For the Soul of Rafael

by Marah Ellis Ryan

When Andres Pico and his men rode into San Juan with the doubtful decoration of necklaces of human ears strung on rawhide strings, there was a breath of relief from the natives: it meant that the bandits had been "confessed," according to the General's naive explanation of the absence of prisoners they knew he had taken; the backbone of the bandit gang was broken.

The vigilantes were the heroes of the hour. As the band of outlaws divided and fled in various directions, they were waited for at every pass and hewn down by the dozen. Only two—Fontez, who had shot the sheriff, and El Capitan, who had not been seen by any one at any time of the raid—were still missing. One of the prisoners, on being questioned, stated that Fontez had taken his share of the plunder and started for Lower California; and when questioned as to El Capitan, swore wrathfully, because El Capitan had disagreed with Flores over the raid, refused to be counted in, and in consequence they would all go to hell! If El Capitan had helped, things would have been different, very different. He had voted against starting out with fifty men to drive the gringos from Southern California; he had fought them before in the open, and knew them. He had told Flores he was a fool, and left them in Santiago Cañon, and ridden away, and after the slaughter of the sheriff and his men he had ridden out of the mustard on a horse of the San Joaquin brand, and told them to ride south and stop for nothing; and no one had seen him since. They had not taken his advice—and now it was all over! A little later, it certainly was over for that particular unfortunate, and his ears were added to a string decorating a swarthy ranchman, who was especially lionized because of his gruesome trophies.

In the plaza of San Juan Mission, Ana listened to the hero of the necklace reciting all the glories of the campaign, and shuddered at the ghastly witness of its veracity. Raquel, standing beside her horse, listened also and felt a loathing of it all. Regular war, such as she had heard of, had never appeared so awful as this series of slaughters from ambush, where the victors of either side decked themselves like savages.

"It is bad that we have no soldiers left who are hidalgos," she remarked. "The wild Indians carry scalps at their belts; I did not know people did so who had learned their religion from the padres."

She mounted and rode toward the sea, the only woman who dared venture alone out of sight of the protecting walls of the Mission in those days. The man with the necklace looked after her, and then up at the line of grain-sacks still left as a barricade along the roofs of the corridor. Behind them, men with rifles had lain through the days and nights when the panic was at its worst, and women and children had huddled in dread of massacre in the inner court.

"Does the señora forget all that," he asked, "or is there a caballero to guard her where she rides?"

Ana turned on the hero, glad of an outlet for her pent-up anger. "You—you butcher!" she said between her little white teeth. "You know Rafael Arteaga is not here. What other man would ride with his wife?"

"Who knows?" he laughed, easily. "The lady is not afraid, that is clear; and El Capitan is somewhere in the hills, or the willows."

She said nothing, realizing that he was watching her closely, for all his apparent carelessness. When she continued silent, he laughed and swept his sombrero to the ground and sauntered away. She knew then that he had simply tried her, to see if by any chance she showed knowledge of, or fear for, the outlaw she had never disowned as cousin.