"How could I? Oh, yes, I remember! The priest told me that night. How strange it should have all been crowded out of my mind! He told me to give Rafael a message of warning. What was it? What was it?"
She clasped her hands over her brows and tried to remember. Her first meeting with Rafael beside the dead body of his mother had driven out of her mind the message she was to have delivered. It was a warning, a warning of some sort; that much she was sure of, and—what was it about her father—her father's name?
"I think," said Ana, speaking softly and watching her, "that he told you Felipe Estevan's daughter had saved Rafael Arteaga a treasure that night."
"Anita! So he did; and you know the words, the very words he spoke to me!"
"I know more, Raquel mia; I know what the treasure was."
"And—?"
"It is not nice to tell," and Ana hesitated. "But he saw you there that evening with his own eyes."
"The priest?"
"Yes, the priest. He saved you from being carried to the hills by the Juan Flores robbers, while Capitan took others of the men and secured the chests of wedding gifts from the old Mission. Oh, it was all planned for the one big revenge on Rafael Arteaga. But he saw you, and so—"
"And that priest saved me from them, Anita?"