For the Soul of Rafael

by Marah Ellis Ryan

Not only the young girls, but the mistress as well, kept a respectful distance from the room where Raquel lay, adjoining the hall. Her moans and strange words had filled them with dread, but no more so than had the grovelling fear of the old Indian woman. All day she had crouched at the door like a patient animal, waiting the end. Sometimes she muttered to herself in queer Indian words, sometimes she crept to the couch of Doña Raquel for a little while, and then back again to the door, always mumbling or praying, and always insisting that the mother of Raquel had come from the grave to tell things, and that the last of the kings was gone now for always!

Any attempt at a question, any interpretation of her mutterings, would arouse her to a realization that she was among new people in a strange land, and her lips would shut in a straight line, to be kept shut so long as she was conscious of their presence.

The Indian servants crept past the door, with fearful eyes fixed in dread. She was of another race and another tongue than their own forebears, straight and slender even in her old age; darkest reddish-bronze in color, while a San Juan grandmother was always fat, and nearly always black. Beside them, Polonia looked almost Caucasian. Yet she proudly denied any white blood; she was an Indian of a hill tribe of the south, the name of which she would not utter.

All this, and her mutterings, and the wild words of her mistress, put terror into the heart of the San Joaquin household. The girls huddled together and whispered tales of witches and ghosts, and thought she looked like each in turn; and Doña Ana got great credit for courage in staying in the room with her in the night-time.

But all their vague fears were changed to a definite terror when one of the Indian children found the clay image by the aquia, and in its yet moist members all the pins, for the stealing of which half the children around the ranch had that morning received a taste of the rope's end.

Such a gray-faced, wailing lot as scampered up from the aquia! Girls screaming, old women wailing, and the mothers herding the children out of reach of the accursed thing!

All was explained now, about the sudden awful sickness of the Doña Raquel! The Indian woman from the south was a very devil! Doña Raquel had perhaps had to whip her some time, and she had waited until she was with her in a strange house to do this thing: that was why she crouched at the door as if on guard; she was afraid some one might enter to pray, or with holy water, or any of the helps of the saints. And after the life had gone from Doña Raquel, who could tell that she might not kill others, even all of them on the ranch? Since she had in one hour's time changed her mistress from a well woman to a crazy woman who laughed, how long would it take to do the same for a dozen? Not a day! In a week she could kill them all!

Panic seized the entire herd. They raced in terror for the ranch-house and overwhelmed the mistress with their fears. Her daughters clung together, white-faced at the frenzy facing them. The men were out on the ranch and ranges; Don Enrico was with them, and there was no one to control the dark mob of fanatic faces, any more than one could head a stampeding herd of cattle: that was what terror developed in them—the mad, unreasoning rush of animals to trample underfoot, or tear to pieces, the thing they feared.

The mistress could only gasp, "Pray to God—pray to God!" but her voice was lost in the tumult of the wild chorus. It was too late for prayers; prayers were no good after a devil had got hold of any one! Then there was only one thing to do, and they had the knife for the meat and the axe for the wood! A devil could be burned out, or drowned out, and there was not water enough this side of the sea for the drowning; therefore—

In vain their mistress screamed, and her daughters clung to the bare brown arms of their serving-women. They were thrown aside in the stampede of the savage herd. Let the lady say what should be done with white blood; but this was an Indian, and an Indian of a strange tribe and country!