“You fear such a thing, perhaps?”
“Señor!” the officer cried.
He looked for a moment at the smiling face of the caballero, ground his teeth in his rage, whirled upon his heel, and strode away up the slope, anger in the very swing of his body. Before the teepee the caballero picked up guitar and began to play and sing.
Mud flew from beneath the hoofs of the comandante’s horse as he galloped back toward the presidio. Frailes and neophytes resumed their work. Two hours passed—and then there appeared two soldiers, mounted, who stopped at the plaza, spoke to the frailes, handed their horses over to Indians, and strolled down toward the creek.
They did not approach near the teepee, nor did they seemingly give the caballero more than a passing glance. Yet he knew that he was to be under surveillance, that he would be watched by these men night and day, others from the presidio relieving them from time to time. And he expected guests at midnight!
CHAPTER VII
TWO TALKS, AND A TUNNEL
The siesta hour was over; the caballero had spent it in proper fashion in his teepee; and now, standing out in the open, he was feeding tufts of hay to his horse and caressing the animal’s neck and nose.
Half a hundred yards away the two soldiers from the presidio regarded him with animosity, holding him to blame for their assignment at the mission, where none had love for them, and their absence from the barracks-room and its wine and cards, tales and laughter.
Neophytes and frailes had finished their work of repairing the adobe wall; men were grouped about the plaza; children played about the huts of tule and straw; the door of the storehouse was open and Señor Lopez stood in it talking to Pedro, the giant neophyte apparently in the service of the guest house.
Though it appeared so, yet it was not bravado that drove the caballero to cross the plaza then. It was necessity; for he had given his horse the water that remained in the jug, and needed more, and remembered that there was a well in the orchard.