"Ah ha!" and the old voice lifted to a shrill note of triumph in having at last found the key of the question. "The American government! I thought that would be it. What new crime do they plan against the Californias? This it is to grow old and lame—they would hide it from me! Speak, and tell me all! Does the fine new government want my home to quarter their pigs of soldiers in, as they did in the Mission in other days? And would my friends have hidden it from me until these upstarts were across my door?"
"Luisa—chulita—you were not well. Rafael said you were not to be told; but since you think we mean to speak falsely, or deceive you—"
"Where is it to come? How near?" Doña Luisa was not to be led an iota from the main question. But at her demand, Jacoba tried to speak, and failed, and could only weep noisily at the hardness in her old cousin's tones.
"Why do you make Aunt Jacoba weep like that?" demanded Ana, resentfully. "What has she to do with the railroads—she or her family? Your good Rafael does more to bring them than any one else. He sells them land; he and Don Eduardo help them to get the rights to go where they please. Aunt Jacoba would not do that; her father and her husband would be burned at the stake before they would help these new people to use the graves of the holy fathers at San Gabriel as a road-bed!"
"Mother of God!"
Doña Luisa arose, as though to annihilate the daring speaker; but Raquel caught her and she sank back in her chair with one tremulous hand extended to the frightened Ana.
"Go on!" she said, hoarsely. "Go on! Perjure thy soul with lies, since thou lovest them so,—lies against a son of Mother Church. Go on!"
Ana shrank, and faltered, but the accusation brought back her courage.
"If the truth is shameful, the shame is not mine," she retorted. "Through two of the Arteaga ranches in the north has Rafael sold the right of way for the American railroad to Monterey. That it might come closer to his ranch-houses, he has let it be built across the forgotten graves of the Mission fathers. Beneath the feet of the Americanos will lie the holy apostles of our Mother Church! The Protestant heretics will wheel their pigs to market across the gardens where Ava Marias have sounded all the years of religion in California!"
Doña Luisa stared at her with white face, and her lips moved stiffly when she tried to speak. The other women and girls were clinging together in tears, and Raquel stood with her strong young arms about her, as though to guard her against the world.