"It is a message from Doña Carlota, at the San Fernando ranch," he said, looking his son straight in the eyes. Don Abrahan stood then a moment, taking his breath in such long inspiration as a man draws it when he fortifies himself for some tremendous ordeal.
"Your suspicions are confirmed. She is hiding him," he said.
Chapter VIII
THE TEETH OF A MAN
Doña Carlota, cousin of Don Abrahan, kept her candle burning late that night. She drew the drapery of her chamber window aside to show that the house was awake, herself seated discreetly out of sight of any passing eye. With crochet needle and fine silk thread she worked upon the mantilla that had employed her fingers many months, and would so employ them until the ripening of grapes.
There was a weight of trouble upon the breast of Doña Carlota that night, a haven broad enough to harbor many troubles, yet in which few had come to anchor in her placid years. She was as round and fat as an old hen pigeon, small in the face, her chin merged into her neck, her black hair pulled rigorously back from her shallow forehead in what seemed an attempt to give sternness to a countenance that had no more severity in it than a cake. Even trouble could do no more than give it a comical little look of appeal.
Between love and duty Doña Carlota had suffered these two days. At the last she yielded to duty, as she would have deferred to religion, and the thing was done. Now she waited as it drew on toward midnight, listening for the sound of horses coming from the south. When she felt a flood of drowsiness coming over her, threatening to smother her like a clam on the beach, she fumbled beneath the half-finished mantilla for her rosary. Yet she had quakings and doubts; she suffered tremors of cold fears.
At ten minutes before midnight Doña Carlota believed she had expected too much of Dan Abrahan; he would not come that night. At five minutes past the hour, as she stood with hand on the drawn drapery to let it fall and shut the candlelight from the road, a dog barked before an Indian shepherd's hut. His alarm was taken up, as a cock's crow goes onward over the land from straining throat to throat, from the edge of the world in the west to the very shores of dawn. Men came riding into the dooryard. Don Abrahan was at the door.
Doña Carlota hastened to open to the magistrate's command, even to the command of his presence, before his hand was lifted to the panel.