For the Soul of Rafael

by Marah Ellis Ryan

"But—holy Maria!—we were never robbers, Luisa!"

"Well, we did not need to be," returned her friend. "But I tell you truly, Jacoba, I could find it in my heart to forgive a son who fought the Americanos as he does, even if they made him outlaw. He could not be outlaw to the Church, nor to me."

Jacoba said no more. Of what use was it to tell her that a few such women would be firebrands in the land if they had youth, and that the American soldiers, instead of coming peacefully to buy stock and pay good prices, would come from Los Angeles shooting,—would come with torches to burn each town where rebels hid. It was no longer little internal wars, such as they used to have in the days they both remembered, when the men who smoked or played together one month would fight under different leaders the next.

There were no faction fights now. It was one great ugly pale nation to the east, trailing slowly over the ranges and planting itself like the live-oak in the cañons. The Mexicans might hate, might curse; but the curses made no difference against the heretics. They had no churches, and they laughed at the beautiful wooden saints in the old chapel. Had not some of them snuffed out candles on the graves with their accursed rifles, last All Souls' Day? Yet the sky had not fallen, and no earthquake had come! What would even prayers or holy Church do against a people so ignored by God?

But Jacoba knew there was no use to fight. She remembered what that meant in the other days. In an old adobe of San Juan's one street she had helped as a girl to nurse the wounded of San Pascual. It was years ago, but she had not forgotten the cruel wounds, or the young Americano who died in her arms there. She had never mentioned to any the reason of her hatred for war; for even with revenge in reach, on whom would she seek it?—on her brother who had killed a stranger forcing their gates?

"You do not forget how the blessed Junípero Serra himself spoke from the altar of San Juan in the old days, Luisa; our grandfather telling us that many times,—how, when the Spanish guard was hard with the Indios, he stood on the altar and say that a new people will come and put the foot on the neck of the Mexican like the Mexican tramp on the Indios. He say it, and cry—cry for the reason that the good God no can make their hearts more soft to the Indios. I think of that when I see the Americanos come. They not put the foot on the neck—but they are here!"

"Father Junípero was old then—very old—like a child, and would make of the Indios babies to be petted," returned Doña Luisa, leniently. "He was a saint—not a man; only the saints could have the patience with those Indios—I remember! One of the old scares of the padre's was that the water would fail us; yet San Juan still has its river!"

Jacoba nodded. They were likely to find the river a difficulty after the rainfall. The ford was not a good one in high water; but the thought of getting across the ford was a trifle compared to the difficulty of impressing Doña Luisa with any idea of the change she would find in the land she had known.

In sheer despair she returned once more to a safer subject, Raquel Estevan,—Raquel the wise, who was to marry with Rafael and forever build a wall about him from American influence; Raquel, who might not love, because of that dark shadow of the cloister, but who would be all the more wise for that! Still, who could tell?

"When one is young like that, one never can be sure until the right man comes," said Jacoba; "and she is handsome, your Raquel. But is it true what they say, that there was the blood of the old Mexican Indios in her mother?"