“Ah, then a story has been published about them.”
“Well, I don’t reckon it was published none,” replied mine host, facetiously. “That writer feller tumbled off the foot-bridge into the Tuolumne Canyon about a week after that, an’ I’m afraid he didn’t go to press.
“But I’m runnin’ a hotel, such as it is, an’ hain’t got much time for fairy tales, an’ still less time for Greasers, which the same I don’t like nohow.”
Needless to say, my conversation with the landlord had only served to increase my curiosity. As I bade him good-night I resolved to seek for Chiquita and Ramon in the morning. I had scented a romance; which meant with me that I must take the trail and run the story to earth.
* * * * *
I found the fortune teller and her companion in the cabin of a Mexican sheep herder, among the hills a little way out of town. This is the story that Ramon told me:
“Our story, Señor? It is not much, our story. What you have seen, that is all it is to tell. It is the story of Chiquita, my Chiquita, there, that you should hear. I, Ramon, know the story. Alas! too well do I know it. Listen, Señor:
“Many, many years ago, in the days when los Americanos—the mineros—were by hundreds here in Calaveras and in the valley of Tuolumne, a great hacienda there was, and a great mansion, near Sonora, just by the road that now runs to Vallecito. When the Señor rides to Sonora, at the right hand of the road will he yet see the stones of the crumbling walls of the house. He cannot mistake, for all along the road is there none other like it.
“Don Pedro Salvia, the name was, of the owner of the hacienda. Many broad acres of the hills and valleys were his, and over those acres by the thousands grazed his cattle. All the land it was black with his droves of the long-horned breed of la España. Horses too, there were in vast herds. Never were seen mustangs so many and so fine and swift as those of Don Pedro. Many cattle and many mustangs mean always much money, and Don Pedro was muy rico—of great riches.
“The old Don was proud, oh, so proud, but not his great wealth was it that made him so. Of a famous and haughty race he was. None older was there in all Castile. His blood was what the Americano would call—what is it that they call the blood of the grandee? Ah, I remember—he was of the blue blood. None was there in all Spain so blue.