At last, the conflict still continuing in his breast, he slowly arose from his seat on the stone bench, and slowly walked back into the town; but he took the streets by the hospital and the market-place, thus leaving the arroyo of the ojo de agua far out of his path. As he entered the barracks the sentinel looked at him curiously. “Oho! there has been a quarrel,” he thought. “To quarrel with ‘La Reina,’ my little captain must be a very great fool!”
The noise and confusion, the loud talking and coarse laughter of the barracks jarred on Pedro, and presently he went out again. Walking without purpose, he retraced unconsciously his steps toward the Alameda. Then, finding of a sudden an object, he walked on rapidly until the shady lanes beyond the Alameda were traversed and he stood at the gate of the Campo Santo. Reverently he entered between the stone pillars of the gate-way and stood in the presence of the holy dead.
In a shady corner of the old grave-yard he seated himself upon a stone that had fallen from the wall, and took up again resolutely the problem that he had to solve. There in the perfect peace and stillness, with only the dead about him for witnesses, the great battle of his life was fought and won. His own faith in his manhood came back to him and gave him strength; the doubt and trouble were cast out of his soul; a steadfast light shone clearly upon the way that he must go. And the silent counselors around him confirmed his choice. By the very utterness of their silence, as it seemed to him, they were as strong voices declaring that Love is but the dying daughter of Time, while Honor is the deathless son of Eternity.
When he stood up, the fight ended, he was very pale, and sweat stood in great drops upon his forehead; but in every line of his figure was firmness. Erect and steadily—with something of the feeling, as he bethought him, that had upheld him once when leading his men upon a most desperate charge—he marched between the graves and out again through the gate-way. His resolute step was in keeping with his resolute purpose. Love lowered her sword and fell back, conquered. The path of Honor was clear.
Being cheered by her prayer and by the good saint’s promise that it should be granted, Pancha went home blithely and with a heart at rest. And further cheer came to her from her mother, the excellent Catalina. By profession, this good Catalina was a lavandera. Hers was a vicarious virtue, for while her washing was endless, its visible results rarely had any perceptible connection with herself. Indeed, it is a fact that the washer-women of Mexico are upheld by so lofty a sense of their duty to their employers that only by the operation of some extraordinary law of chance is it that their own garments ever get washed at all.
Down by the edge of the clear stream, in company with many other washer-women, Catalina practised her honorable vocation, squatted upon the ground and having in front of her a broad, flat stone. On this stone she soaped and rubbed and squeezed each separate garment until her fine knowledge of her art told her that cleanliness had been achieved, and that for the perfecting of her work was needed only copious rinsing in the running stream. Close beside her, always, was a little fire, whereon rested a little boiler; and thence smoke and steam curled up together amidst the branches of the overhanging trees. On the low bushes near by were spread the drying clothes; in the middle distance stood out the straw-thatched hut; and beyond, for background, were trees and bushes and huts and half-hidden stone walls. And as near her as their perverse spirits would permit them to come were the twins, Antonio and Antonia, scantily clad or not clad at all, usually engaged in some small evil, or else basking like two little brown lizards in the sun. Some day an artist will come to Monterey who will paint Catalina at her work with all her picturesque surroundings; and if he paints the picture well, he will thereafter awake to find himself famous.
Pancha, joining this group, and perfecting it by standing erect beside the bubbling boiler, was further cheered by Catalina’s confident talk concerning the certainty of Pepe’s success. Manuel had stopped at the jacal on his way homeward—coming sleepily back from his vigilant duties on the city watch—to leave the good news that a detachment of the contraresguardo really had been sent away early that morning toward Garcia—quite in the opposite direction from that whence Pepe would come. There could be no doubt about this assuring fact, for one of his fellow serenos, being on duty near the barracks, actually had seen the force depart. So it was clear that the most important part of the promise made to Pepe by his employers had been fulfilled. The other part, the massing of the rurales in the wrong place at the critical moment, might now confidently be counted upon—and this made sure that Pepe would accomplish safely his unostentatious yet triumphal entry into Monterey. As became the prospective mother-in-law of the hero of this noble adventure, Catalina greatly rejoiced; and Pancha, listening to such heartening news, was still more firmly convinced that the good Saint Francis had heard her prayer.
But even while these comforting thoughts upheld the hopes of the watchers in Monterey, Chona’s treachery was doing its work. In the early morning of the third day after Pepe’s departure there had been a tough fight south of Lampazos—and the end of it was the capture by the contraresguardo of one of Pepe’s three trains. Broken by a sudden charge, the guard of smugglers was overcome; one or two were killed, half a dozen were captured, and the rest saved themselves by the speed of their horses and their knowledge of the mountain paths. The men of the contraresguardo were jubilant. But there was no joy in the heart of their captain. He had but the cold satisfaction of knowing that he had done his duty—and bitter he had found that duty to do.