Raquel looked as though she thought all the truth might not be in the reply, but she turned quietly away.
"I would have ridden with him if I had known," she said, and went back to Doña Luisa, who was so eager to continue the journey that she would wait for no breakfast but the coffee.
"Cut another strap of the harness and take time to mend it," muttered Jacoba to Pedro; "we are not all so near to being angels that we can live without eating."
Thus was a little more time gained.
Benito made the second crossing where the river bends around the mesa, and there met one of the boys from the village looking for a pair of strayed mules.
"The Don Rafael—he has started for San Diego?" demanded Benito. "Turn and ride with me, José."
The boy did so, grinning.
"When Don Rafael wake up to-day he much too late to go to San Diego," he said, and the old man uttered a sigh of relief.
"He sleeping, then?"
"No one sleep in San Juan last night," said José. "There was the supper, and some girls stay. The army men they all start north an hour ago, but maybe the others still dance in the Mission, Don Rafael say he go to get married, this is his last night—no one must sleep, or be sober!"