“The señor will not forget me—that is all I ask,” the Indian muttered.
“Be assured I will not! Adios!”
“’Dios!”
The caballero trotted his steed for a mile, then broke into a gallop. Forty miles more, and he would be at San Diego de Alcalá, his journey’s end. He laughed aloud as the dawn came and showed him the sea sparkling in the distance. His spirits had revived wonderfully.
“Poor self-styled Juan who once owned a mule!” he murmured. “He loses a couple of pieces of gold, I take it, since it is not to be believed that he has reached the goal before me. I wonder what would have happened if I had gone to the inn on the plaza at Reina de Los Angeles?”
He was in the hills again now, yet the highway was seldom masked, and he felt secure in the knowledge that a foe could not approach without being seen. The miles flew beneath his horse’s hoofs. A cool breeze came in from the sea and neutralised the heat of the sun. In the distance he could see a broad valley, and he knew that the end of his journey was near.
Another ten miles, and then, stopping his horse on the crest of a hill, he saw San Diego de Alcalá before him. Near the shore of the bay was the presidio, topping a knoll. Six miles up the valley was the mission proper, and near it an orchard surrounded by a wall, and fields of green.
“’Tis a bit of paradise in the wilderness!” the caballero said aloud. “And there is an angel in it, I have heard.”
He chuckled and urged the horse on. Purposely he avoided the presidio for the time being and made his way toward the mission. Only a few neophytes were to be seen, and even they disappeared as he approached.
The mission buildings formed three sides of a square; the fourth side was an adobe wall nearly ten feet high. Through a space between two of the buildings the caballero rode his horse. Not a human being was to be seen in the plaza.