For the Soul of Rafael
by Marah Ellis Ryan · English · Gutenberg #39995 · 443,510 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: For the Soul of Rafael
Author: Marah Ellis Ryan
Illustrator: Ralph Fletcher Seymour
Photographer: Harold A. Taylor
Release date: June 14, 2012 [eBook #39995]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/39995
Credits: Produced by Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, tallforasmurf and
the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
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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
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/39995