"I could not forget the things of my home. Is there coffee? I am very glad."
She held her left hand against her side, and the women exchanged frightened glances at her pallor and the strange weakness of her voice. While she drank the hot coffee Jacoba deftly drew the old vaquero aside to look at a bit of broken carriage harness which Pedro was mending with rawhide.
"Benito, is there no boy here to ride fast to the Mission?" she demanded when out of hearing of the others. "Our Doña Luisa is a sick woman, and no one dare say it. Some one must go and have a bed ready—everything!"
"There is no boy here. The horses were run off last night by Juan Flores or Capitan—no one knows how many. All the men have gone that way. I ride to the Mission. Don Rafael, he go to San Diego to-day."
"To-day? Santa Maria! he may have gone! Ride fast!"
"He not go yet," and the old man shrugged his shoulders. "Too early. Army men going away. Don Rafael make barbecue yesterday, and last night he have a big dance for the Americanos in the Mission."
"Hush! Ride fast! We will drive as slow as she will let us. But tell Don Rafael Arteaga I say for him to meet his mother on the road."
Raquel noticed the old man cantering slowly along the level green, and heard the sound of his horse galloping rapidly once he was out of sight past the fringe of sycamores and low growths along the river.
"For what is that, Jacoba?" she asked.
"Oh, some bandits have run off some horses—they may send more vaqueros," she replied as easily as she could with the girl watching her like that.