to have earned a great many! Is it not time some of the
+family should try to live for blessings?"
+
+He did not answer, only stared at her with angry eyes and lips twitching
+in wrath he could not express. She looked at him an instant, and
+stretched out her arms wearily. All the glorious world of love about
+them, yet never aught of harmony in their two lives linked together. She
+had never seen the life domestic of young people. She did not know what
+it might mean to other women, but there were days when she grew sick
+with the dread of future years, the endless prison of her vow, the--
+
+Suddenly she turned to him with a little gesture of appeal, almost
+tremulous. It was such weary work to battle constantly; and his mother--
+
+"Rafael," she said, gently, "the blessings are in the world
+somewhere--shall not we try to find them? The old lives of the
+maledictions are gone. Ours is the new life, and we have done no wrong
+to expiate. And it may be, if we live as--as your mother would have
+wanted us to live, that the saints--"
+
+"To the bottom of the sea with your saints!" he broke in, angrily. "Por
+Dios! you are always dragging the dead out of their graves to make the
+days like a funeral. I prefer most the picnic in the hills, and I go
+to-day."
+
+"So do I," she answered; "but it will be to the hills of the south by
+the sea. To-night the moon shines, and the ride will be better than a
+picnic of your political friends."
+
+"By--"
+
+"It is no sort of use for you to make empty oaths, Rafael. I leave this
+town to-day; with you if you are wise, without you if you are not. But I
+myself--I go!"
+
+He went out and slammed the door, and directly she heard him tell Juan
+Castillas that he had married one of the wooden saints of the Mission
+come to life.
+
+"I am glad it is not one with the broken glass eyes and the missing
+fingers," laughed Juan. "Dona Raquel is the most beautiful woman in the
+Californias to-day."
+
+She turned from the window and looked at herself in the mirror. The most
+beautiful woman in the Californias! Was that so? Could it be? Yet what
+was beauty, after all, if--
+
+Between herself and the glass another face seemed to arise,--the
+blue-eyed childish face for which she had been forgotten.
+
+"Holy Mother!" she moaned, and covered her own with her hands. "Of what
+use is beauty to a woman who is not beloved?"
+
+[Music: _El Tormento de Amor._]
+
+    Tormento de amor,
+    passion que devora,
+    Tu marchi taste
+    la fuente de mi vida.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+"I wasted the holy water on the doorway of the sala and the bedroom,"
+grumbled old Polonia, ensconced among the serapes on the carreta; "I
+should have kept it for the road to the sea. She rides away from him
+alone; but it is a witchcraft, all the same."
+
+Secretly the old woman gave sympathy to the handsome Rafael, who loved
+women of gaiety and fine clothes. The town was a very good place to
+stay, and the band played, and there was a good circus; and to choose
+instead a nasty old Mission where a cross priest scolded, and smoked,
+and drank himself stupid each dinner-time! What kind of a girl would go
+back there?
+
+Still, the old Indian knew that she was not of wood, like the statues in
+the old church, let the husband think as he might! Last night had proven
+she could be her mother's own child in a storm of passion. It was
+perhaps for the best that she did not love her husband so madly; for if
+he should ever prove untrue,--and men of course were so--what might not
+happen?
+
+She thought of the witchcraft of the mother, and crossed herself.
+
+The moon, the beautiful moon of the month of Mary! shone round and
+silvered in the blue above the mountains, as the blaze of the sun sank
+into the western sea. South lay the ranch of San Joaquin, and Raquel,
+for all her thirty-mile ride, was sorry. She would have no excuse to
+ride past; it was the one slight of the country to pass the house of an
+acquaintance, and this family was one deserving of honor. The soft dusk
+of warm lands had stretched over the level. The sweet clover along the
+road had a deeper note of perfume, and the patches of mustard bloom
+added its own spicy fragrance. Gladly she would have ridden on alone in
+the perfect night, but it would not do. She cared little for the herd of
+people, but she always tried to keep in mind what the Dona Luisa would
+have done in the little duties toward the opinion of the valley, and
+she had no idea of making a scandal, or of appearing to ride in secret
+from the town where her husband was still detained.
+
+So, when the dogs barked, she galloped forward to the ranch-house, and
+was met with excited welcome from the mistress and her two vivacious
+daughters and their cousin Ana Mendez. All the news of the town they
+asked for. They had heard wonderful things of the courtesy shown her by
+the new bishop, who was not given to showing much pronounced attention
+to even the devout of the faith. They had rejoiced each day to hear of
+the honors showered on her by the families of the city. It was as if a
+queen had arrived in their valley--and to leave it all and ride alone in
+the night!
+
+Ana cut their queries short and bade them see to old Polonia, that she
+might be fed and rested well, and the driver also, and then carried her
+guest to her own room, where she put her hands on Raquel's shoulders and
+looked into her eyes, and then without a word led her to the shrine in
+the corner, where they both knelt.
+
+When the prayer was over and she had seen her guest supplied with bread,
+and red wine, and olives, and sliced beef, she regarded her sadly a
+moment, noting that only the wine was swallowed, and that the girl
+looked pale in the candle-light.
+
+"Poor little dear," she said, softly, and patted her shoulder and spoke
+with the tenderness of intimacy. "I think now thou wert only a child
+that morning in the wedding-veil, when she gave thee that vow and died.
+Thou hast such strength in looks, my Raquelita, no one remembers how
+young in life thou art. But I see now how it is. Rafael is the son of my
+mother's cousin, and I know that blood! You but give the word, and my
+uncle shall ride to Los Angeles in the morning and say what is right to
+be said to Rafael. We know those boys--Miguel too," and she crossed
+herself. "My uncle always look himself to the door-key when that Miguel
+Arteaga come with a serenade. Oh, we know those boys in this valley
+better than their mother, who thought to guard Rafael from the heretics.
+Holy Mary! No heretic in the land lived worse than the life on Miguel
+Arteaga's ranches!"
+
+"That does not make any difference at all," said the girl, wearily. "I
+took the vow, '_So long as we both shall live_.' That seems a long time,
+my dear Ana, but I must have not one other thought in this life."
+
+"And he sends thee home?"
+
+"No; this is not his fault--do not think it," and she evaded the eyes of
+Ana. "He will follow, now that I have come; I am most certain of that;
+but he was in a rage, of course, and if I would live there in the town
+he would do anything to please me, almost. But I feel weak some days.
+I--I am not strong enough to fight the people there whom his mother was
+afraid of. In my own house they will not come. In my own valley I may
+keep my promise."
+
+"Poor little dear," moaned Ana again. It was a good hope, and the girl
+did not seem to have much else to live for; but Ana had known the
+Arteaga men for many years, and had her doubts.
+
+"It is time that Rafael were at home," she conceded. "Juan Flores is
+around the range again; some say El Capitan is with him, and they are on
+this side. Last night they had supper at Trabuco ranch; they did no harm
+there, but that does not mean that he will do no harm elsewhere. Avila
+let him have horses once when the marshal was close behind; since that
+time Avila's house is safe, and his herds as well."
+
+"And Capitan?"
+
+"Oh!" Ana's tone was carefully careless. "No one seems certain he is
+along. He does not so often come this way; for a year he has been
+somewhere in Sonora--only when the horses are picked for the government,
+or the Arteagas have a fine lot broken, does he cross to this country.
+There is where Rafael needs guarding more than from heretics."
+
+"From Capitan? He--he--would not kill--"
+
+"No," said Ana, slowly; "I never think he wants Rafael to die; he only
+wants him not to be happy; always he wants Rafael to remember he is not
+so far away but he can do him harm. Rafael hates the lonely Mission
+valley on account of that. In a town Capitan never can make him afraid
+so much."
+
+"Rafael is not a coward, I think," returned Raquel.
+
+"No, but he knows Capitan does not forget--there was a girl between them
+once. Rafael is the handsomer, so he got her. Oh, that is long ago. But
+Rafael was foolish and laughed too loud, and so he has to pay!"
+
+"But I think that is a mistake. I heard all about the trouble; his
+mother told me. Capitan fights the government only, and takes horses
+from the Arteagas because they go with the Americanos as friends; that
+is all. We heard it all at San Luis Rey as we drove north--you
+remember?"
+
+"Oh, yes, I am not forgetting that," and Ana laughed. "I listen all the
+time to what his mother thinks she knows about that; and it is true,
+too, but not all the truth. I could tell you--"
+
+She stopped suddenly, not certain it was wise to tell the girl the
+thing causing her amusement, for, after all, it was not really funny; it
+was serious enough in itself, it might frighten the girl very much. No
+other in her place would live one hour in the valley, or ride at night
+with only one man and an old Indian woman as guard.
+
+"If you know that I have been told lies, you had better tell me the
+truth," said Raquel. "It may cost me more to find it out alone than to
+hear it from a friend."
+
+"That is true," agreed Ana, after a moment of thought. She went to the
+door and looked in the outer room to be sure no curious ears were there.
+She could hear ecstatic cries from the girls, who were giving old
+Polonia good things to eat, and plying her with endless questions. She
+was recounting the brilliant worldly scenes her old eyes had lately
+witnessed, and pitying herself a little that she could not remain; for
+each day had been finer than the day before. And the horse-races, and
+the fine cavaliers, and Dona Raquel always in the finest carriage--Holy
+Mary! but it was a thing to see!
+
+Ana closed the door tightly and came back and sat down beside Raquel and
+took her hand.
+
+"My aunt and the girls are over their heads in delight out there," she
+remarked, dryly; "and I will tell you a thing no one has been told
+concerning that ride from San Luis Rey. Rafael lost some fine horses
+that night--do you remember?"
+
+Raquel did not; she might have heard--but Dona Luisa's death, all that
+sorrow, all the many and quick changes, had blotted out the fainter
+records of that day.
+
+"Well, when we stopped for coffee at the camp the cook told us; you may
+not have heard. However, they were taken after you went into the river.
+You have not forgotten that?"
+
+"How could I? Oh, yes, I remember! The priest told me that night. How
+strange it should have all been crowded out of my mind! He told me to
+give Rafael a message of warning. What was it? What was it?"
+
+She clasped her hands over her brows and tried to remember. Her first
+meeting with Rafael beside the dead body of his mother had driven out of
+her mind the message she was to have delivered. It was a warning, a
+warning of some sort; that much she was sure of, and--what was it about
+her father--her father's name?
+
+"I think," said Ana, speaking softly and watching her, "that he told you
+Felipe Estevan's daughter had saved Rafael Arteaga a treasure that
+night."
+
+"Anita! So he did; and you know the words, the very words he spoke to
+me!"
+
+"I know more, Raquel mia; I know what the treasure was."
+
+"And--?"
+
+"It is not nice to tell," and Ana hesitated. "But he saw you there that
+evening with his own eyes."
+
+"The priest?"
+
+"Yes, the priest. He saved you from being carried to the hills by the
+Juan Flores robbers, while Capitan took others of the men and secured
+the chests of wedding gifts from the old Mission. Oh, it was all planned
+for the one big revenge on Rafael Arteaga. But he saw you, and so--"
+
+"And that priest saved me from them, Anita?"
+
+"Yes, he saved you--the priest--and sent you back to your friends, and
+sent the men across the mesas--because you were Estevan's daughter. But
+he did not try to save Rafael's horses; that night many of the finest
+were headed eastward and never came back."
+
+"And if--if the padre had not been there at the right moment, I--"
+
+"It is not a nice story, at all," acknowledged Ana. "They are rough men.
+One of them would have married you, and you would never have cared to
+see your friends again, and Rafael never would have found you."
+
+"Mother of God! He hates Rafael like that, yet lets him live?"
+
+Ana laughed a little and shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Capitan is like that," she observed. "No one is like him. If Rafael's
+life were in danger this hour, Capitan would ride to save him. Oh, he
+does not mean that he shall die while young, and handsome, and rich, and
+beloved!"
+
+Her tone had a little hard ring for a moment; her eyes were sparkling
+with a certain admiration for the character she was describing. The
+story had brought the color back to Raquel's face, and she listened
+feverishly. What strange, strange things could be possible in the
+smiling valleys of San Juan! For the moment she forgot the dull ache in
+her heart which had driven her to ride alone back to sanctuary.
+
+"And you know all this, Anita; even the words of the padre! How?"
+
+She caught Ana's hands in hers impetuously, and made her look in her
+eyes.
+
+"He told me," said her friend, simply.
+
+"Then you know him? You see him sometimes?"
+
+"Sometimes."
+
+"And he is called--?"
+
+"Libertad."
+
+"Padre Libertad--the Liberated? I never have heard him spoken of. Where
+can I find him? Anita, I will go alone, but this feud shall be ended. He
+will help me. And I--I never knew what he saved me from that night. I
+scarcely thanked him. He was so strange, so abrupt, so masterful, I
+accepted all he did, and never knew! Tell me. Anita. I will go to him--I
+will--"
+
+"No one goes to him," said Ana. "He never stays in one place. If you see
+him, you see him--but--"
+
+"But he comes to San Juan?"
+
+"Oh, yes, he comes to San Juan once a year at least, so they will not
+forget him."
+
+Ana's lips curled in a little smile, quickly suppressed.
+
+"But, Anita, that he tells you all these things, so that you know the
+reasons of Capitan--"
+
+"Oh, Capitan is a sort of cousin of our family. Even when he is outcast,
+I do not want him to lose his soul; so I--my people do not know--but
+always I pay for a mass when I hear that the robbers have killed a man.
+I never think that Capitan would like to kill; still, it might happen.
+So I remember--as I remembered him when I was a little girl, and when I
+was married--and I pay for a mass, that is all."
+
+"I am glad to-night, very glad you tell me all this, Anita. Not glad
+that it is so, but, thanks to God, it is something to do--to do--to
+do!"
+
+"And what?" asked Ana, regarding her curiously. Heretofore the wife of
+Rafael had appeared to her self-restrained and cold, but to-night--
+
+Raquel caught her hand and pressed it, and laughed.
+
+"You are saving me to-night, Anita, and you do not know it," she said,
+with feverish intensity. "I was unhappy when I rode to your door; so
+tired of all the world that I could think of nothing sweeter than to
+ride on and on to the sea, and into it, and go to sleep there."
+
+"Raquel! That is a mortal sin!"
+
+"So it is, but I shall do penance, and when the padre comes again, O my
+dear Ana, you alone will not pay for the masses; we can do many things
+for good together, you and I. You must come to me to the Mission; you
+must! I have had many things to fight alone, Anita, and I never can tell
+you what they are. But this new thing we can fight together,
+darling--you for your relation and I for my husband and my promise; and,
+the saints helping us, we shall win, Anita, and it will all come right;
+and thanks to God I came to you this night!"
+
+Her eyes were alight with excitement, her cheeks flushed and burning.
+Once or twice she shivered slightly; and Ana, who had been reassured by
+the beautiful color so quickly replacing the pallor of the cheeks, grew
+all at once apprehensive, as she noticed that the hands of Raquel were
+very cold indeed, and that her laugh was nervous, and that her teeth
+chattered, and that the words she tried to utter grew indistinct.
+
+"Holy Mary! I have given her a fever," gasped Ana. "That my tongue had
+been blistered, before I babbled all that to her! Raquel, for the love
+of God don't shake like that, and don't laugh at me! Stop it! The laugh
+is the worst of all! Raquel--Raquelita--darling mine!"
+
+But Ana's frenzy of fear was so irresistibly funny, that Raquel
+continued to laugh, and the laughter grew louder after the other women
+were called in, and helped to undress her and wrap her in blankets to
+smother the chill. That night, candles never went out in the house, and
+Ana knelt before the altar with prayers to the saints that they might
+undo the folly of her tongue. But old Polonia knelt instead by the couch
+of Raquel and cursed the American, that he had not died there in Mexico.
+
+In the early dawn Polonia crept unseen to the aquia, and of soft clay
+made an image of him, and thrust pins through every vital portion of it,
+that there might be no chance left of life in the man it represented;
+then, having finished her work, she left it where the sun would dry it,
+and crept back to the room and curled up on a rug, and slept the sleep
+of the content.
+
+The good holy water she had paid money for had failed. But there are
+always two ways. If the saints refuse to help, there is always the devil
+left. If the padres did not get more effective holy water, whose fault
+was it that poor souls had to seek help elsewhere? She would do penance,
+of course, after the man died, and perhaps pay for a mass, and that
+would make it all right for everybody, and was so easy! She went to
+sleep wondering if he would die from a slow lingering disease, or how it
+would be. It was inconvenient that one was not allowed to select the
+very way the end must come. But the devil would know what she would like
+best,--that the foot of his horse might go down in a gopher-hole and
+pitch him on his head just so that the neck would break, quick, like the
+snapping of a finger. And no one would ever guess how it had been
+brought about!
+
+[Music: _El Sueno_]
+
+    En el sueno dichoso prove----
+    Delicias, rodear mi existencia.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Tea made of Castillian rose petals, and all the other little helps of
+the herb family, were brewed and steamed in the kitchen of the ranch for
+the saving of Raquel from the grasp of a strength-sapping fever.
+
+Conscience-stricken, Ana fought and argued against sending for Rafael.
+Every hour of the day and night she was willing to watch and work, if
+only Raquel's illness might pass without the cause of it being known;
+and she was certain that the cause was the shock of learning how
+narrowly she had escaped kidnapping at the hands of Rafael's enemy.
+
+Sometimes, indeed, Raquel did murmur in her sleep of "Padre Libertad"
+and the water surging over her head; and then again it was "the
+altar--the altar--and the blood on the tiles of the temple"; then "the
+ring--the ring--the ring." Sometimes she would moan that the beautiful
+one with the happiness must not receive the ring--never the ring of
+Aztec witchery! Then her words would trail along in inarticulate
+whispers, and sink into brief periods of slumber.
+
+Old Polonia, listening and watching, heard all. Of Padre Libertad and
+the dream of the water she cared not anything. Of the ring she
+understood, and was afraid lest a name be uttered. But when the girl
+moaned of the blood on the altar and on the floor of the temple, the old
+creature dropped in a cowering heap and screamed with fear, and begged
+with tears that the husband would come, and that a padre must come, for
+it was all of no use to do any more of anything; and that the mother of
+Dona Raquel had come from--from death, to tell of hidden things to her
+daughter, and it meant that death was in the home with them, and that
+Dona Raquel would never again sing with the birds, or gallop across the
+mesas!
+
+Ana, trembling with fright and this assurance, almost smothered old
+Polonia, that the others might not hear the wild prophecy, but without
+further delay she sent a letter to Rafael, and the man who bore it was
+to spare neither horses nor himself on the errand.
+
+The man rode well, and made only one halt to change a horse at a ranch.
+The sheriff of Los Angeles County, and many owners of ranches, were
+there. The sheriff looked at the rider and his reeking horse carefully.
+
+"From where do you come?" he asked, and the man jerked his thumb toward
+the south.
+
+"San Joaquin."
+
+"What's up there?"
+
+"Not anything, senor."
+
+It never entered his head that a woman sick at the San Joaquin ranch
+would have interest for a party of horsemen who looked as if out for a
+hunt. But the party exchanged glances. One of them, a farmer who knew
+him, stepped forward.
+
+"Where do you ride in such haste, if nothing is up?" he asked.
+
+"I take a letter to Don Rafael; his wife is sick."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"At San Joaquin ranch, senor. Adios!"
+
+He had his foot in the stirrup, when the sheriff laid his hand on his
+arm.
+
+"Wait a bit," he said, quietly. "I think it is said that a picnic is
+given to-day by Senora Downing for Dona Raquel Arteaga who is visiting
+in Los Angeles. How can she be at the same time at the San Joaquin
+ranch?"
+
+"I know not anything of the picnic, senor, but I know a woman rode her
+horse into the ranch at dark last night, and they say it is Dona Raquel
+Arteaga; and she has a fever, and screams and laughs all night in the
+room of Dona Ana. I know, for I am called after I am asleep, to get wood
+for a fire. No one sleeps, and outside the window I hear all what she
+screams, and it is enough to freeze the blood,--all of altars where
+blood is, and a ring that she cries for; and I am glad to get away and
+ride for Rafael Arteaga."
+
+"Rather thin, isn't it, all of that story?" remarked one of the
+ranchmen. "Bryton, when we asked you to join us didn't you stop to send
+word to the Downings that you couldn't attend their little celebration
+in the hills?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Bryton had turned from the others and was rolling a cigarro. He replied
+without looking up from his task.
+
+"And it was given in honor of Dona Raquel Arteaga and the bishop?"
+
+"I understood so."
+
+"Understood? Why, that was the reason Arteaga gave for refusing to come
+along," broke in one of the other men. "I heard him."
+
+"That's so; I did too, and I thought at the time a picnic for a woman
+and a priest was a mighty small excuse to give for evading--"
+
+"Careful!" And the sheriff shot a warning glance at the speaker. "A
+newly married man was excused, even in Bible times, from going to the
+wars, so Arteaga's reason is all right."
+
+"Just a moment," said Bryton. "I am as certain as it is possible to be
+of anything one does not see, that the boy tells the truth. She is
+there, and she is ill. Let him take the message."
+
+"What makes you think so?" and the sheriff eyed him carefully. Bryton's
+jaw set stolidly, though his face flushed.
+
+"I know it; that's all," he said, briefly, as he turned away.
+
+"But--"
+
+"The boy is speaking the truth; I know it!"
+
+The sheriff looked after him a moment, and then spoke to one of the
+others.
+
+"Just keep the boy here a bit until I can see clearer," he said, "if
+Bryton knows."
+
+He tramped after Bryton, who was going for his own horse tied in the
+shadow of a pepper tree.
+
+"Bryton, tell me _how_ you know!"
+
+"I can't do it. Take my word or ignore it, as you like."
+
+"But, hell, man! it is not your word; it is only your impression! Give
+me your word as to how you know it, and I'll take it quick. I suppose
+it's some inside family history you've dropped on; but the lady is at
+Los Angeles, and it is some other woman they are nursing at the ranch
+and deceiving the servants about. That is my theory. There are some
+women mixed up with that Flores outfit, and I happen to know that El
+Capitan, who is the brain of the gang, is related to the folks at that
+ranch. Now, is it reasonable to think that Arteaga's wife would ride at
+dark, alone, over this country where hold-ups are so common? Would he
+let her? Would not the Downings have known?"
+
+"They probably did know, and Rafael Arteaga certainly did," returned
+Bryton, impatiently. "Their picnic was more a matter of policy than a
+pleasure party. They wanted the bishop there, to put an end to that
+church fight. They wanted Dona Raquel Arteaga to serve as an attraction
+and help them. She has absolutely refused all along to assist with any
+compromise; and to avoid it this time she has evidently ridden quietly
+out of Los Angeles, and her husband, who wanted the picnic very much,
+has kept her absence a secret."
+
+"But if she is as sick as this boy says, how could she take a
+thirty-mile ride on horseback?"
+
+Bryton made a gesture of impatience.
+
+"She is there!" he insisted. "I--I feel that she is there. The sooner
+you let the boy ride for Arteaga and the doctor, the less likely she is
+to die."
+
+"Doctor! Did he say anything about a doctor?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You see, if the woman was very ill, the fellow would say it was a
+doctor he was riding for."
+
+"No; it would be a priest. These women do their own doctoring. If herb
+teas and prayers can't save a life, it is let die. Good God! She may be
+dying now while we talk. Let the boy go!"
+
+"Well, I'll be damned!"
+
+The sheriff was staring at Bryton, whose face was white and set. He was
+untying his horse, with quick decided movements, and cinching up the
+girth.
+
+"If you don't send the boy on that errand, I'll go myself," he said,
+curtly.
+
+"Well--I'll be--" The sheriff broke his sentence midway, to stare at
+Bryton in amazement. "What the devil is it to you?" he demanded.
+"Arteaga is no bosom friend of yours, is he?"
+
+"Not that I know of. If the boy doesn't go, I go! The girl may be dying,
+and the help she wants, she's going to get. Speak up!"
+
+He was in the saddle, and the sheriff, with one look at him, walked back
+to the group.
+
+"Boy, do you carry only a message to Don Rafael Arteaga?" he demanded,
+"or is it a written letter?"
+
+"A letter," said he, sullenly, "and Dona Ana raise the hell if you don't
+let me take it."
+
+"Ah! The Dona Ana! I thought so. Dona Ana is an interesting little lady.
+Let me see the letter."
+
+The man hesitated, but finally pulled the letter from his pocket. The
+sheriff took it and walked back to Bryton.
+
+"I'm humoring your queer notion all I know how," he observed; "for I
+want you south with us instead of taking the back trail. You read
+Spanish; the letter is not sealed. Read it."
+
+Bryton read it aloud, slowly. Ana had not minced her words.
+
+"RAFAEL ARTEAGA:--
+
+"For the love of God, come quick to Raquel. Among us, some way, I think
+we have killed her. That she is too good for you is no reason that you
+should let her ride alone with a heart-break. I think myself she does
+not want to live any more,--and no medicine cures that. Maybe you cannot
+cure it either, but it is your place to be here if she dies.
+
+          "Your cousin,
+
+                   "Ana Carmencita Mendez."
+
+"You see," said Bryton, handing it back. "I told you."
+
+"I see," conceded the sheriff. "It reads all right, but there is always
+a chance of--" He folded the paper thoughtfully, and stared hard at the
+ground. "This is all a ticklish business, Bryton, and if Flores's
+friends have got wind of this little _pasear_ of ours, they may send all
+sorts of scare messages where they will do most good. These greasers
+have tricks of their own, and most of them are cousins--see?"
+
+"I see; but that is not a message of that sort. Does the boy take it, or
+do I?"
+
+"The boy takes it, and I'll send a man with him to be sure he takes that
+message and no other; and you, if you are so keen for the road, can ride
+south and investigate before Cousin Ana can expect any reply to her
+message."
+
+"I--ride alone to San Joaquin ranch?"
+
+"That's it! You've got the best horse in the bunch. If the whole outfit
+rides in, they'll get scared, but one man alone on his way to San Juan,
+that looks all right. You may chance on things worth while, when we
+finally catch up."
+
+"But there are other men--men who know the family better."
+
+"Not one would be so apt to note the points we need. The family is
+square, but of Cousin Ana there have been some curious things said. She
+is the one of the lot who openly claims El Capitan as cousin. That's all
+we really know, but keep your eyes open."
+
+"Let me see the letter again."
+
+The sheriff handed it to him and looked at him curiously as he half
+turned away to read it, and his eyes sought out the one statement: "I
+think myself she does not want to live any more, and no medicine cures
+that. Maybe you cannot cure it either, but it is your place to be here
+if she dies."
+
+He pulled his hat low over his eyes and gathered up the reins.
+
+"All right," he said, briefly. "I will go. Adios!"
+
+A little later, and only a cloud of dust marked the way in the south
+that he had gone; and the mist in his eyes, hidden so well from the
+sheriff, was dashed away by his hand, but came back again and again.
+
+"It is your place to be here if she dies," he repeated, grimly,--"my
+Dona Espiritu--my beloved! The message was written to him, but fate sent
+it first to me, and I--I will be with you to-night. You will not be
+again alone with the heart-break."
+
+[Music: _Indian Torture Chant._]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+Toward evening Raquel grew more quiet, and Ana, seeing that the fever
+was abating, gave herself much blame for sending in such haste for
+Rafael; and what she had written to him only the good saints could tell,
+for she had been so frightened she had possibly told him unpleasant
+things!
+
+However, all things could be endured if only Raquel would open her eyes
+in reason once more, and lift the load of self-blame from the heart of
+Ana.
+
+Not only the young girls, but the mistress as well, kept a respectful
+distance from the room where Raquel lay, adjoining the hall. Her moans
+and strange words had filled them with dread, but no more so than had
+the grovelling fear of the old Indian woman. All day she had crouched at
+the door like a patient animal, waiting the end. Sometimes she muttered
+to herself in queer Indian words, sometimes she crept to the couch of
+Dona Raquel for a little while, and then back again to the door, always
+mumbling or praying, and always insisting that the mother of Raquel had
+come from the grave to tell things, and that the last of the kings was
+gone now for always!
+
+Any attempt at a question, any interpretation of her mutterings, would
+arouse her to a realization that she was among new people in a strange
+land, and her lips would shut in a straight line, to be kept shut so
+long as she was conscious of their presence.
+
+The Indian servants crept past the door, with fearful eyes fixed in
+dread. She was of another race and another tongue than their own
+forebears, straight and slender even in her old age; darkest
+reddish-bronze in color, while a San Juan grandmother was always fat,
+and nearly always black. Beside them, Polonia looked almost Caucasian.
+Yet she proudly denied any white blood; she was an Indian of a hill
+tribe of the south, the name of which she would not utter.
+
+All this, and her mutterings, and the wild words of her mistress, put
+terror into the heart of the San Joaquin household. The girls huddled
+together and whispered tales of witches and ghosts, and thought she
+looked like each in turn; and Dona Ana got great credit for courage in
+staying in the room with her in the night-time.
+
+But all their vague fears were changed to a definite terror when one of
+the Indian children found the clay image by the aquia, and in its yet
+moist members all the pins, for the stealing of which half the children
+around the ranch had that morning received a taste of the rope's end.
+
+Such a gray-faced, wailing lot as scampered up from the aquia! Girls
+screaming, old women wailing, and the mothers herding the children out
+of reach of the accursed thing!
+
+All was explained now, about the sudden awful sickness of the Dona
+Raquel! The Indian woman from the south was a very devil! Dona Raquel
+had perhaps had to whip her some time, and she had waited until she was
+with her in a strange house to do this thing: that was why she crouched
+at the door as if on guard; she was afraid some one might enter to pray,
+or with holy water, or any of the helps of the saints. And after the
+life had gone from Dona Raquel, who could tell that she might not kill
+others, even all of them on the ranch? Since she had in one hour's time
+changed her mistress from a well woman to a crazy woman who laughed, how
+long would it take to do the same for a dozen? Not a day! In a week she
+could kill them all!
+
+Panic seized the entire herd. They raced in terror for the ranch-house
+and overwhelmed the mistress with their fears. Her daughters clung
+together, white-faced at the frenzy facing them. The men were out on the
+ranch and ranges; Don Enrico was with them, and there was no one to
+control the dark mob of fanatic faces, any more than one could head a
+stampeding herd of cattle: that was what terror developed in them--the
+mad, unreasoning rush of animals to trample underfoot, or tear to
+pieces, the thing they feared.
+
+The mistress could only gasp, "Pray to God--pray to God!" but her voice
+was lost in the tumult of the wild chorus. It was too late for prayers;
+prayers were no good after a devil had got hold of any one! Then there
+was only one thing to do, and they had the knife for the meat and the
+axe for the wood! A devil could be burned out, or drowned out, and there
+was not water enough this side of the sea for the drowning; therefore--
+
+In vain their mistress screamed, and her daughters clung to the bare
+brown arms of their serving-women. They were thrown aside in the
+stampede of the savage herd. Let the lady say what should be done with
+white blood; but this was an Indian, and an Indian of a strange tribe
+and country!
+
+Even in their panic the bovine cowardly herd remembered that fact; there
+would be no Indian relatives of the witch to wreak vengeance on them;
+she was the devil's own, and she had no other kindred!
+
+They tore across the hall, sacred at other times to the family, and Ana,
+rising in wonder at the tumult, was met at the door by the mob. She
+retreated to the couch of Raquel, with outstretched arms to protect her
+guest, as she commanded that they be gone.
+
+Her words were scarcely heard. At the door, crouching, and with covered
+head, they found her they wanted, and dragged her unresisting through
+the hall and out into the open.
+
+The mistress, sick and half fainting, stumbled to her own room, and
+cowered at the altar, with one daughter clinging to her and sobbing,
+while the other stood at the portal of the patio and called for some of
+the boys, or a man, or horse for any one who could ride for help and
+stop the horror.
+
+"Mother of God! They make the fire!" she screamed.
+
+It was true. They were dragging the wood and making ready for a fire.
+Children followed their mothers, gathering leaves and straw. One
+black-skinned creature had brought a shovel of coals, and was lying
+prone on the ground beside it, blowing it with her breath until it
+glowed and sent demoniac lights into her heavy-lidded eyes. One old hag
+held the devil's witness, the clay image, before the accused, and after
+one brief look Polonia made no struggle. It was fate; she had known from
+the feverish words of Dona Raquel that some one must die as sacrifice.
+
+Then she began to croon a strange whining chant, and the hands of those
+holding her fell away in sudden terror of even the touch of her. Slowly
+she stumbled to her feet, and looked at the sun, and raising her old
+hands toward its lowering light, waved them to and fro in weird
+salutation, never checking the strange song or chant.
+
+Ana had a pistol, and stood in wavering uncertainty as to whether she
+should run out, or stay on guard beside Raquel; but to the final
+adjuration she responded as one suddenly aroused from a stupor of fear,
+and rushing to the little plaza she screamed loudly and then fired two
+shots in quick succession; then after a deliberate little pause she
+fired once more, and with pale cheeks turned toward the door, trembling,
+and waiting.
+
+"God be praised! See, help is coming," gasped Juanita, pointing
+northward. "Good! The dust--the man on the horse--and how he rides--how
+he rides!"
+
+Ana watched the rider, fascinated and weak with terror. Juanita was
+laughing and crying with joy, but her cousin stood pale and motionless,
+and said not a word as the horseman swept past the garden to the back of
+the house, where smoke was rolling up in a white cloud.
+
+He was none too soon. The fire was leaping in long tongues from the
+crackling sycamore boughs. The dark faces of the fanatics were alight
+with frenzied eagerness for their pious task of destroying a witch
+before they might be interfered with. They had heard the screams and
+shots, and knew what they meant, and the log they were tying the witch
+to was held upright by many willing hands.
+
+Her hands were already tied together; there was nothing left to do but
+fasten a rope around her at the waist, and toss both log and witch into
+the hottest corner.
+
+And then Juanita ran screaming toward the group, and back of her rode a
+man on a fiend of a horse, knocking the pious devotees right and left,
+and caught up the limp figure of old Polonia and flung it on the saddle
+in front of him.
+
+She opened her eyes and looked at him once as he raised her from the
+ground, and then closed them and looked no more. It was all of no
+use--neither the holy water to keep away the thought of him, nor the
+witchcraft to take the life from him. It was the accursed Americano, and
+the charm had only served to bring him more quickly!
+
+After the first staggering blow from the stranger's horse, some of the
+stronger spirits rallied, and lunged forward to drag the woman from her
+rescuer, while others lashed his horse that it might become
+uncontrollable. Two able-bodied wenches held on like grim death, despite
+the quirt which he brought down across their shoulders again and again,
+while he held the horse and Polonia with one arm.
+
+The animal, between the lashing of the mob and the roaring of the
+flames, was leaping madly, and the rider had all he could do to control
+its terror. Any moment a shot, or a club, or a stone thrown at his own
+head might give them two victims instead of one. That was Juanita's one
+wild fear. She screamed for Ana with the pistol, but Ana had sunk down,
+white and trembling on the doorstep, as she saw a black form suddenly
+appear in the midst of the howling mob of savages. An instant she saw
+him on the outer edge of the leaping, struggling circle, and the next
+he was by the head of the horse, and a strong arm struck right and left
+until there was space enough to show he was a bronzed, bearded man in a
+priest's habit.
+
+"Back to your kennels, dogs!" he cried, sharply. "Since when have ye
+dared strike at gentlemen? On your knees, every one of you! On your
+knees!"
+
+The younger girls and children dropped in the dust, but some of the
+older were less willing to give up.
+
+"She is a witch, father; she is killing a woman," cried one; "it is
+right a devil be put in the fire!"
+
+"Then how hot must the fire be made when your day comes!" he replied,
+and raised his hand and spoke slowly, solemnly, "Thrice heated will that
+fire be for the thrice-accursed! To your knees, in the name of God!"
+
+With sullen, shamed, disappointed faces, they obeyed. A white man who is
+a stranger they dared attack, if enough of them were together, but not a
+priest--a priest who could hit hard enough to knock a bull down.
+
+"That was a close shave, padre," observed the American, with a breath of
+relief. "They had this poor old wretch almost pulled in two--will you
+take her?"
+
+The priest made a step forward, and then halted and smiled, as in vague
+perplexity.
+
+"I have not the pleasure of understanding English," he said, gently.
+
+Ana arose and came forward; she was still very pale and still trembling;
+she looked at the priest and tried to speak, but the words were
+smothered in a half sob.
+
+"My daughter," he said, quietly, "take courage." Then he glanced at the
+pistol still in her hand. "It was you who fired? That was right. I was
+on the hill in the edge of the wood, and it is well you sent that
+warning. Your American friend said--?"
+
+"Oh, I speak a little Spanish too," remarked Bryton, in that tongue; "it
+is the woman with the tied hands I wanted you to take."
+
+The padre did so, untying the rope deftly, and steadying her wavering
+figure, while Bryton slipped from the saddle, and spoke to Juanita, who
+had the one welcoming face he had seen.
+
+"I know you," she said, eagerly. "Did I not see you at San Juan
+Capistrano, at Alvara's and at the Mission? I was sure of it. This is my
+cousin Dona Ana and Father--"
+
+"Libertad," the padre interrupted, briefly, and spoke directly to
+Bryton, "from Mexico."
+
+"You will think us all savages to allow this, father," and she pointed
+to the huddled Indians and the leaping flames; "but it was all so
+quick--like that--no one could think! My mother is in hiding from it,
+and--"
+
+"Father," said Ana, speaking for the first time, "a priest is needed in
+the house. We have a woman who may be dying. Will you come quickly?"
+
+She was eager to separate the priest from the others, and, her speech
+was nervous and eager.
+
+"Dying?" he repeated, "is that what they meant when they said the Indian
+had killed a woman?"
+
+"Yes, father," broke in the quavering tones of old Altagrazia, "here it
+is--the devil she made!" and she held up the clay image, from which the
+head had been broken in the _melee_. "One day ago the lady is well and
+rides like a caballero, and this day the sun goes down and she dies. The
+Indian from Mexico put on the curse!"
+
+Old Polonia understood, and screamed denials in her native tongue, and
+then turned to the padre and pointed to the American.
+
+"It is that man!" she cried, shrilly, "he is a devil! He does not
+die--not for anything! And while he lives he breaks the heart of my
+mistress. It is he; that is the man! Put on him the curse of the Church,
+father! Put on him the curse to send him to a desert where he never can
+find a road again!"
+
+The padre smiled grimly. "That is all they use their religion for after
+a century of Christianity," he observed. "They still stick to their
+devil-worship, and call on the Church only when they want maledictions
+or absolution. Woman, you talk like a fool. Did you do this?"
+
+He took the headless clay pin-cushion and held it before him. Polonia
+flashed one vindictive glance at him and then nodded her head sullenly.
+It was bad luck to lie to a padre.
+
+"It was to save her," she muttered, "but the Americano is a devil, and
+nothing kills him."
+
+She turned one glance of hate and fear upon her rescuer, and moved
+toward the house.
+
+"She means you?" asked the padre.
+
+"Oh, she is crazy, that old Indian," cried Juanita; "always she makes me
+afraid. The Senor Bryton she never perhaps has seen until this minute.
+That is her thanks that he pull her from the fire!"
+
+The padre turned for one level look at the pale face of Ana.
+
+"Your name is Bryton?" he then said, quietly. "Will you, Senor Bryton,
+see that these savages do not attempt another roasting, while I look to
+the woman who is dying?"
+
+Bryton turned to Juanita.
+
+"Is it so bad as that?" he asked. "The Dona Raquel--"
+
+"We think she is better this evening; still, it may be a fever coming;
+one never knows. Ah! there are my father and the men."
+
+Don Enrico Cordoba and some vaqueros rode madly through the corral and
+into the place of the huge bonfire and the still kneeling Indians. Now
+that their white heat of passion was over, they remembered only the
+beating they would get, and crouched doggedly where the padre had bidden
+them; the younger ones wept with fear when Juanita told her father the
+story.
+
+"Holy God!" he shouted in a rage, breaking in on her recital. "In my
+house to trample on my family and drag a woman to the fire! Tomas, count
+every head and remember every name. In three days every one shall be
+tied to a tree and whipped; if one runs away, she shall be caught and
+whipped twice,--once here on the ranch, and once on the Mission plaza of
+San Juan, on a Sunday after mass. You cattle, you dogs, you devils,
+begone from my sight!"
+
+He struck right and left with the green-hide reata, spurring his horse
+after those who stumbled along too slowly to suit him, striking old and
+young alike as they ran wailing with terror at the promises he had made
+them, and which they knew would be kept. The Mexican master was quite as
+prone as the Indian servants to find acute methods of torture or
+punishment.
+
+When all were despatched he rode back, puffing and laughing, to his
+daughters and guest, with whom he shook hands heartily.
+
+"Holy saints! but we did ride when we saw the smoke; it looked like the
+house on fire. It winds a man, a ride like that at my age," and he shook
+his fat sides with laughter. "Come inside and have a glass of whiskey,
+Senor Bryton. We met at the alcalde's last year when the army officers
+were in San Juan? Yes, I thought so. I am glad you have come to my
+house, and--who knows--you maybe saved my wife and my daughters as well
+as the old woman. When these savages get the taste of blood, they are
+crazy wolves, never fighters in the open, brave only when there is a mob
+like that. Come in, come in! Juanita, go tell your mother we have a
+guest who has saved you all. What was it you said of a padre? where is
+he?"
+
+"With Dona Raquel, father."
+
+"She is worse?"
+
+"We do not know, but thanks to the Virgin, she no longer laughs or
+cries. Ana is there. If she live or die, we all feel the padre has come
+if the husband do not."
+
+"Humph! Oh, yes, yes, always the priests!" he grunted. "Women can't keep
+house without the padres. I think I build a chapel for my women; then
+they can pray all the time to be sure they save my soul," and he laughed
+skeptically; then he tossed aside his sombrero, and brought bottles and
+glasses to a little table of marble on the veranda. "Will you have
+whiskey, or the bottle of wine?"
+
+"I prefer your own wine of the ranch, Don Enrico," and Bryton poured out
+the white moselle, of which the Cordoba family was justly proud; "I
+think the padre was also off a journey, senor; perhaps a swallow of this
+fine wine--"
+
+"Oh, let the women alone to look after the wants of the padre," laughed
+his host. "They own my house when they are in it, though sometimes I
+never see them. 'How much money do you want?' I say when they come, and
+that ends my business with the padres! I buy and sell with them and get
+beaten at _monte_ or _malilla_, but I let women do the praying with
+them! Here comes my wife. Refugia, this is the preserver of your house,
+the Senor Bryton. Have some whiskey, dear; you are still pale."
+
+"Pale! Never shall I get over this day. Think of the shame of it! Dona
+Raquel Arteaga has been entertained like a queen by the bishop, and when
+she honors our home, her servant is dragged out to be burned! The word
+will go out that we are savages. Enrico, never so long as you live do
+you leave this house again without a man in it!"
+
+"Surely not. Drink the whiskey, dear, and be composed."
+
+Dona Refugia drank the fiery liquor, and appeared to enjoy it very much,
+but it had not a quieting influence. It rather helped her to remember
+and recount all the details of her own stages of fear during the
+stampede of the self-appointed executioners.
+
+"After the night we all had," she lamented, "to have it followed by such
+a day! God grant that Dona Raquel slept or was unconscious through it
+all. Had she seen those fiends, it might have killed her or brought back
+the fever. Juanita says a padre has come, which is the one lucky thing."
+
+"Senor Bryton came first, which was a more lucky thing," said her
+husband; "all the saints could not have saved the woman from the fire if
+he had not come when he did. Such a thing has not happened here in this
+valley since I was a boy. Have some more of the wine; it will give you
+an appetite for supper."
+
+At the mention of supper his wife remembered that all the help of the
+kitchen might have deserted the premises under the scourging of Don
+Enrico's reata, and calling the girls to help, she left the gentlemen to
+their glasses.
+
+At the hall she halted to ask after Raquel, and in the shadow saw her
+niece and the padre talking softly. Ana's head was bent as though
+weeping, and the hand of the padre was smoothing her hair, and his words
+were reassuring.
+
+"There, there! it is not so bad, after all," he was saying. "You did the
+best you knew; and now that I am here, there is nothing to do but--"
+
+"Oh, I know," broke in Ana; "you say all this so I will not blame
+myself. You would do the same if the worst, the very worst, happened."
+
+"It is not going to happen," he said, quietly; then, as he saw Dona
+Refugia in the hall, "Your friend is surely not so dangerously ill as
+you fear; by to-morrow--"
+
+Ana looked up quickly at his change of tone, and arose to her feet.
+
+"Here is my aunt," she said. "Aunt Refugia, this is a padre journeying
+south to Mexico. He--he came at the right moment to help Senor Bryton,
+and I have asked him to stay--and--"
+
+"Of course," said Dona Refugia, promptly. "Thanks to God you are here
+this night! Show him to the padre's room, Ana, while I see to supper. Is
+she sleeping?" she asked, nodding toward the couch.
+
+They did not know; she lay with closed eyes most of the time, and they
+received no replies to queries, but Ana felt that she only slept
+fitfully, and then her own muttered words were certain to arouse her to
+a sort of half wakefulness in which she was simply conscious of the
+presence of some one without caring in the least who it was. The
+entrance of the mob had not impressed her mind more clearly than the
+visionary pictures of the night before.
+
+Old Polonia had again crouched outside the door, in the hall, wordless
+as before, and, except for some slight disarrangement of her clothing,
+showing less sign than might have been expected of the horrid scene she
+had been a part of. She had gone in to look at her mistress, had
+swallowed some wine offered her by Juanita, and with a short guttural
+laugh had settled herself outside the door as a sentinel--or near enough
+to hear the slightest call from Raquel.
+
+The priest regarded her sharply and turned to Ana.
+
+"You are certain it was not Estevan's daughter she meant to harm?" he
+asked, quietly, but not so low but that the sharp ears of the Indian
+caught the name. She pulled a corner of the mantilla from across her
+eyes and looked at him.
+
+"Sure," said Ana, "why, she was her nurse, and the nurse of her mother
+before her. She would make a carpet of herself for Raquel's feet."
+
+"The nurse of her mother before her," said the priest, slowly. "Then she
+is of that strange hill tribe of the temple mountain, and she herself is
+not a common Indian. To have been nurse to that family of the priests,
+means that her own family was entitled to notice. Yet she has followed,
+in her old age, to a strange land. Yes, it must mean devotion. But why
+does she dislike the American?"
+
+"God knows! She could not have ever seen him before. I thought she
+lied."
+
+"The hate in her eyes was no lie," observed the padre. "His presence
+here was lucky, but it is not explained, any more than is my own. To me
+it looks--well, as I said, he is in with the officers."
+
+"And it is my fault he has seen you--my fault," murmured Ana. "If you
+would only go at once--"
+
+"I think not; it is a good chance to watch the gentleman. If I were sure
+that old woman meant her hate for him--"
+
+He stared at Polonia a moment, and then nodded his head.
+
+"I'll take the chance," he decided, and went alone to her and pulled the
+cover entirely from her face.
+
+"Friend of a daughter of many kings," he said, slowly.
+
+She stared at him, and stumbled to her feet in salutation.
+
+"It is true, my father, but the kings of the hills are dead; and now,"
+pointing toward Raquel, "there will be no more in the land."
+
+"Who knows?" said the strange padre. "There still lives a daughter;
+guard her better than you did her mother when I carried love messages
+from Estevan."
+
+"Ai! I know you now. You have become padre, and you guard her from the
+heretics--the heretics, father," and she pointed toward the veranda
+where Don Enrico and his guest could be heard in conversation. "That
+accursed Americano--"
+
+"Sh--h! quiet, you!" and he placed a hand on her arm authoritatively;
+"make no noise, say no words, but watch him all the time--every time
+when I am out of sight. Understand?"
+
+She glanced from the padre to Ana, who nodded her head, and at once the
+dark old face was illuminated; at last she was not alone in this strange
+land! Others were here who hated the Americano, and that made them her
+kindred. She caught the hand of the padre and pressed it to her
+forehead.
+
+"I watch always," she promised, fervently; and to herself she thought,
+"After all, we get him killed some way, if the padre, who was a soldier,
+helps."
+
+They left her in her chosen place, crouched in the hall just outside the
+door of Raquel, content at last that she was not alone in her hatred of
+the man whom she blamed for the weary hours of wretchedness lived
+through by her mistress.
+
+Ana showed the padre to the room set aside always for the use of such
+priests as travelled from San Gabriel to San Juan. They were not so many
+of late years, but in this house they were always honored guests, no
+matter what their order, or land, or language.
+
+"I am afraid--afraid!" said Ana, as she opened the door; "if some one
+should come who knows--"
+
+"No one will," he said, reassuringly, "and this may be a good chance to
+learn much. Go, help your aunt, and forget to fear."
+
+Ana sighed, but went as he bade, to the kitchen, where Dona Refugia was
+doing her best to make amends for the distraction of the cooks. They
+were like big, fat, frightened children, not one of them of any use that
+night.
+
+Still, there chanced to be enchilladas made the day before, and the
+tortillas took but a little while to bake, and the bonfire in the yard
+had settled to a bed of gleaming coals where the beef could be barbecued
+with no delay but the sending of some girls to the creek for spears of
+peeled willow. Ana glanced out and saw them squatted peacefully around
+the red heap, turning the poles on which the strips of beef were hung,
+as phlegmatic as though they had not howled for a human roasting there
+not an hour ago.
+
+Juanita had made the table look very nice, in honor of the strange
+American guest who had followed her call and saved the family from the
+disgrace of such a killing.
+
+He filled her girlish ideal of the heroic, and she was not like some
+women who thought that California girls should marry only their own
+race: a big American husband seemed the finest thing in the world to
+Juanita.
+
+So there were red geraniums on the table, and yellow poppies, and the
+best new plates brought from a steamer at San Pedro but a month before;
+they were a bright blue, and Juanita thought the color combination very
+fine indeed. She ran to put on a new dress, that the stranger might not
+think they all looked as if the house had been wrecked. Ana, for a
+wonder, was indifferent to her own personal appearance, and kept on an
+old black dress with not even a collar of lace to break its severity.
+
+Don Enrico showed Bryton to a room where he could wash and brush a bit,
+but so interested was he in his chance guest, that he remained at the
+door chatting affably, and recounting the word he had received that day
+that Flores and his men had made a big fight with some cattle people
+over in Sonora, and had either got a boat at San Onofre and gone out to
+sea, or else they were somewhere in the San Juan mountains, and of
+course had spies on the outlook for the marshal or the army men. Don
+Enrico himself thought it time for the army men to interfere--there were
+many army men in Los Angeles, and this was no longer a county affair.
+
+"But the devil of a trouble in this country is that too many Mexican
+men, and women too, will help to hide Flores's men because of Capitan,
+who has never yet taken a peso from a Mexican, except the Arteagas, and
+who never fails to strip an American if he starts on his trail. They
+like that, these Mexicans, whose men fought the Americanos; they are not
+strong enough to fight in the open, but they like to help this vagabond
+Capitan, who should have been priest instead of bandit, and who keeps up
+their fight for them under cover."
+
+He had entered the dining-room while talking, and so interested was he
+in his pet complaint against the troublesome outlaws, that he did not
+notice the tall black figure by the side of his wife.
+
+"Uncle, this is Padre Libertad," said Ana, almost timidly. Don Enrico
+did not like priests in general; he made the mistake of classing them
+all with the Catalonian padre of San Juan, whom he disliked so much that
+he would not eat at the same table. His women folks never knew how he
+would receive a man of the Church until he was proven to his taste.
+
+However, the good American whiskey had put him in a cordial mood, and he
+nodded amiably as he took his seat.
+
+"A good day to you, padre," he said. "You tramped a long way in the dust
+to find trouble, did you? Well, the women are thanking the saints you
+came at the right time, you and Senor Bryton. So it is all very well,
+and God send that the fight gave you an appetite."
+
+And evidently something did, for the priest ate like a vaquero off the
+ranges. Don Enrico felt a growing respect for the man who could eat more
+barbecued meat than himself, and drink as much red wine. In fact, all
+did ample justice to the beef of the bonfire built for old Polonia,--all
+except Ana,--who still looked pale and uneasy, and Bryton, who made a
+pretence of eating, but who refused a second glass of wine, a thing the
+padre noticed with a smile, and their host commented on vigorously.
+
+"You can't drink--you Americans," he insisted; "and look at your
+plate,--not half empty! It takes students and brain-workers like the
+padre and me to spoil a side of beef! You are Spanish and of Mexico,
+padre?"
+
+"No, not even my grandfather came from Spain; so I cannot claim to be
+Spanish," said the padre. "I claim only to be Mexican."
+
+"And good enough too! Across the line, do these bandits of ours make
+much trouble these days?"
+
+"No one has complained to me of them. You say they take most from the
+Americano, but in our country there are no Americano ranches yet; we do
+not expect to find them there for many years."
+
+"Well, Capitan does go down there sometimes," insisted Don Enrico; "I've
+heard of it. His family meant him for the Church, but the young devil
+ran away and joined the army with his elder brother. The Americans shot
+Roberto; this one was only a boy then, light-weight to ride, and he
+carried despatches, and never went back to the Church. Oh, he is
+Californian, all right,--is cousin to half the country. He is--what
+relation should he be to us, Refugia?"
+
+"He is second cousin to me," said Ana.
+
+"So if you hear of him being in trouble for his soul, say a prayer for
+him, padre, on account of his loyal cousin," said Juanita, and laughed
+teasingly; but Ana lifted troubled, dark eyes to the padre's face.
+
+"Do so, father," she said, simply; "for the sake of his soul, remember
+me!"
+
+"These women!" laughed her uncle; "they are always troubling us about
+our souls, padre. Don't let them spoil your supper with a list of
+prayers!"
+
+"And what would become of some of your souls if we women did not say the
+prayers?" retorted his wife. "God knows, Capitan needs them."
+
+"We all need them," said the priest, quietly.
+
+"Still, I always have understood that he is the whitest of the bunch,"
+observed Bryton.
+
+"There are, then, different shades of blackness?" asked the padre. "I
+believe the law holds all equally guilty."
+
+"El Capitan's motives, at least, have been different, and it has come to
+be understood that when extremely brutal things have occurred on their
+raids, Capitan is never of the party."
+
+"Is it so? I did not know you Americanos gave Mexicans credit for such
+negative virtues?"
+
+Bryton looked up quickly. There was a mocking light in the eyes of the
+padre, and he was smiling across the table. The smile puzzled Bryton as
+much as the quick alarm in the eyes of Ana. Was she afraid of
+controversy over the still warm question of Mexican and United States
+rights?
+
+"I think that, individually, we give each other credit," he replied,
+"especially to the fighters. It is only the political schemers who make
+the troubles between the two factions. As for Capitan, he has too much
+daring not to force admiration even from the people he dislikes."
+
+Ana flashed a grateful glance at him, and a slight flush crept to the
+forehead of the padre; he gulped down the contents of his glass, and
+pushed back his chair.
+
+"Do you fear any trouble with those Indians to-night?" he asked,
+abruptly. "Had I better speak with them?"
+
+"It is better, perhaps, that we say a rosary, and bring them together
+that way," observed Dona Refugia; "it is the best way. I will have Pedro
+ring the bell--"
+
+Ana slipped out of the dining-room beside the padre.
+
+"You will?" she asked.
+
+"Surely; a rosary is easy. Why do you look so frightened? Your Americano
+will not eat me."
+
+"But you don't like him?"
+
+"What does that matter? At least, he says no harm of a man behind his
+back, and it is true what he says of the politicians. Oh, if he keeps up
+the compliments, who knows but that we may be good friends yet--after he
+has paid for the horses he took north? Chut!--that is only jest! Smile a
+little and help to corral the Indians."
+
+Bryton, with Juanita beside him, had sauntered again to the veranda.
+Passing the door of the hall, he noticed Polonia still crouched there,
+and Juanita shuddered and drew away.
+
+"I am always frightened at her," she confessed; "not alone would I go in
+a room where she is at dark for all the gold they say there is in
+Trabuco Mountain. It is not so strange to me that the poor creatures
+were afraid and thought her a witch. If you had heard the Dona Raquel
+all last night, you also would have thought only witchcraft could make
+her so suddenly fall sick with a heart-ache for a ring that would save
+her, and a temple where a sacrifice was. Truly, it was pitiful--her
+cries. I pulled the pillow over my ears. Only Ana was brave enough to
+stay close to her,--Ana and the old mummy."
+
+"And Dona Ana--she thought what of it all--the madness--the--"
+
+"Oh, Ana has no love for Rafael; she blames him in some way; and it may
+be that he does make trouble for his wife--he would not be an Arteaga
+else. But she never mentioned his name in all her cries, never once. She
+called always--always for the ring, and laughed that some one who wore
+the ring was again alive. Oh, it was all of queer crazy things like
+that--ghostly things--she made laments for. It was like purgatory to
+hear her, yet Ana was not afraid. She has courage, that girl!"
+
+"She is asleep now?" he asked, suddenly.
+
+"Who--Ana? why--"
+
+"No, no, I mean Dona--I mean the sick lady. She is better--or--how?"
+
+"She notices nothing, and says nothing, but she does not scream for some
+one who was dead and is now alive, as she did last night, when she
+laughed and wept; so I think that means the herb teas have checked the
+fever. Do not you?"
+
+Just then the bell rang in the patio for the rosary, and Juanita, with a
+word of apology, slipped away, saying diffidently, "Though you are
+welcome to come and pray with us,"--divided between her wish to have
+him, and her reluctance to make it obligatory on a heretical guest to
+attend their services.
+
+"I shall pray with you," he said, simply, "but I shall remain here. My
+presence might not have a soothing effect on your servants. I shall
+smoke a cigar here on the terrace until you return."
+
+Juanita blushed. She would rather have lingered there herself than
+joined the others. The dusk was coming on; a few last bars of red lay
+along the sky line to the west where the sea was, and at that hour there
+was no corner so delightfully appealing as the great veranda where the
+gold-of-Ophir roses made a lattice of green and yellow against the warm
+sky.
+
+Ana entered and lit a candle in the hall and another in the room of
+Raquel, and went out again with a quiet nod to the American guest pacing
+the veranda aimlessly, and smoking one of Don Enrico's prime cigarros.
+
+When she had disappeared, he sauntered as aimlessly through the hall to
+the patio where the dark people were gathered with bent heads, murmuring
+responses sullenly, scarcely daring to lift their eyes to the group on
+the veranda.
+
+A few candles had been lit along the wall where the shadows were
+deepening, and in their soft light Bryton could see Don Enrico and all
+the men of the ranch--vaqueros and ploughmen alike--kneeling back of the
+women, and the red light yet showing through the gray of the ashes where
+the flames had leaped so lately.
+
+[Music: _El Campo._]
+
+    Ya me voy de esta campo querida,
+    Donde tiernas caricias goce
+    Y me voy con el alma partida,
+    Campo ingrata por ti llovare!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+Only an instant he gave to it all, but in that instant he made certain
+that every man and woman on the place was at prayers, except the old
+Indian woman, who squatted with covered head in the hall, and himself.
+His movements were no longer aimless. He retreated swiftly to the
+veranda, and tossed the cigarro into the garden. One glance he gave the
+wooden-like figure of the old Indian. Only as a last resort would he
+attempt to pass that way, but if the windows were not barred--
+
+They were not. Ana had gone against her aunt's Mexican rule, which was
+that all fresh air should be excluded from a sick-room; and while that
+lady and all her servants exclaimed against the admission of air, they
+let the blame lie on the shoulders of Ana, and no one closed the window.
+It swung wide to the wind of the west, and on the couch within, Bryton
+could see Raquel's face.
+
+The lids were closed over the violet eyes, and the lips were apart,
+showing the white teeth. It was still so light that he could see the
+little flush on the cheeks against the white pillow, and on her right
+hand one little old ring of plain gold. On the left hand shone the red
+gold of her new wedding-ring.
+
+She looked so pathetically young and so utterly alone, as she lay there,
+that all the man in him arose in protest, and a mist of tears blinded
+him for a moment to the beauty of her face.
+
+"Poor little one," he whispered, "my poor little broken Dona
+Espiritu--my one lady of the spirit!"
+
+The sound of the words did not wake her, but the sense of them reached
+her some way; for she opened her eyes suddenly, and without any shadow
+of wonder they rested on his face.
+
+"I waited a long time," she said at last, "then I heard your voice, and
+I knew you were coming to me."
+
+He set his lips tightly, and nodded, but did not speak.
+
+"I waited a long time," she repeated, as a child appealing for
+understanding. "Did they tell you I thought you were dead?"
+
+[Illustration: "THEN I HEARD YOUR VOICE"]
+
+He nodded assent. No one had told him so, but the words explained much.
+
+"You said you would come back if you lived, and you never came, and they
+told me--the padre told me--that you were dead!"
+
+"So I am," he said, gently; "and they told me, my lady of the spirit,
+that you had taken the final vow of the convent--that the night, our one
+night, was a thing you were forgetting under a black veil. Child, child!
+they lied to us, and now--"
+
+"Forgetting?" she said, slowly. "How does one forget a night like that,
+when we walked out of the wilderness into the day together? You never
+came back; and I--I wanted to be in the world where you had been, so
+I--"
+
+"I know," he whispered, gently; "I know, my dona of the spirit."
+
+He had not meant to touch her,--only to look at her and speak to her
+once, and then ride wherever fate might take him.
+
+But she reached her hands to him, and with a smothered groan he knelt by
+her couch and his arms were around her.
+
+"Don't weep like that!" she whispered, and laid her hand on his head.
+"I have wept enough for two, since our carriages passed and I found you
+had not died. And you--you knew all the time."
+
+"I knew when I saw you kneel in your wedding-veil and take that
+oath--not until then. I heard his mother say that he was the man you
+loved; and, soul of mine! you had not said as much as that in words to
+me. So I--"
+
+"You heard that? Then you know the life I have to live." He nodded,
+without lifting his head from the pillow of her arm. There are some
+things hard to face with open eyes, but she felt the shudder that passed
+over him. Through the opened window came the rise and fall of many
+murmuring voices repeating the rosary. In the gold-of-Ophir rose-tree
+two birds fluttered and called to each other in the very whisper of bird
+notes. The soft lavender-grays of a Californian nightfall were sifting
+through the warm light of the afterglow, and away there in the west
+stretched bars of blood red, the last trace of the dying day. All the
+sequestration of the hour was about them, all the hush of the pause,
+before the final plunge of their day into the shadows, and the two souls
+were enveloped by the atmosphere of that ever-recurring tragedy of the
+hours, and of lives.
+
+How long he knelt there he did not know. She felt his lips on her
+wrist, and felt rather than heard the broken words he was
+whispering--the wild, mad words he had meant not to say, as he had meant
+not to touch her; then her eyes grew bright as the stars picking their
+way through the vault of blue, and the golden-haired woman of the
+carriage belonged to a feverish phantasy of the past hours. She might
+exist, that golden-haired creature of beauty, but the real life of the
+man who knelt there in the dusk belonged only to her, to her always,
+through the bond of one starlit Mexican night of witchery, and this last
+hour of the California day.
+
+Nothing made any difference now; though she lived in a hell of purgatory
+all her waking life, the bonds of their dream life would be closer than
+all else--always, always!
+
+She felt suddenly well and strong. Ah, there was so much in the world to
+live for! Though they never met, never spoke again, this hour of the
+tryst would be his through all her life--her hour of a rosary of the
+heart.
+
+A girl's voice in the patio came softly through the dark in an old
+Spanish hymn. It was Juanita, and the service of prayer was ending in
+the usual duo; one of the vaqueros with a fine barytone voice was
+singing the echoing stanzas of praise.
+
+It was the signal for dispersing, but the man at the couch did not know
+that. Neither did he know that the crouched form of the Indian was no
+longer in the hall. She was waiting in the dusk at the door, and she was
+clutching with a claw-like hand at the robe of the padre, and muttering,
+"He is there--it is true. He is there--and she is again bewitched. Now
+you will help me to kill the American?"
+
+The padre looked at her sharply, and then motioned to Ana, who was close
+behind.
+
+"Remain with the others. Make some excuse to keep them there--another
+hymn--anything. And be quick--quick!"
+
+Startled though she was, Ana obeyed, and from the door of the hall he
+heard again the voice of Juanita; this time it was in a favorite known
+to all, and the volume of sound told him that Don Enrico himself was
+joining in the refrain, and that no one would leave the patio until the
+finale was reached.
+
+No candle burned now in the hall. Polonia had blown it out, that no ray
+might enter the half-open door of the inner room. She would have gone
+with the padre, but the sudden vigorous grasp of his hand on her
+shoulder stopped her where she stood, and without a word being spoken,
+she knew better than to follow.
+
+Quickly as a cat of the hills, the padre crossed the hall and stood
+where he could see the open window and the kneeling man, and the hand of
+Raquel on his bent head.
+
+"Every night when the dusk comes it will be our time of the day," she
+was saying. "They told me you were dead, else--but you know. I think the
+mad hours have gone by for me; I can go on living if--if you do not
+forget."
+
+The listening priest could not hear what the man said, but she heard,
+and smiled, and sighed.
+
+"There is one thing," she said, hesitatingly: "the ring, you have worn
+it a year--and--"
+
+"I know," and he lifted his head. "We need no visible emblem, you and I.
+I put it back on your finger, my lady of the spirit,--Dona Espiritu;--a
+pledge of renunciation, and a reminder of the rosary of the dusk."
+
+She took from her right hand the little gold band and gave it to him,
+and in its place he slipped the onyx ring of the Aztec eagle and
+serpent.
+
+"I did not tell you what that ring means to my people," she said, as he
+kissed it in its new resting-place. "Maybe I never can tell you. I--I
+thought I could be stronger if I wore it on my own hand, for--for the
+reason that my heart went out of my bosom to follow it, and--and I rode
+my horse as fast and as far as I could from you, because I--was
+afraid."
+
+"Good God!" whispered the man. "You don't know what you are saying.
+Remember that I dare not touch your lips, and that I love you--love
+you--love you!"
+
+Then the nestling birds in the gold-of-Ophir rose were startled from
+their repose by the man who strode through the open window and walked
+blindly out into the garden.
+
+The padre watched the girl's face on the pillow for a moment, and heard
+her sobs, and retreated softly to the hall, where he met the others; and
+at Dona Ana, when they were alone a moment, he smiled with a certain
+elation.
+
+"Look distressed no longer, little one," he said, reassuringly. "You
+have helped me to a good day's work, very good. Listen! I like your new
+American friend very much, and when you go to San Juan I count on you to
+help to make him welcome there. He is going to do me a good turn with
+Rafael Arteaga, and I forgive him all the horses he helped to save for
+the army men. He does not know it, but he is going to be my good friend,
+that fine Americano. He is so fine and so strong, Ana, that he thinks he
+can put a woman he loves in a niche of the memory, as we put statues of
+the saints in the niches of the altar-places."
+
+"What do you say?" she queried, perplexed by his smile and words.
+
+"And that though the woman loves him so much that she kisses her own
+hands where his lips have been, and though he loves her so much that he
+is half mad at denial, yet he will leave her always there in the little
+niche of the altar,--just above his head, but in reach of his hands; and
+the hands will never try to lift her down, Anita. He will only look at
+her as he rides past, and leave her there to remember."
+
+"I think you have gone mad," said Ana, sharply. "What did the Indian
+witch tell you in the hall?"
+
+"Ask her!" he suggested. But when Ana did so, she met only scowls and
+gutturals. And even the sound sleep of Raquel, and the absolute freedom
+from delirium, brought nothing but suspicion to the heart of old
+Polonia. It was witchcraft, like all the rest, and the padre should have
+put the malediction on the Americano when he had so good a chance. Above
+all, he should not have let him ride away in safety.
+
+[Music: _Indian Reveille._]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+The padre himself rode away very early. Don Enrico lent him a horse to
+ride to San Juan, and wondered a little that the San Gabriel people had
+not done as much; but times were changing in the land. One could not
+expect the old customs to live when so many strangers were crowding into
+the country.
+
+The offered horse was accepted gratefully, and the padre breakfasted
+with the vaqueros, and left for the south before the family were astir.
+Bryton watched him go, but lingered for a sight of Ana, that he might
+hear how the night had passed inside the window of the golden rose.
+
+And Ana was the last to join the party at breakfast, but was a very
+happy creature, compared with the nervous, pale woman of the night
+before. All were astonished at the fact that Raquel announced that she
+had slept like a child and all the illness and fever were forgotten. She
+was not sure but that she could ride to San Juan, and above all things
+she was grateful to Ana, and wished both the girls to go with her and
+visit in the old Mission.
+
+The servants were again the quiet listless folk they had been before the
+finding of the witch charm. But as Bryton rode out of the patio after
+many farewells and blessings from Dona Refugia, and cordial invitations
+from Don Enrico to ride back that way, and consider the place as his own
+home, there were sullen scowls among the dark people.
+
+On the veranda Juanita stood alone and waved an adios to him. Back of
+her was the open window of the golden rose, and a slender girlish figure
+swayed toward him for an instant and then stood erect, and their eyes
+met and lingered, while he swept his sombrero to the stirrup.
+
+Juanita wondered, since he saluted so gallantly and rode with his face
+turned toward her veranda until the hedge intervened, why he did not
+smile; she was accustomed to gayer caballeros. She realized that she
+must have looked very pretty in her pink gown framed in the blossoming
+vines, and she turned away with a pout and a shrug. After all, Fernando
+was right: American men did not know how to make love.
+
+Raquel was rather pale and very quiet that morning, but insisted upon
+staying up; she even remembered to ask what the loud calling and running
+of many feet had meant the evening before; or had she dreamed it? She
+supposed it was a stampede of horses--was it? Was any one hurt? She had
+heard the voices of women.
+
+Ana told her it was only the breaking loose of part of a wild herd, but
+that no one was injured. Old Polonia heard, and blinked and scowled at
+Ana, but said nothing.
+
+It was noon when Rafael reached the ranch and caught sight of Raquel in
+a porch-chair under the vines. She paled slightly at sight of him, and
+turned the onyx ring so that the carving did not show, and by the time
+he had crossed the patio and walked to join them, her face was a serene
+mask. The only surprise she betrayed was at the dark look he cast on
+Ana.
+
+"Are you two in a politician's pay, that you bring me from Los Angeles
+in a fright of life and death, when I am needed every minute there for
+the business matters?" he demanded, and saw in a moment that his wife
+did not understand. Ana only laughed.
+
+"I did it," she acknowledged. "I sent the boy with some truths for you.
+Your wife was like to die the first night she came. It is by the grace
+of God she has been saved from a siege of fever. She does not know in
+the least how ill she was, but if you had heard her gabbling of
+blood-stained altars and strange wedding-rings, and floods sweeping over
+her until she screamed to be saved from them,--well, Don Rafael, you
+might well have forgotten to spare your horse. Three hours would have
+brought a lover here, but it takes thirty for the husband."
+
+"Why do you two quarrel always?" asked Raquel, indifferently. "I did not
+know she had sent for you. I was very tired, and the hot
+sun--something--oh yes, I was ill, and wakened myself screaming. But it
+is all gone. I can go home."
+
+Rafael tramped the veranda and sulked.
+
+"A fine laugh you have made for me in Los Angeles! They will think you
+were sick, that I follow my wife!" he said, frowning at Ana. "God of my
+soul! Why do you not get another husband to worry into the grave, and
+let your neighbors alone?"
+
+She only laughed again, and bent over her embroidery frame, where white
+butterflies were being woven on the drawn threads of linen.
+
+"Because no fine, manly, handsome caballero like yourself rides this
+way to ask me," she retorted. "All the most desirable men are always
+married."
+
+"The Senor Bryton was here for the night," remarked Juanita.
+
+"Oh, he was? Alone?" asked Rafael.
+
+Juanita nodded. "And a priest," she added. "They both rode south."
+
+"Bryton alone?" mused Rafael. "I thought perhaps--Did any strangers ride
+south last night,--a large party?"
+
+No one had heard of any one passing.
+
+"Dona Maria comes in a carriage by this morning," he remarked, "and Mrs.
+Bryton. I suppose they will want you to travel in their carriage, if you
+feel equal to the drive to San Juan."
+
+"Oh, she must not go to-day--not for anything!" decided Dona Refugia,
+who had come from the hall and overheard. "Dona Maria and her friend can
+stop here a few days, and then perhaps if your wife is strong enough--"
+
+"Certainly, that is the best, the very best," assented Rafael, with a
+smile of relief. Dona Refugia was making it necessary that Raquel should
+at least meet the friends of Dona Maria. All was turning out well, after
+all.
+
+Raquel made no remark, only looked out idly across the garden to the
+fields, yellow where the mustard bloom glowed. She knew she could not
+bear it just yet. Later, perhaps, she could grow strong enough to see
+Bryton's wife, and hear her voice cut across the days and the dusks
+here, where his whispers had awakened her to life--some day, perhaps;
+but she knew it could not be either to-day or to-morrow.
+
+Her husband watched her curiously. If she would only give some sign of
+what she felt, as another woman would do! How was a man to read a woman
+who stared out on life like a sphinx, seeing nothing and hearing
+nothing?
+
+In the same way, she had seemed a bit of wood over that old legend of
+the curse on San Juan: it had not changed in the least her determination
+to go back there; yet, since she had screamed of it in a fever, who was
+to know what feeling it had awakened back of those fathomless violet
+eyes?
+
+Rafael turned this theory over in his mind, and smoked several cigarros
+to help to solve the problem, but it was of no use. It had been a very
+fine marriage for him. Her visit to Los Angeles had further emphasized
+that fact; but he had the galling feeling of being only prince-consort
+to the queen, and it was not so pleasant to a man who had been shown
+favor of a different sort by many women who would have been glad to
+give him the king's place.
+
+To marry a girl who is like a wooden saint in a church may be a victory;
+it may be even romantic when she is half a nun; but it is not comforting
+to a husband who expects only a wife, a home.
+
+Then across his thoughts came the blue eyes and yellow hair of the woman
+he had said a reluctant good-bye to in Los Angeles. There was a woman
+who would have met all his friends half-way, would have promoted his
+interests, instead of closing doors and refusing to entertain any but
+the slow old Spanish, who were letting all the money slip out of their
+hands. In a few years their names would be forgotten in the new world of
+commerce building, through the Americanos in Los Angeles,--the
+Americanos whom his wife disdained, but whom the clever little woman of
+the blue eyes would have won to his interests in so many ways that her
+influence would have weighed down all the gold of the Estevan heiress,
+who did not know how to use it. It is only a trick of fate that the
+money always goes to the wrong people.
+
+So he thought, and smoked, and looked at Raquel Estevan de Arteaga, and
+wondered by what man[oe]uvre or stratagem he could break down her
+prejudices; he wondered, also, how a woman with such eyes and such lips
+could be so cold. He supposed it was inherited from the nun, her mother.
+
+Rafael had never heard the story of the love, and revenge, and widowhood
+of that nun. One or two of the older people of San Juan had heard of it
+at the time of Estevan's death, but none knew how true it was. It seemed
+too much a bit out of the dark ages of the Indian records to be true of
+the debonair Felipe, who had ridden and fought to the admiration of all
+Californian Mexico, who had found women wherever he rode, and had made
+love as a caballero's duty. It seemed scarcely credible that he, of all
+men, should have met death in that way on the far southern mountain; and
+the older men crossed themselves and tried to forget it, and the younger
+ones never heard of it.
+
+Rafael, smoking on the veranda and watching the serene face of his wife,
+and ascribing her coldness to the chill of convent walls, understood her
+no more than had Felipe Estevan understood the nun who had stepped down
+from her saint's niche for him; and old Polonia, sitting in the shadow,
+watched them both, and in her dull brain was also a query: Would he ever
+discover that she was not cold? And would he find out in the same way?
+Both God and the devil would be needed to help them all on that day,
+for California was not the hill of the temple, where the Indian still
+ruled!
+
+Rafael at last rode out to the range to see Don Enrico about several
+matters. He did not care to alarm the women concerning the rumors of the
+bandits, but now, since he had left Los Angeles behind, he would just as
+soon ride with the vigilantes as not, and Don Enrico could be trusted.
+It would be five long hours before the carriage with Dona Maria and her
+bewitching guest reached the ranch, and one must kill time some way.
+
+He killed more time than he had counted upon. As the sun began to lower,
+and he and Don Enrico turned their horses for the ranch-house, the dogs
+started a coyote, and with one accord the Don, his guest, and his
+vaqueros, took up the trail, following the howls with hue and cry over
+mesa and along creeks, and by the time the dark had fallen, they were
+far toward Trabuco. They rode back laughing and singing, and making
+little dashes at racing, under the early stars.
+
+But their laughter was changed when they rode into the corral. News had
+come from the south, and a bad thing had happened there. The sheriff
+from Los Angeles had been ambushed by the Flores men at Niguel Rancho,
+and nine men were lying dead there. Carts were on the way to take them
+to San Juan for Christian burial, and Bryton had sent a messenger to Los
+Angeles with the word; the man had only checked his horse at San Joaquin
+ranch to shout out the news; that was hours ago. The Indian who had
+searched the ranges for Don Enrico had come back and said he was not to
+be found. Dona Refugia had thought it possible that they had heard the
+word on the ranges and ridden direct to San Juan, and thanked God they
+had not done so.
+
+She went on to recount to Rafael her terror of the night before, and the
+awful scene from which she had by no means recovered, and now for this
+horror to follow so close, and the dread that they might be left alone
+on the ranch--well, she was having chills at the thought. Ana was the
+only one not afraid, but with Ana gone to San Juan Capistrano--
+
+Rafael grasped her arm so tightly that she gasped.
+
+"To San Juan?" he demanded. "Alone?" But he was certain of the answer
+before she spoke.
+
+"Holy Maria! What a grip you have! No. Did I not tell you? Well, we are
+crazy over it all; we forget. No; she went with your wife, and wild
+horses could not have held either one of them."
+
+"A malediction on the pair of them!" burst out Rafael. "God curse the
+horses they ride, that they break their necks on the way!"
+
+"Rafael, for Jesus' sake, not so loud!" and Dona Refugia tried to put
+her hand over his mouth, but he dashed it aside in fury.
+
+"Loud! Holy God! What do I care?" he demanded, wrathfully. "Do you know
+why they go like that? It is all a lie, that ambush story. That devil
+Ana Mendez has schemed to have some one ride past and call that out to
+you, so that they could pretend an excuse to ride anywhere away from
+here; and do you know why?"
+
+Dona Refugia was past speech, and could only shake her head dumbly.
+
+"Well, I will tell you. It is because Raquel Estevan did not mean to
+meet the friends you said you would be pleased to entertain on their
+arrival from Los Angeles. Dona Maria she will speak to, but Dona Angela
+is one of the heretics she vows her doors will not open to. That is the
+reason."
+
+"But, Rafael--"
+
+"Now listen to me," and he turned his fierce stride across the hall,
+"and God curse me if I do not keep my word!"
+
+"Rafael!" she gasped, frightened at the white fury of his face; but he
+held up his hand.
+
+"I swear she shall open her door to admit the women she slighted, first
+at Los Angeles and again in your home. She will find she has an Arteaga
+for a master. She shall open her door; she shall receive her; she shall
+make up for the insult to your home. By God, she shall make up, with
+interest!"
+
+Then he strode out of the door, leaving Dona Refugia in a cold terror
+lest the guest of whom he spoke had heard his words through the closed
+door of Ana's room. It had been given to Mrs. Bryton on the arrival of
+the party an hour before, and though the door was closed, who could tell
+that his words might not have been heard there?
+
+But the window on the veranda was open, and Dona Refugia breathed a sigh
+of relief when, a few minutes later, she saw Mrs. Bryton's fair face
+emerge from a bower of clematis in the garden. She had been admiring the
+beauty of the lilies out there, and looked like one herself,--so cool,
+so sweetly childish in her little appeals for admiration of the
+beautiful blooms she loved. Rafael met her there, and was enslaved anew
+by the blue eyes, as he bent over her tiny hand and kissed it furtively,
+and walked with her to show her Dona Refugia's carnation-beds, and under
+the starlight help her to see the beauties of the San Joaquin garden.
+
+But old Polonia, who had heard his words to Dona Refugia, and who
+watched the two walking in the starlight, muttered in her Indian jargon,
+"Have a care, Don Rafael; have a care!"
+
+Despite Rafael's doubt, it was all true about the ambush. It was quite
+true, and very awful. It had occurred in the morning, and Bryton had
+missed it only by his stay that night at the ranch. But he was also
+quite right when he said the two girls had left the ranch for other
+reasons. Raquel was quietly preparing to leave, when the word came
+warranting her in taking Ana. The two rode south with few words, each so
+wrapped in her own reasons for going that she gave no thought to the
+reasons of the other.
+
+They found the town panic-stricken. Don Juan Alvara was ill, and Padre
+Andros absent at San Luis Rey. Raquel rode into the plaza white and weak
+from the long ride, but sat erect to hear of the things done and the
+things needed for the dead.
+
+It was almost dark. While Ysadora the cook prepared supper, Ana
+questioned concerning a padre who had ridden a San Joaquin horse to San
+Juan that morning, but no one had seen him. Later, the animal was found
+grazing along Trabuco Creek. Evidently, some one had passed with a wagon
+or a herd going south, and had given the padre help on the way:
+beyond that, no one thought, except Ana, and what she thought she did
+not say.
+
+Raquel walked through the little hall of the Mission into what had once
+been the garden of the padres, the little enclosed bit at the back of
+the belfry built after the falling of the tower. It was the one little
+corner from which the world seemed shut out. Under the carved doorway
+she passed into the old domed vestry with its stone centre cut, or worn
+by the dripping water, into the semblance of a leering face; "the
+devil's face," it was called, and people looked from its queer smile to
+the twisted serpent-like carving over what had once been the arch to the
+church itself, and wondered what the strange carvings meant, and found
+no one to answer. They were only a sign left by an unknown Mexican
+sculptor a half-century ago.
+
+Raquel glanced at them and shuddered, and passed out into the great
+unroofed, beautiful place of fluted pillars and carven cornices.
+
+The pink reflection of the sunset yet lingered on the mesa and the
+highlands above the sea. The world of the strange new town to the north
+was left behind. Here among the ruins consecrated, she breathed the air
+of home-coming, and paced the old altar-place with noiseless step, and
+with closed eyes and hands clasped she murmured prayers not in the
+book, taught by the good nuns; and she drew great breaths of strength
+from the wine-like air, and knew that somewhere, riding the mesa, a man
+was remembering this hour of the rosary.
+
+Ana found her later on the altar steps, with head bowed over her knees.
+Gaining no reply to questions, Ana felt that she had been weeping. She
+undressed her and put her to bed in the little chamber of the barred
+window facing the sea, and gave her all the care a devoted friend could
+in the grim isolation of the old walls.
+
+And that was the home-coming of Raquel after her half-royal reception in
+the City of the Angels.
+
+[Illustration: "HERE AMONG THE RUINS CONSECRATED"]
+
+[Music: _El Capotin._]
+
+    Con el capotin, tin, tin, tin,
+    que es ta noche va llover.
+    Con el capotin, tin, tin, tin,
+    que sera al amanecer!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+When Andres Pico and his men rode into San Juan with the doubtful
+decoration of necklaces of human ears strung on rawhide strings, there
+was a breath of relief from the natives: it meant that the bandits had
+been "confessed," according to the General's naive explanation of the
+absence of prisoners they knew he had taken; the backbone of the bandit
+gang was broken.
+
+The vigilantes were the heroes of the hour. As the band of outlaws
+divided and fled in various directions, they were waited for at every
+pass and hewn down by the dozen. Only two--Fontez, who had shot the
+sheriff, and El Capitan, who had not been seen by any one at any time of
+the raid--were still missing. One of the prisoners, on being
+questioned, stated that Fontez had taken his share of the plunder and
+started for Lower California; and when questioned as to El Capitan,
+swore wrathfully, because El Capitan had disagreed with Flores over the
+raid, refused to be counted in, and in consequence they would all go to
+hell! If El Capitan had helped, things would have been different, very
+different. He had voted against starting out with fifty men to drive the
+gringos from Southern California; he had fought them before in the open,
+and knew them. He had told Flores he was a fool, and left them in
+Santiago Canyon, and ridden away, and after the slaughter of the sheriff
+and his men he had ridden out of the mustard on a horse of the San
+Joaquin brand, and told them to ride south and stop for nothing; and no
+one had seen him since. They had not taken his advice--and now it was
+all over! A little later, it certainly was over for that particular
+unfortunate, and his ears were added to a string decorating a swarthy
+ranchman, who was especially lionized because of his gruesome trophies.
+
+In the plaza of San Juan Mission, Ana listened to the hero of the
+necklace reciting all the glories of the campaign, and shuddered at the
+ghastly witness of its veracity. Raquel, standing beside her horse,
+listened also and felt a loathing of it all. Regular war, such as she
+had heard of, had never appeared so awful as this series of slaughters
+from ambush, where the victors of either side decked themselves like
+savages.
+
+"It is bad that we have no soldiers left who are hidalgos," she
+remarked. "The wild Indians carry scalps at their belts; I did not know
+people did so who had learned their religion from the padres."
+
+She mounted and rode toward the sea, the only woman who dared venture
+alone out of sight of the protecting walls of the Mission in those days.
+The man with the necklace looked after her, and then up at the line of
+grain-sacks still left as a barricade along the roofs of the corridor.
+Behind them, men with rifles had lain through the days and nights when
+the panic was at its worst, and women and children had huddled in dread
+of massacre in the inner court.
+
+"Does the senora forget all that," he asked, "or is there a caballero to
+guard her where she rides?"
+
+Ana turned on the hero, glad of an outlet for her pent-up anger.
+"You--you butcher!" she said between her little white teeth. "You know
+Rafael Arteaga is not here. What other man would ride with his wife?"
+
+"Who knows?" he laughed, easily. "The lady is not afraid, that is clear;
+and El Capitan is somewhere in the hills, or the willows."
+
+She said nothing, realizing that he was watching her closely, for all
+his apparent carelessness. When she continued silent, he laughed and
+swept his sombrero to the ground and sauntered away. She knew then that
+he had simply tried her, to see if by any chance she showed knowledge
+of, or fear for, the outlaw she had never disowned as cousin.
+
+Teresa, seated beside her, saw her changing color, and reached over,
+patting her hand.
+
+"Even when thou wert little the Capitan made a pet of thee," she said,
+kindly; "and now every friend he ever had is being watched. If--if--in
+any way you could warn him--"
+
+"Warn him? How can we, when no one knows? I would walk barefoot across
+San Juan Mountain if I knew where he was hidden. He may be dying, or
+dead."
+
+"That is so," decided Teresa, placidly; "and it would be better. They
+will always hunt him if he is alive."
+
+There was silence between them for a little while, and then she added,
+"Well, there will be no mourning for him in the Arteaga family. Rafael
+will be glad."
+
+"Oh, he!" muttered Ana, with impatience. "He is hanging on the skirts of
+Dona Maria these days, when he should be here with these other fine
+gentlemen." She pointed to the plaza where the vigilantes and their
+friends were gathered preparatory to starting on a new trail suggested
+by an Indian who had seen a white man without a horse somewhere in the
+hills.
+
+"On the skirts of Dona Maria," repeated Teresa, her little eyes
+twinkling with interest. "It is true, then--it is that English woman
+still?"
+
+"Still? How you talk! Is it so long since Los Angeles?"
+
+"Oh, it was long, long before that! I was--Santa Maria!--I had a fright
+for a while! I thought there would be no wedding. He was crazy as a boy
+over her. It started, oh, with only a pin-point of a chance; for the
+Americano Bryton was here, and her eyes were for him! And then--Basta!
+All at once things changed, and Dona Angela and Don Rafael were never
+apart; and if she had not been married, I think always Raquel Estevan
+would have had no husband here in San Juan Capistrano."
+
+"Raquel--does she know?"
+
+"Raquel Estevan is too proud to show if she knows, just as she is now!
+Never will she go along or follow him when he rides abroad, but if she
+knew his time was with that heretic--she hates the heretics!"
+
+"She is patient with him."
+
+"Oh, sure; she is a good wife. But if she cared more, would she do as
+she did when the girl Marta came to the Mission with her child? On my
+soul, I think Rafael was afraid when she gave to Marta the bed and the
+clothes, and counted out how many cattle she could have,--to say no word
+as to how she stood herself as godmother at the baptism! The padre
+laughs over that!"
+
+"And Rafael--?"
+
+"Rafael--God knows what he said to her! He tried to make her send some
+one else as godmother, and she would not. Ysadora heard her say 'It is
+for your soul's sake, and the souls of your children, Rafael,' and he
+turned white and walked away."
+
+"Poor Rafael," mocked Ana, "I do not think that he has much of a soul.
+It is as when a man sees he is beloved for his bravery, and all the time
+he is afraid of his own shadow, and hopes the one who loves him will not
+discover his weakness: that is how Rafael feels when his wife does
+penance, and prays for the soul he has not."
+
+"How you talk! We have all a soul; the padre says so."
+
+"Oh, the padre! The soul of our padre is also like a grain of mustard
+seed--so small, and no soil to grow in! Never could I confess to him. I
+wait until Padre Sanchez comes; no one but a Franciscan priest do I
+believe in."
+
+"Ai! and if you should get sick and die, and Padre Sanchez on some other
+side of the world? He is always travelling; never will he settle and
+gather 'dobe dollars like our padre. Suppose he should not come; you
+would die without confession?"
+
+"No; I would hang on to the edge of life by some thread of prayer until
+he came."
+
+"Padre Pedro of the north was here last month: that man makes me afraid.
+He tries to be a saint, and is so often under vows. This time it was a
+vow not to speak, and Padre Andros was glad when he took to the road. It
+was like a black ghost to see him walk the plaza with a black hood over
+his head, and never a word or look up from the ground. You would think
+the saints he prayed to lived somewhere in the roads. We thanked God and
+emptied some bottles with the padre when he was out of sight."
+
+"But he is a good man."
+
+"Oh, he is a saint; but we can't feel easy with saints in San Juan. That
+is why your Raquel Estevan will always be outside."
+
+"You mean above," retorted Ana. "The devil's face in the stone of the
+Mission dome fits better this place of the necklace of ears."
+
+Teresa shuddered.
+
+"It is bad luck to say things of that face," she warned. "Some think
+maybe it was an Indian god,--I heard an old Indio say so once. Never
+will I go under the dome of that old vestry since that day."
+
+"How would an Indian god be put in a Christian church?"
+
+"No one knows," and Teresa crossed herself. "The old Indios say it is
+bad luck to talk about it; so whatever the story is, it has been
+forgotten, and that is better. When I was a little child the old Indios
+told strange ghost and curse stories, and we were all much afraid; now
+the old Indios are mostly dead, and no one else remembers, only all are
+still afraid of the earthquake ruin at night."
+
+"They are sheep; they are afraid of their shadows at night," retorted
+Ana; "that is why Raquel will always be, as you say, 'outside'!"
+
+"Well, she goes against the padre, and that is always bad. It is bad
+luck to fight a padre; he can refuse absolution."
+
+Ana made no reply. She was very weary of the endless, endless stories of
+Raquel's unlikeness to the other women; and what they did not understand
+they would like to condemn. She knew so well that in Mexico the Dona
+Luisa and the Dona Raquel had met only the hidalgos when they went for a
+brief visit to the world of people, but in San Juan there were no
+hidalgos; only the mixed races without pride of birth or distinction,
+apart from the lands and cattle around them on the ranges. Ana could
+feel, better than any other, why the wife of Rafael rode alone to the
+cliffs above the sea, seeking kinship there in the isolation.
+
+In vain Ana had tried to solve the problem given her by the padre at the
+San Joaquin ranch that strange evening: his quick change of attitude
+toward the Americano,--even asking her friendliness and her welcome for
+him if he crossed her path. The queer idea of the Americano's love
+affairs was the most puzzling of all: it never occurred to her that he
+meant Raquel--Raquel, who avoided all heretics! Still, it was strange
+that she never thought of the Americano's love affair without
+involuntarily trying to picture a woman who would look like Raquel. And
+she did not dream those two had ever met.
+
+As Pico and his men got into the saddles and started north she heard him
+mention Bryton's name. The latter had evidently tired quickly of
+vigilante work; at any rate he had disappeared as effectually as El
+Capitan,--no one had seen him for over a week. And of course no one had
+time to hunt him up.
+
+At Trabuco Creek the vigilantes passed an Indian boy loping easily
+along the valley road. When stopped and questioned, he stated he was
+going to the Mission from San Joaquin ranch. The brand on the bronco
+corroborated his story, and he was let pass with slight attention; yet
+they would have found him quite worth while.
+
+Ana had gone with Teresa to make a little visit to Don Juan Alvara, who
+was still ill, and very impatient at being housed up when all the world
+of San Juan was astir to see the cavalcade of avengers. He was asking
+sharply why Rafael Arteaga was following his English partner's example,
+and keeping out of the work of search or battle. It was to be expected
+that Don Eduardo Downing, after being forced by El Capitan to pay over a
+thousand dollars as tribute to the Flores bandits, would feel that he
+was exempt from active service in pursuit of them; they had cost him
+quite enough. And of course he had never anything but an alien's
+interest in the country, the interest of dollars; but with Rafael
+Arteaga it was different. What was he doing these days, when every man
+who held stock and could fight rode abroad?
+
+The women exchanged glances. Of what use to tell Alvara it was a woman?
+He would only be more disgusted, and might say things to Dona Raquel,
+and that would never do.
+
+Teresa's curiosity as to results led her very close to it, for her new
+sister-in-law was a thorn in the side of the bovine ponderous
+Californian, by whom the "brown girls" had been accepted as a part of
+domestic life. Ever since she had listened that day to the story of
+vengeance in Old Mexico, she had resented everything about it, even the
+child of that strange marriage, the child who had inherited--who knew
+how much?--of the blood and instincts of that saintly, half-Indian nun.
+
+Yes, Teresa would have dearly loved to watch Raquel Estevan when the
+story was told; also the story of Rafael's latest infatuation; yet, all
+the Arteaga boys had died violent deaths, and she had no wish to see the
+last one of them murdered. She was certain that if it did happen, the
+ghost of Dona Luisa would be at the foot of her bed every night, and she
+would have to pay a lot for masses. They cost thirty-five dollars since
+the padre was building new fences around his orchards. So she contented
+herself with wishing as much as she dared without being held liable by
+the ghost of Dona Luisa in case of accidents. And then Ana was always
+there with her eyes, and if any one did tell Alvara, Ana would ferret it
+out, and she had such a tongue!
+
+While they reassured the old man, and told him the troublous days of
+San Juan were nearly over, the Indian boy from the San Joaquin ranch
+stopped at the gate.
+
+"There is a letter for Dona Ana Mendez," he said. "It came last night.
+Dona Refugia sent it."
+
+"Dona Refugia?" Ana knew that her aunt could not write, and that the
+accomplishments of her daughters in that line extended to the ability to
+inscribe their own names. She glanced at the message, and her lips grew
+suddenly white as she noted the writing.
+
+It was in pencil, written very plainly. The envelope was folded from a
+page of letter-paper and sealed with gum of some sort. When she opened
+it, she found the written page was a communication to Mr. Bryton
+concerning saddle-horses. But a pencil was drawn through the lines, and
+around the Bryton letter was written the real message, and it was very
+brief:
+
+_"A man is hurt here. Can you in quiet help him to San Juan?"_
+
+An arrow and a cross were the only signature.
+
+Teresa watched Ana questioningly. Letters to women were rare in San
+Juan, where few women could read; it must be of a death, or something of
+great importance.
+
+But Ana told nothing, only ordered the boy to go to Ysadora for some
+lunch before he started back, and to tell Dona Refugia that all was
+well at San Juan. Though Dona Teresa listened closely, that was all she
+could hear that was said, and then she knew, of course, that Ana did not
+intend to remain a widow. She had a lover who wrote letters, an
+Americano perhaps; the Mexicans did not trouble themselves with such
+useless learning, now that the old padres were gone.
+
+Ana sat quietly on the veranda for a little while, speaking of matters
+in general, and then arose languidly and confessed she wished she had
+gone with Raquel. A ride to the beach was better than to stay shut up in
+the town. Now that the vigilantes had gone, women would dare ride abroad
+without growing gray with fear.
+
+"Ai! it is not far you would ride, Ana Mendez. You are like other women
+when it comes to riding alone these days."
+
+"Raquel rides alone."
+
+"Her mother was not of this country, or she would not be so bold,"
+returned Teresa, tartly. "Men have little liking for women as strong as
+themselves."
+
+"Alas for me!" laughed Ana, "for I tell you now I am going to copy after
+her. She makes the other women look like sheep. If she would go with me,
+I would ride to the San Joaquin ranch this night and have no fear."
+
+Teresa shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"You grow like a child, Ana, as you get more years. Your letter makes
+you young again--so?"
+
+But Ana was out of the gate, and crossing the plaza with a light springy
+step, as if indeed the days of girlhood had come back. In her eyes was a
+smile, but back of the smile was a light of new determination. All at
+once she seemed to have found herself: he was in danger, and had called
+her.
+
+At the Mission she found the Indian boy with a dish of frijolles.
+
+"How did the letter come?" she asked, but he did not know. It was found
+under the door, and it had frightened Dona Refugia, and she wanted it
+out of the house when the men were away. She thought it, maybe, was a
+demand for money, such as the outlaws had sent Senor Eduardo Downing,
+and she asked Ana for the love of God to send word back quick what it
+meant.
+
+"It is only from the padre who borrowed the horse, and he thanks her,"
+said Ana, coolly. "Ride straight home, and talk to no one, or you will
+get a reata instead of frijolles."
+
+The Indian boy nodded silently. He knew the Dona Ana always kept her
+promises of that sort.
+
+A little later, Teresa looked out at the sound of horse-hoofs
+thundering by, and saw Ana on the road to the sea.
+
+She let her horse have his head until she came to the Rancho de la
+Playa, when she halted to scan the meadow and sand of the shore, and
+then bent her attention to the ground, and paced slowly along until she
+found the tracks of Raquel's horse turning to the right. There was only
+one road to be followed to the right; she had gone through the little
+canyon of the cactus and up to the heights above. More than once Dona Ana
+halted to examine the ground, to be sure that no later tracks had been
+made on a return trip. Then, away across the mesa she saw Raquel's horse
+browsing among the sage-brush on the cliff above the sea. Raquel was
+nowhere in sight; but, knowing she was near, Ana rode quietly along the
+bluff, until right at the edge of the cliff she saw her stretched at
+full length in the odorous grasses, her chin propped on her hands,
+staring down the steeps where yellow poppies nodded to the surf below. A
+cluster of the blossoms was beside her, and her skirt was torn. She had
+evidently been down there after them, and was resting after her climb.
+
+"What is it, Anita?" she asked after a brief upward glance. "Is there a
+spirit of unrest with you also? Some say there is sleep and
+forgetfulness in these little cups of gold. I have gathered some and
+lain here a long time, but it is not true, Anita. There is no
+forgetting."
+
+Ana slipped from the saddle and came closer. Never before had so much of
+confession been heard from Raquel Arteaga.
+
+"What, then, do you try to forget, my darling?" she asked, caressingly.
+"Your love and happiness?"
+
+"Love is not happiness," said Raquel, and laid her cheek against the
+sheaf of poppies. "Why do people say so? Do they wish to lie, or do they
+not know? The heart does not laugh with love; it aches. The light and
+the glory of it comes, and after that comes the earthquake; and the life
+is shaken out of us, and all we can do is to make ourselves a
+sacrifice."
+
+"Holy saints! I never knew love was all that!" acknowledged Ana. "It
+means also to dance, to listen to your lover's songs in the night under
+your window, and to go to sleep satisfied that he is not with some other
+girl. It means stolen looks like kisses. I never am sure but that they
+are sweeter than the kisses themselves, though they do not make one
+mad."
+
+[Illustration: "THERE IS NO FORGETTING"]
+
+Raquel looked at her, and smiled strangely, and rose to her feet.
+
+"Ai! you are right, Anita; it is without doubt more wise to love like
+that. All the girls in the willows think so." As she saw Ana's face
+flush, she turned in quick contrition. "Ah, forgive me! You do not love
+as they do, I am sure--those fat brown animals; but, Anita darling, I am
+a tired soul, and rest is somewhere far beyond the ranges, and--ah,
+well,--forgive me!"
+
+Ana smiled and shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Why should I not?" she asked; "for, after all, you are right. All human
+things are much alike when they love--the brown girls in the willows
+also. They nurse their babies and thank the Virgin they are not
+childless, as I am."
+
+"And you--?"
+
+"I am thankful to be as I am. When I have children, I want to love the
+father of them. My people did not ask if I loved my husband. They made
+the marriage, and God made me a widow. I thank God always that when I
+marry again I can do my own choosing."
+
+"Oh, when you marry again! Good! When is it to be?"
+
+Ana laughed and then grew grave.
+
+"You may help me to decide," she said, a trifle nervously. "I am going
+to elope to-night. Will you ride along?"
+
+"Anita!"
+
+"It is up there," and Ana waved her hand toward the blue mountains above
+Trabuco. "It is a long ride, but the moon shines, and--I am trusting
+you!"
+
+"And the man?"
+
+"Your husband hates him, and will find fault if you go."
+
+"And he does not come to you?"
+
+"He is--I think he is hurt," said Ana. "And I am going, though I go
+alone."
+
+"You shall not go alone," and Raquel whistled to her horse. "Come! I
+needed something of this sort to rouse me from poppy dreams. I ride with
+you, my Anita; and the man, whoever he is, has my blessing."
+
+They galloped together through the sweet-smelling grasses, and a load
+was lifted from Ana's heart. With Raquel beside her, she could ride
+care-free from danger to the man who had called her.
+
+"I have not been told to take any one along," she confessed, "so I
+cannot mention names; but there is a man hurt, and we must manage to get
+extra horses away from the Mission, and things to eat, perhaps, for we
+go where no people live; and--I--that is all I dare tell you."
+
+"It is enough, my Anita. We will ride together like nobles of old Spain
+seeking adventures, only we will storm no castles, and wear no colors to
+denote our caballeros!"
+
+She was elated as a child over the secret journey they were to take over
+unknown roads. The poppy dreams were left at the edge of the cliff, and
+she rode lightly across the divide, where at other times she ever halted
+for the picture of ocean and valley stretching from San Mateo at the sea
+to San Jacinto of the ranges.
+
+"I knew it was love in thy heart for some one, Anita," she said,
+smiling. "Religion alone does not make a woman comprehend heartaches for
+other women. You are the only one of all of them who asks no questions,
+yet you put your arms around me that crazy night when I rode from Los
+Angeles, and all at once I felt that I need not hold with tired hands a
+mask to my face for you."
+
+"Holy Mary! I know, and why not? My family married me to the wrong man,"
+said Ana, easily. "But I was lucky in one thing, and I know enough now
+to thank the saints for it,--I had not learned what love meant, so the
+other man had not come."
+
+"And if he had?"
+
+They had checked their speed to descend the steep ravine cut in the
+heart of the mesa, and giving outlet to the blue sea. Raquel was
+intent, apparently, on finding the best footing for her horse, and did
+not look up at once, but when no reply came she tried to laugh, and
+repeated the question.
+
+"I did not answer," said Ana, after a moment, "because, Raquelita, when
+you made me think of it, truly it seemed as if my heart stopped beating
+that minute. Poor Jose, my husband! It would have gone hard with him,
+and my relatives would have cursed me."
+
+"And why?"
+
+"I think I should have risked the purgatory they would have sent me to,
+but I would ride as we are riding now, straight to the man--the one
+man."
+
+"And suppose--suppose, Anita, you were bound by a vow to the dead--could
+you ride away from that? Suppose that so long as you lived you were set
+to guard one living soul--that each day when you awoke, your prayers
+were to keep worthy for the task; suppose--"
+
+"No, no! I will not suppose. A woman can endure just so much, no more. I
+know you are doing all this, my Raquel, and I see that it is forever one
+big fight and sacrifice, and all your life it will be the same. But,
+Raquel, when you awake and pray each morning, thank the Virgin at the
+same time that the other man has not yet ridden into your heart. I know
+you do not think of men--that it is to live ever in cloisters! But pray
+God that the man may never come, Raquel--for a girl is only a girl,
+after all!"
+
+"Of course, but--"
+
+"Oh, you would argue, because you do not know!" burst out Ana, with
+impatience. "Raquel, you are so good you are always beautiful; but I
+tell you truly, that if it should happen--all the saints could not help
+you. Between your vow for the soul of Rafael and your love for the one
+man--"
+
+"Well, my Anita?"
+
+"Well, you could not live through it and remain what you are. Any woman
+would go mad--any woman."
+
+Raquel touched her horse and galloped up the steep hill ahead of Ana.
+Down the longer one to Boca de la Playa she rode in the same reckless
+way, and it was not until they had reached El Camino Real that she
+pulled her horse in, and allowed Ana to come alongside.
+
+"Jesusita! how you ride away from me!" gasped her friend. "Wait until I
+braid up my hair. Look at it--all the new pins lost, the pretty ones you
+brought me from Los Angeles. We will send a boy back to hunt them."
+
+Raquel sat silent on her panting horse, looking out on the wide sea and
+saying nothing. Ana glanced at her white face while braiding her hair,
+and thought it looked cold and determined, almost angry; and as they
+started on once more, she reached across and touched her hand.
+
+"Do not make your eyes like cold agates of violet," she entreated.
+"Truly, I meant not to anger you, and I know you are good always, and
+think only of your vows. But even the saints have known temptation, my
+Raquel, and some who might have been saints have lost souls for a man or
+a woman."
+
+"Oh, my own soul!" and Raquel shrugged her shoulders with a dreary
+smile. "It is the soul of Rafael I am set to guard. Only that must I
+think of every day of my life. My own! Only Mother Mary knows what my
+own may become."
+
+"His mother knew the power of the heretics; it was not fair, Raquelita."
+
+"It is judgment," said Raquel, steadily. "I asked God to give me some
+work for the Church in the world, instead of within the convent walls.
+It was brought to me; I accepted it on my knees. What any of us think
+now does not change that in the least. I must live till I die with that
+thought."
+
+"So I know," conceded Ana, "and so I thank God the other man does not
+come. You would know then how to feel sympathy for the women who fail,
+or the women who do mad things such as I mean to do to-night."
+
+"Do I not understand? Do I not go with you? Yes, ahead of you, for my
+horse beats yours," replied Raquel; and from that to the Mission plaza
+there was only the sound of hoof-beats on the hard road, and no more
+words of love or lovers.
+
+A man had come from San Diego with a message from Rafael Arteaga. He
+would be at San Juan in a few days, and was bringing guests for a
+barbecue. Strange word had come from the vigilantes of the disappearance
+of Bryton, the Americano. It had been learned that he had not returned
+to Los Angeles, neither had he gone south. To free Mrs. Bryton from
+anxiety, Rafael and Don Eduardo meant to find him and make a holiday
+while doing it.
+
+Raquel Arteaga listened, and Ana noticed all at once how white and tired
+she looked from the little gallop.
+
+"Get down from the saddle, my dear," she said, appealingly. "Lift her,
+you, Victorio. Mother Mary! Do not faint, Raquel!"
+
+Raquel did not faint. She thanked the muscular Victorio, who lifted her
+from the saddle as though she had been but a little child, and placed
+her on one of the long seats of brick, while Ana ran for water, and old
+Polonia crouched beside her and looked up in her face, but did not
+speak. She had heard the name of the hated Americano, and she had no
+need to ask questions. It was the witchcraft come over her again; even
+the sound of his name could bring it!
+
+"No, I am not ill, Ana. I really am not," she persisted. "You say I turn
+white. Well, it may be I had no dinner--I think I forgot it, or those
+heroes the vigilantes took my appetite. See! I can stand; I am quite
+well. I am ready for the San Joaquin ride when the sun goes down."
+
+"But, if harm should come?"
+
+"Never fear. To go will not harm me. I am very strong--stronger than you
+think. Ai! I shall live long--a long, long time, Anita!"
+
+She arose and passed through the door of the carved Aztec sun and little
+half-crescents, and Ana looked after her doubtfully.
+
+"It is the Americana?" said Victorio, with a shrug and lifted brows.
+"Rafael Arteaga is mad after that baby woman--just mad. I think it makes
+Dona Maria afraid. It would not be well to have the wrong things happen
+in her house; so they jump at the chance to ride north together, for any
+reason at all, and bring Don Rafael to his own wife. That is all the
+reason they come: Dona Maria is afraid."
+
+"But to bring them here! The Dona Raquel is not fond of heretics."
+
+"I think myself it is the woman and not the religion she will think of
+when they come," said Victorio; "and she must have heard
+something,--what else made her look like that?"
+
+"Who knows? A woman may be tired, may she not? You talk a great deal for
+a man of your years!"
+
+"Oh, it is only to you, Senora. It is as well some one knows who is a
+friend,--that pretty white baby of a woman has the 'money eye.' Some one
+should warn Dona Raquel, for who knows where it will end? You know the
+Arteaga men."
+
+Ana nodded her head.
+
+"We all know them; but, thanks to God, the right woman has come into the
+family. I do not know what she will do--Estevan's daughter; but Rafael
+will learn what a curb-bit means if he go too far. Women who do not care
+whether they live or die are more reckless than the wildest man,
+Victorio; and Rafael will do well to say good-bye to heretic pets."
+
+Victorio shrugged his shoulders, and did not quite believe. Of course a
+woman could do a lot with a man if he was not so foolish as to marry
+her, but after that what could she do but keep the home and obey? Some
+of them found other amusements when their husbands rode abroad, but what
+more could they do than that, even the most powerful?
+
+Of course if Dona Raquel were not his wife, Rafael might be faithful:
+Victorio acknowledged he knew how that was himself. There was a woman
+who kept his house, and now after four years of content, the padre was
+at him for a marriage fee, and was putting the devil in the woman's
+head, and there was discord. All had been content for all those years,
+but when the marriage was even talked of, there was trouble; and
+Victorio had no use for it except, of course, if the woman was dying, or
+if he was--then the padre could get the marriage made. The money was
+saved up in case of such need for absolution, but otherwise--
+
+Ana interrupted him angrily, though she knew he voiced the masculine
+opinion of the valley. She had heard the padre complain that the women
+had also refused marriage for the same reason; so there was little could
+be done, and she knew that if Rafael Arteaga should fail openly within
+the year of his marriage, there would be laughs and shrugs, and the
+marriage fees would be fewer than ever. The example of their superiors
+was all that was needed to break all the little invisible bonds told of
+in the prayer-books, but remembered so little in the everyday life.
+
+"Oh, you need not rail at me, Dona Ana," protested Victorio; "I am only
+one--and I feed my children! You do not believe so much in Rafael
+Arteaga yourself; and, after all, it may come right. It depends most on
+the woman."
+
+"Dona Raquel Arteaga?"
+
+"Never! She is only a wife; it is the other who is still _the_ woman."
+
+Ana flung an angry look at the pessimistic, philosophic vaquero, and
+followed Raquel, slamming the door after her to emphasize her impatience
+with his all-too-true statements.
+
+She checked her tempestuous entrance at sight of the wife they were
+discussing, kneeling at the little altar in the corner of her own room.
+The tall candles were lit, and before the shrine of the Virgin Raquel
+was prostrate.
+
+Ana crossed herself and went out softly, half afraid that the argument
+in the corridor had been heard through the thick adobe walls. This new
+sign of Raquel's disfavor at every mention of the Americanos gave Ana
+several unpleasant moments. The letter now in her pocket had belonged to
+the Americano whom they were coming to search for: dare she mention it
+to the girl kneeling there at the shrine? Or did not the news brought by
+Victorio Lopez make more imperative the need for secrecy? In riding the
+hills for Bryton, what others hidden there might be discovered for
+death?
+
+Ana sent an Indian with a pack-mule of provisions to the sheep-herders'
+cabin in Trabuco canyon, with instructions to wait there until the men
+came for it, and in every way made smooth the details for the journey of
+the night.
+
+Don Antonio, the major-domo for the Arteagas, had ridden north with the
+vigilantes, so there was no one to oppose or question the order of Ana,
+given in the name of Dona Raquel.
+
+Teresa shrugged her shoulders and said some things when the two mounted
+and rode gaily northward. She hoped Dona Refugia would say some things
+to them for the good of their souls when they reached the ranch. Ana had
+always been a little rebel; it was well they married her when they did!
+No one gave much heed to Ana's vagaries or strange whims, but with
+Raquel it was different. The opinions of Dona Luisa concerning the
+convent novice secured as a daughter were well known in the San Juan
+valley: she was a saint, no less. But Teresa watched the slender girlish
+form riding away on the black horse, and hated the grace and daring of
+her as only gross creatures can hate refined ones, and had her own ideas
+of two women who were young, riding like that toward darkness,--the
+darkness where even men scarcely dared ride alone these days. One might
+be saintly in soul, yet do indiscreet things in this mundane world. And
+Teresa wished them a lesson, from the centre of her fat heart.
+
+[Music: _Mi Memoria._]
+
+    Mi memoria en ti se ocupa
+    No te olvida un solo instante,
+    Y mi mente delirante En ti piensa,
+    en ti piensa sin cesar.
+
+[Music]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+The dark was falling when the two girls reached the sheep-herders' cabin
+in Trabuco. Jose, the boy with the pack-mules and the led horse, had
+arrived before them, and, shaking with fear, had built a fire with which
+to banish the threatening shadows. No herders were there, and to stay in
+the isolated canyon with the mule and mustang was not to his taste. Jose
+belonged to the Mission garden work, or the driving of the cows to
+pasture, and had little relish for the adventurous life of the ranges.
+He appreciated not at all the confidence placed in him by the laughing
+Dona Ana.
+
+But Ana had no desire to trust an older man, even an Indian, and when
+they reached the cabin she delighted his soul by giving him a gold
+piece, the first he had ever earned, and telling him to go straight back
+to San Juan; and unless he wanted his own ears to wear on a string
+around his neck, he was to utter no word of having seen any one at the
+sheep-herders' cabin. His task was over when he left the provisions and
+extra horses there.
+
+Glad enough to escape so easily from the prospect of a night where wild
+cats and mountain lions were no strangers, Jose not only promised, but
+swore by the Virgin and Jesusita that no one at San Juan should be the
+wiser for his having seen the ladies in that devil of a canyon. If they
+never came out alive, he would confess to the padre before All Souls'
+Day, but until then not a word would they get from him even by whippings
+and salt water!
+
+Despite the fervor of his protestations, Ana rode up the terrace of the
+mesa, and sat there watching the trail along the creek until she saw him
+cross far below, a moving dot against the yellow stretch of sand, and
+knew that he was indeed moved by winged fear and had none of the courage
+for spy's work.
+
+Raquel watched the first star break through the blue, and knew that, if
+he was alive, somewhere in the width of California a man watched it
+also, and shut out for one brief instant any crowding humanity
+surrounding him. It seemed a very far-away thing, this tryst of the
+star, and never--never, any day of her life, durst she dream of bringing
+it closer.
+
+Ana found her huddled in the crooked white arm of a great aliso tree,
+and regarded with dismay the quivering shoulders and face hidden against
+the white bark.
+
+[Illustration: THE ALISO TREE.]
+
+"Raquelita!" she said, in quick contrition. "I have asked too much of
+you, to ride with me blindfold into the wilderness. Say so, and ride
+back while it is yet light to reach the road. It was wrong to ask you to
+share burdens of others. I am at your feet, darling. Do not blame me too
+much, for--"
+
+Raquel lifted her head and looked at her, and smiled through tears.
+
+"Anita mia, you cannot send me back, for I will not go. Do not fancy me
+unhappy because--oh--because of anything. I feel, here in the open, more
+at home than any moment since I came to California. We were of the hill
+folk, my mother's people, and out under the stars in the night all their
+old buried instincts awake in me--the pagan gladness of the wilderness."
+
+"You do not look glad," said Ana, doubtfully.
+
+"Child, child! who of us is glad with unmixed gladness, after the door
+has been closed on our youth and the dreams of youth?"
+
+She slid from her perch and slipped her hand through her friend's arm.
+
+"But to-night, beloved, we will close other doors--the doors of the
+world of people. This tree shall be the last landmark; beyond this we
+ride over enchanted ground, and fancy all wild sweet things of our
+destination. You go to--to your lover, perhaps; and I--I ride to dream
+dreams in the open."
+
+"But, Raquelita--"
+
+"Never fear they will lead us too far astray, the harmless dreams," she
+laughed. "If they do, I shall do heavy penance; be sure of that!"
+
+"You look like a witch, instead of a devotee, in this half-light,"
+observed Ana. "Your eyes are like stars; and--what has wakened in you
+this wild mood? Is it the wilderness alone?"
+
+"Not quite," acknowledged Raquel, demurely. "Since you will have a
+definite cause, I will confess, Anita mia, that it was the white, strong
+arms of--of--never look so frightened, dear,--of my friend the aliso
+tree!"
+
+They both laughed, but Ana sat a moment by the little camp-fire and
+stared at her.
+
+"That is all very well, and you have your good fun with me," she said;
+"but out here you are a different person from the lady of your
+cloisters. Yet nothing has happened to make you different--nothing,
+except that we are in the open."
+
+"Nothing? O thou wise one!" mocked Raquel. "But a star shone out, and
+its rays bewitch people sometimes, when it shines down into the heart
+until the radiance there is too great for one little bosom to hold; and
+it trembles to the lips, and all the eager longings of the world are
+understood, and one feels very, very close to one's own soul; and one
+feels that just beyond that star, or just beyond the bend of the trail
+up here, one might find it. So, let us ride hard and fast, my Anita,--I
+to my bewitched fancies, and you to your lover."
+
+"And I--I thought you did not understand!" muttered Ana. "That was
+because never before have I seen you without the hedges of people about
+you. God forgive Rafael Arteaga, who has known and ridden away!"
+
+"Hush!" said Raquel; "our outer world is on the other side of the aliso
+tree. That is our plaza, and this the inner court. Life itself has the
+same divisions: all the world may cross the plaza, but the inner court
+of one's own soul is the sanctuary, where only one may kneel beside us;
+it is the tabernacle of the heart, and no word of Church or your own
+will can give to anyone the key, or--Santa Maria!--take it out of the
+hands to which it is given by divine right!"
+
+"Raquel, beloved!" cried Ana, in dismay, "you are not laughing at me
+now. You make my heart ache with your words and your smile,--more with
+the smile, I think. And what you say is--is almost sacrilege. No Spanish
+mother teaches her daughter that the sacrament of the Church is not,
+above all things, binding. Those who break it are taught the sin of it."
+
+"But I had no Spanish mother to teach me; only a priest and an old
+Indian woman. The nuns never spoke of the worldly ties, they were so
+sure I should never know them."
+
+"But, Raquelita, you rode gladly north to Rafael; you--"
+
+"Yes; I was more a devotee than I ever shall be again," acknowledged
+Raquel, with a sigh. "I remember the elated, half-dreamlike way in which
+I rode over those mesas to meet him. I was riding to help to guard a
+wonderful soul and a wonderful life for the Church. I was upheld by the
+conviction that God desired it. If, instead of asking me to marry a
+husband for the good of a soul, they had asked me to ride my horse into
+the sea and wait for the rising tide, and given as convincing a churchly
+reason, I should have ridden into the sea and waited, I suppose. It is
+bad for one when the dreams go, and the clear vision begins."
+
+"But Rafael--"
+
+"Rafael, beloved, is contented with the life of the plaza. He will
+always be; and--the inner court is forever this side of the aliso tree.
+Come! The stars are thick now, and if we have far to ride--"
+
+Dona Ana untied the mule and the mustang.
+
+"I think they will follow; but it is best, perhaps, to keep a rope on
+the mustang. I will lead him, and I have a bell I will tie later to his
+neck; it may help in the dark if we should go wide of the trail."
+
+The wilder mood of Raquel in the great out-of-doors, where she became
+something besides the girl of the cloisters, had a sobering effect on
+Ana herself. A girl who would sacrifice herself through a temporary
+religious fervor was not one to look with favor on any sacrifice or risk
+for heretics. Again and again she thought of the letter to the Americano
+on which that message had been pencilled. She thought also of the words
+of friendship uttered by Padre Libertad for the same American, at the
+San Joaquin ranch. Was it that the latter was dead, and thus his letters
+accessible? Or was there a chance that the man whom Don Eduardo and his
+guests were to start in search of was held either by a friend or an
+enemy in the hills they were riding to?
+
+She had felt sure, without hearing it put into words, that Raquel rode
+from the ranch that night to avoid Mrs. Bryton. What other reason could
+there be? Therefore, was it fair to lead her blindfold to meet another
+of that heretic family, to whom she would not open her door even to
+please her husband? They had mounted their horses when the certainty
+that it was not fair came upon Ana, and she slipped from the saddle and
+stirred up the sulking embers of the little fire until it broke into a
+blaze.
+
+"Raquel, it is no use! I must tell you before we start. The man I go to
+see is the friend of a heretic whom you bar out from your knowledge. The
+message sent me is written on a letter of Bryton's. You heard them say
+Senor Bryton cannot be found; and there is a chance--only a chance--that
+he may be in the mountain where we are going."
+
+Raquel stared at her, and did not speak. In the flickering light Ana
+could see that her eyes grew large--with dread, or anger, or what? Even
+her lips grew pale, and she almost seemed to sway in the saddle.
+
+"Raquelita mia, I was wrong, I know it was wrong to bring you; but oh,
+my beloved--"
+
+"You--did not know--he--was here?"
+
+"I did not think. The devil put mud where my brain should be! It is only
+when we are on the road it commences to trouble me; and now your
+words--your--Oh, I know that of all women in California, you hate the
+heretics most; and now it is I who--"
+
+"Tell me what the letter says," interrupted Raquel, who now sat erect in
+the saddle, rigid and white. "You said your friend was hurt and--"
+
+"Some one is hurt; I do not know who. You can read the letter if you
+bend down here. Who knows? It may be his American friend."
+
+"Mother mia! It may be, it may be!"
+
+She covered her face with her hands, and Ana, looking at her, thought
+she was praying for strength to remember humanity ahead of the creeds.
+At last she spoke.
+
+"Anita mia, never feel so badly about it. We did not plan this, you and
+I, but it happens--it happens! There is only one straight thing to do: I
+can ride back to San Juan when you learn the truth. If it is the
+Americano, the word shall go to his wife quickly. I need not see the
+man, but I can carry a message, and I will; God helping me to the
+strength, I will!"
+
+"His wife? Santa Maria! The man has no wife. Half the girls of Los
+Angeles county try to marry him, but it is never any use."
+
+"Anita!"
+
+"How you stare at me, Raquel! You think I mean some other American,
+maybe. No? I speak of Don Keith Bryton. You hate them all so; no one
+ever speaks of them to you; but he is not bad. He saved your Indian
+woman at the ranch while you slept. You did not know it all."
+
+"Stop, and let me think," said Raquel, imperatively. "Some one has lied.
+Who is the fair woman with the blue eyes--the Mrs. Bryton--the Dona
+Angela he drove with--the--"
+
+"She is the widow of his half-brother; that is all."
+
+"All? Then how--why should Teresa say this thing? Yesterday I heard her
+say that Dona Angela made a flirtation with Rafael only to make Senor
+Bryton jealous. I heard it, though she did not know. Why should that be,
+if it is only his brother's wife?"
+
+"Oh, God alone knows the heart of a woman, Raquel! It may be all a lie.
+Our people do not understand the gringo women. They look love to so many
+men, and mean it, perhaps, for none. But it was thought, yes, plainly
+said, when she first came to Los Angeles, that Keith Bryton was the one
+man she wanted to marry. But that is all over now; no one thinks--"
+
+"Teresa thinks."
+
+"Teresa had better be at her prayers! I could tell you something strange
+of Keith Bryton,--only you are not interested in gringos,--something
+of a love of his, and I feel sure it is never the pretty Dona Angela."
+
+"Tell me," said Raquel, coldly.
+
+[Illustration: AN INNER COURT.]
+
+"A man--a priest--learned it from him some way. I thought the Americanos
+had no saints; but something like a love for a saint keeps Keith Bryton
+from caring much for any one else. It is as if a woman, instead of a
+wooden saint, should be in one of the niches of the old altar-place, and
+he said prayers there. Whoever she is, she seems to be very far above
+him--like the star he cannot reach."
+
+"The men who cannot reach the stars content themselves with picking
+flowers, do they not?"
+
+"Oh, God alone knows how they content themselves! I only tell you this
+thing to show you that Senor Bryton has not anywhere in the land a woman
+to go to him if he were dying alone in the hills; his saint would not
+step down from the niche of the altar-place."
+
+"Anita mia, you forget," she said, in a strange, mocking tone. "If Keith
+Bryton is a friend of yours, you should wish him better fortune than to
+kneel at a place like our old altar. Do you forget that of the eleven
+niches still left in the old ruin, only one holds a saint,--a saint
+where no one openly kneels,--that of the Maria Madalena?"
+
+"Raquel, what things you do fancy! Now that you know whom you may have
+to meet, will you ride with me, or back to the road?"
+
+"Back to the plaza?" asked Dona Raquel. "Anita mia, all this has come to
+me in the inner court of the aliso portal: it does not belong to the
+outer world; neither do we, I think, to-night. Whatever the shadows of
+the canyon cover for us, I think, we must ride upward to meet them. Your
+friend's saint, the Madalena of the niche, will watch over us. When we
+go back she shall have candles and roses--red ones, Anita!"
+
+Ana was voluble in her delight, and rode up the valley with a great load
+lifted from her heart.
+
+But the witching spell of the aliso portal had lost its gay charm for
+Raquel, or else it had sent her another more potent, for she rode in
+silence under the stars, without gladness, yet so steadily, so
+recklessly, that Ana more than once had to complain that only a deer or
+a coyote could keep ahead of her.
+
+[Music: _Ella No Me Ama._]
+
+    Ella vierte la copa de amargura
+    Gota, gota en mi pobre corozon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+That same evening a gay party from the south rode along the sea to San
+Juan Capistrano. Dona Maria and Don Eduardo rode in a carriage, but the
+Dona Angela had received riding lessons from Rafael, and disdained now
+the lounging ease of the cushioned seats. She and Rafael galloped far
+ahead at times, and then loitered idly among the odorous grasses and
+chaparral, and watched the waves roll in, and said the gay, foolish
+things that sometimes mean only courtesy, and sometimes mean the ripples
+of thought fringing pools of unsounded depths. There was little doubt of
+the quality of Rafael's thought. Whatever it had been in the
+commencement, there was little now within his power to accomplish which
+he would not have done at the bidding of her smiling childish lips.
+
+"If we had a boat out there where the whitecaps are, we could go even
+faster than the horses," she was saying. "I always wanted a boat; I
+always wanted to live near the ocean, if only the right people could be
+with me."
+
+"You shall have a boat, any day you want it," he said, eagerly. "They
+make them at San Pedro; that is not far to send. A boat, and a house by
+the sea! Why not wish for a more difficult thing? Would you like that
+bluff above the river's mouth? Or Dana's Point, beyond there? You could
+watch the whales spouting from the quay, and all the sea and valley
+could be yours at a glance, and--"
+
+"And a fine view, also, of your monastery walls, far, far away, Don
+Rafael."
+
+"I should never be far away, only as far as you bid me go."
+
+"Ah! that sounds very submissive," she replied; "but you are not really
+so, not really. I--I want to say to you that my cousin's wife reproves
+me for your--your--"
+
+Her hesitation was very pretty. It delighted the man, who caught her
+hand and kissed it.
+
+"My--my--you can find no word, madama, for my madness; is that it?" he
+asked, softly. "You are right; there are no words ever coined to cover
+it. I make myself a carpet for your feet, mi corazon!"
+
+"I don't want a carpet for my feet,--at least I think I do not," she
+said, doubtfully, "not in the face of all the frowns of California; and
+we perhaps go to-day where we see many frowns from my cousin. She says
+she may not visit your wife. Why?"
+
+"Perhaps she does not like a home where there are endless prayers," he
+said, briefly; "but, such as it is, it is for you, madama. You would
+light up even the shadows there. As for the Dona Maria, she is--ah,
+well, she is old, and forgets many things. She has had her own romances,
+and they should teach her charity! The plans she makes in San Diego and
+on the road are all right for those places, but when we reach San Juan
+you all go to my home. I sent word ahead."
+
+"Your wife expects us to-night?"
+
+"She does not know what night, or what day, but she will expect you."
+
+"She does not care at all for people, does she?" and Angela's eyes were
+turned from him to the sea. "All this wonderful principality of a place,
+and a home like a ruined castle, and the boxes of jewels they say she
+never looks at! She must be a marvellous woman,--the Dona Raquel
+Arteaga. I shall feel a little afraid, I think, of the magnificence she
+disdains."
+
+"A finer castle will go up on those bluffs when you say the word, madama
+mia; and the jewels--one can always find more pearls in the sea!"
+
+"How often shall I have to tell you that you must not make those foolish
+promises to me? You, a married man!"
+
+"Just so often as you make me forget the marriage--and that--"
+
+"Adam!" she laughed. "Of course it is to be the woman's fault,--'She
+tempted me!'"
+
+She sprang to her feet and ran to her horse as the carriage came in
+sight over the mesa. He was by her side in an instant.
+
+"And that, madama, is every time I hear your voice, or look in your
+eyes, or feel the touch of your hand! Ah, beloved!"
+
+"If you kiss me, Don Rafael, remember I cannot go to the house of your
+wife!"
+
+He released her with a groan, and stared at her as she leaned panting
+against her horse.
+
+"You put a man in purgatory, madama," he said, between shut teeth. "But
+it must end--only Christ knows how! It must end one of these days."
+
+He lifted her to the saddle and kept his arms about her, looking up into
+her face.
+
+"Was that about the boat all a jest? Once before you spoke of a
+boat--and us two. Perhaps it was only your woman's way to torture a man
+by helping him to think of that sort of heaven! But, after all, what is
+all this life here to you? You care nothing for the people; you will go
+away somewhere, some day, and no one will ever hear of you again. What
+better way, after all, than the boat? It leaves no tracks; there would
+be all the world before us."
+
+"Hush!" she said, with a little smile. "Who is now the tempter? You are
+quite mad, Don Rafael."
+
+"God!" he muttered. "If I could only have the happiness of knowing it
+_was_ a temptation to you!"
+
+She smiled again, and touched her horse with the quirt; and though he
+caught his horse and mounted quickly, she was a considerable distance
+ahead of him, and perversely insisted on keeping a wide space between
+them, or else lagging beside the carriage for conversation with Dona
+Maria, whom Rafael knew she loved little.
+
+For the rest of the ride there was no chance of a word alone with her.
+Only as they turned from the beach to the river valley she checked her
+horse for an instant, and with a little flash of a glance toward him,
+she flung a kiss from the tips of her fingers to the bluffs above San
+Juan River.
+
+"Adios, O castle of the air in which Love might have lived! Adios, O
+boat of beautiful dreams, for which there is no harbor! Don Rafael, you
+sing so well--could you not put the castle and the boat in a Spanish
+song! It would sound pretty in a love-song, and it is much too romantic
+for every-day life; for, after all, there is no harbor here."
+
+He devoured her with sombre eyes of desire, and a glint of rage showing
+through their ardent depths.
+
+"There will be a harbor, madama mia," he muttered. "By the God and all
+the saints, there will be a harbor here on the San Juan shore, and there
+will be an embarcodera! And the boat will--will not be a boat in a song
+or a dream, madama mia! I swear it, I swear it, I swear it!"
+
+He dug his spurs viciously into his mount to emphasize the words, and
+the animal reared and plunged, and gave him a chance to vent his
+feelings somewhat, while the Dona Angela tried to laugh, and failed. A
+passion like that was a very masterful force, and there had been times
+when she dared not treat it as a jest.
+
+The shrewd, red-faced ranchman, riding in the carriage beside his
+swarthy wife, noted the little pantomime and nodded to Dona Maria.
+
+"It is as you say, dear. It is better that Don Rafael be with his own
+wife. If anything should happen--"
+
+"If one thing should happen, we should be blamed; even the bishop might
+blame us," said Dona Maria, fretfully. "She could marry with other men:
+what white devil in her turns her to that mad Rafael? The Arteaga men
+always have their own way. She should be married."
+
+Her husband grunted assent, and regarded the fair figure of his
+kinswoman riding sedately along the green. She was such a fragile,
+childlike creature, he thought of her as a little yellow canary, pretty
+to see around the home after the many years lived among the dark people;
+but he never was certain in the least that he knew her, and he was
+beginning to consider some arrangement by which, for the good of the
+doll-like child asleep on the carriage cushions, he could suggest that
+she return to the land of the Briton and abide there--with, of course, a
+comfortable little sum for maintenance. Don Eduardo was too much of a
+politician not to see the wisdom of buying off embarrassing friends; the
+Dona Angela in her amusements might prove not only embarrassing, but
+dangerous. He had plans concerning certain Arteaga holdings, and could
+not have even a charming woman enter into his scheme of things, if she
+suggested discord. And watching Rafael Arteaga's face and the reckless
+passion in it, Don Eduardo decided that his fair countrywoman not only
+suggested discord, she was a living, breathing, alluring promise of it!
+
+A sunset in San Juan is truly worth crossing either a continent or an
+ocean to witness, when the ranges toward La Paz are purple where the
+sage-brush is, and rose-color where the rains have washed the steep
+places to the clay, and over all of mesa and mountain the soft glory of
+golden haze. All that radiance touched the land and sea as the carriage
+of Don Eduardo, preceded by Rafael and Dona Angela, and followed by
+Fernando and Juanita, who had been a guest of Dona Maria, and back of
+all the rest the Indian servants and the nurse for the child on the
+carriage cushion. Amid the shrill calls of greeting, and gay exchange of
+words and laughter, the cavalcade passed the Casa Grande of Don Juan
+Alvara, and drew up before the portal of the great white Mission. Rafael
+lifted Angela Bryton from the saddle first of all, and then with his own
+hand opened the door of the carriage for Dona Maria.
+
+"My house is your own, senora," he said, with the debonair grace so
+charmingly his own. "I claim the privilege of carrying the child through
+the door myself. Dona Raquel will be here on the instant, and--"
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Music]
+
+    Vengo a tu ventana
+    para decirte mi amore!
+
+The padre, pipe in mouth, had been watching the arrival from his own
+door, but he drew nearer, and smiled grimly at Dona Maria as he
+interrupted the young man.
+
+"Not quite on the instant, Don Rafael," he remarked. "The Dona Raquel is
+well on her way to San Joaquin ranch with Dona Ana Mendez. They rode
+good horses, and they started this evening, a few minutes before my own
+return."
+
+The child in Rafael's arms uttered a little cry. He had suddenly gripped
+her very tightly indeed, and a strange Spanish oath broke from his lips.
+The priest smiled, and the florid face of Don Eduardo flushed angrily.
+
+"You--you sent Victorio Lopez--" he began, but Rafael gave him one
+silencing look, and stepped forward, offering his hand to Dona Maria.
+
+"Will you honor my house by accepting it during your stay, senora?" he
+asked, smilingly. "My wife has not received the message that you would
+arrive this week. Sickness at the ranch, or some accident, has no doubt
+called the Dona Ana there, and Raquel would not let her go alone. But
+our house and my service are at your feet. Will you enter?"
+
+There was not a moment's hesitation on the part of Dona Maria. Let her
+English husband feel as he might, she meant to enter the doors where
+only the most exclusive had been entertained, since the day of the new
+chatelaine had dawned. Raquel Estevan de Arteaga was too well bred to
+make a scene when she returned and found them there, and Dona Maria had
+too much of the blood of Mexican gamblers in her veins not to be willing
+to take all chances when she wanted a thing very much.
+
+As to the fact that her host and her charmingly troublesome guest would
+be thrown together even more than in the south, it did not trouble her
+in the least. Even the bishop could not blame her for what occurred in
+the house of Raquel Arteaga! Let that lady stay at home and guard her
+own husband. And if she failed,--well, it might be well to have some of
+that cold, Indian-like pride of hers lowered.
+
+The Dona Angela said nothing, only smiled a little, and pretended to
+understand none of the Spanish spoken, but the padre, watching her wide
+childish blue eyes, and her rosebud of a mouth, noticed also the one
+quick birdlike glance she flung toward Rafael, and felt, like Dona
+Maria, that the stubborn pride of Raquel Arteaga was at last to be
+lowered a little. She had been as an eagle swimming in the blue above
+all their heads, but this petite, golden-headed ladybird would sip more
+of honey from the blossoms of life, and touch more closely an Arteaga!
+
+And when, after the very gay supper in the old refectory, Rafael brought
+a mantilla for Dona Angela, that its lacy film might protect her from
+the soft air of the starlight, the padre poured an extra glass of wine
+for the Dona Maria, the Don Eduardo, and himself, and held them in
+discussion. Fernando and Juanita and the other young people could go
+along and show the Dona Angela how beautiful were the arches and
+corridors after the sun was gone, but they, the older people, were
+content with the shelter of adobe walls after the night fell.
+
+So they wandered forth, Fernando with a guitar, that the end of a
+perfect day should be celebrated in love-songs; and as he protested that
+they sounded better at a distance, he and Juanita strayed off into the
+night.
+
+Dona Angela and Don Rafael, from a throne of sculptured stars and
+circles, suns and crescents,--all the Aztec symbols of light,--listened
+to the passion expressed in "El Tormento de Amor" floating down to them
+from the tiled roof of the corridors, and later, when the doors were
+closed on the girls for the night, those two still listened together to
+the musical cadence of "Vengo a tu Ventana" sung under barred windows,
+and to other harmonies never written in music, but known as a compelling
+power to the tempestuous heart of the Mexican. Under the stars of that
+night, the butterfly was made to feel that the beautiful tiger she had
+at first paraded as a trophy was not to be laughed at,--never any more!
+And even when the dawn broke, she lay wide-eyed behind the iron bars of
+her window, wordless and frightened,--a magician who had raised a spirit
+stronger than her power to subdue. What a trifle it had been at
+first,--a mere flirtation for the sake of his handsome eyes, and now--
+
+She told herself over and over that it was Keith Bryton's fault, and
+that wooden Mexican woman's fault. Why had she barred her out and raised
+the aggressive spirit in her? It was not in the beginning that she
+really meant to take her husband. And why should Keith betray his
+indifference in the way he did? It was so easy to show him that other
+men were not indifferent. And oh, the awful dismal tragedy of it! To
+think that by such a little, little chance she had missed being
+legitimate queen over this most royal domain!
+
+[Illustration: "AFTER THE VERY GAY SUPPER"]
+
+But that other woman, the Mexican, would hold it all, always! Another
+woman might win Rafael's smile and his love-songs, but the acres, the
+herds, the coin, and the jewels (he had allowed Dona Maria to show the
+latter to her guests that evening), all those things would be held
+always in the slender strong hand of Raquel Arteaga--Raquel Arteaga, who
+stood guard over even his soul, lest the heretics--
+
+Then she smiled a little to herself, an involuntary smile of triumph.
+Had he not said in the dusk of the corridor last night that his soul was
+at her feet? With that battle won from the intolerant Mexican girl, were
+the jewels and the coin out of reach? Had he not said a boat left no
+track on the ocean,--the boat he had sworn to find a harbor for,--sworn
+to?
+
+Of course it was only a fleeting fancy, but it drifted across her brain
+as a sort of solace for her fretful, feverish rebellings against the
+uneven division of things, and it served its purpose, for she was at
+last lulled into slumber by the dream, though of course it was only a
+dream.
+
+But dreams, when dreamed by two, suggest such alluring possibilities!
+
+[Music: _Mi Corazon de Fuego_]
+
+    Mujer! Mujer! Mi corazon de fuego,
+    Te adore con delirio y con ternura,
+    Porque eres bella angelical criatura,
+    Como los flores que adoran a' Dios;
+
+    Lejos de ti no me importa la existencia
+    El mundo todo y sus mentidas glorias.
+    Lejos de ti la vida es ilusoria,
+    Porque tu eres mi vida,
+      Tu eres mi amada,
+        Tu eres mi Dios!
+
+[Music]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+It was two days later, before the sun was high, that Raquel Arteaga rode
+into the plaza, and, slipping from her horse, walked directly into the
+little private chapel and closed the door. From the other wing of the
+corridor Dona Maria and Dona Angela saw her, and exchanged startled
+glances. Their hostess had arrived, and had not even cast her eyes in
+their direction. They were both relieved when Rafael and Senor Downing
+emerged from the portal of the patio.
+
+"Ah, she has arrived--my wife," remarked Rafael as he noticed her
+saddle-horse nibbling at the geraniums. "I sent an Indian messenger this
+morning. He has been quick; and, Santa Maria! so has she. Look at the
+horse!"
+
+The animal was dripping, and as an Indian boy removed the saddle the
+water ran down his sides and made little pools in the dust.
+
+"That will do him good," said Rafael. "Rub him well, and he will look
+like black satin. And the Dona Raquel is--"
+
+"Your wife went to her own chapel; she saw no one," observed Dona Maria.
+"I should go in, but if she is at prayers--"
+
+[Illustration: "THEIR HOSTESS HAD ARRIVED"]
+
+If she had been, her prayers were ended, for as they spoke she opened
+the door and came out on the corridor. She was more pale than Rafael had
+ever seen her, and without greeting to anyone, she spoke.
+
+"Rafael, two men have been hurt in the mountain, a priest and--the
+American who was missing from the vigilantes. I think--I understand that
+he saved the life of the padre--and both were hurt, and--they are
+bringing him here."
+
+"The American? You mean Keith Bryton?"
+
+"Yes, I mean Keith Bryton," she said, steadily. "I rode ahead. Ana is
+coming with them; she thinks he is very ill--and the padre also was
+hurt--and--"
+
+"Keith!" cried Dona Angela, sharply. "He is hurt--and coming
+here--_here_?"
+
+"There was no place else to send them," said Raquel, quietly. "There has
+always been room in the Mission for the sick or wounded--and in this
+case--"
+
+"That is right," exclaimed Rafael, with nervous approval; "that is all
+right. Where should Senor Bryton go but where his friends are? This
+is his sister, Senora Bryton. It is well she is here; sick men need
+their own women folks about them. Raquelita, thou art white as the
+lilies in the garden! Get you some wine while I see to beds for the
+sick. It was lucky you and Ana chanced to meet them. When did Tomas
+reach you with the letter?"
+
+She did not reply. Dona Maria was also asking questions, and telling her
+the Padre Andros had gone again to San Luis Rey for a week, and the
+three women entered the dining-room, leaving Rafael's question
+unanswered. He supposed that Raquel and Ana had ridden south at his
+bidding, and was elated that she had received the Dona Maria and her
+guest as she had--without gladness, of course, but without signs of
+displeasure. He divined there was a white devil of rage under her calm
+exterior, but that made no difference so long as she showed no outward
+sign of it. Evidently she had accepted the fact that he meant to be
+master; after that, life would be easier in Capistrano. He had always
+been a bit resentful of Keith Bryton's attitude toward himself. Never
+since that dictatorial letter to San Pedro had he felt easy with him,
+and there was no doubt whatever that Bryton had avoided him since his
+marriage. But he forgot all that in the satisfaction of the news Raquel
+brought.
+
+With Bryton ill in the house, there was every reason why the one woman
+of his family should remain under the same roof indefinitely. It would
+mean the breaking down of barriers against heretic invaders, and so well
+content was Rafael over all this that he meant to nurse Keith Bryton as
+the most valuable friend the fates could send him. Elated with this
+idea, he called Don Eduardo, and together they rode out to meet them,
+and at sight of them wondered that even Raquel's cool exterior had not
+been more ruffled at the situation: she had given them no idea of what
+to expect.
+
+"Your wife, in the cause of humanity, will allow dying space for a
+heretic," observed Don Eduardo, dryly, "but she evidently thinks them
+worth little attention. The man looks worse than she led us to think. We
+should have brought Indios and a litter to meet them."
+
+Keith Bryton, with his head bound up so as to be almost unrecognizable,
+was tied on his horse and supported by the left arm of a bearded priest
+who rode on one side; while Dona Ana rode on the other, white-faced and
+tremulous, as she recognized the two men approaching.
+
+"For the love of God, be cautious--cautious!" she whispered to the
+priest. And the latter drew the hood of his habit lower over his brows,
+to shut out the sun.
+
+"Softly, Anita mia! From this moment I am under a vow of silence. This
+heretic and I have come out of the shadow of death together, he with a
+broken head and I with a broken arm. You can send your friends to see
+where three men are still unburied in the Trabuco hills. I ask of the
+Mission only time for silent meditation until my preserver, here, is
+better--or dead. I leave the words of it to you. From the moment help
+comes I have vowed silence. Come, come, Anita, girl. When we have
+blinded a woman like Raquel Arteaga for two days and nights, we need
+fear no eyes of men."
+
+And it was so. The condition of the two men was warrant of Ana's recital
+that three refugees of Flores's bandits had assaulted the priest, with
+the idea that he was of the vigilantes. When the Americano, by some
+chance, had taken a short cut across the ranges, and, hearing shots, had
+gone to the rescue, he found one man with a broken arm keeping his
+enemies at a distance with one of their own guns. He had stumbled on
+their camp while they slept. For the rest, Ana asked Rafael to send some
+one to bury the three bodies. They were too near the trail to be left
+like that, and would frighten horses when one rode that way.
+
+Of the padre, who, relieved of his burden, had quietly fallen in the
+rear, Dona Ana told that he was a travelling monk from Mexico, who had
+been entertained at the San Joaquin ranch, and had assisted the Don
+Keith to quell a crazy uprising there. He was under a vow of silence
+from the moment God sent help; and--and of course there was room for him
+at the Mission, not with the crusty old Padre Andros, but if Rafael and
+Raquel would allow him a private corner, undisturbed! He did not appear
+to be the sort of man for Padre Andros's game-cocks and monte games.
+
+Rafael, glancing at the sallow, bearded face under the monk's hood,
+decided that she was right. The padre looked like a man given to vigils
+and fasts, one living the life of renunciation such as one heard of from
+the older records of the valley, before the secular priests had been let
+loose upon the land to fatten, while the parish drifted from faith.
+
+"Padre Andros has been called to San Luis Rey; it will be a week until
+he returns. This man--what is his name? Libertad? That is very Mexican.
+Well, the Mission is his; he can pray where he chooses. God send he
+prays Don Keith well again. Santa Maria! but he has a fever! Does he
+know one?"
+
+Ana shook her head. He certainly did not know her, and he did not know
+the padre, and she felt a hesitation in telling him that the only one
+whose voice or hand quieted the occasional ravings of the American was
+that of his own wife. If she had done so, Rafael would have only thought
+it a great joke on Raquel, who avoided heretics. All the hours of the
+days and nights in the hills, Raquel Arteaga had moved like a woman in a
+dream, walking alone when she was not praying beside Keith Bryton's
+couch of pine boughs. While Ana slept the sleep of exhaustion that first
+night, the silent priest had gone again and again to see Bryton and hear
+if there was aught to do, and each time that girl was crouching there,
+white-faced as a spirit in the light of the waning moon, while the man
+on the couch moaned "Espiritu! Dona Espiritu mia!"
+
+That was the one moan he had made since the fever had struck him, and
+there had been no way of quieting him. But that night, when the moans
+grew into cries, the silent priest saw the girl listen until she could
+bear it no longer, and then she went closer to him and knelt there, her
+hands clasped tightly behind her, and in them the golden beads of a
+rosary shone against her black dress.
+
+"I am here, close beside you," she said, lowly, "always beside you in
+spirit--always!"
+
+"Espiritu mia!" he muttered, and then with a great sigh of relief sank
+into slumber.
+
+The priest watched the girl to see what manner of woman might be this
+daughter of a nun, whose father had been the gay, lawless, debonair
+Felipe Estevan, of whom wild stories had been told in the old days. When
+had he ever resisted a love appealing? The man watching her knew the
+girls of Mexican California too well to doubt what the result would be:
+the lover first, and the rosary and the prayers afterwards.
+
+But the night waned, and the pale moon, facing the morning star, saw her
+still crouching there against the tree trunk. Ana thought she slept, but
+her husband's enemy, who had watched her through the night, knew better.
+He drew Ana aside, and gave her warning.
+
+"Tell Felipe Estevan's daughter nothing. I am the priest; that is all.
+She is not the woman to think this justified," and he touched the monk's
+robe. "This night I heard her prayers when she thought no one listened;
+and, Anita, girl, forget all crazy things I said about Rafael's wife
+helping me to revenge."
+
+"You said nothing about Rafael's wife," and Ana faced him with startled
+eyes. "You said--what was it you said? Oh, that Keith Bryton should
+help you--Keith Bryton, and his love for a woman who was a saint."
+
+As she spoke, the full meaning of his words burst upon her, and she
+uttered a low cry of dismay.
+
+"Barto! Holy God!--_Barto_!" she whispered.
+
+But he caught her wrist, and his voice had a note of command in it.
+
+"Silence! She may hear you. Forget the fool things I said there at the
+San Joaquin ranch. I thought I knew something of Keith Bryton, but I was
+mistaken. I thought I knew much of woman, but one girl at her prayers
+last night changed all that. We will nurse him well again, if your
+friends do not murder me, and then I will get him away. Some day when
+you and I have left all this behind us, I may tell you what I thought I
+knew, but not now."
+
+"But Raquel--"
+
+"Raquel will always be first of all the wife of Rafael Arteaga; after
+that she may show kindness to other human things, even the heretics. But
+this one heretic we will take the care of off her hands all that we can,
+Anita. She is not the girl to drag into a man's schemes of revenge."
+
+"I think she bewitches you each time she comes near you," flashed Ana,
+resentfully. "On all other things you talk to me sense, but when it is
+Raquel, my one friend, you talk riddles always, and you make me feel as
+if I were walking beside her in the dark or blindfold. What is it you
+mean? That Bryton thinks of her? How could that be, when they have not
+met? She thought until last night that he was married, so little
+interest in him has she. How do you get such crazy things in your head?"
+
+"That is true. I find they are crazy things; I confess it to you, and
+ask you to give no heed to my mistakes."
+
+"It was a mistake, then, that he cared?" persisted Ana. "You were so
+sure--"
+
+"It was another woman," broke in the priest, curtly. "Oh yes, there was
+a woman; but I was the fool when I thought I knew who the woman was;
+that is all."
+
+"And Raquel is not--"
+
+"Raquel Estevan de Arteaga is a woman men should cross themselves when
+they mention," he said, quietly. "She has a strength in her that is of
+God or the devil; she brings it from her Indian hills of Mexico, and I
+for one will be on the safe side and treat it with respect."
+
+"She has bewitched you, that is all," declared Ana; but the man in the
+priest's robe drew her behind a giant aliso tree and kissed her on the
+mouth.
+
+"Perhaps so," he agreed; "but, my Anita, it is only enough to make me
+pity the man she would bewitch in a different way. God! If he knew that
+she cared like that, his life would be a hell."
+
+"Why not a heaven?" asked Ana, turning to the care of the breakfast.
+"Raquel spoke beautifully of a love like that last night,--a love in the
+inner court of life, in sanctuary, where only one other soul could kneel
+beside one; it was a love spiritual only."
+
+"Only!" said the man, glancing toward the girlish figure in the serape
+curled against the white bark of the tree. "Only! Anita, girl, let us
+get the breakfast and leave love to people who have not a price set
+against their heads. As for that love of the inner court of life, the
+sanctuary, Raquel still dreams the dreams of a nun. Men and women of
+California are of flesh and blood, and they do not love in that way."
+
+[Music: _La Tempestad_.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+Three days later, Keith Bryton opened his eyes within the white walls of
+a little room in the Mission. The wooden shutters of the barred window
+were open, and all was still. A meadow-lark called somewhere without,
+and he could hear down the valley the beat of the surf against the
+cliffs. A bearded priest sat in the window reading a book, and a woman
+coming from the dining-room, through the quaint old Moorish doorway
+stopped suddenly with a quick-caught breath of fear as his eyes opened
+at the rustle of her dress, and he smiled at her with a great sigh of
+relief.
+
+"Dona Espiritu!" he murmured. "I knew you would come if I waited. Such a
+bad dream has been with me! I thought I was back in California, and
+you--ah! there were higher barriers around you than the convent walls,
+and--"
+
+Dona Raquel stood motionless, with the little earthen olla of spring
+water in her two hands. Her face grew white, and she glanced at the man
+in the window-seat. He raised a finger of warning to his lips, and arose
+and came forward.
+
+"You must not talk, Don Keith," he said, quietly. "One cup of water,
+since the lady brings it to you, and then to sleep again. Sleep is
+best."
+
+"You were of the dream, too," muttered Bryton, fretfully, "the bad
+dream. Espiritu mia! tell me it is not true. I cannot think; my head--"
+
+"Tell him, Dona Espiritu," said the man with the book. Then he gave her
+a glance of warning and touched his temple significantly. She crossed
+the room and placed the water beside him.
+
+"What shall I tell you, Don Keith?" she asked, softly. "I am sorry you
+have been so ill and the bad dreams have come. This is Padre Libertad;
+he has nursed you very well. We must all obey him and let you sleep."
+
+"But not to dream again," he protested. "Be kind, as you were in the
+hills of the temple,--give me your hand again,--then I will sleep
+without the hell of dreams."
+
+At the command of the padre, she obeyed, and he took her one hand in
+both of his and drew it across his lips. A shudder passed over her at
+his touch, and she rested her other hand against the whitewashed wall
+for support.
+
+"Courage, my daughter," said the man with the book, gently; and the man
+on the bed looked at him and smiled.
+
+"Courage?" he said. "You should have seen her when she faced that mob of
+Indians and saved us. We had not meant to spy on their ceremonies, and
+we paid dearly for getting lost in the wilderness. Still, it was worth
+it, Dona mia! It was worth going through it all, even the hell of
+dreams, to find you again like this, and your hand in mine."
+
+She did not speak, only turned imploring eyes on the padre.
+
+"You need not mind him," continued Bryton. "I like him better than the
+old padre, and he shall marry us when I come back. Now I can go to
+sleep."
+
+He held her hand in his, and when she tried to draw it away, he smiled
+with closed eyes, and whispered, "You remember how we watched all the
+stars cross the sky? And then the morning star, the star of the Holy
+Spirit, that was yours, Dona mia; and then--then--you remember all--all
+of our one night?"
+
+"All of it--always!"
+
+He smiled with his eyes still closed, and released her hand, and did not
+see her as she swayed toward the door and was caught in the strong arms
+of the man she called Padre Libertad. When she knew where she was again,
+she found her face and hair wet with cold water, and all the women about
+with cordials and cures.
+
+"It is a fever; she will get it next," prophesied Dona Maria. "A woman
+who neither eats nor sleeps gets ready for the graveyard."
+
+But Raquel waved aside all their cures and sent for Padre Libertad.
+
+"You broke your vow of silence there just now for him," she said,
+abruptly. "Break it now for me. You know?"
+
+"God help you, Raquel Estevan! I know. No one else ever shall, and
+whatever you want done shall be done."
+
+"God help me, indeed!" Raquel moaned. "To the soul of Rafael I am bound
+all the days of my life. I want nothing done. I dare want nothing."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Raquel went no more into the room where Keith Bryton awoke to a hold on
+life and reason,--that was the one thing perplexing to the man in the
+priest's gown; and not even Ana was allowed to hear the constant
+demands for Dona Espiritu, or the girl of the temple, or the lady who
+had led him out of the wilderness under the light of the morning star!
+All those things would have seemed like maddest ravings to any but Padre
+Libertad, who carefully excluded all visitors from the room, despite the
+protests of Dona Angela, who claimed the privilege of relationship,--a
+claim denied by a shake of the head of the silent, book-reading padre.
+
+Raquel moved almost as silently about the corridors of the Mission,
+serene, quiet, and busy, always busy with the entertainment of her
+numerous guests. The people of the country rode on any pretext to San
+Juan in those days, to meet the Downings and talk by the hour in the
+cool shadows of the patio concerning the tragedies of the bandits. The
+beautiful old Mission town had gained a new sort of fame through them.
+
+Rafael arranged barbecues and picnics to the canyons, where the wild-rose
+thickets were yet odorous with bloom. Even a dance was arranged by some
+of the gentlemen in the old wing of the Mission, called the travellers'
+room,--a Spanish dance at which only those wearing the old Spanish
+costumes dared keep time to the music, and the Mexican serape was
+discarded for the velvet cloak or cape of grander days.
+
+[Illustration: "AND--HE WAS AN ATEAGA!"]
+
+The younger men rode fifty miles for costumes. Don Juan Alvara, who
+still wore knee-breeches, stockings, and buckled shoes, had promised to
+go to bed earlier that night because of the demand on his wardrobe.
+Raquel delved in old chests of Dona Luisa Arteaga's belongings, and
+brought out treasures of embroideries and brocades enough to turn the
+heart of Angela Bryton bitter with envy. She knew Raquel would look a
+barbaric queen in the jewelled bodices where topazes formed the hearts
+of yellow roses, or real pearl-embroidered lilies, and in laces--laces
+to wrap her like a mummy, leaving only those great violet eyes of hers
+visible to gaze in that serene haughty way at one, and through one!
+
+But once having been forced by circumstances to take the hand of a guest
+in hers, Raquel Arteaga raised no material barriers to hospitality.
+
+"They are at your pleasure, Senora Bryton," she said, graciously. "After
+you have selected what you would like, Carmella and Juanita may care for
+some of them. The white brocade of the lilies would become you. There is
+a white mantilla of lace to go with it, and pearls--plenty of pearls."
+
+Dona Maria and Teresa Arteaga exchanged glances. They had never objected
+to the favorites of their husbands,--no good wife did,--but even the
+most devoted of Mexican wives had never opened her jewel-box for her
+rival.
+
+However, they decided in confidence that Raquel had appeared strange and
+indifferent since the day of the fainting spell. She was more kind and
+gentle, if anything, to Rafael himself, even tender in little cares for
+his comfort, as his own mother might have been. But beyond the tender,
+conciliating, half-maternal attitude toward her husband, she walked as
+in a dream of indifference toward the rest of the world. Full of care as
+a hostess, she yet spent no moment alone with any guest except the
+silent padre, who paced the corridors, his eyes on a book, and always on
+guard at the door of the American, who had almost given his life that an
+unknown priest might live.
+
+Rafael himself did not understand Raquel's gentle, devoted attitude.
+Once, as he smoked in the corridor facing the sea and commented aloud on
+the charms of a pretty girl who crossed the plaza, some man, standing
+there, took up the subject and spoke of his wife--Rafael's--and the
+lucky fellow he was to get her,--that girl of the South with her
+strange, alluring beauty not to be defined, but so surely felt by all
+who had the happiness to meet her. As Rafael listened, he, for a moment,
+felt again a delight in the barbaric sense of possession of her. It was
+true; she was of strange beauty, and he knew every man envied him. The
+thought of it brought back the remembrance of the fitful passion she had
+aroused in him there in Mexico, where the bars of the convent had made
+more keen his desire for victory. Some echo of that fitful passion sent
+him from the man in the plaza to the door of her room. It was not love;
+but she was his, and--he was an Arteaga!
+
+The shadowy room was lit by the soft glow of candles on the altar of the
+Virgin. She had knelt there until some wave of feeling swept over her,
+leaving her prostrate at the feet of the serene, tender, changeless
+Mother of Sorrows. For a moment he halted, but the brandy he had been
+drinking was of the best. The Dona Angela had gone bathing with the
+others on the beach, while he had been kept in the town by some
+business, and a man must console himself. He remembered that he had won
+this girl, whom others found beautiful, from one altar there in the
+South; it gave a certain zest to his present determination. A woman
+could pray at any time; but just now--well, she should remember she was
+his!
+
+What he said he did not clearly remember afterwards; but he was strong,
+and he had been silent, and she was gathered in his arms and lifted to
+her feet, and he was seeking her lips with his, when, with a cry that
+was terrible in its smothered rage, she wrenched herself free and darted
+to the table where the jewel-box lay open, and on the top of strings of
+pearls shone the glittering steel of a dagger. What she said to him
+turned him, sullen and cowed, toward the door. But there she stopped
+him.
+
+"Your child, and the mother of it there in the willows, are my care,
+Rafael Arteaga, as they would have been the care of your mother, had she
+lived. I have sworn to that dying mother to live beside you, and guard
+you from what harm I can, but if you still take your marriage vows to
+the willows, you put aside the sacrament of your marriage to me. Never
+again, while you choose to live like that, must you cross to me where
+this altar is. I guard your soul for your mother, but by the Virgin, and
+by this cross on the dagger, I will send you to account there where she
+is, if you come to me like that again! I give my life to keep my vow;
+but if you drive me to it, my soul may yet have to pay in the other life
+for the loss of your own!"
+
+As he stumbled out of the door he met the Padre Libertad pacing the
+corridor, as usual, with his book. He did not lift his eyes or speak,
+and Rafael passed on sullenly, muttering an oath: each way he turned in
+the Mission he met an altar or a priest!
+
+Ana, coming through the portal of the inner court, met him there, and
+heard the oath, and was filled with fear of a discovery so appalling
+that her woman's wit left her, and she blundered and caught his arm and
+questioned.
+
+"But, Rafael, he has done nothing. That he was at the door of Raquel is
+not--"
+
+"Sure, it is not," he agreed, scoffingly. "But when a man has a wife of
+his own,--even Raquel Estevan de Arteaga,--he does not want a black gown
+and a monk's cowl forever as her shadow."
+
+They were outside the window of Keith Bryton, and the words reached the
+ears of the man on the bed there, and brought him reeling but determined
+to his feet.
+
+It was the first word reaching him by which he could grasp at the
+reality of the life about him; all the vague dreams were dashed aside by
+that name, "Raquel Estevan de Arteaga." It cleared the visions of the
+fever his nurse had feared to dispel too quickly, and in one staggering
+flash he saw the truth: the "dream" of the California life was no dream,
+it was the real life to be met and fought again. Where was he, that the
+voice of Rafael Arteaga dared ring with such imperious directions? He
+reached the barred window dizzily and leaned his head against the high
+ledge. The world whirled about him for a moment, and when it stopped
+and stood still, he again heard the voice of Rafael, irritated this time
+into more intolerant speech by some eager protest of Ana.
+
+"Oh, ho! That is the man, is it? And he saved her from Juan Flores that
+night? That is news--God curse him!"
+
+"Rafael!" and the woman's voice was full of horror. "You are crazy with
+brandy; you do not know how you speak. Go to your bed and sleep. That
+man saved your name and your wife from disgrace, and you have only
+curses for him in your mouth!"
+
+"Basta! He may win seven heavens for aught I care. But, name of God!
+sing no praises of him for saving Raquel Estevan for me! She is not a
+woman, Anita! Never a woman for a man who wants a wife. By God, I think
+she is the devil turned saint; and the man who carries her to the hills
+is my friend and earns a herd of horses!"
+
+"Santa Maria! You are mad over that other woman, Rafael Arteaga. Every
+one sees it but Raquel; and when she does see it--"
+
+"She! she sees nothing but her saints on the altar! She has only the
+heart of a nun in that white breast of hers. Don't you put your devil of
+a tongue in this business, Ana Mendez, or--"
+
+"You are drunk, Rafael," said Ana, untouched by the personal remark.
+"You are drunk. Go to bed."
+
+No other words came to the ears of Keith Bryton. He heard the departing
+steps, and the rustle of Ana's silken gown on the tiling, and then
+someway he found himself back in the bed, with all the cobwebs cleared
+from his brain. He knew where he was now--in a room of the Mission,
+where he had not dared set a foot since the day when he heard her vow
+made to the dying woman. He was in her home, then, the home of her
+husband. And that silent padre who had shielded him from knowing
+it--what did his devoted guardianship mean? What did it mean that he had
+approved that once she had come there and stood by the bed with her
+hands in his? That she had listened to his words, and---- Or was that
+also a fancy born of the fever?
+
+But when the silent padre came in and closed the door, and heard the
+direct rapid questions, the replies were just as direct. Padre Libertad
+observed that the shock of the truth had come, and there was no reason
+for further illusion. The American was weak, but alert to all the padre
+told him; and he told him all the truth.
+
+"So you see, Senor Bryton, you saved my life, and there is a good price
+set against it. I am here in the home of my cousin, who will make a
+fiesta of the day I am hung or shot. You know it, and the girl I love
+knows it. It has been a good place to hide: they think me in Mexico. I
+start there to-night, unless you--"
+
+"Wait: to-morrow I can perhaps go with you. God! To think I have been
+helpless here in his home!"
+
+The other man said nothing, only watched him with the dark velvety eyes
+full now of the spirit of comradeship.
+
+"It is strange it should be you I trust," he said, at last. "I remember
+days when I planned which way I would have you killed when my men found
+you. You saved the government their horses last year. I shot at you once
+as you rode from Santa Ana ranch."
+
+"Was that you?" observed the other. "Yes, I remember." Then, after
+another silence, he asked with careful indifference:
+
+"Dona Raquel Arteaga--she was in here, and I said things I--well--you
+heard! Does she know the truth about you?"
+
+"Not even does she suspect. No one here has ever seen me since this
+beard is over my face. I pass the men on the plaza who hunted me with
+hounds and guns to the water's edge a year ago, and they bow their
+heads and lower their voices not to disturb my devotions. Madre de Dios!
+it has been great sport, but for the thought of--of a woman whose heart
+has been shown to me as a priest! The thing I have done is a sacrilege,
+and Father Andros would scorch me well for it--but I would rather burn
+than have her ever know the truth--I who am the lover of another woman!"
+
+Keith Bryton reached out his hand to the outlaw, and there were no more
+words spoken between them of the matter.
+
+Later Dona Angela returned, and hearing from Ana that Bryton was again
+conscious of his whereabouts, insisted on seeing him; and this time the
+silent padre of the prayers offered no protest, only sat in the
+window-seat, and did not lift his eyes, and listened.
+
+"I've been wild--just that, Keith, ever since they brought you back.
+Who? oh, Dona Raquel and Ana, and, of course, the padre. My! You looked
+awful. I'm glad you are better. There is to be a really great Spanish
+dance, and I should have hated to go unless you were out of danger. They
+would not allow me inside this door before, and I--Keith, there are a
+thousand things I want to say to you, and--"
+
+The priest arose and made a quiet movement toward the door. The
+interview was evidently terminated. Keith had not had a chance to say
+anything, and Dona Angela whisked out of the room in a temper. She
+sought Rafael, but could not find him, for the reason that he had taken
+Ana's advice and tumbled into bed. She finally found Ana and Raquel in
+the dining-room, and smiled tolerantly at the fact that the latter,
+covered with a great apron of linen, was attending personally to the
+moulding of candles, and not a servant, not even Ana, was allowed to
+help.
+
+The days of Dona Angela's stay had brought her face to face with many
+self-satisfying little scenes of that sort. Remembering that first
+meeting of the two as strangers, it was comforting to Angela to be able
+to look down in some way on the wife of Rafael Arteaga; and since she
+chose to make of herself a servant---- It seemed so incredible to the
+woman who had never, never, had all she wanted of luxury, that this
+other girl, young, and many said handsome, had not the natural woman's
+vanity for decking herself with the gorgeous things stacked in those old
+chests. To her it seemed a warrant to Rafael to seek companionship
+elsewhere. A woman who could claim a throne lessened her value by
+stooping to the cares of the kitchen. It argued low tastes; it
+emphasized the uneven division of things. It was a constant reminder to
+Angela Bryton that she, the woman who appreciated it all, who would have
+held a half-regal Court of Love in the old walls where only endless
+prayers were whispered,--she was the woman to whom it should belong by
+right. For her, Rafael Arteaga would have spread carpets of velvet on
+the tiled floors and cast himself, happy, at her feet.
+
+All these thoughts had given her a sort of insolent courage to comment
+on the girl who trod the Mission-made bricks, and whose eyes looked out
+so often over one's head.
+
+"Of all the Indian servants, have you none trained in so laborious a
+task as this?" she asked, sinking into one of the rawhide-seated chairs
+at the table. "It is horrid work. I wonder you spoil your hands."
+
+Ana flashed a glance of resentment at the languid blossom of a woman,
+always a shimmer of lacy ruffles, a picture of alluring, half-childish
+helplessness. It was for such a white kitten Rafael was losing all his
+sense.
+
+"I should be proud to use my hands for the same work, instead of this
+endless embroidery," she observed; "but Dona Raquel will not hear of
+it."
+
+"To mould the candles for the altar, each woman of each house should
+make her own," returned Raquel, quietly. "You have not that custom in
+your land--no?"
+
+"Certainly not. We are not taught that extra pounds of beef tallow will
+help to save our souls if burned in silver holders."
+
+"No? What, then, does it take to save souls in your country?"
+
+"Those who come here leave their souls at home for safe-keeping,"
+declared Ana, thrusting her needle viciously into the embroideries of
+lawn; "they only bring their long purses to be filled."
+
+For one moment the snapping black eyes of Ana met the childish blue ones
+of Angela and carried in their glance an accusation and understanding.
+Angela's pretty teeth closed with a vicious click under her red lips,
+then she shrugged her dimpled shoulders, and laughed.
+
+"Oh, you see of course only the merchants here," she conceded, "the
+people who buy hides, and tallow, and herds of horses."
+
+Then she turned again to Raquel, who had seen some of the little byplay.
+
+"And those candles of purest white, packed in scented cotton, for what
+especial purpose are they reserved?"
+
+"They are the candles for the dead."
+
+Angela shuddered, as with a passing chill.
+
+"How constantly you people keep before you remembrance of the tomb!"
+she exclaimed. "One needs to get out in the sun often to remember that
+the old Mission is not really a vault."
+
+"It is," said Ana; "there are padres of the old days buried under some
+of the floors."
+
+"How perfectly horrid! And you make all those dozens of immaculate
+candles to be used for whoever comes first," she continued, addressing
+herself to Raquel, with a slight smile of disdain as at a childish
+pastime; "and they are all duly blessed, I suppose, and duly insured to
+light the souls from the path of the inferno."
+
+For the first time Raquel perceived the touch of malice under the
+smiling query.
+
+"You are right," she said, quietly; "those are of the first I ever made
+with my own hands here in San Juan Capistrano. Padre Sanchez bestowed on
+them his blessing, and the thought of so holy a man is in itself a
+blessing."
+
+"But think," persisted the soft little malicious tones, "is it not often
+the story of the pearls and the swine? Any sodden drunken Indian beast
+is likely to be laid in state with those emblems of purity burning in
+his honor."
+
+Raquel paused with the last handful of them, and the violet eyes, dark
+with indignation, met the blue ones.
+
+"That is true," she said, coldly. "We are taught that souls are all
+alike before God. These in my hand may be lit for any one--for a sodden
+beast that dies in sin, for a murderer, for me perhaps, or it may be
+they burn even for you, senora!"
+
+"Ugh! how ghastly!" The blue eyes wavered, and she arose with a little
+shiver. "But I don't think I would want them, really," she added, as she
+was leaving the room, "any more than I would want masses said if I
+should go under a breaker some day when bathing, and never come up
+again. The fashion of the living praying for the dead seems a bit
+incongruous and amusing. Save the candles for those of the faith, Dona
+Raquel."
+
+Her little mocking laugh made more pointed her intention of ridicule.
+The face of Raquel was still and expressionless, as she slowly placed
+the last of the candles in the perfumed box and closed the lid. Ana
+flung down her embroidery, and said to Raquel, with blazing eyes:
+
+"Raquelita! Some day I shall choke that pretty little white devil, you
+will see! How and why we endure her mocking I don't know. That she is of
+Keith Bryton's family is something, but it is not enough. When he is
+able I shall tell him some things--I shall tell Don Eduardo things! She
+makes a mock of our women, and I keep quiet; she makes her love to your
+husband, and I say nothing; but, Raquel, she makes mockery of your
+religion in your own house. Can you stand that too?"
+
+Raquel put her hands over her eyes an instant in a tired way.
+
+"Quiet, you, Anita mia," she said after a little. "Words are not so much
+use. They will go away soon now--after the dance to-morrow night. And I
+do not think it is true of Rafael. He is her caballero, as he would be
+yours or Juanita's; that is all. There is that other woman in the
+willows. She--"
+
+"Raquelita, how little you know men! Pretty Marta by the river is only a
+servant; but our men go mad for these white women of blue eyes--mad!"
+
+"A few days more, and that will be forgotten as he would forget the
+brown girls. Have patience. At least, she will not mock our religion to
+him; and the rest--it is only one day and two nights more, Anita, and
+you will help me."
+
+"At least you will find a way to keep those pearls from her," insisted
+Ana, stubbornly. "How could you offer them to her? Oh, I could have
+screamed at you!"
+
+"The pearls are but a trifle to let go for a night, dear. Help me with
+the candles to the altar-place. Oh, yes, she may have the pearls."
+
+[Music]
+
+    Porque tu eres mi vida,
+    Tu eres mia mada,
+    Tu eres mi Dios!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+Angela Bryton sought until she found Rafael asleep in a corner of the
+travellers' room.
+
+"Ana Mendez knows; she has told your wife," she said, abruptly. "Two
+nights and a day we have; that is all. Raquel says I am not more to you
+than a brown girl in the willows. You make her pay for that!"
+
+"Pay?" He rubbed the sleep of the brandy from his eyes and sat up, then
+caught her to him in the instinct of possession.
+
+Quickly she drew aside and eluded him.
+
+"Not yet," she said, with the glint of steel in her eyes. "Not until you
+make her pride pay, Rafael mio! She tosses a string of pearls to me as a
+queen would to a waiting-maid, to show how trifling a thing it is to
+her. One string! Rafael, where now is that boat?"
+
+"The boat?" He stumbled to his feet and stared at her.
+
+"The boat! You said it. Not even my hand shall you touch until it is in
+the harbor. Cousin Eduardo and Keith Bryton will send me away when she
+tells them; they will never let you see me again."
+
+"Huh!" He flung back his head contemptuously. He had never quite gotten
+away from Teresa's conviction that Keith Bryton's impatience with Angela
+was born of jealousy. So it was Keith Bryton again!
+
+"He gets you when he has killed me, not sooner," he muttered. "And they
+all know, eh? How is that?"
+
+"Perhaps not, but they will. It is that Mendez woman and your wife! I
+will _not_ be sent like a pauper back to England! Cousin Edward spoke
+yesterday of that; of an allowance for Dolly and me. Now I know what it
+means! If I go, I will go in a manner they don't dream of,--alone in
+that boat! You can join me anywhere you say, on the coast. How you
+stare! It is not so difficult, and there will never, never, never be any
+other way we can be together."
+
+"That is true; we will go."
+
+"You want all the coin; you want the jewels; you want--"
+
+"I want only you," he said.
+
+"If you want me, you must give me what I ask. Those women must not--"
+
+"To hell with the women! We will go, and no one need guess we have gone
+together. I will send Victorio with a letter to San Pedro for a boat.
+Your lips for that promise!"
+
+"When the boat is in the harbor, and the jewels in my hand, Rafael," she
+replied, and darted like a bird through the door, and out into the
+garden. Later she came into the refectory with an armful of
+lilies,--symbols of innocence,--and asked Ana for an olla for them, and
+was very demure and sweetly appealing for the rest of the day.
+
+[Illustration: "EACH WAY HE TURNED HE MET AN ALTAR OR A PRIEST"]
+
+[Music: _La Noche esta Serena_.]
+
+    La noche 'sta serena, tranquillo el aquilon,
+    Tu dulce sentinella, te guarda il corazon,
+    Y en alas de los zefiros,
+    que vagan por doquier,
+    Volando van mis suplicas, a ti bella mujer,
+    Volando van mis suplicas, a ti bella mujer!
+
+    De un corazon que te ama, recibe el tier no amor,
+    No anmentes mas la llama, Piedad a un trobadour,
+    Y si te mueve a lastima,
+    Mi eterno padecer,
+    Como te amo amame, bellisima mujer,
+    Como te amo amame, bellisima mujer!
+
+[Music]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+What Padre Libertad saw or heard he did not particularize. But when
+Keith Bryton, the day of the Spanish dance, had arisen and dressed, and
+talked a little with all those known to him in the Mission, except the
+mistress of it, the bearded priest closed the door on them all, and came
+and sat beside him.
+
+"To-morrow, my friend, we go," he said.
+
+"Can I--will she speak to me--once?"
+
+"What is there to say to a woman like that? God! To think that such a
+one should be Rafael Arteaga's wife!"
+
+"No," agreed the other; "there is nothing to be said. Only I would like
+to see her face once, even though she should not know it. Could that
+be?"
+
+"It is not wise; it sends you away with more of a heartache; but there
+is one place she goes each evening as the stars come out. There is one
+saint left in one niche of the old ruin. Since she rode with us from
+the hills, flowers are always there, and she goes from her own chapel
+there--to pray, perhaps. She has not said so, but--"
+
+"I can see her there. Will you--will you try to manage that no one else
+comes? Oh, it will be brief enough, even if we speak. But the statue in
+the niche--I can't remember."
+
+"It is in the shadow. The draperies of red are very faded, and so is the
+gilt of the embroideries now. Once it was very gorgeous, and it is
+called Maria Madalena."
+
+Keith turned on the speaker with flaming eyes.
+
+"She kneels there to pray--_she_? What mad fanaticism is that? Good God,
+man! _she_ is the soul of innocence!"
+
+"What she knows of her own heart, she knows, my friend. This is not the
+thing to tell a man who is to her what you are; but there is--there may
+be some day, a thing that will leave her free; and if it come--"
+
+Keith had covered his face with his hands. The weakness of the illness
+was still on him; he durst not leave his eyes unguarded. But after a
+little he looked up.
+
+"You know something more?" he said.
+
+"I know there is another woman who has Rafael tied hand and foot; I know
+she will take him away; the only thing I do not know is how long it will
+last. The bishop himself would help such a separation."
+
+"God himself could not," said Keith, "unless he kill Rafael Arteaga.
+When I heard what he said of her outside the window, I was tempted to
+kill him with my own hand. Nothing else would free her; I heard the oath
+she took!"
+
+"To send to eternity the soul she is vowed to guard would not free her
+from the idea. If he should die suddenly, unshriven, it is a lost soul,
+just the same."
+
+"It is the maddest fanaticism to bind a child like that to such a hell;
+and she accepts it, as--as her people in the past accepted the order for
+sacrifices."
+
+"What do you know of her people?"
+
+"What do you?"
+
+The two men looked into each other's eyes for a moment, and then Padre
+Libertad spoke:
+
+"I saw her mother years ago in Mexico. I was only a boy, and I adored
+Estevan. I carried letters for their love-making. That helps me to
+understand their daughter. It is true; it is in the blood, and you must
+go, my friend, before worse happens. And if ever she should be free--"
+
+Keith put out his hand.
+
+"Don't tempt me with a hope like that! I want to be sane when I do see
+her!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He saw Dona Angela first, a delightful vision of brocades and white
+mantilla. She had dressed early, that she might help to receive the
+guests.
+
+She flinched a little under his keen glance as his eyes wandered from
+the pearl-trimmed bodice to the fair face.
+
+"Oh, of course it is not mourning," she exclaimed, "if that is what you
+are thinking of! But at least I wear no color, and it is only for one
+night. I have not the least intention of dancing. The whole affair is
+only to show off the old costumes."
+
+"You succeed very well," he remarked. "Let Dolly come around to see me
+when she has had supper. I leave early in the morning, and can't see her
+then to say good-bye."
+
+"So soon--going?" She tried to keep the delight from her tone of
+surprise. He was the most unmanageable man she had ever known. His
+indifference had attracted her, even infatuated her, a year ago, but
+there were days since when she thought she hated him. "Yes, I will send
+Dolly. She loves you dearly, more even than she did poor Ted."
+
+"We will not discuss my brother," he said, coldly. "But that will not
+prevent me caring for the child as he would have done."
+
+"Irrespective of her mother?" she asked, halting in the door and looking
+over her shoulder at him.
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Or--or of anything I might offend you in?"
+
+"Nothing you choose to do will affect my promise to my brother," he
+said, impatient at her persistence.
+
+"I may remind you of that some day," she said, gathering up her
+brocades. "If you do go, I hope that ghoul of a man, your padre, goes
+too. His silence makes him more like a spook than a man. The people have
+a holy horror of his piety."
+
+After she had disappeared, Padre Libertad entered from an inner room and
+smiled grimly at Bryton.
+
+"You are the sort of lover to be unhappy," he observed. "You can't
+console yourself with the other women. Half the men in the valley are
+mad over that woman, who would coquette with you if you did not turn ice
+when she comes near."
+
+Keith stared out of the window toward the hills of the sea, tinged with
+the warm rose of the sunset. And the man in a priest's robe tried to
+laugh, and ended with a sigh.
+
+"I admire your strength, though I doubt if I could emulate it," he
+confessed. "One pretty woman in sight is worth a dozen goddesses over
+the hill."
+
+"Talk sense if you can!"
+
+"I can. I shall leave to-night instead of to-morrow. I find I can go to
+Mexico, or South America if I choose, without touching land. I shall be
+running away with the property of a relative, and you might not care to
+mix up with it."
+
+"An hour ago you had no such plan."
+
+"An hour ago I had not confessed Victorio Lopez! I know an old record of
+his, and he thinks it is witchcraft. There is a lot of coin going
+along,--a matter of several rawhide sacks of it,--but it will be donated
+by a man who can afford gifts. Let me have your address two months
+ahead, and I can tell you how it all turns out."
+
+"You should be glad to get away alive, without weighting yourself with
+coin. There is a woman here who would care if things went entirely
+wrong."
+
+"Ana? It is for her I take the chance. I know a corner down the coast
+where fifty thousand will last forever. She is free, and she is of
+California--no snow of the hills in her blood! She will come to me after
+the chase is over."
+
+"She knows?"
+
+"Not yet. Women's fears upset things sometimes. If I do not tell her,
+it will be better. I need only tell that I am going; she is waiting
+eagerly for that."
+
+"And Victorio Lopez?"
+
+"He is paralyzed by the fear that I may give some old proofs of things
+to the alcalde. Oh, Victorio is all right. He knows two Indian sailors
+who will say nothing. They need to get away, and want a chance. We will
+bind and gag the others and put them ashore. It is all settled. The
+saints be thanked that I know boats and the coast!"
+
+Bryton scarcely knew whether to think the plan a wild fancy or an actual
+fact. The whole scheme of life those days was so filled with the strange
+and tragic, that all the echoes of laughter and the tinkle of guitars in
+the corridors could not even temper it.
+
+At sunset Rafael Arteaga rode a dripping horse into the plaza, and
+shouted cordial responses to the chorus of greetings awaiting him. All
+the day he had been in the saddle. "On business," was the only
+explanation to Don Eduardo and Dona Maria. To his wife he had offered
+none, nor spoken since the scene in the chapel. But he was in high good
+spirits, gay and eager.
+
+He came direct to Bryton's room with a fine air of delight that he was
+on his feet again. Even to Padre Libertad, whom he had so fervently
+cursed the day before, he was at last gracious. When told by Ana that
+the padre was on his journey south either at once or early in the
+morning, he gave her some gold pieces to bestow upon him for his church
+or his order: priests always had all sorts of ways to use money. Padre
+Libertad accepted the alms gratefully, and exchanged for them a
+blessing.
+
+The sun was gone, and men, and women too, were riding in from outlying
+ranches. The Indians and Mexicans were trooping to the plaza to watch
+the gay caballeros and dark-eyed ladies in the dresses of their
+grandparents. Raquel Arteaga, dressed in simple black, with white
+undersleeves and white chemisette of silk, stood in the corridor for a
+while and greeted her earlier guests, while her husband dressed. All the
+people were on the west side of the plaza, where the dancing was to be.
+Bryton could see her there surrounded by the gay people, almost nunlike
+with the strings of black pearls around her throat as sole ornament, and
+in the braids of her hair the white stars of the odorous jasmine, thrust
+there by Ana, to break the severity of her garb. Her eyes burned like
+purple stars, and the pink color crept, in spite of herself, to her
+cheeks, and stayed there. Somewhere, she knew, one man was watching her,
+and each moment the terror grew that some of their many friends would
+bring him to her and make it impossible for him to refuse to come.
+
+Several times she caught the eyes of Ana regarding her curiously. It was
+the first time she had ever seen Raquel surrounded by men and bandying
+compliments, and looking, for all her nunlike white and black, like a
+royal creature at a puppet show. And Ana had a sort of triumph in noting
+that the eyes of Dona Angela also wandered to her hostess in a sort of
+petulant amaze at the supremacy of her, when she chose to unbend and
+radiate graciousness in that manner. For Raquel jested and laughed at
+the pretty phrases of caballeros murmured in her ear. She refused a
+brooch of emerald for the Virgin in the chapel, in exchange for the
+jasmine in her hair. She promised two men to say a rosary for their
+aching hearts, and she allowed the older men to kiss her hands. One
+looking at her said:
+
+"You are Mexico come to life to-night, senora. Always I have thought it.
+But to-night I see it with my own eyes. Mexico has always that glory of
+the opal fires at the heart."
+
+Angela Bryton saw and heard, and her own childish appeal appeared all at
+once cheap and of tinsel. The pearls and brocades of the woman she hated
+seemed to scorch her flesh, and she felt the truth of the petulant words
+she had said to Rafael: that the pearls had been tossed to her with the
+indifference of a queen. The owner of the casket could afford to stand
+serene and gemless, with only the jasmine flower in her hair, and yet
+dominate.
+
+A cold rage filled her as she realized what Raquel could mean to men if
+she cared. It would be as it was when they met first on the hill, always
+she would hold the middle of the road, if she was aroused to care. Up to
+that moment there had been a wild fancy of perhaps sailing away alone
+with the hastily gathered coin, and of stopping at no port for Rafael.
+She was half afraid of him and after all what could he do if she did
+elude him like that? But the sight of Raquel and her little court of
+admirers changed all that. The proud eyes should know all the
+humiliation one woman could cause another--all!
+
+She looked for Rafael; at once she would tell him,--now, while the glory
+of the Mexican opal eclipsed the woman of the royal pearls! She was
+blind with anger to every other thing. But he had not yet appeared. He
+was dressing, and a gentleman came to claim her for a dance. The guitars
+were already sending harmonies through the open doors, and the people
+were gathering thick along the western corridors. The rest of the plaza
+and the inner court were deserted. Not even a pair of lovers strayed
+from the crowd as yet. Later, when the moon came up, they would gather
+courage, but the shadows of the corridors seemed eerie retreats at
+night to any but souls oblivious to the world.
+
+It was not night yet. The first star glimmered in the western sky, and
+to the east a soft radiance over San Juan Mountain marked the path where
+the moon would come. In the warm dusk the woman with the opal fires of
+Mexico in her heart slipped away from the gay groups and through the
+stillness of the padres' garden, under the sculptured face and serpent,
+and then to the place of the altar, where the shadows were always
+softest. She came swiftly, silently; she had an odd feeling of being
+followed by his thoughts. The altar was the one place of refuge
+surely--the altar!
+
+But it was not. He stood there leaning against the pillar. She carried a
+tiny candle and a rosary. He watched her light other candles in the
+niche, thus outlining the carved saint with the long hair over her
+shoulders, and the draperies of crimson. Flowers were there, blood-red
+roses, and he saw it all in the soft glimmer of the candles; then, as
+she was about to kneel before them, he strode forward and caught her
+arm.
+
+The golden rosary fell on the tiled floor between them, and she placed
+her other hand over his, in mute appeal.
+
+"You shall not kneel at that altar," he commanded, his voice scarcely
+raised above a whisper; "that much of you belongs to me. I will not go
+away from you with that memory of you in my mind; I will not!"
+
+She was trembling, and dared not lift her eyes.
+
+"You should not have touched me," she said, brokenly. "All those hours
+on the hill I did not touch you even once. Must the two of us be weaker
+than one?"
+
+"Weak? Oh yes, I am weak to-night, or I should not be here--the weakness
+of a sick man who cannot help himself. It is the last time, Espiritu
+mia, so long as we live--so long as we live!"
+
+She slipped the Aztec ring from her finger and gave it to him.
+
+"I thought perhaps it was the ring that gave you power over my
+thoughts," she said, simply; "but it was not. Your heart beats here in
+my breast, and will till I die, or till you do. Take it back, keep it.
+After all, it was not the ring!"
+
+Her voice was so low, so even, that he, hearing his own heart-beats at
+the mere sight of her, felt the sudden resentment of a sick man at what
+appeared to be her cold control of herself.
+
+"Is it so easy for you, then?" he asked. "Like slipping a ring from your
+finger or a bracelet from your wrist, and putting it aside to wear no
+more? Oh, God! If but for one minute you could know aught but the sweet
+cool love of the girl, or the nun, or the devotee!"
+
+She caught her breath in a little shudder at the heart-call in his
+words, then put out her hand and looked at him as he had never seen her
+look.
+
+"Don't touch me," she said, her tones tense with a final decision. "You
+think that I do not know--that I do not understand; yet you see me kneel
+_there_!" and she flung one eloquent hand to the Madalena of the roses.
+"It is the thought--the thought! That we live on different sides of the
+world will not change the fact that you live in me, and I in you. And it
+will be always--always! I do not understand? Yet I have locked my door
+at night and flung the key through the bars of the window, that I could
+not follow my heart and go to you wherever you were! I do not
+understand? Yet there have been days when I feared to mount my horse to
+ride alone, for fear the wild wish for you would grow stronger than I
+could bear, and I should ride to you, to you only, and--oh, Mother of
+God!--ask you to keep me there!"
+
+Her voice broke in shuddering sobs, and she covered her face with her
+hands, sinking on her knees before the Madalena of the altar, the last
+crowned saint left in the ruin. Her one hand was still extended to ward
+him off, but he caught it, held it, and drew her to him.
+
+"You are mine by all that!" he muttered, scarce knowing what he said.
+"Do you think I shall leave you here after knowing the truth? Espiritu!
+The Indians named you rightly. Spirit of mine, there are no bonds of
+earth strong enough to keep me from you now. Come! Our world is
+together; the nights of the evil dreams have been lived through.
+Somewhere we shall find the sunshine."
+
+The hand clasping hers she caught to her lips, but when he would have
+clasped her, she broke from him with a low moan of protest.
+
+"I tell you this that you go away knowing that the real life of me is
+with you always," she said, and stood leaning against the altar of the
+saint. "Go now, and go quickly; for I tell you truly, if the day ever
+come again when I find myself like to follow you, I will come where I am
+now, and this will end it all."
+
+From the bodice of her gown she drew the little dagger she had taken
+from the jewel-casket the day before.
+
+"My life is not my own to live in my own way; it is bound by an oath to
+the dead, and there is no release, none--none! Go now. You know my
+heart and the madness of it. Forget me if you can,--but oh, beloved, not
+too quickly!"
+
+[Illustration: "ONE WORDLESS MINUTE."]
+
+He caught her to him and held her there. The world reeled about them for
+one wordless minute, and then he released her and walked out across
+where the tower of the temple had once been, and he knew he was leaving
+her forever. A horse was waiting. He had said he could ride best in the
+moonlight, and a little later the hoof-beats sounded through the
+strumming guitars, and she knew it was over! It was her sacrifice for
+the oath to the dead, and she sank prostrate in the shadow of the altar.
+The tiny candles glimmered and went out, yet still she lay there. The
+moon in its soft yellow light flooded the open space without, but did
+not touch her. She had found the rosary and clasped it, her lips against
+the cold pearl figure of the sculptured Christ.
+
+And then two persons came toward her through the arch of the old
+sacristy, one in the velvet and gold lace of a Spanish grandee, and the
+other a shimmer of brocade and pearl-gemmed lilies.
+
+"No, I will not go without it," the woman's voice was saying,
+petulantly, "not though a dozen boats waited! Yes, I can slip away after
+the dance. Have a horse ready. Dolly will be sleeping; she is the
+greatest risk. But we can be out of sight of land long before the dawn
+breaks."
+
+The man murmured some plea in her ear, and she turned away, shrugging
+her shoulders.
+
+"The jewels first!" she said, with pretty decision. "The coin is a
+matter of course; we shall need that to live on. But the jewels--why
+not? Half of them belonged to your own family, and for the rest--well,
+you leave her enough to give the Church; that is all she lives for.
+Bring me the jewels at once: when I see them in my own hand, I am ready
+to promise everything."
+
+"You are not afraid to wait here?"
+
+"Yes, a little," she acknowledged. "It's a horrid, creepy place, but
+it's the one corner where no one else will come. I will wait for them
+here."
+
+The woman prostrate before the Madalena arose to her feet and stood
+motionless in the shadow. Her hands were crossed unconsciously on her
+heart to quiet its beating. Her own sacrifice, then, was to go for
+nothing; the vow she had sworn to live for was to count for naught
+because of one little white vampire of a creature whose god was gold and
+jewels!
+
+The crossed hands held the rosary and the dagger.
+
+"They are here," said Rafael, returning after a few minutes, "all but
+the few the girls wear to-night. There! They are at last in your own
+hands, and now--"
+
+She slipped her white arm about his throat and kissed him on the mouth.
+
+"And you will live in my way--not hers?" she said, with clinging
+sweetness. "You are not to be even Catholic with me? You have promised!"
+
+"Thou art my only god, O little white one!" he said, and pressed her to
+his breast. "All the world can go to hell, so I have you! My soul I give
+into these little hands; my heart is under these little feet, which I
+kiss thus; and thus, and thus! Though Christ himself stood in the way, I
+would have you for myself!"
+
+She laughed softly in her triumph.
+
+"We shall be missed," she said at last. "Go that way to the plaza, and I
+will go by the old garden. These I will wrap up and carry in my own
+hands. Go,--oh, there will be other nights for kisses,--go now,
+quickly!"
+
+She pushed him from her, and he obeyed, walking across the tiled floor
+in the moonlight, and out into the plaza, as Bryton had walked so short
+a time before. The woman with the casket stood an instant looking after
+him, and then raised the lid and lifted a handful of the gems, holding
+them up that the soft light of the moon might add to the glow of rubies
+and the white fire of diamonds.
+
+"All these, and his very soul besides!" she murmured, holding a necklace
+aloft to the moon's rays,--"his soul besides!"
+
+And then a low strangled cry escaped her as the woman of the rosary and
+dagger came silently to her from the shadows and halted a moment beside
+her.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A little later the Padre Libertad was stopped in the corridor by Raquel.
+He had been watching the dancers, and was about to start south. Like
+Bryton, he meant to ride at night, instead of in the hot sun.
+
+"Wait," she said, imperatively; "the chapel is open; I would confess
+before you go."
+
+"But to-morrow--your own padre--"
+
+"To-night," she said; "and I want no other padre."
+
+"If you have remembered a sin--" he began, hesitatingly; but she
+interrupted.
+
+"I think it is neither sin nor remorse," she said, quietly; "but it is
+you that must listen to me."
+
+He closed the door behind them. Old Polonia crouched unnoticed beside
+it, and in perhaps ten minutes he came out again, and started to walk
+the road to the sea. Rafael saw him, and laughed at the queer
+crack-brained padre who preferred walking to riding a good horse.
+Others laughed also, and the dance went on, until the partners of Dona
+Angela grew impatient, and a gay party with guitars started to encircle
+the plaza for her, singing love-songs of appeal as they went.
+
+[Illustration: "THINGS KNOWN AND NEVER TOLD."]
+
+The white gleam of the brocaded gown caught the eyes of the singers, and
+then a great cry went up in the night, and the music of the dance
+ceased, and the people crowded about the dead woman on the altar steps,
+and the old Indios crossed themselves, and said in their own tongue:
+
+"It has come, after all,--the sacrifice of blood on the altar of the
+temple,--the thing our fathers told us has come to pass."
+
+The strings of pearls and other jewels were scattered on the
+diamond-shaped tiles of the floor, and many were red with blood.
+
+"Some one has tried to steal the jewels while we all danced there,"
+suggested one of the guests, "and she has died defending them. Rafael,
+she has given her life to save the jewels of your wife!"
+
+"Yes," Rafael said, at last, and stared at the speaker in a dazed way;
+"my wife. I--I will go to my wife."
+
+He strode through the crowd toward the living-rooms, and flung wide the
+door of her chamber. She was on her knees where Padre Libertad had left
+her.
+
+"Raquel!"
+
+His voice sounded hollow and strange in his own ears. A strange buzzing
+in his head blurred speech and thought, and when she arose and faced him
+with clear eyes and quiet face, he leaned against the chair and looked
+at her strangely--helplessly.
+
+"She is dead," he said, thickly; "Angela Bryton is found dead--and your
+jewels--"
+
+"Wait," she said, "and I will go with you."
+
+And turning, she lifted the lid from the perfumed box of candles.
+
+"She did not believe in these," she said, quietly, "but we will light
+them for her, just the same. None of us knew whom they would burn for;
+perhaps she knows now, Rafael."
+
+He made no answer, but moved like a man stunned mentally. Out beside her
+he walked to the altar-place, and the people made way for them.
+
+It was the hour of dawn when a fisherman rode from the beach to tell how
+he had found two sailors beaten and bound at the landing-place. They had
+a story of a sailing-vessel and sacks of coin, and a bearded man who
+looked like El Capitan; but it must have been his ghost, for it was
+thought Capitan was dead, as well as Juan Flores. At any rate, the
+vessel was gone, and the sailors were left tied on the shore. They were
+afraid to face Rafael Arteaga, because of the coin he had trusted them
+with, and the good boat, gone now straight out of sight--the saints and
+the devil only knew where!
+
+But they needed not to fear Rafael. The coin, for which he had exchanged
+all the cattle and horses possible to sell in two days' time, was a
+forgotten thing to him, or uncared for. He sat apart and silent, as
+though paralyzed by a great fear, and he ever followed Raquel Arteaga
+with his eyes, and said nothing.
+
+The people wondered much that the robbers who would kill a woman and
+steal a boat had not stopped also to gather up the scattered jewels
+strewn about her. But they had not. Not even a diamond was missing. They
+were gathered from the tiles, and the blood was washed from them, and
+the casket was taken to Raquel by Ana, who was almost as silent as
+Rafael. On that subject, never in their lives would they gain courage to
+speak. Raquel took the casket, and looked at the gems, but did not touch
+them.
+
+"And for such trifles she lost her life, perhaps her soul--who knows?"
+she said, in the same colorless quiet way, and handed the casket to her
+husband. "Rafael, have these put away for her child, when she becomes a
+woman. They were paid for by the mother!"
+
+From that night Rafael Arteaga was a changed man. Some said he had gone
+mad at the death of the woman there; others said that it was not the
+death of the woman, but the curse of the Arteagas had fallen upon him.
+No one ever heard him laugh or sing again; and when his wife brought
+pretty Marta's little boy from the willows, and had him educated to
+inherit after his father, the father accepted him almost without notice.
+
+Keith Bryton never came back. Letters concerning the child of Dona
+Angela were exchanged with Don Eduardo, who remained her guardian, and
+after that there were long years of silence. Only one man, far down the
+coast of South America, guessed what Raquel Arteaga lived through. Even
+to Ana, who had left her own land to join him, there were some things
+known to him of the old Mission days, and never told.
+
+[Music: _Al Fin_]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+Raquel knelt no more at the shrine of the Madalena, but she went there
+nightly as the afterglow flooded the valley. Sometimes she rode her
+horse alone up the dusk shadows of Trabuco, past the portal of the aliso
+tree and into the inner court of memory. But always she kept the tryst
+of the first star of nightfall.
+
+When the years of the great war of the East came, she knew he was there.
+And when, after a battle called "Chickamauga," there came a tiny package
+from that far-away place, she stood in the dusk of the old temple, and
+slipped the ring of the Aztec eagle again on her finger. Then she knew
+that the end of the separation had come.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"If it were any other woman than you, Raquel Arteaga, men would say you
+rode to meet a lover, when you gallop like that in the night, and come
+back looking as if you had just been kissed," said Teresa, with watchful
+malice. "The old Indios say that you bathe in the night dews as a charm
+to keep young always. But why do you ride alone?"
+
+"Alone?" The woman who the old courtier had said held the opal fires of
+Mexico in her heart smiled on her sister-in-law at that question, and
+the dusk shadows of night and mystery were in her violet eyes. "I am
+never alone now, Teresa. It is a long time since I felt alone, a very
+long time."
+
+
+THE END
+
+[Music]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's For the Soul of Rafael, by Marah Ellis Ryan
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOR THE SOUL OF RAFAEL ***
+
+***** This file should be named 39995.txt or 39995.zip *****
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
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