Then he heard voices, faintly at first, the voices of women, and they seemed to come from above. He heard Señora Vallejo’s deep tones raised in rebuke, the softer syllables of Señorita Anita Fernandez in justification of her act. He put out his hand to touch the wall, and found it dry and warm. The cracking of burning wood could be heard. The tunnel ended against a wall of the guest house.
“Some wise old padre did this in the earlier days,” the caballero observed. “I doubt whether half a dozen men in the mission know of its existence now.”
But there was another tunnel that branched away from this, and in a diagonal direction. The caballero followed it, determined to gather what knowledge he could. Less than a hundred feet, and he came up against another wall. There were no sounds here, but there was a thin streak of light entering at the end.
He crept near the streak of light and applied his eyes to the crack. The day was dying, and he could see but dimly, but enough to show that he was looking into the mortuary chapel of the mission. Here, then, was another way of escape in case of danger, provided by the frailes of Serra’s time.
His exploration was at an end now, and he faced the long, wet return journey through the tunnel to the well. He shivered at the thought of it, and decided it should not be made. Again he looked through the crack; there was no one in the chapel, and, moreover, the tunnel entrance was in a dark corner. He put his fingers in the crack and tried to pull. A section of the wall gave a little. He braced himself against the side of the tunnel, exerted his strength, and a square of adobe swung inward.
For a moment he waited, listening, then slipped into the chapel and swung the section of wall back into place, even scattering dust along the crack where his hands had gripped. Walking silently, he made his way to the main part of the church, meeting no one, arousing no suspicion. Presently he opened the door and stepped out into the plaza. He was seen only by neophytes, and his presence there did not arouse much curiosity among them, for even Captain Fly-by-Night, they supposed, attended to his devotions and confessed his many sins.
At the corner of the plaza he came face to face with an agitated soldier, who had looked back into the orchard, missed the caballero, and searched frantically and without result. The caballero grinned in the man’s red face, and walked slowly down the slope.
“Now from where, in the name of evil, did that man come?” the soldier gasped. But he got no answer then, though he gathered a solution at a later day.
The caballero was building up his fire and preparing the evening meal when the soldier joined his companion beside the creek. Two neophytes hurried down the slope and made camp for the men from the presidio, building a fire and stretching a shelter of skins, and giving them food and wine. Darkness came swiftly, and to those at the mission the two fires beside the creek looked like the eyes of a giant beast about to spring on the settlement.
The caballero did not attempt a serenade this night. He sat before his fire, wondering what would occur at midnight, when the Indians were to come. The presence of the soldiers complicated matters. He knew that at least one of them was watching him, and that, if he started to move away, one would follow.