"Who killed them, Catalina?" I asked in astonishment, as I saw my pet brood of ducks and their over careful mother lying dead in the grass.
"I did," she replied, "and it was time that something was done. Madre Moreno has been busy again. The cows gave bloody milk last Friday, and to-day, while I was sorting some herbs, the hen and her brood began to act mysteriously, to tumble about as Victor might, after too much wine. All at once I saw the cause, Madre Moreno had bewitched them, and in three minutes I had cut all their throats and have given the wicked woman a lesson."
"Catalina! Catalina!" I cried, "how can you be so cruel and superstitious?" Her face lighted up with supreme contempt for me, but she said nothing more. On the ground about her were bits of leaves which I recognized as nightshade and henbane, which could well account for the actions of the late hen and ducklings.
"What are these?" I asked.
"Little Pablo brought them for dinner; he thought they were mustard, but they were not, so I threw them away."
"Poor ducks and poor Catalina," was all that I could say, and went laughing into the house, while she muttered to herself about the ignorance of the new generation.
My home was, and is a beautiful one, low and long, with all the rooms opening on the broad veranda; it is part of adobe and part of wood, the sides being covered with a network of fuchsia, heliotrope and jasmine reaching to the eaves of the brown tile roof; a broad, branching fig tree is in the little court before it, and a clump of yuccas and fan palms to the right, while down to the road and along the front stretches a broken hedge of Castilian roses, which we Californians love as the gift of old Spain, our first good nurse, we must always have a nurse it seems, England, Spain, Mexico and our present, very dry one—but let us be content, our majority will come. There is a pretty stream from the mountains, brought through hollow logs, and two good wells to water the place, which is green in the hottest summer when all the hills and meadows are yellow and brown from drought; before it rise slopes of manzanita, and higher hills covered with redwoods, and then the sharply cut peak of Tamalpais, from which on clear days we not only may see the good St. Helena, but alas, as in all the world, Diablo, himself, is in view, black and barren, though we do sometimes call him San Diablo, as the old Greeks did the Eumenides, in propitiatory compliment.
Madre Moreno was indeed a strange woman, and feared by the country people, before whom she lost no opportunity of playing her role of witch, and she was known by all for her remarkable skill in extracting the virtues of herbs, and brewing such efficacious drinks that even Pedirpozzo, the famous physician of the Alameda side, had been willing to consult with her.
I was about twenty years old at this time and had but recently returned from the City of Mexico, where I had been graduated in the law, having also made a thorough study of botany, and was happily and lucratively employed in collecting specimens of the Californian flora for the old college, as well as for one in the States, and two in Europe. This pleasurable employment gave me an income, more than supplying the few wants of the primitive life at the little rancho, the herds of which were alone a good source of revenue.
Just beyond my home, to the west, over the first hill, was a ruined adobe, surrounded by a great number of fig and olive trees; there had never been any windows in the house, but the arches for the doors were still standing, where ivy, poison oak and wild honey-suckle hung in profusion; the cellar, which was quite filled with stones, was overgrown with Solomon's seal, eschscholtzia and yerba santa, while a white rose and a shapeless clump of half wild artichokes grew where the garden had once been, also many flowers, hardly distinguishable from the weeds, having lost all they had ever gained by cultivation; a winding bed of ranunculus, or little frog, as Linnaeus wittily calls these water lovers, marked the course of a narrow stream which had long ago broken away from its former wooden trough. Among the stones and decaying beams were enormous bushes of nightshade, which seemed to poison the plants about them, all of which had a sickly green wherever they grew under its shadow.