Then she turned to the big gravestone close at hand, and moved the wreaths of red carnations so that she might read the words inscribed. From these she soon knew that this was the family burial place of the de Valencias—that here rested the former owners of the San Antonio Rancho, the beloved parents of two children, Manuel and Rosetta.
“Manuel,”
“Rosetta”—she repeated the names. The latter awakened no memory, but when she filled out the former to “Don Manuel de Valencia,” she instantly recalled the old-time bandit of whom she had heard many a tale.
“The White Wolf,” she murmured eagerly.
“Yes, yes. His father once owned the rancho, and that was the cause of the deadly feud—the Vendetta of the Hills. But I thought all that was forgotten. Yet here are the beautiful fresh flowers.”
Seating herself on a flat monument near by, Merle pondered, piecing things together. “Sister”—the cross must mark the grave of the girl Rosetta, and have been erected by her brother, Don Manuel. Then whose hand had strewn the roses? Mr. Robles! In a flash she knew that Mr. Robles was Don Manuel.
And her father, too! The further thought came with such suddenness, with such absolute conviction of certainty, that for a moment she felt appalled. Her father the notorious robber chief, the desperado on whose head a price had been set, the outlaw who had defied the whole state of California to arrest him. Somehow she felt no shame—Don Manuel de Valencia had been a sort of heroic knight-errant in all the stories she had heard—his hand only against the rich, his heart always for the poor and oppressed, his attitude toward the intrusive gringos quite justified by the sharp practice whereby he had been robbed of his patrimonial acres. It was this very story of wrong which had been one of the reasons that had from the first predisposed the household at La Siesta to despise the Thurston family at the Rancho San Antonio.
Then from thinking of Don Manuel, Merle’s mind passed to Ricardo Robles—the courteous, dignified, generous, lovable man she had known all her life, the very man whom she had rejoiced that day to call her own father. Don Manuel could be judged only by this standard, and her heart went out again to Mr. Robles, whatever the name which he had formerly worn.
The shadows were closing around her, the night air bit sharply, and Merle arose. Two or three of the rose blooms had fallen beyond the lines of white stones that marked the graves. Merle advanced, and picking these up gently, placed them on the breasts of the sleeping dead. Her own kith and kin! Now she realized how she came to have brown eyes and raven tresses—the blood of Spain was in her veins. With this thought throbbing in her heart, she left the cemetery and hurried away for home.
Tia Teresa was the only Roman Catholic at La Siesta, a devout member of the faith of her fathers and of her childhood days with which no one around her had ever sought to interfere. Her room was her private chapel, a curtained recess at one end being fitted up with a crucifix, a small altar, and a prie-dieu.