"Loose the stirrup!"
Raquel did so mechanically, just as a rope circled about her shoulders, pinning her arms to her sides, and with a quick, cruel jerk she was wrenched from the saddle; and as her horse, relieved of her weight, swam straight for the opposite shore, she felt herself caught by a strong arm and lifted across another saddle. The man with the reata had caught her first, lest she be dragged downward into the whirlpool, but it was another man who dashed through the whirl of waters and bore her to the shore, where half a dozen men waited. They were evidently vaqueros; one of them had thrown the reata, and hastened now to loosen it, to lift her from her rescuer and stand her on her feet. She swayed a trifle, and reaching blindly for support, she caught the arm of a man beside her, the one who had lifted her from the water. Then for the first time she noticed that he wore the garb of a priest, evidently a secular priest, for he wore a beard, and even then it struck her as strange that he looked so bronzed and rugged. His grasp was that of a rider of the range, rather than a priest of the Church.
"Father, the Virgin have you in her keeping! You saved my life then. I shall always—always—"
Then she could no longer distinguish priest from vaquero; the earth seemed to meet the sky, and between them she was extinguished.
When she awoke she no longer could hear the screams of Ana, and the red rays of the lowering sun touched the face of the priest as he bent over her. It had more of youth than she had at first perceived.
"Lie you still," he said, as one used to command. "The water was rough with you, and the reata rougher. Swallow some of this wine; it came from your own carriage, and is better than ours."
"From the carriage?" The carriage was on the opposite side of the stream, but her horse had followed her and was tied near, shaking himself like a great dog.
"Yes. I sent one of the boys—the vaqueros—across. Your friends know you are safe, but the carriage cannot come over—not yet; you have had good fortune to get out."
"The good fortune was to find you here, father," she said, and catching his hand she kissed it reverently. "It is a good omen and shows me a blessing is on my journey to my father's land. You may have known him by name. I am Raquel Estevan, and it was my father Felipe who once owned this land from mountain to sea."
"Felipe Estevan—you! But that cannot be. He is dead, and his one child is in religion—I was told so—I—"