Her lord is away often in the field. His days are spent galloping over his broad domains. There is no intellectual life, no change of day and day. The years have silently buried themselves, with no crown of happy memories. She left her merry home at the Alameda shore of the great bay to be the lonely lady of this distant domain. Her narrow nature has settled into imitative and mechanical devotion, a sad, cold faith.
Youthful lack of education has not been repaired by any individual experience of life. Maternity has been a mere physical epoch of her dreary womanhood. The current of her days in narrow channels sluggishly flows toward its close.
Even the laughing child runs away from the young "pathfinder." She furtively peers at him from the shelter of the graceful vines and rose bowers of her playground.
Maxime has exhausted the slender library of his friend. In the peaceful evening hours he listens to weird stories of the lonely land of the Far West—early discovery, zealous monkish exploration, daring voyages in trackless unknown seas, and the descent of curious strangers. Bold Sir Francis Drake, Cabrillo, Viscaino, Portala, the good Junipero Serra of sainted memory, live again in these recitals.
Day by day passes. No news from the Americans at bay in the wilds of the Klamath. By courier the Don has heard of Castro's feeble moves. He toils along with his cavalry, guns, and foot soldiers, whom Fremont defied from behind the rocky slopes of Hawk's Peak. The foreigners are all conspiring.
A cloud of government agents are scouring the valleys for aid to send a column to attack Fremont. It had been a pride of Don Miguel's military career to assist warlike Vallejo to drive the foreigners from Monterey in 1840. He is ready for the fray again.
The Commandante gnashed his teeth when he heard, in 1842, at Lagunitas, that the strangers had returned. He remembers the shameful day of October 19, 1842, when the Yankee frigates covered Monterey with their guns, while Commodore Jones hoisted the stars and stripes for a day or so. Always before the English.
Though it was disowned, this act showed how easily the defenceless coast could be ravaged. Many times did he thank the Blessed Virgin that his domain was far away in the inland basin. There his precious herds are safe from the invader.
There is danger for Valois in the Commandante's scowl when the saddest May day of his life comes. A rider on relay horses hands him a fateful despatch.
"Curse the Gringos!" He strikes his table till the glasses ring.