An exclamation of incredulity answered him; he heard Anita calling in her own voice; then he slapped the horse Señora Vallejo had ridden and sent it back up the road, and swung his own mount toward the hill.
“‘Señor, your arm is wet,’” he mimicked. “By the saints, that was rare indeed! ‘Perspiration, señorita,’ said I. Hah! Excellent—if it was not so inconvenient—and painful!”
In the guest house a few minutes later Señorita Anita Fernandez happened to glance down at her hand. She gasped in surprise and understanding when she saw blood on it.
CHAPTER XVIII
FOES IN WAITING
A grey dawn came that morning to San Diego de Alcalá, for the heavy fog hung like a pall over the valley, rolling in great billows against the hills. The mission bells rang, and into the church trooped frailes, soldiers, ranch owners, loyal neophytes, none appearing more devout than those same soldiers whose license and cruelty had done much to make the Indians dissatisfied and undo the work of the frailes. Collectively they may have been a boisterous, fighting, drinking, gambling lot—but individually they were properly religious.
The comandante had taken charge and done everything possible in preparing the defence. It had come to a question of deciding between presidio and mission, for there were not men enough to defend both. It was a question, too, which the hostiles would attack first—the presidio offered arms and ammunition, food and wine; the mission offered more loot. Did the savages have greater hatred for the soldiers or the “long gowns”?—that was the question the comandante would have liked to have had answered.
Sergeant Cassara, pacing the plaza after service, pulled at his long moustache and waited for his officer to appear. There were some things Cassara had not fathomed. With his own eyes he had seen the savages take Rojerio Rocha to the house at the rancho, and he knew that the women had been there. And now, so he had been told, both women were back at the mission, and unharmed. This was something new in Indian warfare.
The comandante came from the church, two of the older frailes with him, and went toward the padres’ quarters, Cassara falling in behind. Since there was no other officer here, Cassara, by virtue of his long experience, had been appointed a temporary second in command.
Inside the building, with the door closed and a man on guard outside to prevent interruption, the frailes sat down at a long table, the comandante at the head of it, Sergeant Cassara at the foot. There was silence for a moment, and then the lieutenant lifted his head and looked down the length of the table, ignoring the frailes and gazing straight into Cassara’s eyes when he spoke.