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This etext differs from the original only in that a few minor typographical errors have been corrected.

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“Because of One Little White Vampire”

FOR THE SOUL OF RAFAEL

BY

MARAH ELLIS RYAN

AUTHOR OF “TOLD IN THE HILLS” “THE BONDWOMAN” ETC.

WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS FROM
PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN EXPRESSLY FOR THIS BOOK
BY
HAROLD A. TAYLOR

DECORATIVE DESIGNS BY
RALPH FLETCHER SEYMOUR

ELEVENTH EDITION

CHICAGO
A.C. McCLURG & CO.
1920

Copyright
A.C. McClurg & Co.
1906

Entered at Stationers Hall, London

Photographs by Harold A. Taylor, by permission of
The Hallett-Taylor Company

The Author is indebted to the Southwest Society of the
Archæological Institute of America for the
Spanish Music contained in
this volume

Published May 12, 1906
Second Edition, Sept. 15, 1906
Third Edition, Oct. 1, 1906
Fourth Edition, Dec. 5, 1906
Fifth Edition, Dec. 15, 1906
Sixth Edition, Feb. 11, 1907
7th Edition, Aug. 31, 1907
8th Edition, Jan. 12, 1909
9th Edition, April 30, 1909
10th Edition, Oct. 15, 1910
11th Edition, Nov. 10, 1914

M.A. DONOHUE & CO., PRINTERS AND BINDERS, CHICAGO

Á MIS AMIGOS DE CALIFORNIA

que siempre me han prestado su ayuda con
aquella bonded que les es caracteristica.

M.E.R.

ILLUSTRATIONS

CONTENTS

Capitan de un barco
Me escribio un papel
Que si ne queria
Casarme con el.

FOR THE SOUL OF RAFAEL

CHAPTER I

Over the valley of the Mission of the Tragedies, the grass was knee-deep in March that year. The horses galloping from the mesa trail down to Boca de la Playa (the mouth of the ocean) were fat and sleek and tricky as they ran neck and neck past the corral of the little plain, and splashed in glee through the San Juan River, where it ends its short run from the Sierras to the Pacific.

Where the west trail hugged the hill, two men sat their broncos, watching that no strays break for the mesa above; and beyond the cross on Avila's hill, other vaqueros guarded El Camino Real (the road royal), lest in the whirl and dash of the round-up rebels might break for the open and a stampede undo all the riding since dawn of day.

High above on the western cliff a giant head of cactus reared infernal arms and luminous bloom. One immense clump threw a shadow across the cliff road where it leaves the river plain and winds along the cañon to the mesa above the sea,—the road over which in the old days the Mission Indians bore hides to the ships and flung them from the cliffs to the waiting boats below.

A man stood back of the cactus watching with tireless eyes the dividing of the herds and the quick work of the vaqueros as their excited mustangs raced for a stray or a rebel from the ranks. A dark serape was at his feet, the dust of the roads on his face, and when he removed his sombrero to light a cigarro in its shelter, there was disclosed a great shock of black hair worn unusually long, and matching in unkemptness the full beard covering his face almost to his black velvety eyes.

They were the one youthful feature in an otherwise weather-worn visage, and at the sound of horse hoofs on the road, they opened wider, listening, alert, yet he did not turn to look whence the sounds came. Instead, he dropped silently to the serape, crushed the end of the cigarro against a cactus leaf, and waited, as still and as safe from detection as a lizard of the mesa in a sage thicket.

He could see clearly the face of Don Antonio, the major-domo, and instinctively his right hand reached for his gun. Then he shrugged his shoulders at his own folly, and bent his head to listen. Don Antonio was speaking Americano to a man riding beside him, and the man behind the cactus frowned impatiently,—the villanous tongue was an added grievance. A few rebellious animals had made a dash for the cliff, and Don Antonio waved his sombrero and ranged his horse across the road. His companion did the same, and to give the vaqueros time to cross the river after them, the two stood guard in the shadow of the cactus, and rolled cigarros and smoked leisurely, while the horsemen, in jingling spurs and all the bravery of the Mexican riders' outfit, circled and lassoed the pick of the herd for the Apache work of the government in the desert lands.

"It is quicker done than it was a year ago," the American remarked approvingly, "and the horses are in better condition. If you can let us have the five hundred from the La Paz ranges, there should be no trouble about making up the other five hundred from the San Mateo."

"Not any, señor," agreed Don Antonio, "I send a man down to have them round-up for next week. You no want that they begin sooner than that?"

"To-morrow," returned the other with smiling decision.

"To-morrow! Holy Maria and José! You will cut out the fiesta and the barbecue always given for the army men? Señor Bryton, the Don Miguel and Don Rafael Arteaga will feel offend if you refuse their hospitality except for the little—little while, the horse herd is arranged for."

"Sorry to offend the young men," observed the other. "But since Don Miguel is ranging in some other part of California, and your Don Rafael is in Mexico getting married or making love,—which is it?—I reckon they will not miss us much."

"No, señor, it is not to marry down there, only to make it all arrange. His mother, the Doña Luisa, is there in Mexico since San Pascual; but Doña Luisa will be more old and crippled than she is now, before she lets Don Rafael be marry outside her own Mission."

"So they come back here for the ceremony?"

"Sure! Doña Luisa she marry Don Vicente, here in San Juan Capistrano. It is here he have the big trouble with the padre, and the padre put the curse on him that long time ago. It is here that he is brought back dead from San Pascual. And now when the sons have make much trouble, all are dead but two, and when Doña Luisa, who was so proud, has only Indian grandchildren, she wants to marry Rafael to a señorita who is half a nun, that the curse may be lifted. She think that girl do more to keep him from walking in Miguel's shoes than prayers to the saints can do; and it may be,—who knows? I hear you talking of the padre's curse to the Alcalde, so I know you hearing the story."

"Um—something of church property south of here, wasn't it?" remarked the American. "Yes, I remember. There goes a mare that is a beauty for a mustang."

"Some few years, and you no getting that strong, wild stock some more," he observed. "Miguel and Rafael want English stallions and such other breeds. They will have English stock and American customs. The saints keep Doña Luisa from hearing them all. I mean no discourtesy, señor, but she is an old woman now, and left her home because she would not live in your government. She comes back for duty and the marriage; but the old never change, señor, and she is hating it till she die."

The American cast his eyes northward where the heights of San Jacinto stood guard over the beautiful valley. Willows marked the course of Trabuco Creek and San Juan River, and on the plateau between them gleamed the ruined dome of the old mission, a remnant of beauty such as the ranging American meets with in Latin lands, seldom in his own, and admires, and wonders if it was worth while, and drifts away again, but never quite forgets.

Yellow-white it gleamed like an opal in a setting of velvety ranges under turquoise skies. About its walls were the clustered adobes of the Mexicans, like children creeping close to the feet of the one mother; and beyond that the illimitable ranges of mesa and valley, of live-oak groves and knee-deep meadows, of countless springs and cañons of mystery, whence gold was washed in the freshets; and over all, eloquent, insistent, appealing, the note of the meadow-lark cutting clearly through the hoof-beats of the herd and the calls of the vaqueros.

"I think I should hate it, too," he said at last. "They lived like kings and made their own laws in those days. After being a queen of all this, it would be hard to be subject to new forms."

"That is it, señor, she never get used to like the American flag. That why she want always that Don Rafael marry South, a good Catholic, and a señorita of Mexico. She only living for that, they say. Now when it is done she die in peace."

"And Rafael, how will he manage his American deals when—"

Don Antonio shrugged his shoulders doubtfully.

"Who knows? I glad I living my young life in other days. The fences have make ruin of the country in the north; after a while it is down here all the same. All cut up in little gardens. Who knows?"

The American restrained a smile as he thought of the sixty-five miles they had ridden across, and only one little German colony where fence or hedges were in evidence. For the rest all was fenced on the east by the mountains and on the west by the sea. On the north the Santa Barbara range would perhaps serve as a barricade, and south even the Mexican line raised no obstacle to roving herds.

"The fences will not come in our day, and it is all now to be a pleasure ground for your gay Don Rafael."

"Not so much of a pleasure ground as it looks, señor," observed Don Antonio dryly. "The same curse works still. It is good he marries a convent girl; it takes the prayers of Doña Luisa, and a saint besides, to clear these ranges of Barto Nordico, el Capitan."

The man on the serape shrugged his shoulders and lifted his head, resting it on his hands to listen better.

"Nordico? Oh, yes! the man with an eye for good horses."

"If it were only an eye," grumbled Don Antonio, "but the devil seems to have a hundred hands, and his reata touches only the first stock on the Arteaga ranches."

"Not only the Arteagas', I suppose?"

"Oh, you not hearing that?" and the older man's tone expressed surprise. "It going with the curse, maybe, we not knowing. Old Don Vicente have the brother Ramon, but Vicente buy up all Ramon's land some way. Ramon goes crazy mad, loco, on that account. And then his son, Barto, he study for the priest, that is when the war comes, and he is only little yet. He running away from school to fight; but all he can do is to carry the letters, he is so little and can ride so like the devil. He never is content to the American flags, no more than Doña Luisa, so he just keeping on to fight, and the government no getting him."

"Do they try?" asked the American.

"Do they—do they try? Since he joined Juan Flores, one dozen men in Capistrano have the sword cut or the bullet mark, who have gone to try for that reward. It is good money, but no one getting it. He is a devil."

"But I don't understand. You make him out an Arteaga, yet he is called Nordico?"

"Oh, he hating the Arteagas, so he taking his mother's name. He take the government mail sometimes, and he takes the Arteaga horses always, and no one ever finds him any place. While men follow his trail for the mountains, he is out in a boat on the sea. The saints send that he does not meet the marriage gifts of Don Rafael."

The man behind the cactus fairly held his breath.

"Whew! would he attack the Mission or the town?"

"It would not be the first time," returned Antonio, "but it is of the bride-chests on the journey that I speak. Sixty miles of land they must cover from San Diego, and they cost more than a herd of horses."

"Rafael can replace the gifts," observed the American, "so long as his bandit cousin does not kidnap the bride; but even that, I suppose, might be done in this land of lonely ranges."

The man under the cactus nodded and showed his teeth in an appreciative smile. He had met good fortune for his long vigil; it was a day of luck, and he crossed himself.

The vaqueros had circled the rebellious animals, and headed them back.

"It is true, the horses are in better condition this year," conceded the major-domo as they watched the horses loping along the river side. "Do you send them all together, or by the five hundred, across the range, Señor Bryton?"

"By the five hundred, I think the lieutenant said," replied Bryton. "It is not easy to feed more in one bunch on the journey."

The man behind the cactus arose stealthily and stretched his arms as the hoof-beats grew more faint.

"Señor Bryton—eh?" and he shrugged his shoulders contentedly. "The clever Bryton who put us off the track last year and took the stock by the north! This time he will not be so clever. Still, he gives a man ideas in the head,—may he have an easy death for that! Rafael's good friend who picks the good horses for the good government!"

Corre muchacho a la yglesia,
Dile al sacristan mayor,
Que repique las campanas, tan! tan!

CHAPTER II

"Men make plans, and the devil makes other plans—and the devil's plan has always the luck with it."

Don Antonio had expressed himself thus to the army men, who fumed and fretted at delays incident to the funeral ceremonies of Miguel Arteaga, for whom the Mission bells clanged in the gray of a morning, and the word went out that he lay trampled into the dust of the Santa Ana ranch. A thousand head of stampeding cattle had gone over him, and the younger brother—the handsome Rafael—was now the head of the Arteaga family. And with half the horses selected for the government, the work had stopped short. There was no head to anything now until Rafael arrived. In vain the army men swore, and went farther south to secure mounts for the regiment. They had to come back to San Juan, and then it was that Keith Bryton, with his knowledge of the people and of the country, came to their aid.

He heard that the debonair Rafael had landed at San Pedro the day of the death, and had quietly lost himself from the dismal ceremonies awaiting him in his own province. Miguel could not be seen; what use was it to witness the howling mob of Indian retainers?

Bryton, knowing something and surmising more of the situation, held the army men with some promise to "fix things," and secretly despatched a trusted vaquero with a letter to San Pedro, allowing the new heir for his return just the time necessary for the next ship to come into the harbor, and the extra day's drive from Los Angeles. In the meantime a personal letter giving orders to Don Antonio to hand over the stock as per contract was needed badly in San Juan, if Don Rafael ever cared again for government favors.

The vaquero rode back in forty-eight hours with the order. The work of rounding-up began over again, and only Keith Bryton and Don Antonio knew how it had come about.

Slowly affairs began to assume their usual routine. People began to talk of other things; and only Doña Teresa, the widow of Miguel, continued to go daily to the dark old chapel back of the Mission dining-room, and kneel in prayer before the wooden saints in the niches. She sat in the patio of Juan Alvara's house, and stared listlessly from one square of tiling in the pavement to another. The priest had just left her after the perfunctory words of solace, and was refreshing himself with a glass of brandy preparatory to a game of malilla. The week had been one of trial; it always is so when the death is one of accident—no one is ready.

The Doña Teresa had been a pretty girl in the days when Miguel Arteaga serenaded her endlessly, and her family had insisted that the marriage should not be postponed to add to their sleepless nights. One year—two years, and the serenades were a thing of a former life, and so was fat Teresa's beauty. From the willows was brought again the Indian girl whose two children had been christened in his name. She looked after the servants who cooked for the vaqueros. Her manner was ever quiet and submissive to Doña Teresa, who accepted her as better than any of the others of the same class. Doña Teresa had no children, and envied though she was not jealous of Aguada of the smoke-black eyes and the babies. And it was Aguada who came to Doña Teresa in the patio, undid her bonnet-strings, and bathed her face and hands with cool water.

Past the veranda of Juan Alvara, at San Juan, all the world of Southern California found its way. There was a tavern down the street, where the stages stopped between Los Angeles and San Diego, but Juan Alvara's house was the one dwelling where distinguished travellers were entertained, after the hospitality of the padres at the Mission was a thing of the past. It was up to this veranda Keith Bryton rode from the second round-up at Boca de la Playa. He was tired and dusty, and accepted gratefully the wine for which the old man sent when he saw his guest approaching.

Alvara did not usually like "Gringos"; but at the time the Juan Flores bandits were holding up the town for ransom, it was Keith Bryton who had gathered a posse of men, including the sheriff, and headed them again for San Juan. Grain-sacks were piled along the roof of the Mission as a barricade, and behind them some riflemen guarded, as best they could, the several families who had fled to the walls of the church for protection.

Only one store had been burned, and one store-keeper killed, when the help came—thanks to Bryton, and that one ride broke down all barriers for the young Gringo in San Juan. He now never rode past Alvara's veranda without a halt for a glass of wine, or a chat, or even that best test of understanding, a rest in silence together, looking out across the river to the blue shadows of the hills.

This day as the young man sat smoking in such silence, viewing idly the passing Indians whose dark faces were lit by the rosy glow of the lowering sun, and watching the circling doves whose white wings caught flashes of pink from pink clouds above, the older man, regarding his thoughtful face, asked after a quiet interval, "What is it, my friend?"

The handsome bronzed young fellow stretched wide his arms with a great sigh, and laughed shortly.

"Foolishness, Don Juan, much foolishness. I was homesick for a something I never knew, so I left Los Angeles and came here to find it. Can you understand so crazy a thing as that?"

The old man nodded slowly.

"It is a girl—no?"

The young man laughed again, without mirth.

"Which of them?" and Bryton made a gesture toward a group of dark faces across the plaza. "There is pretty Lizetta, Teresa; and if one wants the other sort, there is Chola Martina staring at us both under her mantilla."

"It is you she stares at. The Lieutenant danced with her last night. He is just off the ranges, so she is to-day crazy over the Americanos. No—it is not any of such girls you are for."

"I reckon not," agreed the young fellow. "I think it is just the atmosphere, and perhaps the old monastery. The pictures of Mexican towns paint themselves on the memory and stay there. Were you ever in Old Mexico, Don Juan?"

"Not I; never have I been a travelled man. But you—?"

"I was down there a year ago," answered Bryton, looking hard at the hills. "I found a town in a valley like this,—there were just the same sort of 'dobes, and the same sort of big church walls,—only it was a nuns' cloister, instead of a deserted monastery."

"And—?"

"I'll never go back, but—I'll never forget it! That old broken wall, and Moorish chimney, and the doves—they all belong to the same sort of picture. I come here to sit and moon over them once in a while, that's all!"

The old man regarded him with shrewd, kindly eyes. He had the strain of Spanish blood, condoning many follies of youth.

"So!" he said, kindly. "Thou comest here to dance with the girls of San Juan, that the other girl may be forgotten? Ai—yi!—these other sweethearts are fellows who make much trouble!—so?"

"It is something more than a sweetheart keeps me away," remarked the young fellow after a slight pause. "A mere sweetheart is not such a barricade; most of us are perverse enough to think it rather an incentive."

"You too, my friend?"

"Who knows?"

The old man puffed out another cigaretto and threw the stump away before he spoke.

"The wives of other men it is wise to go clear of, my friend."

Keith laughed more than the remark called for; in fact, his amusement dispelled the murky thoughts by which he had been driven to the hospitable veranda.

"True—very true; but which of us is always wise?"

Alvara made no reply to this, only shook his head, and the other, noting the perplexity of it, chuckled.

"Don't lose sleep over my depravity," he suggested. "I am no blacker than the rest of the sheep."

"Even then thou wouldst fall far short of whiteness," remarked the older man. "The padre swears that San Juan will have worse than earthquakes if there is no reform."

"That is bad," said Keith, with owl-like gravity.

"It is bad, señor—and it is true. I heard him say it but an hour ago. He was playing malilla with old Henrico and won three pesos. He says it is wrong to race horses on Sunday, since José went under and had his neck broke. José, like Miguel, had not confessed, and the padre wants money for a mass."

"Will he get it?"

"Sure. The boys will not see him stay in purgatory for thirty pesos. They are throwing dice at Don Eduardo's now, to see who will pay."

"If it was the horse of Don Eduardo, and José had ridden for him ten years, why cannot Don Eduardo pay?"

"Don Eduardo is English. The Englishmen are used to going to hell."

"They would deserve to go for that, if for nothing else," commented Bryton, as the report of a blast shook the ground, and across the plaza the air was filled with flying rock and brick and plaster; and then a great cloud of dust drifted upward as the Mexican workmen strolled back to their task of tearing down the old church of San Juan Capistrano, whose massive stone walls it had taken the padres and their neophytes so many years of toil to complete.

"Not a church equal to it in the Californias; not a church equal to it dreamed of in the States when it was being built!" and the young fellow stared moodily at the devastation of it. "Can't the bishop stop that?"

"Ten years the Church fight to get it back. They must win some day—oh, yes—sure!"

"But what will they have when the suit is won, if this is allowed to go on?"

"Who knows?" queried Alvara, placidly. "We may be in our graves, señor, and not here to see it. When Eduardo wants foundation for an adobe, he blows down a stone wall; when he wants walls for a well, he blows down the arches of the patio, until bricks enough fall. It is quicker than to burn new ones."

"But the padre?"

"There is the man who is padre of San Juan Capistrano in these days," said Juan Alvara, briefly.

A man was coming up the middle of the road, his boots wet and muddy from irrigating-ditches, a short black pipe between his teeth. He halted to chaffer with an Indian woman who carried a basket of fish from the sea.

Contemptuously viewing the modest sea bass, he said: "Fish only a foot long—what good are they? Who is fool enough to buy such?"

"It is not to sell, father. Tia Concepcion, who is much sick, ask for these; they are to give, for she is sick."

"Humph! a sick woman to eat ten fish! They will be sending for me in the middle of the night for prayers. You go to my cook, and leave seven of these with him in the kitchen for my supper."

The Indian lowered her head and passed on to the Mission. The padre crossed the plaza to where the group of girls stood chatting at the open gate of a patio. At his approach they fell silent, but a few brief words scattered them quickly toward their several homes, and the man of the church tramped on, the dust of the road sticking to his wet boots.

"All what brings a price and is overlooked by the Englishmen, this padre will dig up," said Juan Alvara. "He is getting rich from many fields."

"Many fields?"

"Many fields—the church, the little ranch he has picked up, and the game of monte or malilla. He is the new sort of priest they send these days from Catalonia. No one in San Juan confesses now until Padre Sanchez comes past. If the church wins, the Mission will be blown down all the same, so long while some one pay four bits a load for brick. All is much changed. Father Sanchez is another kind—a holy man and of God."

Alvara lifted his sombrero reverently.

"The vaqueros coming with the band of horses from the beach soon," he observed. "We will go to the corrals, and help you to forget the girl—no?"

"I'm not so anxious to forget, I reckon—the girl is only a sort of dream girl. This trip was not so much to forget a girl as to—you remember Teddy, my half-brother?"

"Don Teddy? Sure—he was the life of the valley when he came to San Juan."

"Yes. Well, Teddy's married; he has married the woman who, you said, had the face of some angel."

"Not Angela, the señora who is Don Eduardo's English cousin?"

The other nodded his head grimly.

"But—" the old man stared at him sharply, and then suddenly recovered himself.

"Teddy says his wife wants to come down here while he is in Mexico," grunted Bryton. "What the devil can I do with her if she comes now?"

"You are a relative now—is it not so?" asked the old man, with an affectionate smile. "She is your sister."

"Sister be—" If he meant blessed, he did not look it as he tramped the veranda. "I start just the same for the south ranch to-morrow. If she comes, she can go to Mac's tavern, or to the Mission with the ghosts!"

"That would not be good to do," said Alvara seriously. "The wife of your brother must come to my house. Teresa, the widow of Miguel, is here; her English is not anything, but it is good that your sister have a lady with her in the house. Teresa, she feel very bad. Don Teddy's wife was once a widow; she will understand."

Doña Angela

"Will it make many changes in the business—his death?" asked Bryton.

"It will lose the ranches more quickly to the English and the Americans," stated the older man. "Rafael will have all the money now, and—it is good that he gets married quick. The girl—she is Estevan's daughter—she likes no English—so they say."

"Oh!—Estevan's daughter—Estevan's! I heard a queer story of that name once—a queer story!"

"He left when the Americanos came to California. Always he fought against the Americanos. He was a strong soldier, and he die there in Mexico, and all his money is for the girl if she marry; for the convent if she not marry at all."

"It was another Estevan," said Keith. "It was a story of an old Aztec temple that would make your hair curl! Might have been a relation of your soldier Estevan."

"There may be the same name in Mexico, but Felipe Estevan had no brothers."

Keith rolled a cigarro, and did not notice that the old man's hand trembled as he did the same, and that his eyes were striving in vain to appear careless.

"My Spanish was pretty queer those days, and I did not grasp the details of the story. You find all sorts of half-buried towns and temples and palaces in the country—queer places no one on earth can tell who built. But the temple was a plain fact. Stonework cut for all the world like that," he added, pointing to the gray Mission ruin. "Zig-zags on the cornices and Aztec suns just the same over the portals. There were great old walls left, but no roof. Trees grew all through it, and right in the open was something like a bench covered with queer Indian figures of fight, and sacrifices, and the only one I ever saw down there carved out of marble."

"Yes—a bench of marble!" Alvara was listening intently, nodding his head, and forgetting to smoke.

"Well, an old miner down there told me a lurid story of the last Indian sacrifice offered up on that altar. He found the body and helped to bury it—the name was Estevan."

"It is a good name," said the old man.

"Fine! but wherever he had lived he was used to a different sort of woman from the one he met at the old temple. She was of pure Spanish and Aztec stock. The women in those temples don't usually appear to count, but she came of a long line of Aztec priests. After the Catholic Church got hold of them, they became Catholic priests instead of Aztec ones, and served the same God under a different name."

"So?" remarked Alvara.

"It seems Estevan drifted into the country with considerable money—cattle-man, I think; anyway, he had a ranch of some sort—and fell dead in love with the sister of one of these hereditary priests, and they were married. The old miner said a lot of queer old Indians gathered from the Lord only knew where, and had a great bonfire and crazy dances and ceremonies at the temple the night she was married. They were waiting for a new priest of their own old religion to be born some day and every marriage in that family was of interest."

"Well?"

"Well—I don't know how to make clear that there are wives in the world to whom brown girls in the willows are—well—they are absolutely taboo to the husbands—understand?"

Alvara nodded silently.

"This Estevan was not used to women like that. He was crazy over the priest's sister till he got her, and then he was like many other men—he went back to the brown girls."

"And then?"

"Then that old Aztec tribe seemed to hear of it on the wind—no one knows. A brown girl was caught by the Indians one night, her long hair cut short to her head; and the next day Estevan was found tied on that altar with the same hair plaited into ropes. The heart had been cut from the body and rested in a little urn or vase carved in the stone of the wall. There were no other mutilations or signs of cruelty—it was more like a pagan ceremony than anything else. The girl's hair was the only clue as to what the cause might have been."

"And the wife and the child—what did the man tell you of them?"

"Child?" Keith stared at the old man. "I did not mention a child; never heard there was one. The widow of Estevan entered a convent and was never heard of again. The old miner said the priest took charge of the property—for the Church, he supposed! I think of that old temple every time I see the cactus and Aztec sun cut in this gray-green stone of your church here; but I had forgotten the name of Estevan until you mentioned it."

"It is a good name," added Alvara again. "Felipe Estevan was wild and a fighter, but he was not a bad man in California. He had no wife, and the girls all wore beads he bought—but why not? He knew we have only one life to live here!"

"True, señor; and the story of the tragedy made me forget poor Teddy's comedy—one I can't laugh at yet."

"Some day you ask us to a wedding, and you will forget that marriage is a madness," said Alvara.

And then Doña Teresa came slowly out on the veranda in her many folds of black. There was a hard glitter in her little black eyes, but her lips curved ever so slightly in a courteous greeting as Keith Bryton bent over her hand.

"I hear how you telling that story, señor," she remarked, pleasantly. "You think that it is good to tie a gentleman on a bench, and put his heart on a shelf—no?"

"Good? Why, it was the most ghastly heathenish thing I ever heard of. But—"

"But you Americanos think most of the women who do such things," she persisted; "you think it better than to let him live where there are the brown girls."

"Oh—señora?"

He saw that he had irrevocably damned himself in her eyes. She might speak to him courteously through a long lifetime, but one of the institutions of their pastoral life—an institution ignored by the usual guest in the land—had been referred to in a sarcastic manner, and he knew that never again could he expect the good will of Teresa Arteaga. The allusion had been the most distant, the most unintentional, but at the first word the blood of the Mexican was arrayed against the Gringo.

"You think it well when that wife put the knife in the heart of the husband?" she continued. "(Yes, Aguada, I will have a cup of orange juice, and you may bring wine for the gentlemen.) You think your American ladies do that same thing—no?"

"Oh—the old miner never suggested that it was the woman did it—the wife!" he protested. "It was thought to be the work of the old hill tribe of Indians."

"It was not alone the Indians," stated Doña Teresa, with sudden insight. "Men would not think to tie him with girl's hair. No, it was the wife."

Alvara looked at her warningly over his glass.

"If there are such wives in Mexico, we hope they stay there," he said. "Our own Indians make trouble enough for the padre and the alcalde. The kind you tell of are best left with their tribes in the hills."

For a little longer they talked of the new horses needed for the frontier warfare, and touched upon the chance of the Capitan's stealing them before they got across the divide.

"But there is no danger even of El Capitan now, when the Señor Don Bryton have put himself to help guard," remarked Teresa, eyeing him with a cat-like glance to discover if her sarcasm was appreciated. "We all feel very safe now in San Juan valley."

"With those brilliant army officers in town, you certainly should," he remarked, easily. "The women have always been the Capitan's best friends, and the officers are cutting him out!"

"He see too much—and he talk too much," said Teresa, as Bryton left them and walked leisurely down the road toward the inn and post-office.

"He means no harm," remarked Alvara. "The ways of the Americano are not our ways, but I like him better than the army men. He makes no scandals."

"If the army men make love to the girls, they keep quiet about it," returned Teresa. "But this man—he thinks himself too good for the 'brown girls' he talks of. Men who are too good should go to stay in the church and pray for the sinners!"

Alvara knew that no remark of Bryton's had been meant to reflect in the least on social conditions in San Juan. But what use to argue with an angry, jealous woman hunting for a grievance?

The widow of Miguel had gone through the years of jealous bitterness, the shock of Miguel's death, the knowledge that she would inherit but a widow's share, the nerve-wrenching strain of a Mexican funeral, the sight of her husband's Indian children beside the bier; but that had all been in the midst of the people who understood—where house-servants were often legacies to the estate from brother, or uncle, or cousin. But this man, who told of a wife that revenged herself, had unconsciously flung in her face a new standard; she hated him, and hated the sort of women he knew in his own country,—the white-faced women who had snow in their blood and did not understand!

Bryton tried in vain to think what he had said to annoy Teresa so exceedingly; could it have been his inquiring as to the estate? Surely, she must know that many persons were asking the same questions. Her brother-in-law, Rafael Arteaga, was such an uncertain quantity that wagers were plentiful as to his management of the several ranches. If he left them as Miguel had done, principally to the lawyers, it might not be so bad, but Rafael's disposition to make his own bargains made older people shake their heads. His mother, Doña Luisa, was old and ill. He could have time to make very bad bargains before she could make the journey from Mexico; and even then would she be physically able to take note of business details? All those questions Bryton had heard talked over and over. Also, the matter of the wedding,—would it be postponed because of the funeral? No one knew whether Doña Luisa and the bride were not on the way when the death occurred. Rafael had, it was understood, come ahead that he might make the preparations for their reception. A letter had also arrived saying that all things must be put in order at the dwelling-rooms of the Mission; it stated that the "donas"—the bride gifts—he had selected in Mexico might arrive any day. They had come by sea to San Pedro, and San Juan was in quite a flutter of excitement over its most important wedding in a generation.

The alcalde met Bryton, and incidentally mentioned that it was a pity the horse deal had not been held over for the week of the wedding; there would be barbecues and horse races for the latter part of the week.

"Sorry I can't stay," observed Bryton. "I'm keeping tab for the contractor on those cavalry horses, and must stay with the bunch, at least until they reach Los Angeles. Teddy has gone down into Mexico; if he stays, I may follow."

"Now that one of you boys is married, you should settle down and be a permanent citizen of some district,—what is the matter with this place?"

"It's the most beautiful valley I ever saw," agreed Bryton. "But for getting Teddy to locate sixty miles from town—never! And as to the lady in the case, she will insist always on an audience more—"

What more it would have to be was interrupted by the clatter of the stage down the street, and on the seat beside the driver was a little woman in pale blue flounces thick with dust, and a white hat with pink rosebuds dancing and swaying with the rock of the stage.

"God—" began Bryton, and then checked himself.

The alcalde smiled.

"Mrs. Ordway—or Mrs. Teddy Bryton now—looks pretty well satisfied with this as a temporary audience," he remarked, as he sauntered across the street to his own abode. Bryton's exclamation showed that he was by no means pleased to see her, and the alcalde did not care to witness a family reunion of that sort, so he walked away smiling.

The lady waved her hand and flung a bright smile toward the half-brother of her husband. He lifted his hat, but did not move from his tracks until the horses came to a halt, brought suddenly to their haunches by the driver, who was making a showy entrance into the village for the gratification of the lady.

"I've had a delightful trip from Los Angeles—thanks to Don Rafael," she called, gaily. "I never—never expect to drive so fast again. Come and help me down!"

But the slender, handsome Mexican beside her had leaped to the ground, and, sombrero in hand, was ready to perform that service before the American reached the stage.

"You are always the day after the fair, Keith," she remarked, her eyes narrowing in a smile. "I am a thousand times obliged to Señor Arteaga!"

"It is I who am honored, señora," he returned with a sweep of the sombrero, and one brief yet steady look into her eyes. Mrs. Bryton turned away with a pleased little smile, and proceeded to shake the dust from the ruffles of her sleeve.

Keith Bryton saw both the look and the smile, and it gave a tinge of coldness to his greeting.

"How do you do, Señor Arteaga?" he remarked. "Thank you for looking after Mrs."—the word seemed hard to say—"Bryton. Are you adding stage-driving to your other accomplishments?"

Rafael Arteaga had caused too much jealousy in his day not to suspect he recognized it in the attitude of the American, whom it was something of a victory to outrival.

"Only when there is extra precious cargo on board," he said, meaningly. "American ladies are rare in San Juan. I was the only one present to show our appreciation of such a visit."

"But I am not an American—never in this world!" she insisted. "It was only the accident of marriage took me to your Mexican America. I was born in London, and am a subject of the Queen! Don't ever fancy me an American!"

"Few people will make that mistake," said Bryton, dryly. "I suppose you know that your cousin and his wife are not here?"

"Oh, yes, I discovered that through Señor Arteaga when I was part way down. But he tells me the army men are here, and that there are always dances, horse races, and a general festival while they stay. I thought it might be worth while. Señor Arteaga will look after me if you are too busy."

"With many thanks for the honor, señora."

"The barbecues are over," said Bryton; "they were rather subdued this time, because of the funeral of Don Rafael's brother. I leave with the army men to-morrow for a trip farther north, and you had best return to Los Angeles, or go to your cousin in San Diego."

She pretended to busy herself concerning a bandbox on which the cord had broken, but her little white teeth bit into her lip. Rafael had entered the post-office with the driver of the stage.

"I am not interested in San Diego," she observed. "There must be somewhere in this row of adobes a place where a lady could stay."

"There is the tavern kept by Mac. You may be able to retain a room there alone, if no other women stop over."

"Share a room with strangers? But Don Rafael offered—"

"Don Rafael has only several adobes here, where the vaqueros eat and sleep—neither he nor his brother has lived here as a regular thing; when they do, they share the house of the major-domo, who has an Indian wife. The only privacy Don Rafael could assure you of would be to give you the key of the Mission."

"That graveyard! I must say you are not very brotherly, amigo—I learned some more words of Spanish on the way down! Well, if I must go to the awful tavern, I must! Do you suppose that villanous-looking black-and-tan in the serape will carry my boxes into the hotel? You've not said one civil word, Keith! Are Teddy and I to do the best we can without your blessing?" she asked, mockingly.

He looked at her slowly from head to foot, and back to her innocent wide-open blue eyes.

"I congratulate you," he said, briefly. "I will see that your belongings are taken to your room. The gentleman in the serape chances to be a Mexican Don, not accustomed to carting bandboxes."

"You are not very cordial in your congratulations," she observed, as if determined to break down his cold unconcern,—to make him say something.

"No, I'm not," he agreed, tersely. "If Teddy had given me any idea of it, you know he would not have been a married man now."

"Oh, I knew you would be jealous, no matter whom he married," she replied; "I told him so!"

"So I supposed. But if you want to secure a room alone, you'd better not delay. Apartments are rather at a premium in San Juan."

He walked with her past the admiring group of prominent citizens toward the patio of the inn. Several of the men swept sombreros to the earth as she passed. The cousin of Don Eduardo was a lady they must show special deference to, even if she had been ugly, which she certainly was not.

Most of them envied the tall, rather good-looking fellow swinging along by her side, but he did not seem as happy in the privilege as others would have been. Alvara, seeing himself forgotten for Don Eduardo's pretty blonde cousin, smiled a little, and continued his walk alone to the corral.

"She make him forget,—but she is not the woman," he said, shrewdly.

Mrs. Bryton surveyed the coarse furnishings of the adobe with disgust as she was led to the one room where she could secure sleeping accommodation. It contained three beds with as many different-colored spreads, queer little pillows, and drawn-work on one towel hanging on a nail. The floor had once been tiled with square Mission bricks; but many were broken, some were gone, and the empty spaces were so many traps for unwary feet. Names of former occupants were scratched in the whitewashed wall. There was no window, and but one door opening on the patio and to be fastened from within by a wooden bar.

"But this—there must be something better than this!" she exclaimed.

"It is the one home where you could make yourself understood. The proprietor chances to speak English. If you come without notifying your—relatives, you must take what you find, or go on to San Diego. Your cousin is there—also his wife."

She shrugged her shoulders, and dropped wearily to a wooden bench.

"I can't ride another mile—I'm dead tired. But you don't ask why I came!"

"That is your husband's affair, not mine," he returned. "If there is nothing else I can do for you, I will go and look after my own affairs. I start south in the morning."

"Because I came?" she demanded, with a slight smile. At sight of it his face flushed, and then the color receded while he regarded her steadily.

"Don't make any mistake about that," he suggested. "I did leave town out of impatience with another friend of mine, who was wasting his time with you. Of course he would not listen to me, and he has evidently told you. I liked him, and did not want to see him made a fool of."

"Oh, you are a silly!" she replied, unfastening her hat-string and glancing at him strangely. "It never was that man for one little minute; you, of all the men, ought to know."

"I, of all the men, have been the one who did not guess that it was Teddy," he retorted. "But since it is, there is one thing to remember,—Teddy is the best fellow in the world, and the easiest mark, and you are not to forget it!"

"I did not promise to honor and obey you!" she retorted, petulantly.

"But if you don't in this case—" he halted abruptly and walked away. Her high, sweet voice called after him, but he did not turn his head. He evidently realized that he had come very near threatening her; and, after all, if Teddy chose to make a fool of himself for a pretty doll—

For she was undeniably pretty, and she had created quite a flurry a year before when she reached San Pedro by steamer from Mexico, a girlish widow with one child, and waited there until the English cousin of her husband, Eduardo Downing, had been notified and came up in state from his ranches, with his Mexican wife, to receive her.

One child more or less never made any difference on the ranch of Eduardo, and his wife rather liked the little white doll that was alive, for her own brown-skinned grandchildren to play with. It was better than an Indian baby—more of a novelty, so that the family affairs of the young widow were easily adjusted. She accepted invitations to visit friends of her cousin on ranches and in town. For a year she had earned the reputation of being a rather gay flirt, and she could have married several times. Keith Bryton's friends had more than hinted that she was waiting for him, and when the word went abroad that it was his half-brother, eyes were opened wide in Los Angeles. There were lifted brows, and smiles. Keith knew how the marriage would be commented upon, and he was filled with rage that she should assume at once her care-free attitude, and fraternize with Rafael Arteaga, as she evidently had done on the ride down. And Teddy trusted her absolutely—good old Teddy, who had been infatuated from the first sight of her, and had loved without hope until lately, very lately indeed!

They had been married on the eve of his trip to Mexico. His letter, written that night, and given her to mail, had been held back by the bride until she was ready to follow it on the next stage. What mad idea had she in thus coming to the last village likely to be attractive to her? Was it to enjoy her victory?—to show him that his years of devotion to Teddy went for nothing when she chose to turn the light of her countenance his way?

Something like that it must have been,—the freakish defiance of a spoiled child. Not innocent, despite the big baby-blue eyes, but too ignorant of social conditions in this Mexican town for him to leave her to the guardianship of Rafael Arteaga when he should ride away to-morrow. The only American men in the place were unmarried. For Teddy's sake he must see that she went too. For Teddy's sake—that was the devil of it!

Rafael was lounging in the door of the post-office smoking, when Bryton emerged from the patio. There was a smile in his eyes as he noted the annoyed face of the American.

"I was waiting for you, amigo," he said, walking beside him. "I have no wish to object to the hotel of our friend Mac; but I believe it may be possible to secure a better place for señora, your sister. The widow of my brother is still here, Mac has just told me. I can turn over to them a house of plenty of room to-morrow."

"Many thanks to you, Don Rafael; but the lady will probably remain only until the next stage passes. It will not be necessary to inconvenience any of your people."

He nodded good-naturedly and left Rafael at the gate of Alvara. Teresa was yet on the veranda, interested in the one event of the day, the arrival of the stage, and the lady who was its most noticeable passenger. Alvara did not think it could have been Don Eduardo's cousin, for if so, surely Señor Bryton would have brought her at once to the Alvara home. Teresa, on the other hand, insisted that it was the English cousin; she had seen her once, and was sure that no other white woman would look so much like a white doll.

They at once appealed to Rafael to settle the question. Teresa pushed a chair toward him and suggested a glass of wine.

"Thou art tired, of course, and choked with the dust; a desert wind blew to-day! And who was your pretty señorita? Don Juan Alvara and I could not agree; he said it could not be the cousin of Don Eduardo, or she would certainly have accepted the very kind invitation he gave her to live here while waiting for her relations."

"Invitation?" Rafael looked quickly from one to the other. "I am very sure Señora Bryton failed to receive your invitation. She confessed herself in despair if her cousin should not be here on her arrival."

"But Señor? Bryton was told to bring her here."

"Oh—h!" He was silent a moment and then he smiled reassuringly. "I see how it is! He thinks she will remain over only one day and does not like to put you to trouble; but the poor lady down there alone is no doubt very uncomfortable—perhaps unhappy. If your daughters could call and see her—I would accompany them. In fact, for the cousin of Don Eduardo I will do anything I may be allowed to do."

"Sure," agreed Alvara; "it is the right thing for a lady to ask her;—if only Dolores and Madalena have not ridden to the beach—"

He went into the house to see, and Teresa looked at Rafael and shrugged her shoulders.

"Thou hast told a part, but not all, my Rafael," she said, quietly. "Is the so good Señor Bryton not so good at last? Does he want his brother's wife to see only himself?"

"You don't like him?" he said, quickly.

"Well—if not?"

"Then we could play him a fine trick—fine! He is jealous, that is all. She rode down with me, and of course, when I learned who she was, we talked—you saw! Well, our Americano likes to be the only man. He means to send her away to-morrow,—he is so angry because she marry his brother! Of course she goes, unless we keep her. It would be a good trick to play if we could walk down there, and—"

"We will go," decided Teresa, promptly; "at once we will go before he comes back from the corral. His brother's wife—eh? I ask myself if those people—the Americanos—are so much better than our own men, Rafael. I want no scandal and will help you with none; but if you take from him the woman he wants, I will make you a present—a fine one."

"It is a bargain!" he agreed. "I promise to earn the gift. He is a good enough fellow, but much too conceited; we will cure him!"

As Alvara came out on the veranda to tell them Dolores and Madalena were away, and to ask Teresa to call on the stranger in their stead, Teresa and Rafael were on the street.

$1 "It is a good thing to do," he thought, contentedly rolling a cigarro and looking after them. "It is a kindness to Don Eduardo's cousin, and it is good for Teresa. For the first time since the death of Miguel she is smiling. Yes, it is a good thing."

When Bryton left the corrals, the evening had come; the afterglow was flooding the hills with pale rose, and Indian boys were driving home cows through the village street. The more time he had to consider the matter, the more impatient he grew at the reckless disregard of his new sister-in-law for the conventionalities.

Since she had married Teddy, she might at least have remained decently and quietly where he had left her. Or she might have continued her journey and joined her cousin at San Diego; but to do so mad a thing as to stop off here—he determined she should go either north or south to-morrow, if he had to carry her to the stage. He would tell her so at once.

He had arrived at that determination as he crossed the plaza and heard her laugh through the door of Alvara's house. The door was open; she was trying to teach Alvara English, at which his daughters laughed very much. It was the sharp eyes of Teresa that caught sight of Bryton first, as he involuntarily halted in the road.

"Yes, Señor Bryton, it is all true; we have robbed the Señor Mac's hotel of your sister!" she called to him with a new air of elation,—of victory.

Alvara appeared and invited him to supper, which he declined for a previous engagement with Don Antonio. His sister-in-law came out and listened to his excuses, and smiled quietly at him with the baby-blue eyes, in which he read a certain defiance.

"I would have smothered in that awful cell you took me to!" she pouted. "These people are charming to me; they are friends of Cousin Edward's. It was Don Rafael took them to me. He looks like a hero in a picture-book! How does it come I never met him before?"

"Perhaps because during your last visit down here he was in Mexico, making love to the girl he is to marry very soon."

"Oh! is that why you are guarding him so carefully?" she said, laughingly. "Well, since I am married, I am willing to stay and dance at his wedding; but, Keith, if I had seen him first—"

She broke off, laughing at the quick anger in his eyes.

And Teresa, listening, understood the game of Rafael and the mocking laughter, and the anger of Bryton, and was as happy as she was likely to be, with Miguel under the ground.

CHAPTER III

Many things had happened, and it had been a bad day. "A day cursed of God!" said Pedro Gallardo, the driver; and against such ill fortune the carriage of Señora Luisa Arteaga made such progress as might be, from San Luis Rey to San Juan.

Clouds had drifted along the mountains each night for a week, and never the ranges a bit the better for it, until the cavalcade of Doña Luisa had started north from San Diego; and then—well, it was not what you would call a rain, it was a torrent came down. The skies had opened, and a deluge followed.

Then, after leaving San Luis Rey, a carriage-pole must break in an attempt at a runaway, and two horses were lost over that, to say nothing of the off leader, whose "sire had been the devil, and whose dam had been a witch thrice accursed in the foaling!" Their joint offspring had demonstrated his infernal lineage by breaking his own leg as well as the carriage-pole, and another untamed beast had to be roped on the range—hog-tied, and blindfolded to get the harness on him; and because of him Pedro's throat was fairly blistered with curses.

As the wheels sank into the sands or plunged from one ravine into another, Doña Luisa prayed and trusted to the saints that she might see her own valley again, and her companion, Doña Jacoba, protested, and forgetting to pray, waxed argumentative.

"Raquel was right, Luisa," she repeated for the twentieth time between her groans; "we had been wise to wait at San Diego for Rafael. She has an old head on her shoulders—you will have a wise daughter when the day comes."

"Wise! Yes—yes!" moaned Doña Luisa, shaking her head. "I thank the Virgin for that, every day, for Rafael is young, Jacoba; a baby of a wife would be his ruin. Yet—a baby might love him!"

"Our boys get love enough!" grunted Jacoba, thinking of her own sons, and her own troubles. "They need wives with sense; and our girls all go wild these days about the Americanos, so—"

Raquel Estevan

"The girls, too!" and Doña Luisa's tones were strident with censure. "It is bad enough when men must buy and sell with the Americanos in the markets; but the girls,—the women of California,—it is in their hands to shut the door when the Americano knocks—is it not so?"

"Oh, yes, of course—yes—it is as you say," agreed Jacoba, weakly, as she thought of the many girls of their relationship, who had opened doors very wide indeed for the Americanos, and of not a few who were to open also the door of the Church. But who could tell Doña Luisa that?

"Rafael is all I have left, now that Miguel is killed," continued the mother. "My only grandchildren are half-breeds, and only Rafael is left. Ai! it is hard to grow old,—to let go all lines. But you know what makes me happy, Jacoba? No? It is this one big thing. Raquel will be what I was. She may suffer, but she will stand square on her feet; and she will fight as her father fought—and it will be for California."

"You think so?" asked Jacoba, doubtfully. "It may be so, but—do you expect strong fights from a girl who was half a nun? I say she knows too little of the world to fight it."

"You take from me my one hope when you say that!" and the older woman put out her hand appealingly. "Our men are wild—always! It is the women's work to save them. The death of Miguel is making me think much and quick. Rafael must be marry. There must be no more Indio women and children."

Jacoba glanced doubtfully at her friend. These five years, while Rafael had been learning California ranch life, Jacoba had lived near enough to hear much that she never could repeat to the old mother, whose life was so nearly spent, whose weakness and prejudices could never cope with the new life in the changed land—and of what use to torture her with the truth? She wished with all her heart the exile had elected to stop over at San Diego or San Luis Rey, until some little glimmer of present conditions should enlighten her.

"It is well the donas came by water," she remarked, eager to find some straw of comfort in the situation. "Even extra baggage would be a care, with these roads and troubles, to say nothing of the temptation to El Capitan! Thanks to God, he never yet has had record of troubling women on the road."

"He was a fine boy," said Doña Luisa, musingly. "It is not his fault that he is an outlaw to these States. It means only that he is patriot to California. He was a fine boy."

"Ask thy son how fine he thinks El Capitan!" remarked Jacoba. "Rafael has paid him a heavy tax in his best stock. They have long ago forgotten they are cousins."

"Raquel will make him remember," said the older woman, with certainty. "Did he not fight as he was able beside her father? Ai! he fought for California when only a boy. Do Californians forget?"

"He does not let them do so," remarked Jacoba dryly. "Much has changed, Luisa."

"I see no change, only the Indios more poor. The hills are green, as always after the rains. All these ranges are the same like we rode over them forty years ago. The hills and the sea never change, only the people. It is good to hear there is one of the young left who thinks in the old way."

"But—holy Maria!—we were never robbers, Luisa!"

"Well, we did not need to be," returned her friend. "But I tell you truly, Jacoba, I could find it in my heart to forgive a son who fought the Americanos as he does, even if they made him outlaw. He could not be outlaw to the Church, nor to me."

Jacoba said no more. Of what use was it to tell her that a few such women would be firebrands in the land if they had youth, and that the American soldiers, instead of coming peacefully to buy stock and pay good prices, would come from Los Angeles shooting,—would come with torches to burn each town where rebels hid. It was no longer little internal wars, such as they used to have in the days they both remembered, when the men who smoked or played together one month would fight under different leaders the next.

There were no faction fights now. It was one great ugly pale nation to the east, trailing slowly over the ranges and planting itself like the live-oak in the cañons. The Mexicans might hate, might curse; but the curses made no difference against the heretics. They had no churches, and they laughed at the beautiful wooden saints in the old chapel. Had not some of them snuffed out candles on the graves with their accursed rifles, last All Souls' Day? Yet the sky had not fallen, and no earthquake had come! What would even prayers or holy Church do against a people so ignored by God?

But Jacoba knew there was no use to fight. She remembered what that meant in the other days. In an old adobe of San Juan's one street she had helped as a girl to nurse the wounded of San Pascual. It was years ago, but she had not forgotten the cruel wounds, or the young Americano who died in her arms there. She had never mentioned to any the reason of her hatred for war; for even with revenge in reach, on whom would she seek it?—on her brother who had killed a stranger forcing their gates?

"You do not forget how the blessed Junípero Serra himself spoke from the altar of San Juan in the old days, Luisa; our grandfather telling us that many times,—how, when the Spanish guard was hard with the Indios, he stood on the altar and say that a new people will come and put the foot on the neck of the Mexican like the Mexican tramp on the Indios. He say it, and cry—cry for the reason that the good God no can make their hearts more soft to the Indios. I think of that when I see the Americanos come. They not put the foot on the neck—but they are here!"

"Father Junípero was old then—very old—like a child, and would make of the Indios babies to be petted," returned Doña Luisa, leniently. "He was a saint—not a man; only the saints could have the patience with those Indios—I remember! One of the old scares of the padre's was that the water would fail us; yet San Juan still has its river!"

Jacoba nodded. They were likely to find the river a difficulty after the rainfall. The ford was not a good one in high water; but the thought of getting across the ford was a trifle compared to the difficulty of impressing Doña Luisa with any idea of the change she would find in the land she had known.

In sheer despair she returned once more to a safer subject, Raquel Estevan,—Raquel the wise, who was to marry with Rafael and forever build a wall about him from American influence; Raquel, who might not love, because of that dark shadow of the cloister, but who would be all the more wise for that! Still, who could tell?

"When one is young like that, one never can be sure until the right man comes," said Jacoba; "and she is handsome, your Raquel. But is it true what they say, that there was the blood of the old Mexican Indios in her mother?"

Doña Luisa did not commit herself; yet she realized that Raquel Estevan might have a few battles to fight along the line of race, as well as against the Americanos; for of course Rafael was a favorite; of course there would be burning hearts and jealousy at first.

Keith Bryton

Esta noche voy a verte,
Al otro lado del rio
Te encargo que estes despierta ay!
Para quando te haga (se silva)
Ay! Paloma, daca el pico De ese rico manantial,
Ay! Paloma, daca el pico De ese rico manantial!

CHAPTER IV

From Las Flores, where the Indian village still held together in a shiftless sort of way, Raquel Estevan and her friend Ana Mendez galloped north mile on mile over the mesa above the sea.

"Art never tired, Raquel?" demanded the older and darker of the two as they halted to let their animals drink where a rivulet ran full from the foothills. "Since we left the ranch house thou hast never lessened the gallop."

"Tired? I should shame to acknowledge that, when Doña Luisa never rests on the way. She endures it all, while only the young ones complain."

"Endures! What would she not endure for her beloved Rafael—now your beloved Rafael?"

Ana was not malicious, but there was a touch of mockery in her tone and questioning glance.

"Why should he not be beloved?" asked the other, smoothing carefully the mane of her horse and bending low to conceal the slight flush of cheek. "Is he not handsome and good?"

"It is not easy to be good when a man is so handsome," laughed Ana; "still, I will take your word for it! But, Raquel, you always get clear of the question; not once have you said that you find him beloved. Are you going to be coquette to the wedding-day?"

"You talk to amuse yourself," and the violet dark eyes were lifted an instant. "You learn to coquette when you marry, and cannot forget; but the nuns never teach us that."

"What need?" and Ana showed her white teeth in a laugh. "They did not teach us we must breathe to live; yet some way we learned it! But confess! You outride all the party to reach San Juan, and Rafael; yet how are we sure what urges you?"

"My promise."

"But why the promise, if the man is not beloved? You have had no harsh guardian, as I had; you were all free."

"Free? Oh yes, I had always the choice between some husband and the veil of a nun. And then—then Doña Luisa came with her love and her son, and her great plans of good work I could do out in the world. And so—and so we are riding to meet him, and I outride you!"

"I never hasten to trouble," remarked Ana Mendez; "and if we should meet him on the way, you would send me at once to the carriage. I should put in hours listening to the virtues of Rafael Arteaga and peril my soul pretending to agree with his mother."

"Why should you do that?"

"Raquel, do you really see how little the ideas of Don Rafael and his mother agree? I know little enough—thanks to California, which keeps its girls from education; but I do see that every thought of Rafael Arteaga is for the new ways, the ways of the Americano."

The younger girl drew up her horse with a cruel jerk, and faced her friend.

"Anita, beloved," she said, sadly, "you have said the thing I felt, but did not know. Why not let some less dear one tell me?"

"Holy Maria! Who else would? You are going among strangers, but you are no more a stranger to the California of to-day than is Doña Luisa. I hope all the time some one tell you at San Diego, or at San Luis Rey, but no one does; and Rafael does not meet us; and—"

"The letter did not reach him, or else he has gone by boat," said the other, steadily. "Anita, why do you sometimes seem not quite friendly to Rafael? Your words—"

"Never think it!" cried Ana. "We are friends enough, but—I know him better than his mother—that is all! He has turned the heads of many girls, but I do not think he has turned yours, Raquelita!"

The other girl made no reply.

"I do not think so," continued her friend, "because you have never once lost sight of duty,—the duty Doña Luisa and the padre have taught you to see. You are good, Raquel,—when you are not in a temper; but about Rafael you do not think your own thoughts. You dream of the life of your father and Doña Luisa when all this land was theirs. But the dream is gone, and to-day we wake up."

"I see—the old world was too slow. You wake up to be all Americano—no?"

"Raquel, do you hate them as much as Doña Luisa?"

The girl from Mexico turned her face toward the sea, and did not answer at once. Then she said:

"Only once in my life have I spoken with an Americano, and I did not hate him."

"A young man?"

"He—he was not old," she confessed.

"On my soul, I believe you have had a lover!" cried Ana. "Oho! you can play Rafael at his own game, after all! Santa Maria! I thought you were too pretty to be the saint they think you. Tell me!"

"There is not anything to tell," said the younger girl, quietly, though the color crept to her cheek; and then after a little she added, "He died. I never saw him but once; the padre said I was wrong to—to—oh, they said things to me about heretics! I never knew any other, and I promised not to. But if he had lived I should not have promised; that is all."

"All! Rafael would think it enough! On my soul, I am glad you are so human—though I have no love myself for heretics!"

"Human!" mused Raquel. "Is it human to remember, when one should forget and cannot?"

She did not say it aloud, and refused to discuss the matter further.

"He is dead," she said; "Rafael cannot be jealous of a man I saw but once; it was only the dream of a girl—like a picture in a book—and the page is closed. I shall marry Rafael, and work in the world instead of in the convent. It is for Mother Church and—it is right!"

At San Onofre the surf was breaking against the cliffs. It was high tide, and the beach road was deep enough for a horse to swim. Raquel had ridden far ahead, and now stood on the brink of a torrent cutting its way down from the hills to the sea.

The girl glanced back at the swaying chariot-like carriage on a far hill, and wondered what would be expected of their broncos in this crisis.

The animal she herself rode danced and fretted with fright at the roar of the surf and the dash of the hill stream, but she sat the saddle with ease, answering to every curve or side leap as lightly as a gull that floated on the incoming wave.

Her face held something of the power suggested by her strong right hand. The eyes were so soft, yet steady, and of darkest violet. The black lashes touching her cheeks gave them tender shadows, and the hair, in two thick braids reaching to her waist, framed a face of youthful curves and charm. But what was it made every man, and many women, turn to look again at the face of Raquel Estevan?

Many girls were as beautiful, but something beyond the beauty of feature or color was in her strange half-Egyptian face,—a certain barbaric note held in check by the steady eyes and the mouth firm yet tender. It was a mouth made for love; yet—was it the shadow of the dark veil she had so nearly worn? Was it a hint of regret for the cloistered life left behind? Or was it the shadow of some future—a prophecy of the years to come?

Ana paused at the edge of the stream, in terror at the volume of water barring their way on every side.

"Ai! ai! And Aunt Jacoba but a moment ago declaring that she will have her supper in the refectory of the San Juan Mission. Neither Mission nor supper can we see this night—and no Rafael!"

She turned dismayed though roguish eyes on Raquel.

"He did not expect us when the rains came," said Raquel with quiet certainty. "If he received Doña Luisa's letter, he has gone by sea to San Diego. Did she not say so, Anita?"

"Oh, he can do much, your handsome Rafael," agreed Ana, "but he cannot yet stop the tide, or dam La Christienita! Such a dry bed in Summer! and now it is a river."

"But not deep?" hazarded Raquel. "Not so deep as the carriage bed."

"Deep? There is one ford that is safe if one knows it; but, Holy Maria! on each side are pits of a depth to drown us all!"

"Oh, if there is a good ford to be found—" The rest of Raquel's sentence was drowned in Ana's shrieks of protest, as her horse was spurred into the torrent in search of the roadway safe for a carriage.

Ana was right; there were pits, and there were great round bowlders on the edges of them. The horse stumbled on one, recovered, and stumbled again where the current swung into a whirlpool; and then, as the water roaring in her ears almost drowned Ana's screams, a sharp authoritative voice sounded from the bank—

"Loose the stirrup!"

Raquel did so mechanically, just as a rope circled about her shoulders, pinning her arms to her sides, and with a quick, cruel jerk she was wrenched from the saddle; and as her horse, relieved of her weight, swam straight for the opposite shore, she felt herself caught by a strong arm and lifted across another saddle. The man with the reata had caught her first, lest she be dragged downward into the whirlpool, but it was another man who dashed through the whirl of waters and bore her to the shore, where half a dozen men waited. They were evidently vaqueros; one of them had thrown the reata, and hastened now to loosen it, to lift her from her rescuer and stand her on her feet. She swayed a trifle, and reaching blindly for support, she caught the arm of a man beside her, the one who had lifted her from the water. Then for the first time she noticed that he wore the garb of a priest, evidently a secular priest, for he wore a beard, and even then it struck her as strange that he looked so bronzed and rugged. His grasp was that of a rider of the range, rather than a priest of the Church.

"Father, the Virgin have you in her keeping! You saved my life then. I shall always—always—"

Then she could no longer distinguish priest from vaquero; the earth seemed to meet the sky, and between them she was extinguished.

When she awoke she no longer could hear the screams of Ana, and the red rays of the lowering sun touched the face of the priest as he bent over her. It had more of youth than she had at first perceived.

"Lie you still," he said, as one used to command. "The water was rough with you, and the reata rougher. Swallow some of this wine; it came from your own carriage, and is better than ours."

"From the carriage?" The carriage was on the opposite side of the stream, but her horse had followed her and was tied near, shaking himself like a great dog.

"Yes. I sent one of the boys—the vaqueros—across. Your friends know you are safe, but the carriage cannot come over—not yet; you have had good fortune to get out."

"The good fortune was to find you here, father," she said, and catching his hand she kissed it reverently. "It is a good omen and shows me a blessing is on my journey to my father's land. You may have known him by name. I am Raquel Estevan, and it was my father Felipe who once owned this land from mountain to sea."

"Felipe Estevan—you! But that cannot be. He is dead, and his one child is in religion—I was told so—I—"

The color came back to her face, and she raised herself on her elbow.

"It is true—I was for the Church—but I will tell you all—some time!"

"Go on," said the priest, authoritatively, "tell me now!"

"I was told it was better to work for God out in the world," she said, softly, "and so I am coming with my Aunt Luisa, father's cousin, and—"

"And—" he looked at her strangely. "Then it is you—you they bring to marry with Rafael Arteaga. Holy Mary! And it is Felipe's daughter—Felipe Estevan—who sold for a song rather than live under the Americanos; and it is for his daughter I wait here by San Onofre—for his daughter!"

Raquel stared at his evident agitation, not understanding. The sentences of the padre sank to muttering beneath the black beard, as he turned and strode away. The vaqueros, standing together holding their horses as if eager to be gone, exchanged wondering glances and eyed the girl curiously. Directly he came striding back and halted beside her.

"Yet you marry with Rafael Arteaga," he said, accusingly. "You are Felipe's daughter, yet you are much Americano—eh? You are of the States, is it not so? Between you two, old California will no longer have foot-room from San Jacinto to the water out there. God!" and he ground his heel into the turf. "Yet are you Felipe's daughter, and we must let you go!"

"No!" she cried as vehemently as he. "I go nowhere from the rules of my father in this land. The things he loved I love; the things he fought for I will guard! It is for that, father, I marry with Rafael. He is—he is not so much for old California, I know—I hear! His mother is afraid; she grieves over that much! But the two of us—the two of us, with your prayers to help, and we keep him always for our father's country—always till he die—with your help!"

"With my—help?"

"Your prayers, father! You will see I am Felipe Estevan's daughter, even while I am born in Mexico. I will do what a son would do for our land and our Church. You will see—you will see! It is a blessing from God that you meet me here like this at the edge of the land. Always I have thought these thoughts in my heart, but only to you—a priest—could I say them in words, and it is well you meet me here like this. Your words are the words I needed to make me see what I want to do. It is like a baptism that I went under that water a girl, and your hand lift me out a woman! The Virgin sent me here this day that I meet you. You have opened the gate of the land for Felipe Estevan's daughter."

He leaned against the trunk of a young live-oak and stared at her with a derisive smile in the smoke-black eyes.

"Yes, the Virgin sent me," he said at last, "and she came near sending me too late. The trail is bad along La Christienita for the night-time, and the night is close. The man will take you back to your friends."

"But you, father? You come to the carriage and see the mother of Rafael—no? They wait for us. Doña Luisa is so very old; she will be anxious till she speak with me—and with you."

She arose and held out her hand. He regarded her strangely, and shook his head.

"The men have other work than to camp with a pleasure party. I stay on this side and have far to travel before sunrise. This once I talk with you—maybe nevermore, and to San Juan you take one message for Rafael Arteaga."

"A message? Yes?"

"Tell him Felipe Estevan's daughter has saved to him this once a treasure; but no woman can guard him always, for—El Capitan is never too far to come quickly!"

"Oh—Capitan?" she said with sudden comprehension. "I was told at San Luis Rey how much he is the enemy of Rafael. But it must not be, father. Cannot we help that? I have heard of Capitan from an old soldier of the wars, who told me all I know of my father: he was a brave boy and—he fought beside my father. I remembered that when I passed his mother's grave at San Luis Rey—it will never be bare and forgotten again—never! I planted it thick with the passion-vine. Doña Luisa tells me she was a great woman. She prays that some day the two cousins may be friends."

"Doña Luisa prays for what only the good God could make happen," said the priest, grimly. "But of course all things are possible to the good God, even in the land which God forgot. Fidele is waiting."

He made a movement toward the Mexican holding her horse, and without further words mounted another animal himself, and galloped away along the fringe of trees skirting the cañon. Several of the others followed. Only three remained to watch Fidele pilot his charge across the ford, where the ford was safe though deep; and once her animal's feet touched the opposite bank, her attendant, with a sweep of sombrero, but no words, wheeled his own horse and fell in line after his comrades, who were disappearing one by one toward the mountains.

Raquel Estevan sat her horse at the edge of the stream and stared after them, giving little heed to the shrill calls and exclamations of the women. Even after they had stripped her of the soaked riding-dress and wrapped her in serapes for the night, she maintained a thoughtful silence, and all Ana's hints of romances went for nought, so far as gaining replies or special notice.

What treasure had Felipe Estevan's daughter saved for Rafael Arteaga? And why—why—that strange intensity of the priest? These questions were turned again and again in her mind as she lay there in the light of the camp-fire watching the stars move across the high blue. The other three women were sleeping as best they could in the carriage, smothered in serapes. Jacoba lamented every waking moment, because of much-feared rheumatism,—she was so certain it would mean a camp at the hot springs for a month, just at the time of the wedding!

Doña Luisa made no complaint. When told the carriage could not by any means cross safely, she braced herself for the ordeal of the night, and Raquel, glancing toward her, could see her face gray-white in the gathering dusk. All the night that gray profile met her eyes, for she slept not at all.

The driver had stretched himself where his horses were tethered, but the two Indian boys who rode with the carriage kept a fire of aliso boughs burning. They would nod at times with sleepiness, but the whispered command of the girl ever wakened them quickly, and the dying fire would blaze again. There was no conversation, only brief commands and prompt obedience; and thus the girl passed the first night in the land of her father, the roar of the sea and the wild calls of the coyotes keeping silence from the night.

When the coyotes ceased and the birds heralded dawn, one Indian boy rode across at the ford and gauged the depth of the water on his cow-pony's legs. It was "muy bueno"—very good indeed, the water had gone down a foot, and before the dawn broke, the whole cavalcade was again under way. There was breakfast to ride for, and it was several miles across the hills.

Pedro was of the opinion that there was a round-up in the cañon of La Paz, about half-way to San Juan. If so, there might be "carne oeco" and coffee to be had—perhaps tortillas. The vaqueros would be eating by dawn, but if it was possible to drive fast, there might be hope of coffee at least.

So Raquel rode ahead, alert at the coming day and the promise of it. Ana was glad to stay in the carriage with the older women, complaining that she had caught cold from the sea-damp. At one bend of the road she noticed Raquel far ahead, bending low over the neck of her horse, scanning the ground. Then she turned out of sight under the live-oaks in a narrow cañon, and came galloping back to the main trail as the carriage came up.

"One would think you were searching the sand for grains of gold washed down from the mountains!" called Ana; but the girl shook her head, and rode thoughtfully up the incline to the mesa above. She had been noting the curious fact that the party of vaqueros and the priest had left the trail one by one, heading toward the hills wrapped still in the mist of the morning.

Nescesito buen caballo
Buena Silla, y buen gaban.

CHAPTER V

At La Paz they were in time for coffee, and Raquel, who had ridden ahead with an Indian boy, was told a strange story by the Mexican cook.

A good breakfast had been cooked, but the devil had got among the horses in the night; there had been a stampede—or something. Every one had got into the saddle and ridden that way—up the river,—no one had come back to tell him what it meant or to eat the breakfast that was ready. It was cold now, all but the coffee, but they were welcome to it.

He was a newcomer in the land, and had never heard of the Doña Luisa. To the cholo the lady or the lord of the land is often an unknown personality; their representative, the major-domo, is the centre of their little universe.

But as the carriage came lurching down from the mesa, the oldest of the vaqueros, a very black Indian, rode back to camp, and at sight of Doña Luisa's face white and drawn in the morning light, he slid from his bronco, and ignoring the cook's impatient questions stood with bent head uncovered, until the old mistress noticed him and spoke.

"You are Benito, are you not?" she asked, as she brought him to the carriage with a gesture, and rested her hand on his to alight.

"Yes, señora," said the old man with grave courtesy, though trembling with pleasure at the honor she chose to bestow; "I am Benito. I used to break all the horses you rode. No one else was let put a hand on them. You do not forget; I thank you."

"I could not forget the things of my home. Is there coffee? I am very glad."

She held her left hand against her side, and the women exchanged frightened glances at her pallor and the strange weakness of her voice. While she drank the hot coffee Jacoba deftly drew the old vaquero aside to look at a bit of broken carriage harness which Pedro was mending with rawhide.

"Benito, is there no boy here to ride fast to the Mission?" she demanded when out of hearing of the others. "Our Doña Luisa is a sick woman, and no one dare say it. Some one must go and have a bed ready—everything!"

"There is no boy here. The horses were run off last night by Juan Flores or Capitan—no one knows how many. All the men have gone that way. I ride to the Mission. Don Rafael, he go to San Diego to-day."

"To-day? Santa Maria! he may have gone! Ride fast!"

"He not go yet," and the old man shrugged his shoulders. "Too early. Army men going away. Don Rafael make barbecue yesterday, and last night he have a big dance for the Americanos in the Mission."

"Hush! Ride fast! We will drive as slow as she will let us. But tell Don Rafael Arteaga I say for him to meet his mother on the road."

Raquel noticed the old man cantering slowly along the level green, and heard the sound of his horse galloping rapidly once he was out of sight past the fringe of sycamores and low growths along the river.

"For what is that, Jacoba?" she asked.

"Oh, some bandits have run off some horses—they may send more vaqueros," she replied as easily as she could with the girl watching her like that.

Raquel looked as though she thought all the truth might not be in the reply, but she turned quietly away.

"I would have ridden with him if I had known," she said, and went back to Doña Luisa, who was so eager to continue the journey that she would wait for no breakfast but the coffee.

"Cut another strap of the harness and take time to mend it," muttered Jacoba to Pedro; "we are not all so near to being angels that we can live without eating."

Thus was a little more time gained.

Benito made the second crossing where the river bends around the mesa, and there met one of the boys from the village looking for a pair of strayed mules.

"The Don Rafael—he has started for San Diego?" demanded Benito. "Turn and ride with me, José."

The boy did so, grinning.

"When Don Rafael wake up to-day he much too late to go to San Diego," he said, and the old man uttered a sigh of relief.

"He sleeping, then?"

"No one sleep in San Juan last night," said José. "There was the supper, and some girls stay. The army men they all start north an hour ago, but maybe the others still dance in the Mission, Don Rafael say he go to get married, this is his last night—no one must sleep, or be sober!"

José thought it a great joke, but Benito muttered, "Jesus and San Vicente!" and ordered the boy to go back for the mules, and rode on down the valley alone.

It took José some time to find the mules, and when he did find them they were even more perverse than usual; he had got them so near home as the hill above San Juan, when one of them went careering along the mesa as though heading for San Jacinto mountain.

By the time he had secured it and got back near the road an astonishing sight met his eyes—something one was not used to seeing at sunrise in San Juan.

A carriage came down the valley road from La Paz cañon. There were only women in it, and two Indian boys rode in the rear. Where could a carriage like that come from at such an hour? No one who rode in carriages lived up those valleys!

In staring at the carriage he failed at first to notice the girl on horseback, who had ridden alone in advance of the carriage, and had halted in the road, on the brow of the hill, looking down across the old pueblo to the sea.

She was so motionless, he was very close before he noticed her, close enough to hear her indrawn breath of delight, to see the soft flush of emotion touch her face. Almost he thought there were tears in her eyes; he thought her the most beautiful lady he had ever seen alive,—though one picture of the Virgin in the chapel was as fine.

José stopped at the sight of her and stood very still. He could not drive mules into the road ahead of a lady who was more lovely than even the wooden saints with the gold painted around the border of their gowns; and that is how he chanced to see a strange meeting on that hill.

No one knew why the English señora had elected to take a pleasure ride alone that morning, when the message of Benito, shouted as he galloped past, had effectually banished from the minds of Dolores and Madalena their intended picnic at the hot springs in the mountain, for which they were all ready, and had actually started. But when they tumbled with delighted exclamations from the new American buggy, and straightway forgot all their plans for the day, including the entertainment of their English guest, she stared in ill-concealed irritation from one to the other as they chattered in Spanish, scarcely enlightening her as to the reason of the sudden change in their plans.

When she finally gathered the idea that it was the unexpected proximity of Rafael's bride-to-be, and that all the other social lights of the valley must expect to be extinguished in her honor, the red lips of the Englishwoman straightened a trifle, and the baby-blue eyes took on a shade of coldness; for since her arrival in California she had been made the centre of many social affairs. In San Juan her one week, managed by Teresa and Rafael, had been enough of a triumph to cause Keith Bryton inward rage and to hold him there as long as an excuse to stay had offered.

Once she said in a burst of irritated frankness:

"For mercy's sake, let me be happy once! You are a dog in the manger, that's all! These people really live! There is an empire here for the right woman, and you need not tug at my chains to remind me that I was fool enough to marry before I found it!"

And now the real ruler of the empire was about to enter into possession, and the temporary one was frankly forgotten! Whatever her thoughts were, she did not mean to assist at the royal entry of those two women whose rule meant the ignoring of the English-speaking people.

Only Teresa, watching her out of beady black eyes, comprehended and was content. Rafael had earned the gift she had promised, but it had gone quite far enough; it was as well Doña Luisa was coming with the other girl!

So, when Bryton's sister-in-law looked rather blank and did not descend from the carriage, it was Teresa who agreed that it was a morning too beautiful to stay indoors, and of course if Doña Angela cared to drive alone—and would excuse them—

Doña Angela would. She leaned back languidly, a picture of carelessness, and motioned the driver to go on, but her lips still held their straight hard line as they passed the great dome of the ruined chancel, where the birds held sovereign sway.

"It looks like a place for a throne," she thought, enviously; "and a black creature from Mexico is coming to rule it!"

They were crossing the bridge at the streamlet, when an exclamation from the driver caused her to glance ahead and see the erect slender figure on the dark horse silhouetted against the yellow flood of sunrise.

No girl of San Juan rode alone like that on the mesa, and certainly not one would have paused like that, transfixed by the beauty before her; there was not one that would not rather have admired the beautiful new buggy and the pretty hat of the fair lady in it.

But the girl on the horse did not appear to notice either any more than she had noticed José. Her horse had halted straight across the middle of the road. The driver of the buggy had turned aside before she brought her gaze back from the sea cliffs to rest for an instant on the fair indignant face of the Englishwoman.

The road was miles wide really—since one could drive anywhere on the mesa, but the Mrs. Teddy Bryton had heretofore seen every native step aside from the beaten trail when she drove abroad, and she was furious at the driver for turning his horses an iota out of his way for that girl who looked like—what did she look like?

Mrs. Bryton could not have put into words the idea of the girl's face; but her own angry blue eyes were caught and held for an instant by strange fathomless violet ones—held until she shrank suddenly, and the color left her face. Yet—as the carriage paused, her head was still turned toward the stranger, and José saw her put her hands suddenly across her eyes with a gesture of repulsion or pain, and sink back on the cushions.

The girl on the horse had not moved a muscle. She might have been carved from marble, for any sign she made after she read the angry insolence of the blue eyes.

"Don Felipe Estevan's daughter," said the Mexican driver, "and here ahead of the carriage of the Señora Luisa—it must be so."

Mrs. Bryton gave no sign that she heard, neither did she glance at the occupants of the carriage as they whirled past; her mind held only one hateful picture.

"Felipe Estevan's daughter" meant that she had looked into the eyes of the "black woman from Mexico" who had come back to her father's land to rule, and the Mexican woman had proven not so black as she had fancied, and had sat there on the crest of the hill with a pride that was half regal,—and almost half barbaric,—as though the highway was her very own—as though the centre of it belonged to her by divine right. Mrs. Bryton's vain soul was fired by a momentary wild temptation to test that divine right, to show her there was one man in San Juan not to be ruled by anyone else if she, Angela Bryton, cared to call him to her side and keep him there. Should she—or should she not?

Teresa was quite right in her fancy that the trick against the Americano had been quite successful enough; it was time the other girl came to claim her own!

En la noche fatal que a tus ojos
Dirigi una mirida ardoro-sa
Comprendi que la dicha amorosa,
No me es dada en el mundo gozar.

CHAPTER VI

It was quite true that no one was allowed to sleep that night of Rafael's last bachelor supper. Because of Miguel's death, there could be no dancing, but the hours passed merrily enough, for all that. The army men stayed until the faint gray shone in the east, when they mounted and rode north after the horses, started a day ahead.

Keith Bryton had ridden with the herd as far as Santa Ana, and then, to Angela's amusement, returned to San Juan. She was certain that his return had not been for Rafael's supper, but to see that she did not by some manœuvre manage that it be a ladies' supper and graced by her attendance. She had in jest threatened to suggest it, and Keith felt very much as Teresa felt—it was quite time the bride were at hand to stop a flirtation bordering on the dangerous.

But, after all, the ladies of San Juan were not included. It was a carouse instead of an entertainment. Girls were there, and guitars; and the big Mission doors and wooden shutters inside the deep windows barred the outer world from the hilarity, the songs, the shrieks of laughter over toasts of the old men to the groom-elect.

At earliest dawn the army men, with promises and gold pieces to the girls, and an extra glass to Rafael and his bride, mounted their horses and rode north to catch up with the herd before it reached Los Angeles. One of the girls wept lest the one who had made her favorite might never ride that way again, and the wilder spirits marched around her with lighted candles, singing a funeral dirge, ending in a wild fandango.

Don Antonio was there, and old Ricardo Ruiz, and they sat through the night playing with the dice, and emptying each other's pockets in turn, and comparing the old entertainment with the new, between the drinks.

The fandango ended by Concha, the weeping one, doing the maddest dancing of all, and Fernando Mendez poured out goblets of wine to drink luck to her next lover.

"It is good luck for himself he wants, Concha!" called Rafael across the room. "Fernando is a coyote, always awake for young chickens!"

"Concha mia, he is jealous; never heed him, but drink wine with me to the next lover!"

"He offers her a glass of wine, Antonio," grunted old Don Ricardo. "Huh!—that is the love-making of California to-day!"

"True, Ricardo; at his age you or I would have been at her feet and our jewels on her breast."

"Fernando has no jewels left."

"I should say not. His father made love after our fashion, hence—"

"The deluge!"

"The deluge of poverty and Americanos," assented Antonio. "A plague on them both! They have changed the land!"

A burst of laughter from Rafael's end of the table drowned the grumblings of the old men. Rafael had told a story so very funny that the girls had shrieked and giggled and protested behind their fans.

"Fie, Don Rafael! and you to be a married man in a week!"

"But a week is seven nights away, and all of them your own, Merced mia!"

"Merced!" called another man from a game of malia at an old table once used for altar service—"Merced, darling, never listen to a word he says! A paltry seven nights! My heart is at your feet for a lifetime!"

"Of nights or days, señor?" asked the girl, laughingly.

"She caught you there, Señor Gonzales," observed Bryton, who was dealing the cards. "Don Rafael, after all, makes the only definite offer."

"You are right, Don Keith," returned the other. "With the help of the Americanos, Don Rafael is learning to be a good maker of bargains."

"The sooner the rest of you learn the same trick, the better for California!" retorted Rafael.

"You hear?" said Don Ricardo.

"Sure," assented the major-domo. "What if his mother heard?"

"All the saints! There would be murder!"

"Por Dios!" exclaimed Rafael, as a servant opened a window because of the thick tobacco smoke; "it is daylight, and I must start for San Diego. My last bachelor carouse is ended, and none of us under the table!"

"How sad that we are still able to stand on our own feet!" laughed Merced. "See!" and she sprang to the top of a beautiful silver-decorated chest against the wall; "one of us is even able to dance good-bye to your last night of freedom! Good-bye, O free heart of Don Rafael! On some to-morrow the bride comes!"

"Holy Maria!" ejaculated Don Antonio, putting his glass down; "she is dancing on the donas of the bride!"

"The donas!" echoed Don Ricardo, aghast; "and the bride a young saint stolen from the Church!—the donas!"

"What's that?" asked Bryton, while the rest applauded the dancer. "Donas?"

"The gifts of the groom to the bride,—the gown, the wedding veil, the—holy God! it's sacrilege!"

"Is it?" asked the American; "then we'll stop it. Come to coffee, Merced!"

Without further ceremony he picked the girl up in his arms, and carried her, laughing and struggling, into the great refectory, where the Indian servants were placing breakfast on the table.

"That was quick work, Antonio," observed Don Ricardo, with a breath of relief.

"Sure; he is the best of all the Americanos. Ai! even more like the caballeros of other days than our own sons!"

Don Ricardo did not care to commit himself so far as that. He contented himself with grumbling at Rafael's indifference.

"And the girl a young saint—meant to live in religion!"

Bryton rejoined them with a cup of coffee, and both the men hastened to assure him that it was not Rafael who was in fault, but the many glasses he had emptied.

"Sure, it was the glasses," affirmed Don Ricardo. "No man of California would let a girl of pleasure dance on the things sacred to the woman of his family; eh, Antonio?"

"Of course; at any other time Rafael would have thrown the girl through a window; truly, he would!"

"No doubt of it," agreed Bryton.

"Doña Luisa has given the boy a long rope. It must be that she has learned that it is too long—she comes back after the years to steady him with a wife,—and such a wife! Young, wealthy, beautiful!"

"And a young nun, all but the veil!"

"That seems rather a joke—or a tragedy—after all this," and Bryton motioned to the remainders of the night's carouse.

"If there is a joke, it is the devil playing it on the saints."

"Sure; and the devil wins," agreed Don Antonio. "It is all settled. The Doña Luisa is a wise woman. Her son wins a wife, and the convent loses a fortune and a nun at the same time."

"Had the good son nothing to do with the arrangement?" asked the American, dryly.

"Oh, of course, señor. Three times he have gone to Mexico, where Felipe Estevan's daughter visit with his mother. He has time to sing many dozens of serenades,—all of the burning hearts and torment of love, and lost souls, to make a girl have pity. Maybe she have never before talked with one young man, one minute of her life; who knows?"

"It is good time she comes," observed Don Ricardo. "One year—two years, and Rafael, like Miguel, would be content with half-breed children and their mother. Little Marta's child is born, and they say she will not stay at Las Flores, where he sent her—not for the best house there!"

A peal of laughter reached them from the other room.

"Bravo!" called Rafael; "I take you at your word, Merced. A kiss to seal the compact!"

"Keep it for your wedding-day, Don Rafael," she retorted, and ran from him through the door into the room where the three men were talking. But Rafael caught her inside the portal, and dragged her back, his face flushed and his beautiful eyes glowing.

"I will have it!" he muttered, with his lips against her own. "You pretty devil, I will!"

"And this is the home your young nun will come to from her convent," Bryton remarked. "Some one said there was Indian blood in her family; it may prove fortunate, for she will need war-clubs instead of religion to quell this sort of thing."

"But with the help of her saints—"

"Of course," agreed Bryton; "with the help of her saints all things may happen."

An Indian servant came in from the plaza, and closed the door and stood with his back against it.

"The Doña Madalena, and Doña Dolores, and the Señora Bryton, stop in the calesha," he announced, stoically; "they come in!"

"Bar that door! they sha'n't; they must not!" called Bryton, but it was too late. The side door opened, and the three appeared—the two girls plainly frightened, but Mrs. Bryton beautifully audacious.

"Nonsense! Doña Teresa will not scold; we will stop only a minute. Your uncle and cousin are here—it is all right!" Then she saw Bryton, and laughed.

"I told you I would at least see inside," she observed, "and it is quite worth while. What a magnificent chest!"

Bryton walked directly to her.

"I will see you to your carriage," he said, laying his hand on her arm. "What the devil did you mean by this bravado?"

She wrenched her arm free and regarded him coolly.

"Thanks. I came because I said I would come, and you said not to dare. 'Dare' is a risky word, amigo. We will go directly. We are going to the hills, and only halted to wish good luck to Rafael."

"Malediction!" muttered Don Antonio. "He can't be seen—he—"

A burst of laughter came from the dining-room, and the two girls retreated toward the door.

"Women!" breathed Dolores; "if Doña Teresa hears this—"

"It is the servants—only the servants," said Don Antonio. "Don Rafael has perhaps started on his journey; he will be disconsolate that—"

But at that moment Rafael and Fernando came in from the dining-room, one smoothing his hair and one arranging his cravat. Rafael was the less sober of the two, but he managed to bow with a certain grace as he took Mrs. Bryton's hand.

"My poor house is at your service, madama," he murmured, "and I am at your feet. I hastened to you as soon as—"

—"As soon as he could get the other girls out the back door," remarked Fernando, aside to Bryton.

"Mr. Bryton was horribly cross to me for coming in; he thinks it too unconventional; he thinks I do not know the Spanish customs, and—"

"I offer myself as your teacher," said Rafael, looking straight into the blue eyes. "Believe me, señora, there are many delightful things to be learned in old California!"

"I shall remember your offer," she returned, smilingly. "See how sulky Mr. Bryton looks! He never takes time to be gallant himself."

"That is true," assented Rafael. "He never looks at the girls, or speaks except to tell them to keep quiet."

"Oh!" she replied, with a little malicious smile, "there is always a girl excepted!"

Bryton looked at her with impatient wonder; he was about to speak, when an Indian came in with a tray of coffee, and Rafael offered a cup to Mrs. Bryton.

"Honor me, madama, and let us hear of the girl who is an exception."

"Bravo! The exceptions are always of interest. Don Keith is forever a reproach to the rest of us; he has no vices."

"Or conceals them better!" put in Rafael, with a touch of malice.

"You are to be unmasked, señor," murmured Dolores, with lenient eyes.

Bryton glanced at his watch and then with impatience at his sister-in-law.

"I have not the slightest idea of the lady's meaning," he said, coldly; "and if you want to make an early start for the hot springs—"

Mrs. Bryton shut her teeth together with a little click, at his palpable ignoring of herself.

"Oh—short memory of man!" she said, chidingly; "He has forgotten in a year!"

"A year?" Bryton stared at her with a puzzled frown, and a slight motion of his hand toward the door. That, with its little suggestion of authority, decided her.

"I shall tell it," she announced. "How many of you believe in love at first sight?"

"All of us, after meeting you!" declared Rafael, with an exaggerated bow.

"Sure!" agreed Don Ricardo.

"My husband, you know, is an engineer, and goes on long journeys into queer corners of the mining world."

"Bad habit for husbands with pretty wives," remarked Don Antonio.

"Last Winter," continued she, slowly sipping her coffee and watching Bryton; "last Winter he went to Mexico."

"Pardon! We do not ask for the love affairs of your lucky husband, but—"

"But last Winter Don Keith went along; yes—he went along to look up some mining property in the Indian hills, and when he came back—Have any of you noticed the peculiar ring Mr. Bryton wears?"

"Angela!" said Keith, sharply; but she looked at him with smiling insolence.

"Oh, I know your little romance of Doña Espiritu; Teddy told me."

"Damn Teddy!" he remarked, while the rest shouted with laughter at the color flaming in his face.

"Doña Espiritu!" repeated Don Ricardo. "The lady of the Spirit—let us hope it was a good spirit, Don Keith—and that she was kind!"

"To her health!" cried Rafael. "Pour brandy, Fernando; we drink our last toast of this meeting to the love of Don Keith—to the Doña Espiritu!"

"I would rather see the ring than drink the toast," said Dolores. "May I, señor?"

"There is nothing remarkable about it, except that it is very, very old," and he held out his hand for her inspection. "An onyx engraved with the Aztec eagle—now the Mexican eagle."

"But given him by—"

"By a lady who was of service to my brother, to an old priest, and to me."

"See how he drags in the others," laughed Mrs. Bryton. "Teddy and the priest got no ring; Ted had a knife-thrust, and the priest a black eye. Keith had some hurt on the head, from which he had a long and interesting case of fever."

"Let us hope Doña Espiritu nursed him through it, and the priest did not watch them too closely," remarked Rafael, with a meaning glance at Bryton. The last drink of brandy had been the one too many, and his smile was not nice.

"Did she nurse him through the illness?" whispered Madalena in Angela's ear.

"Oh, I could tell," said the latter, demurely; "but Keith evidently resents his romances being made public."

"Señorita, there is no more to tell," remarked Keith, coldly; "not even so much as Angela would suggest. My brother and an old priest and I lost our way in the hills; and seeing a light, we chanced on some religious meeting of a strange hill tribe of Indians. They thought we were spies of the Church or the government, and there was trouble. A lady, whom the Indians and the priest called by the name you heard, saved us all that night. She was the one person of the Catholic Church they would allow to know them well, and she was a nun or a novice."

"Santa Maria! and she gave you rings?"

"The ring was some talisman respected by the tribe. She put it on my finger after I had been struck down and—well—used up. It stopped them when words were of no use. We made a litter for the old priest, and tied Teddy on a burro,—he had a leg wound,—and we walked beside them over the wilderness trail until dawn came, and we met help. I fainted from loss of blood about that time, and Teddy and I recuperated in the house of the old priest. We never saw the lady again."

"You never saw her again after an adventure like that!" cried Fernando in amaze. "That is cold blood for you!"

"It may be that she was ugly—or old," suggested Rafael.

"On the contrary, she was so charming that he shouted for her in the delirium of the fever; that is how Teddy learned that she was the one exception among girls! But all their scheming could not learn her name from the priest or the Mexicans. 'Doña Espiritu' was all they ever heard. Teddy fancied they had shipped her to Spain for the adventure with a heretic that one night."

"Is it all true, señor?" asked Dolores. "Doña Angela laughs at it, and you frown; and between the two, how are we to know how serious it may all be to you?"

"Serious enough to make him bare his head at every old battered shrine for her sake," said Angela, with a little shrug; "and an old ring of his mother's was lost from his finger on that wilderness trail, while the Mexican eagle took its place. Oh, nuns are only women after all, and much can happen in the length of a Mexican night!"

"Well, señor," said Dolores, with sudden courage, "I am a good Catholic, thank God! and I see no sacrilege in the sort of love for which a man bares his head at a shrine. Señor Bryton, the story will make us of California more than ever your friends!"

"Sure," agreed Don Antonio.

"I am at your feet, señorita," said Bryton, with kindly deference. "Now, Mrs. Bryton, if you have no other—romances—to elaborate and embellish, perhaps you will allow me to see you to your carriage, before I start for Los Angeles. Don Rafael is detained by us when he should be on his way south, and—"

"Oh—I beg—" began Rafael, but Madalena interrupted.

"Not another moment must we stay. Aunt Teresa will scold us well for this!"

"For taking pity on a lonely bachelor?" asked Rafael.

"Lonely?" repeated Dolores. "We will come again when the bride comes. Until then we leave you to prepare your soul with this—and this!"

She motioned to the decanter, and picked up the scarlet fan of Mercedes.

"You cruel one! You would make Doña Angela think—but do not think it, madama! I assure you, it is my mother's—or my aunt's—or—"

"He never had an aunt," laughed Madalena. "Come, Uncle Ricardo, Doña Maxima wants you at home; she is at our house saying things to make your ears burn."

"Sure!" said Don Ricardo, getting on his feet and taking the cane offered him. "But it is in honor of Doña Luisa Arteaga I am here. When her son makes gay company, it is the time for the steady friends of the family to stay by. So I am here, Madalena mia; and I shall say to my wife I was here all the evening, right here at this table as a respectable friend, and won seventy pesos!"

"Sure, he did," assented Don Antonio. "But it is over! The sun is up, it is good time to go home."

Rafael managed in the farewells to kiss the hand of Mrs. Bryton twice, and to be observed by Bryton only once. That was enough of victory for the moment, and when the door was closed he flung himself into a chair and reached again for the decanter.

"Ai! she is delicious—the madama whose husband plans mines and goes on long voyages! How she makes our women look tame!"

"Tah! She is insolent, that is all. We would lock up our women if they had the American way. Drink coffee—not more brandy."

"To the devil with your coffee! And it is not an American way—she is English—the delicious lady!"

"Worse still!" grunted Fernando.

"How?" roared Rafael, straightening up in his chair. "You forget, señor! She is my friend—my very illustrious friend—she is—no matter what she is. Her husband goes on long voyages—and you must apologize to me—you hear? I have the admiration for her—I—"

"You are drunk; that is what ails you, Rafael," said his friend, bluntly. "You think that you are in love with that woman, but you are only drunk."

"Drunk—I? And you call her—call the illustrious lady who is a friend of mine, 'that woman!' Señor, there are two swords on the wall. You take your choice—you—"

Fernando tried to avoid him, but he wrenched the sword from the wall and lunged at him wickedly.

But for a girl who shrieked and rushed from a shadowy doorway, and flung herself on the arm of Rafael, it would have gone ill with Fernando.

"Rafael mio!" she cried, clinging to him, "for the love of God!"

"Marta!" he cried, and dropped the weapon. "I—did I not tell you—"

He broke off vaguely, and avoided Fernando's eyes; that young man laughed good-naturedly.

"Another illustrious friend whose husband goes on long voyages!" he said, lightly. "I leave you, my friend, until you are sober. Señorita, adios."

Rafael stared moodily at the girl. She was a pretty bit of bronze flesh with passionate eyes.

"I told you to stay on the ranch," he said at last; but she broke into tears and caught his hands.

"I could not! They all know—the old woman and the priest. They thought I was dying, and he came and I had to tell him the name of the child's father; and—and when my own father comes back from the herding he will beat me, and I will not stay! I will not! He is not a fine gentleman, Rafael; he is only a herder who was a soldier in Mexico. Fine words would not count with him, unless it would be words before the priest, and you promised—"

"Jesus, Maria, and Joseph!" burst out Rafael. "What an hour to come with a list of a man's promises! I've been up all night, and I'd fight with the saints if they came my way. Go, Marta; I will tell Antonio to make a home for you away from the crazy herder. I—I am very busy; I start south in an hour."

"But, Rafael—"

"Well—well?"

"They say you are to marry an illustrious señorita—that you—"

"They say a lot there is no sense in saying!" he burst out angrily. "If you had stayed on the ranch, you would not have heard their lies or—"

"Ai! I am happy that it is not true. But that one lady—whose hands you kissed—Rafael—"

"Oh, for the love of God, go!" he said. "You women drive a man mad! You—"

Fernando rushed in, interrupting him:

"Rafael! Your mother—she is here!"

"My mother?"

"On the hill—her carriage—a man brings the news."

"Damnation! Coming here—now? And my head—Yes, it's true, Fernando; I was drunk. Help me to think! Make them clear all this away!" and he pointed to the tables and the dice and the cards on the floor. "Por Dios, how my head swims! And my mother is no fool—she will see! Think, Fernando! Help me to plan something. And you, Marta, let yourself not be seen!"

The frightened girl was only too glad to slip away, while the rest of the group stripped the rooms of evidences of the night's orgy.

"Mount a horse and ride to the beach," decided Fernando. "You will be gone on business, to see about—eh—to see if the vessel for hides has come in. Make yourself decent, and I will send a messenger after you. Don't be too easily found—you are likely to be drunker in an hour than you are now."

"Curse the brandy! And Bryton was to come back to see me about—oh, God knows what! But don't let my mother see him—an accursed heretic Americano, you know! Dios! If I could only sleep for an hour!"

Fernando fairly pushed him out at the door.

"Take a sea bath; drink black coffee; get out of sight while I receive the bride!"

Then, after the door was closed on the groom-elect, he took a quick survey of the room.

"That is right, open all the windows. Some one cut lilies—the white ones—quick! Hide this fan for Merced. Light those candles on the Virgin's shrine, and put the lilies there and on the table. Whose pipe is this under the edge of our lady's lace robe? It smells vilely—take it away! Where is the key of the chest of the donas? Here it is in the chest, and that is unlocked—only Rafael could do that. Let us hope he has not let Merced try on the wedding-dress! Are there no more flowers? Get some for the room of the señorita. Tell some one to make French coffee. Manuel, put out the light."

Dolores and Madalena ran through the open door, breathless.

"Fernando, she is here—the Señora Arteaga, and—"

"Already! Aunt Teresa told us to run and help; she will come also. Don Rafael?"

"Has ridden to the harbor."

"More likely to bed," remarked Madalena, skeptically.

"Señorita!"

"Sh—h!" whispered Dolores, with lifted hand. "The carriage; they are in the plaza!"

She rushed out, and the others followed. Teresa was there greeting Doña Luisa; but all fell suddenly silent as they noticed the gray-white of the old face, and the frail figure as she descended from the carriage with the help of Fernando Mendez and Ana—his cousin's widow.

Fernando cast one glance at the girl who sat her horse and glanced over their heads for the face she did not see.

A wizened old Indian woman alighted from a cart and came to her and touched her foot on the stirrup.

"It is your new land, little mistress," she said, in a tongue not understood by the others, "the land of your handsome lover."

The girl looked again across the many faces gathering in the plaza, and then accepted the help of Don Antonio to alight.

"But he is not here, Polonia—the handsome lover," she returned, and then walked past all the others and slipped her hand under the arm of Doña Luisa.

"A thousand welcomes, señora," said Fernando, at the portal. "The town will rejoice to-day."

"One welcome I had a right to expect at this door," the old lady answered, "and he is not here."

"He will be heart-broken. He did not think you had yet reached San Diego. To-day he was to start for there. Will it please you to have this seat?"

"Not yet," she said. "Raquelita!"

Raquel Estevan gently disengaged her other hand from Dolores, and the frail old woman led her to the little shrine of the Virgin, where the candles glimmered. The others halted at the door, but Fernando and Dolores and Ana knelt also as the old woman and the girl from Mexico clasped hands and bent heads before the statue in the niche.

The old woman rose first and kissed the girl's forehead.

"My daughter," she said, faintly, "I welcome you for my son and for myself, to the land where you are mistress. Now, señor!"

Fernando placed a chair for her, and she sank into it wearily.

"My last journey, my children! You are the son of Manuel Mendez?—we called ourselves cousins once. I present you—all of you—to my daughter—Doña Raquel Estevan."

"At your feet, señorita!" said Fernando.

"I appreciate the honor of your acquaintance, señor," replied Raquel, in the conventional greeting of the day and land. Then the others crowded about, and spoke many pretty things of welcome. But in the midst of it all Doña Luisa arose, and leaning on Jacoba's arm, passed into the room prepared for her. The group left behind stared into each other's eyes.

"How frail! How could any creature like that make the journey?" asked Fernando. "She has been very ill."

"She is ill; we dare not mention it to her!"

"But Rafael—her son—"

"Must not be told, so she says; not until the wedding is over. All at once she has gone like that. It is the heart, señor, and she is old. It may be months—may be days—may be only hours, and we can do nothing but keep her quiet and happy."

"Santa Maria!" muttered Dolores, "and Rafael—"

"His heart it will break—no? To not see him at the door is like a bad omen. She likes not the new Americanos' way of business—to be gone at breakfast time to look at ships! But of course he is very good!"

"You are very good," replied Dolores. "Have they sent for Rafael?"

"I will see," said Fernando, and went away muttering, "The so good Rafael!"

"Oh! we have a thousand things to ask you, Raquel," said Madalena. "Could you have been a nun and been happy if—Rafael had not found you?"

"To work for Mother Church—is not that of happiness?"

"Never to dance! Never to hear a serenade! Never to watch on moonlight nights for a handsome caballero!"

"I would as soon live in a tomb," confessed Dolores.

"But if you had never seen a dance, would you miss dancing? My mother's people were priests; she was to have been a nun. My blood and my teaching have been of the church. My life has been lived in one little narrow strip of the world. All at once the world changed. Sometimes it bewilders me, this change. You say 'happy,' but I don't think I know that word as you know it. Maybe I never shall learn it—who knows? But I can find work for the Church even here in the world, and you will all be my good friends, and—I shall be content."

Doña Luisa had entered the room while she was speaking, and nodded her approval.

"Content? You will be happy, my child; you will be with Rafael! Have you seen the chest of the donas? Is it not handsome? If we only had the key!"

"There is a little silver key on the shrine," said Dolores, and ran to get it.

"Aha! On the shrine of the Virgin!" said Doña Luisa. "Is that not love, Raquelita?"

"I am willing to believe it," she said, and took the little key, only to hand it back to Dolores. "You open it—and may you be the next happy bride!"

Dolores rushed to unlock the chest, and Madalena to lift the lid, and Ana, as well as the older women, exclaimed at the richness of the contents.

"Ai! Raquel Estevan, thou happy one!" cried Ana; "you have more luck than a queen!"

They pulled out embroideries and laces and jewels, with little shrieks of ecstasy at the beauty and fineness of them. Raquel looked on, smiling at their delight.

"Aha! is not that a lover, Raquelita?" repeated Doña Luisa. "Bring me the mantillas. Those two are for the bridesmaids; see how they look on Madalena and Dolores—fine—fine! And here is the wedding-veil—and the shoes, and the rosary—not anything is forgotten! He is so dear, so good—my Rafael!"

The girls insisted on placing the wreath and veil on Raquel's head, but she broke from them at sight of a silken scarf of green and red and white.

"Ah! more than all the jewels!" she cried, and clasped it to her bosom. "The flag of my own Mexico! I will love him for that—I will love him with all my heart!"

"Ah! thou hast said it at last," said Doña Luisa, in triumph; "never forget thou hast said it!"

"When I say it," whispered Dolores to Ana, "it will be to the man, not to his mother."

"Come to me, daughter," said Doña Luisa, sinking back into a chair. "The heart feels—feels almost too happy! My dear Raquel—my dear Rafael!"

"The Americanos will be crazy to see this wedding in the old California fashion," said Madalena, adjusting Raquel's veil caressingly. "Señora Bryton would give her two ears—ouch! Doña Ana, you break my arm!"

"Give thanks it is not your neck, babbler!" muttered Ana. Doña Luisa looked at the two intently a moment.

"Who is the American señora of the two ears?" she inquired; "and why should the wedding of my son have interest for such—persons?"

"She—she was a cousin of Don Eduardo, and now she is married again—and she visits us, and her husband is some kind of engineer to make railroads, and mines, and—"

A pinch from Dolores stopped her this time, but it was very clumsily done, Doña Luisa saw it.

"Ah," she said, quietly; "and when is he to bring the railroad of the Americanos to the Californias, eh?"

The women and girls stared at each other.

"I—I cannot tell her," murmured Madalena to Jacoba; "you speak! Of course it is not Doña Angela's husband who does it, but—the railroad does come—so they say."

"Why do you whisper, and not speak aloud?" demanded Doña Luisa, putting aside the hand of Raquel, who tried to quiet her rising resentment. "Is there not anyone here to speak plainly, and the truth? What is it you try to hide from me?"

"Oh, Luisa," begged Jacoba, tearfully, "do not make of this a thing to trouble you! No one tries really to hide things; it is not here the railroad is to be first; it is only talk; it may never happen—it may—"

"Where?" demanded Doña Luisa. And Jacoba, with tears in her eyes, confessed having heard of the impertinence of the Americanos, who meant to build a new road of their own instead of the wagon trail to San Antonio.

"That was good enough for our fathers. What is now wrong with the San Antonio road?"

"Not anything, of course; but the government—"

"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.

Bryton, who had strolled back through the patio for a final word with Rafael, had heard nothing of the arrivals; he pushed open the door at the back, and then halted at the sight of the group there,—the women and girls frightened and weeping, the scattered wealth of silks and laces flung across chairs and tables, and the three girls with bride-like veils.

"Is it—a witchcraft?" half whispered Doña Luisa at last; but the whisper was plainly heard above the sobs of the girls, who scarcely dared to breathe. "It is a work of the fiends to snare his soul for hell Immaculate Mother, let it not be!"

Raquel bent above her with murmured assurances of divine help, and the old woman suddenly caught the hands of the girl in her own and held her, staring in her face with questioning eyes; then she spoke eagerly, fiercely.

"Your wish but a moment ago! You wished for some great work for Mother Church—to fight evil out in the world; your guardian angel heard the wish and has sent you a soul to save from the heretics,—the soul of the man you love!"

Raquel stared at her, but did not speak. Her eyes looked a bit frightened, but she rested her cheek on the frail old hands, and caressed them reassuringly.

Doña Luisa lifted the gold and ebony crucifix, and held it above her head.

"Kneel!" she said; and the girls and women did so. Bryton, in the doorway, caught sight of the girl in the bride's veil, and made a movement toward her, but was checked by the voice of the mother.

"It is for the soul of the man you love, Raquel mia. Never forget that—never forget!"

"I will not forget," said the girl, gently; and at the sound of the voice Keith Bryton's jaw set in a tense, ugly way, and he stepped back into the shadow.

"Then swear by the Holy Mother of God!" said the old voice, and the crucifix above the head of the kneeling girl was held rigidly steady.

"I swear by the Holy Mother of God!"

"Swear by the blood of Christ crucified!"

"I swear by the blood of Christ crucified!"

"To stand as a guard over the soul of Rafael!" The old voice had a faintness, despite the steady words; the end of her strength had come.

The eyes of Raquel widened ever so little as she realized what she was promising. There was an involuntary pause before she spoke again, and then the absolute despair of the mother, and her one hope, swept over the girl's consciousness, and a spark of the martyr fire lit her own soul.

"To stand as guard over the soul of Rafael," said she, steadily.

"So long as you both shall live!"

"So long as—we both—shall—live."

Then the crucifix fell to the tiled floor, and the old face looked very gray, as she sank back on the chair; and Jacoba smothered a shriek at sight of her eyes; and Raquel, still on her knees, clasped her about the waist and whispered:

"Doña Luisa, Doña Luisa!"

The staring eyes regained a momentary glimmer of consciousness at the sound of the girl's voice, and she lifted her hand again as though it still held the crucifix.

"Until—the day—of—" and then the sentence trailed along into the eternal silences of the unseen land.

"Señora!" called Raquel, appealingly; but Ana caught her by the shoulder and looked in her face, and said:

"God help you, Raquel Estevan! To the recording angel she has taken that oath."

Keith Bryton closed the door on the weeping women, and walked out through the old refectory to the inner court, where he met Fernando.

"What is it, señor?" he asked. Bryton looked at him much as though he had not been there.

"I—I scarcely know," he said, dully. "You had better—"

"But you have the face of a ghost!" interrupted Fernando. "Something has happened—in there?"

"I think so," agreed the American, recovering under Fernando's curious gaze. "Some one is ill—or—"

Fernando ran past him, and Bryton walked slowly along the inner court to where the one-time baptistry lay roofless to the sky. Through an old doorway with the Aztec sun cut in the coping, he passed into the old graveyard of the padres, and thence to the great altar-place of the old earthquake ruin. Even there the cries of the girls came to him through an open window—a wailing chorus of tragedy. Then an old Indian untied the ropes of the belfry, and the toll of death sounded along the valley. But it seemed very far away. He stared at the half-pagan decorations of the old stonework—never the cross of Christ anywhere on them—and sat so still that two linnets lit almost at his feet and were not afraid.

"I wondered why I should stray back to this little corner of the world," he said at last, "and now—now I reckon I'm finding out. God! I feel like a bad dream. And my hands tied!"

He paced back and forth on the old altar-place, until the mad clatter of hoofs coming from the sea cut across the tolling of the bells and told him the lost bridegroom—the man she said she loved and would never forget—had been found.

He swore softly as he crossed the plaza to the veranda of Juan Alvara. The old man, rolling his first cigarro of the day, was sitting there on the bench in the early sunlight.

"Don Juan," he said, holding out his hand, "I ride to catch up with the officers and go with them into the Indian country, and I may not see San Juan again for a long time. Your home has always been a pleasant place, and I thank you for many courtesies."

The old man shook his hand gravely.

"Adios! You come back to San Juan—no?"

"Perhaps not," said Bryton. "If there is anything I can do for you in Los Angeles—"

"Thanks, señor; there is nothing. My daughters go there in a week with the wedding party. For whom think you old Tomás tolls the bell?"

When informed, he stared vaguely at the Americano. Alvara was growing old. Teresa had warned them all that no one should tell him until his breakfast was over and he had had his smoke.

"Luisa! the Doña Luisa! Dead, you say?—before the wedding-day? No, señor, pardon, but you have not understood. I know Luisa Arteaga when she is still a little girl—and always. She not dying before she have marry the boy like she want."

Still, his hand trembled as he reached for his cane. Across the plaza Indians and Mexicans were moving toward the Mission. It was early for San Juan to be astir in the street. Old Matia, who had been nurse to Miguel and Rafael, went past, not seeing the two men for the tears in her eyes. Yes—after all, there was trouble—but Doña Luisa!

In his perturbation he turned, and again held out his hand.

"Adios, señor," he repeated; "but you coming back for sure. To San Juan all people coming back some time. You go with the horses across the deserts?"

"Yes, I am going across the deserts. Adios!"

Yo te he de amar,
te he de amar
hasta muerte,
Y si pudiera—
Yo te a maria despues.

CHAPTER VII

He had crossed the ranges twice and returned, but the City of the Angels had lost its old witchery.

The rose-tinted dawns, and the amethystine dusks were beautiful as ever, but to banish the memories he had once dreamed over there, he galloped alone to the harbor called "The Hell of California," and lay all one day on the beach, and stared moodily at the waves whipping the yellow sands of San Pedro.

To the south there, far beyond the prosaic stretch of grazing-lands bordered by the sea, beyond all the tame levels where the water was green or yellow in the shallows, beyond all the jutting points, veiled in the miles of mists, he could follow in his mind each curve, until the one valley of beauty would gleam like a green jewel seen from the cliffs of San Juan.

And at the foot of those cliffs there were no flat stretches of color such as make weary the eye; the water there held all the shimmering, bewitching, iridescence of a peacock's feathers,—the gold and purple, the greens and the blues ever changing,—the strange touch of pink making it all glorious in certain glints of the sunlight; and at the edge of it all, the fringe of foam—a string of pearls shattered on the brown cliffs or sandy beach, and gathered up to be dashed again and again and again—the endless garniture of old Ocean's robe.

Never on any other shore had mere waves, running to the sand, the same witchery. Alvara had said that all men came back some day to San Juan. What witchery was it by which its mesa and its valley and its wonderful shore were forever set apart from other shores of California? Some mystery of life brooded there from sea to mountain, suggesting so much which was left for poor humanity to solve; it was only a whispered suggestion, dim and delightful, as the music of the waves heard from the Mission plaza, or as dreamy as the high film of fog, drifting high up and tempering the sun's rays until they fell softly as a benediction on the valley between blue sea and blue summit.

“Never on Any Other Shore”

His own life stretched before him like the brown levels and yellow flatness of San Pedro; and there to the south, miles across the ranges, was the heart of the dreamland he must not enter: another man had that claim under fence. He gave voice to some self-condemnation of a sort reserved for men who go loco over a woman who forgets, and after hours of brooding there alone by the shore, arrived at only one decision—the California of the south ranges was no longer his own. All the width of it was now narrowed to one little valley, where the poppies flamed over forgotten graves and adobe walls, and the doves circled above a ruined chancel.

He rode into town, where some kind friends mentioned that Don Rafael Arteaga and his bride were being fêted by the leading Spanish families of Los Angeles, and he was invited to a dinner in their honor a week hence.

"I go to Mexico—I start to-day," he answered, briefly. Ten minutes before, he had not thought of it.

"To Mexico? You cover ground fast these days, Don Keith. On the new road of iron they mean to make, you could not go so much faster than on the horses you ride; you have the good American luck in the pick of them."

"Yes, the good American luck!" said Keith Bryton, with a touch of bitterness. "May your saints send you a better!"

A man who stood near, and who much desired the invitation Bryton had refused, shrugged his shoulders as the Americano mounted his horse and rode away.

"What better luck could a man have, than a chance to meet Doña Raquel Estevan de Arteaga?" he queried of any who might care to answer. "The bishop himself shows her honor, and they say she is working for the Church against Downing, the Englishman, who holds the Mission lands under Pico's sale. Sixteen years has the Church fought for those lands in the courts; if she gets them back, she deserves the pope's blessing. And the fool boy of an Americano rides south when he could meet her—perhaps touch her hand!"

But the fool Americano rode south and kept on riding south for many dusty days. He crossed a corner of the Yaqui country, and then across the ranges to the old mine, called the Mine of the Temple—the one of which he had told Don Juan Alvara—was it so few weeks ago? It might have been years instead of weeks, by his own feeling and attitude of mind. He was riding back a different man. He evaded the few Mexicans as he neared the mine; no turn of the trail was lonely for him. Memory kept pace, and the murmur of one girl's voice spoke through the rustling leaves of the mountains.

A travelling priest, jubilant at the idea of comradeship, hailed him in one of the mountain passes, and found him but a sorry companion.

"This is a country," said the padre, "where the sight of a white face is most welcome. Six months since I was sent to this parish, and few of them have I seen. Now, I ride out of my way just to talk with an American who works a mine up here. Your brother, is it? Well, he has a good name with the brown folks. A lot of pagans they are! It is not a priest they need here; it is a missionary the bishop should send to teach them their religion anew. If ever they had any, it has been lost."

But it was evidently the opinion of the padre that they had never really secured any to lose. He discoursed at some length on the failure of the Church to impress upon them the advantage of marriage. Few were the wedding fees to be obtained from the Mexicans, while the heathen Indians had some form of their own, arranged by the head of their clan, and it was a disgrace to a land held under cross and crown for two centuries—an endless shame!

Keith assented, without heeding the list of Indian iniquities. He was rather glad, after all, that Teddy had a civilized neighbor, willing to be companionable. Teddy liked people too well to exile himself from them but for the one thing—to go back north, able to cover one white throat with pearls, or two white hands with diamonds.

His greeting of his half-brother was a bit shy, though wholly glad, and the padre served to bridge over the first few awkward moments. Both men recognized the fact of a change in each since the Los Angeles days. Teddy thought it due only to his clandestine marriage, and Keith felt guilty as he realized how little, how very little, Teddy's marriage meant to him now. While the padre was getting acquainted with the Mexican, the two brothers walked apart, and talked of the chances of the mine's success, and the failure of the backers to see the necessity of using money more freely on the enterprise.

"It's there, you know," insisted Teddy; "all this district is flooded with stories of the ore taken out of it in the first days of the Spaniards; then the Indians descended upon them, and there was a slaughter, and no Spaniard dared venture into these hills for a century."

"Yes. We put in a good many fruitless days trailing those old legends," assented Keith, "but only the Indian superstition tends to show that this is the real mine of that history. The rich one may not have been on this side of the mountain, since you have not yet struck the lode."

"Don't let's talk about it, if you feel that way," suggested Teddy, "I hear plenty of that from the others; and you didn't really come all the way down here to talk mines. Say, old chap, you acted like a prince over the—well, the wedding. I felt pretty nearly three inches higher when I got your letter. I—I know I acted like a kid, but Angela wanted it arranged so; and—as she about filled the whole horizon—"

"Cut out the explanation, Teddy. A man is never sure of himself until the right woman crosses his trail—or the wrong one. God knows I'm not fit for alcalde in the case. At least, you married your wife."

Teddy stared at him an instant, and then shouted with laughter.

"Married my wife? Well, rather! How else could she be my wife?"

Keith avoided the frank boyish blue eyes of Teddy, and turned away, seating himself on a great bowlder and staring across the little semicircle of the cañon basin, to where gnarled century-old trees reached grotesque arms above some old stone ruins and fragments of marble. Teddy looked at him an instant, and then whistled softly.

"If it were any other man than you, Keith, I'd think—but it's too ridiculous!"

"Say it," suggested Keith.

"Well, I'd say the wrong woman had crossed your trail."

"Not the wrong one."

"Good Lord! you don't mean that by any chance it is at last the right one?"

"At last—the right woman."

"And you sit there looking as solemn over it as a wooden Mexican god! Wake up, old fellow, and tell about her."

"There is nothing to tell. She is the right woman, and I shall never see her again."

"Keith!"

"And I've come back here to tell myself so," continued Keith, doggedly; "to say it over and over, and beat it into my brain, if I have any left. The desert didn't help me—I thought this might."

"This?"

"These hills, and—speaking of it."

His brother said nothing, only looked at him in wonder, as he rose with hands thrust in pockets and walked the length of the little terrace formed by the refuse of the mine. The two brothers had changed places. It was now Keith, the cool, the indifferent, who had crossed some line of emotional experience where speech was a relief—Keith, of all men! Teddy wondered who the woman could be; she would be worth seeing.

"So you see, Ted," observed the other, with a forced laugh, "you need not explain things to me. When the woman comes, none of us cares much what the other fellow thinks."

"If she is the right woman, I'm mighty sorry, old man, that it's going to be as you say—that you are not going to see her again."

"Don't waste good sorrow! I'm the only fool in the case—she doesn't care."

"That's not so easy to believe," declared Teddy, loyally. "You probably only asked her once, and then hit the trail before she could change her mind."

"Ask her. When people care, words are not so necessary."

"Perhaps not, but girls do expect words; though the right girl—"

"She doesn't know that she was the right girl; I may not have made it clear. I was a fool who dreamed dreams and believed them true. Talking about it doesn't help. I thought it might; that's all."

He continued to walk the terrace, as though with a certain impatience at having let go of himself. Teddy regarded him for a few moments of awkward silence. Keith had never been demonstrative, and this sudden confidence caught Teddy unprepared. He felt ill at ease, realizing that it was no light sentiment, causing him to let go of himself and speak.

"I reckon this particular mountain must be bewitched," he said at last. "The only other time you talked of a girl—any special girl—was after we were led across yon range by that girl of the convent. Even then you talked of her only when the knock on your head sent you luny. What was the name they called her? Spirit—Doña Spirit—Doña Espiritu! That is it! I really thought for a few days of your ravings that we were going to have a nun in the family; and now it's a new girl!"

Keith regarded him for a moment, then in silence took out tobacco and made a cigarette. Of what use were words?

"I always wondered who that girl was and what became of her," continued Teddy. "The old padre was as dumb as an oyster on the subject. Did you learn more than her name?"

"Not much," said Keith, briefly.

"I always meant to. Funny how those crack-brained Indians let up on the attack that night, when she slipped that ring on your finger and held up your hand for them to see. It was the last thing I noted before I keeled over. Those Indians have not forgotten that. They knew when I came back here, and they seemed to watch either the mine or me,—I don't know which it is. Once they asked an old Mexican for you; he speaks their lingo. They described you as 'the man of the ring.'"

"That's queer."

"Did the girl tell you what the ring meant?"

"Meant?" repeated Keith, questioningly.

"Yes. To the tribe, it means more than a mere ring. The old Mexican gathered that much. It had something the significance of a sceptre, and was worn only by one of the rulers in the old days. When that girl put it on your finger, the tribe thought it meant that she had picked you out for marriage. She didn't tell you?"

"No, she didn't tell me."

"Well, it's all that saved our lives that night. You know the old padre is dead. It was he did the sleight-of-hand work in getting the girl out of sight before you got on your feet again. With some threat of eternal flames, he shut the lips of every Mexican I tried to bribe to find her."

Keith took the cigarette from his lips, and looked at him without speaking. Teddy smiled and nodded.

"Yes, I looked for her without your knowing it. You came nearer going 'over the range' in that fever than you ever realized. The English doctor down there asked me who the devil 'Espiritu' was, and said that she could probably do more to lower your temperature than his drugs. I tried to locate her, as soon as I could hobble on a crutch, but it was no use. The padre said she had taken the black veil: that shut us out."

"Yes, of course," assented Keith, absently.

"You never mentioned her name after you got on your feet, so I figured that it did not really mean anything. Girls never did mean much to you, individually, Keith,—until now."

"Until now."

"And now it's no use, since you can't see her again."

Keith puffed away in thoughtful silence before he spoke.

"Perhaps not. Yet—quien sabe? A sentiment may be like a sunrise, lifting clouds for you and making you see things—things within yourself you never suspected were there. Our trail in these hills followed the light of the morning star once, and we got out of the wilderness to safety: that star has meant something to me ever since. I can't possess it, but the meaning of it is mine. I can't give myself to the right woman,"—and he held out his hand and looked at it,—"but no conventions of the world, no man-made walls can prevent the thought of me from going to her—the thought which, after all, is the real me. When that is so, who can say that even an unknown love has not its own uses? It may prove the illumination of a whole lifetime."

Teddy, with wonder in his eyes, laid his hand on his brother's shoulder. "Old man, that kind of feeling is beyond me. I want my girl with me, and I want her mighty bad. I've lived beside you all my life, and never dreamed it was in you to care like that for any woman. It only shows how little we know, after all."

"Yes; how little, after all, until the right woman crosses the trail."

"The chances are that we can never talk of it again. I know you that much! I told you this old hill of the temple was uncanny—bewitched,—and it is. You never would have mentioned this to me in civilized places."

"Perhaps not," agreed Keith. "And you're right—I could never speak of it again."

They never did. That night they talked only of Teddy's enterprise, and covered much paper with many figures, and made fine plans for the future.

The next day it was that Keith, hunting in the hills, heard an unusual blast from the mine, felt the ground tremble from the shock, and turning back on the trail, met a Mexican with a bleeding hand and a cut face, who urged him to hasten. It was the word of the padre!

He reached Teddy's side only in time to accept "Angela—poor little Angela—" as a life-long legacy. There had been an explosion. Graves were made for the young engineer and three of his Mexican miners on the side of the mountain. When it was all over, Keith Bryton climbed to the heights above, where the broken walls of stone showed white and gray among forest growth on the temple terrace. Below, and beyond the ranges, lay the world. In his isolation of grief, he felt as alone as the solitary mountain rising from the plain below, through which a river ran. Far down the river, miles away, gleamed a cross on the chapel of a convent. It was the old Mexican pueblo of which he had told Alvara. He remembered saying to the old man that he would never come back; yet here he was. How useless to say what one will or will not do in this world! One must make allowance for the moves fate insists upon in the game of life.

Back of him, on a slight elevation, stood some broken columns, and half an arch yet showed where an entrance had been, and under a dwarfed and twisted oak half covered with tropical vines a bench of marble gleamed. Two birds fluttered to the ground near him and turned inquisitive eyes on the intruder. He watched them carelessly, until one of them perched on a fallen block of stone ornamented with the sculptured sun of the Aztecs. It brought back like a flash that other day when he went from the presence of death to a ruined altar-place, where the Aztec sun and the cactus commemorated some unknown Mexican sculptor who cut the symbol of the faith of his people into the walls of a Christian church.

He closed his eyes, and the vision of that other day was only intensified. The wind in the oaks back of him sounded like the surf on San Juan's beach; and through it the slow, fateful words of a girl kneeling in her wedding-veil echoed in his ears as it had done a thousand times:

"So long—as—we—both—shall live!"

There were no weeping girls here, and no bells to toll out the death message; but otherwise the atmosphere of the place, and the illusion, were perfect. How—how had he chanced to enter into this half-pagan atmosphere of death? Unconsciously, automatically, he turned and re-turned on his finger the onyx ring at which Angela had laughed.

He was still seated there when the miners who had filled the graves came up the path, and with them the priest from the plains below. The Mexicans halted outside the broken walls. Only one Indian, who had followed at a distance, crossed the line of entrance, and stood apart, watching and listening in a furtive way—watching the American especially.

"Many times I have heard of this place," said the priest, "but never before have I been so far into the mountain. There are strange old traditions of it in the accounts some of the early padres left. Their king or chief became Christian and gave his sons to the Church, but the main body of the people kept to many of their pagan rites. And this was their temple. The men ask me if you continue with the mining, señor."

He noticed they all listened for the answer, and looked relieved when he said, "No."

"They are all very glad, señor. They ask me to tell you they have no ill will, but they say not any of their men will go into the mine of the temple."

"Some superstition?"

"It seems so. They say one man always dies when outsiders meddle with the mountain, but never before have three men died at once. They ask you to let the company know that none of them will come back."

"Very good," and Bryton arose and picked up the sombrero he had dropped beside him. "I will tell them to bring foreigners if they mean to keep on; but I doubt it. The cave-in down there means a fortune to dig out. I don't think they have the capital."

He was turning away, when he noticed the Indian.

"Is he a workman?"

The others exchanged glances, and then one of them stepped forward.

"No, señor. He is one of the mountain people. No one knows where they live. I know a little of their talk. He says for us all to go away, or worse things will always happen. He—he wants to speak to you."

"Well?"

The man hesitated, and then said a few words, and the Indian replied in a strange jargon with peculiar aspirated syllables.

"He says," continued the interpreter, hesitatingly, "to ask if she is to come back."

"She?"

Bryton's face flushed, as the priest looked at him curiously.

"You have known those people before?"

"I—my brother and I were lost once in the forest here. We—well, we were made to feel we had trespassed; but some one—a sort of missionary among them—made them lead us to the plain. It would have been better if my brother had never come back."

"And—?"

The priest noticed Bryton's hesitation; so did the Indian, for he walked direct to him, and pointed to the ring he wore, and looked from the ring to Bryton's face.

"Tell him," said the American, "that she is a man's wife, and lives in a lovely land."

"You see her—some day?" asked the Indian.

"No—not ever again—perhaps."

The Indian bent his head, and with a slight gesture as of farewell, turned and walked swiftly away from them, around the bend of the mountain.

"Your words have an unusual interest," said the priest, as they walked down toward the plain. "They suggest that the missionary might be the one they spoke of here as the Indian nun."

"This lady was not Indian," said Keith, decidedly. "Her skin was whiter than either yours or mine. The Indians called her Doña Espiritu! It was the only name they knew her by."

"It was the same, and her father's name was Estevan," said the priest, quietly.

"Yes, I know now. His name was Estevan, but—"

"And he was the man who died the awful death up there." And he pointed back to the temple.

"No!" Bryton stopped on the path and faced the priest, thus halting the entire procession at a point where a yawning gulf of a cañon reached to unseen depths below.

"For the love of Christ—señor!" screamed the priest, while the Mexicans in the rear clung to their burros and swore.

"The man who was killed left no child," persisted Bryton. "I heard the story."

"A daughter was born six months after his death—after the wife had taken the black veil of eternal renunciation of the world," declared the priest, solemnly. "Now, señor, for the love of God, will you let us find safer footing?"

"Oh, yes. Pardon me!" and Bryton continued thoughtfully along the trail to the plain below. When they reached a broader road where it was possible to ride abreast, he asked one more question.

"Father, does she know?"

"Not unless some in the world have told her. Here, the old priest, her uncle, had power enough over the wild tribe to make them promise they would not tell her until she had lived twenty years. He died ten years ago, but they kept faith. There are some people in the world who had to know,—the lawyers and judges who settled the estate,—for Estevan was a man of wealth. He carried wounds here from the war for California. The child thought he died from the effects of those. Out in the world where she has gone, that wild barbaric outbreak of her mother's people will never be known; and of the few who have learned it who would tell her?"

"True, father: who would?"

CHAPTER VIII

He did not go north for a month. His letter to Angela contained a check, which she at once invested in very becoming mourning, for which she of course had to journey to Los Angeles.

With her went Don Eduardo Downing and his wife, Doña Maria, who, with Rafael, had unpleasant business to transact with the bishop, and were irritable in consequence. Bryton called upon them at the home of the ex-Governor of California. After Angela's first emotional outburst at the details of Teddy's death and burial,—and regret that a Protestant clergyman was not to be had,—she managed to come back to subjects nearer home, and retail a few of the changes since the death of Doña Luisa.

There had not been time for many. Yet—well—there had been the marriage, of course; and the relations who thought it so fine a thing that Rafael married an heiress and a saint were not so sure now. The tone of Angela and her slight shrug of contempt showed that she shared their doubts.

Raquel Estevan de Arteaga was in the city. She had ridden the sixty miles on horseback, and all the old Spanish families were entertaining her in a style magnificent as their means would allow; but all who cared to have her must invite no heretic Americans, and it was understood to be a promise to Doña Luisa. She did not wish to meet the English-speaking people; not one had yet crossed her threshold; even Don Eduardo, sharing some business interests with her husband, was not welcomed, because he held fields of the old Mission, for which the Church was fighting in the courts of law.

The bishop himself had set the pace for courtesy toward Raquel. He had called on her personally, had a long private interview (Angela's opinion of clerical private interviews with young wives was expressed by another shrug), and he made a point of calling on several families where she visited.

Doña Maria was of course justly offended. Her estates had been greater than those of the Arteagas, and her family name was older in the land than Estevan, which after all was only Spanish for Stevens. On this subject it was easy to see Angela agreed perfectly with the wife of her cousin. Each had built her own plan for certain social supremacies in the little kingdom of San Juan, but neither had reckoned with the fact that the girl from a convent in Mexico would assume a rule there such as no one else had ever dared attempt, and emphasize it by barring out heretics, even when married into Catholic families.

What Rafael thought of it no one yet knew. He hated the old Mission, above all places. The only time it was worth while was when the dances were held in the old dining-room; and when his mother died he thought of course no woman would ever wish to live there. A town residence was assured, and thus closer connection with the new, progressive people. But the bride of a day had decided differently: when a home befitting their station was built for her in San Juan, she would move to it; until then the Mission rooms would serve, and they must arrange it with the bishop.

To tell her that the bishop no longer had jurisdiction over the property was of no use whatever. She had listened quietly to the legal details of the auction sale, when it had all been bought by Eduardo Downing and Miguel Arteaga.

"That is right, to buy it when the place was sold for debt; any son of the Church should do that," she conceded; "but to hold it,—to treat it as a quarry from which to mine bricks and blocks of stone,—may the saints intercede for your brother in his grave, who did such wickedness! If your mother had known that a son of hers was fighting in the courts of law against the Church, it would have killed her the day the word reached her. If you people value money more than the blessing of God, I will give you money for it—to you and your English partner; but not another blast of powder must shatter the place of the altar."

It was in vain they told her Doña Maria had a pious plan to blow down the stonework—the most magnificent monument of such Indian labor ever erected in that part of Mexico which is now United States,—and to build on its site an adobe chapel of her own design. Raquel Estevan de Arteaga listened quietly to all the plans, but shook her head.

"It is sacrilege; it shall not be," she repeated. "Since gold is the god of the English people, we will give them gold."

"But you forget, beloved," put in Rafael. "Doña Maria is Catholic—is Spanish—is—"

"Rafael," said his bride, quietly, "will you listen a little? Then it will be no need to speak of those things again—we will both understand. The padre comes a stranger to San Juan as I do, but he comes from a strange land, and cares not anything for these different races. But I have all the names of those people from your mother, that I know whom to avoid in this life—and in the next."

"My mother was one of the old Spanish people; they were slow. Times change."

"Yes, times did change when men like Alvarado were pushed aside and a quadroon ruled the politics and the Mission property. Thus California paved the way for American rule. In politics and business men must meet unpleasant people often, but it is not ever necessary for the ladies of any family to do so; and, Rafael, here before your padre, two things I must say. The heretics I have promised never to meet except as God sends them in our path. As for the Spanish ladies you mention, if you do not know that there is not a woman of noble Spanish blood in the length of this valley, then you shut your eyes very tight when you might see. The daughters of Don Juan Alvara have one Spanish strain in them; the others are mixed people of Mexican, Indian, and negro, and few of them care to remember their grandmothers. When you bring into my house Spanish ladies of good breeding, I shall be glad to make them welcome, but I do not care for the substitutes. The Indios by the river are of more interest, for they need to be taught."

This conversation had been repeated by Padre Andros to Doña Maria over a game of malilla and a glass of the new American drink called whiskey,—a gift from the army officers, and enjoyed very much by the ladies of San Juan; it suggested a drink made of chilis, because of the appetizing burn it gave the throat.

Padre Andros was frightened when he saw the effect of his recital. Doña Maria was not so stout as most of the women of the mixed races; but as he saw the dark color mount luridly to her face, and her eyes look almost bloodshot with sudden fury, he set down the glass of whiskey to cross himself, and dropped an ace in his perturbation.

"For the love of God! señora," he exclaimed; and then it was Angela entered the room and found her cousin's wife ill with a fury she durst express only in prayers and maledictions against this girl brought to San Juan by Doña Luisa to ruin them all!

Only fragments of the cause of her fury reached Angela, despite all her sudden sympathetic interest in the wife of her cousin, to whom she had heretofore been rather indifferent. But she pieced the fragments together, and as she told them to Bryton he could, with his own knowledge of the early racial mixtures in the land, get a very fair idea of the situation. The girl from Mexico had dared open the closet of a forgotten skeleton.

"Of course she rules Rafael just now, to a certain extent," conceded Angela, carelessly. "He sees the Church and half the town at her feet here; she is a novelty, and he sees everyone turn to look at her. But at San Juan she will find no one at her feet, and her churchmen will be far enough away. The padre there detests her; she stopped him from selling bricks from the cloister pillars."

"The padre and Doña Maria should make a strong team," observed Bryton. "The woman need be strong to win against them—is she?"

"How do I know? I've never spoken to her. She has nasty eyes. That's all I can remember of her."

"Nasty?"

"Oh, it is the expression. I saw them once, and she made me nervous. Perhaps it was because she divined that I was one of the 'accursed heretics.' I understand that is the way the lower order speak of Protestants!"

"But she cannot be quite of the lower order, can she? Her father was of the best Spanish and American blood ever joined on this coast, far above the Arteagas."

"Oh! So you also look up pedigrees here; I wonder why."

"It is a country where you hear of them without question," he returned, indifferently. "The people are always sparring among themselves and referring to their ancestors—if they dare. Doña Luisa was a pure-blood Spanish woman, but the Arteagas had a bad Indian and Mexican streak. She saw it develop in her own children, and it gave her a bad fright. She counted on this marriage bringing the last of them back to the old conservative manner of life."

"Ah!" She shrugged her shoulders contemptuously; "but you forget that Raquel, the present Señora Arteaga, has also a Mexican streak."

"No, I don't forget; but there are high class and low of every race. Noble Indians and high-class Mexicans have gone into history. The American makes a great mistake when he judges the high classes by the masses. In this land one has to dig out the facts of each individual line, if he wants to know the truth of a pedigree. But the lady from Mexico seems to have drawn her distinctions very closely, and realizing her own superiority, she dares dictate."

"Even to her—husband?" There was just the slightest possible hesitation at the title.

"Why not, if she is the superior?"

"But—oh, can't you see how all these marriages are a barter-and-sale family affair,—money that is married, instead of people? If she was in love with him as a—a real woman would be, she never would know she was superior, never! Not that I believe she is," she added with a shrug; "to me she looks as wooden as the saints on her own altar."

He arose and walked to the window, staring out over the heads of the people.

"She may not be wooden to those she cares for," he said at last.

"Perhaps not; but I'm certain of one thing: if she ever cared for any one, it is not the man she married. If she cared, she would forget that rigid fanatic sense of duty sometimes."

"I came to talk of your affairs," he said, abruptly. "Teddy left some mining shares; they may pan out later on. I have talked with a lawyer about them; this is his address," and he handed her a slip of paper. "Whatever funds are procurable he will turn over to you quarterly. Is there anything else I can do for you at present?"

"Yes," she returned; "you might be a bit human and sympathetic. You seem to forget," and her red lip quivered in self-pity, "how utterly alone I am among these Mexicans, and all their women jealous as fiends."

He regarded her with a long, steady stare, and then smiled as he rose.

"I don't blame them," he observed, quietly. "You have given more attention to several of their men than you ever gave to poor Ted. Where's your baby?"

"Heavens! Do you suppose I could drag her on this trip, and a Mexican or Indian nurse?" she demanded, impatiently. "That's so like a man! They think a woman with a child should be merely a domestic animal, like those dunces of Spanish women. I feel as if I were in jail, hedged around with all their conventions. I don't dare walk on the street alone, or with a man; I don't dare ride in a carriage with a man, and it's no pleasure to go with those empty-headed women. Doña Maria is as bad as the rest since I'm in mourning; it is a sort of prison, forbidding the wearer a free breath!"

"Take it off," he suggested, so quietly that he quite deceived her, and she uttered a little cry of shocked appeal.

"Keith! And poor Teddy—"

"Angela!" and his hand fell heavy on her shoulder, "listen to me just once. When Ted was alive I could bear to hear you mention his name, but now that he is dead I—can't. He belongs to me now, and I forbid it."

"Keith!" She gasped again, but this time in sheer fright. "And the money—the shares you—"

He laughed mirthlessly, and took his hand from her shoulder. His moment of feeling gave place to amused appreciation of the real woman poor Ted had never known.

"Who says women are inconsistent?" he queried. "You are a living illustration of the contrary. I have never seen you vary a hair's-breadth from my first instinctive feeling concerning you, you pretty baby kitten! You needn't look so frightened; you will get whatever money is in reach. Now, don't go to whimpering! Get on your bonnet, if Doña Maria may think it allowable for me to take you both for a carriage drive. I promised Ted to do things for you, and I must make a beginning."

"Is that the only reason?" she began, with righteous indignation.

"That is the only reason, my lady," he returned. "Are you coming?"

A little later they were rolling along Spring Street, past the plaza, and many heads turned to look at the golden-haired girlish little figure in mourning, drooping beside Doña Maria, whose rigid, unsmiling, dark features were the best possible foil. Keith Bryton, sitting opposite, noticed the admiration she aroused. The caballeros who had swept sombreros to the ground at the passage of the carriage in which Raquel and the bishop were riding did so as a matter of reverence to a devotee; but the rule of the woman whom Keith had called a baby kitten would always be one of childish appeal, personal to a degree.

Looking at her cynically, he tried to fancy her twenty years ahead,—the mother of a grown daughter,—but failed. The daughter would have to be guardian; the mother would always need one. She was watching him furtively to see the effect this open admiration might have upon him. He was the one man of them all who had ever dared treat her so carelessly. His attitude had piqued her to the point where she had a brief tigerish desire to rend his heart—his affections—if he had any! And Teddy was the weapon.

Of course she had regretted it all—there were other men with so much more money. Still, as it had turned out, it was not so bad. She was installed as a member of his family, and that was better than to depend entirely on the cousinship to the Mexican Doña Maria. She was really a little afraid of the swarthy black-browed women of the country. To be sure, they sat around in fat content, with their bits of embroidery or drawn work, and seemed to see nothing else; but she had seen Doña Maria whip an Indian servant with her own hands one day, and the blind rage in the dark face had ever after made Angela a trifle more respectful. It was not nice to be entirely at the mercy of ignorant power. Don Eduardo was always ready with gold pieces for a pretty woman, but even the distant cousinhood might not be all the protection required for a lady of Angela's beauty, if any animosity should ever take root in Doña Maria's mind.

So it was all well as things stood. Keith Bryton would, she knew, keep to both letter and spirit of any promise he had made poor Teddy, and she felt sure the fond boy had exacted much of the brother who he thought could accomplish all things.

Thus she decided, as she watched and weighed his apparent amused indifference to the admiration she excited. Fair women were at a premium in the City of the Angels. He had just arrived from the dusky tribes of Mexico; before that he had ranged the desert land; but she realized with resentment that no beauty of hers would ever make an oasis for him. The men who did admire her he regarded as fools.

He saw her glance from him, and she set her white teeth together with a little click of absolute frustration. She had accepted his ungracious invitation in order to show him the admiration her mere appearance on the drive would excite, and it all weighed not an iota. Would he ever really care for any one? Had he ever cared?

Then he moved his hand, and the sun gleamed on the ring he wore, the Mexican onyx with the Aztec eagle. It recalled the adventure over which she had laughed at the Mission. She had never believed Teddy when he declared that Keith's attraction for that queer Mexican nun was a serious fact. Teddy knew so little, so very little, of the real feelings of either men or women. He had gone to his death buoyed for any sort of adventure by the absolute conviction that his wife adored him. Poor Teddy! Never would any woman be able to fool Keith Bryton like that,—not even the woman he would care for, if she ever did appear.

While she thought so, and watched him, his face grew suddenly rigid and colorless. The carriage of the bishop came down the street, the palomentos with their golden coats and silver manes and tails shining like satin in the sunlight. Rafael sat with his back to the horses, looking very much bored indeed, but beside the bishop sat the woman who had faced her on the hill of San Juan, and who had held her horse in the middle of the road.

She was prepared for the sudden light of appreciation in Rafael's beautiful eyes, as he lifted his hat and let his glance linger and meet hers for one swift instant of comprehension, but she was not prepared for the sudden leaning forward of his dark-browed bride, and the quick look with which she took in the two women in the carriage, and then the colorless face of their escort.

He looked at her levelly as he lifted his hat in acknowledgment of her husband's salutation. If his glance held ever so slight a suggestion of warning, it was unheeded by her. Her dark eyes glowed, her red lips parted and lost their color as she rested one slender jewelled hand on the carriage frame, and stared at him with incredulous eyes; one could see that she did not even breathe as the carriages whirled past each other; at least Angela noted it.

By turning her head she saw Rafael put out his hand suddenly to his wife, who had sunk back on the cushions beside the bishop. His manner suggested that he thought her ill. Keith could see the same without turning his head. But even after he observed the lace-draped shoulders straighten themselves, and the head held again proudly erect under the mantilla, he continued to gaze after them, unconscious that the blue eyes opposite him were alive with curiosity.

"One would think you were a long-lost brother, from the way that woman stared," she remarked. "One would think she would show more restraint when riding in state beside the bishop, and with her husband opposite."

Keith recovered himself and turned his attention to her.

"Was that Rafael Arteaga's wife?" he asked, carelessly. "I supposed it was, but have not had the honor of being presented."

"Well, they told me she would not notice heretics, but one heretic was the only person she noticed in this carriage. How she looked at you! I told you she had nasty staring eyes, like augers boring through one. Did you see, Doña Maria? Did you not fear she would disgrace us all by leaping into the carriage?"

Doña Maria's black, bead-like eyes were regarding the young man curiously.

"It may be a custom of Mexico for ladies to show attention to strange men in that way," she observed, guardedly. "It may be so. I had never heard of it. The new lady of the Mission is teaching San Juan many new things, but I do not think she will teach it that sort of manners. They do not compare well with the American ladies' manners—no?"

"I fancy it was only as your escort she was gracious enough to turn and look at me; she might have fancied I was known to her. She looks very young."

"You would forget she was young if you heard her talk to the padre," returned Doña Maria, significantly. "It was enough to bring a malediction on all our heads to listen to it!"

"The bishop has forgiven her; at least it looks so."

"Oh, she is clever! He thinks she is a saint, this bishop. But the padre knows!"

She did not add, "and I know," but her thin cold lips with their satisfied smile suggested as much, and Bryton, observing it, felt anew that the girl from Mexico had a strong team to fight in Doña Maria and the padre.

"A'a'a'i-ne! A'a'a'i-ne!
Ta'a'-ni-aine! Ta'a'-ni-aine!
Bita alkaigi dike yiska ne.
Gayelka'! Gayelka'!"

TRANSLATION.

The magpie, the magpie, here underneath,
In the white of his wings are the footsteps of the morning.
It dawns! It dawns!

CHAPTER IX

When the night was old, and others slept, Raquel Arteaga crept in silence to the bedside of the old Indian woman of the hill tribe who had been her nurse, who was still her maid, and who was the one link she kept near her of the old life.

"Tia Polonia, awake!" she said, briefly; and as the woman did so, frightened and full of questions, her mistress held up her hand and rested herself on the side of the pallet, regarding the dark old face with doubt.

"Thy husband, beloved,—he has—"

"It is not my husband this time, Polonia. He is quite safe at the gaming-table, and will come in at sunrise with empty pockets. It is not my husband. It is—" She paused a long time, scrutinizing every feature of the old woman, who grew gray of visage under those smouldering eyes, and her hands shook.

"Darling, little one, thou art so like thy mother; more than ever when angry, and it is night; and I—Holy God! It is like a ghost comes to my bed to—to—ah, Doña Espiritu—mia!—what is the anger in thine eyes?"

"Can a dead woman be angry?" demanded her mistress drearily, the beautiful curved mouth quivering for an instant. "And it is a dead woman they have made of me—all of you! You lied to me, Polonia, when you brought word to me he had died there in Mexico!"

The old woman covered her face with her hands, and sank back whimpering on the pallet.

"I trusted you, and you lied to me, all of you!" the girl repeated in a hopeless tone of finality. "All these months he has been alive, and I have not known. You liars—liars—liars accursed!"

The old woman uttered a smothered shriek, and buried her face in the blankets.

"Not the curse, beloved, not the curse!" she begged, tremulously, "the curse of your people. It means—it means—Ai! not the curse, little one! Thou hast only meant to frighten me to tell you how it was, and I will—I will! Only, child of the spirits, Doña Espiritu, bring not the curse!"

“You Lied to me—All of You!”

She cowered and mumbled in a sort of palsied fear, but the girl sat there untouched by her misery, looking at her drearily. Perhaps she had some slight hope of denial, but Polonia's gray face put that out of her reach.

"Sit up," she commanded, and the old woman hastily scrambled into a sitting posture, but with her hands over her eyes, her body still rocking with fear. "Why did you do it?"

Never before had Tia Polonia heard those hard cold tones from her "querida"—her little one—her nursling of other days. This girl sitting there erect in the glimmering light of the candle was really Doña Espiritu of the tribe of the kings.

"Excellencia," she muttered, "it is true; I did sin. But the padre gave me the word. He said your soul was lost; that the man had bewitched you as—as your little mother had been bewitched when she—when she left religion for your father, and in the end they both died—and so soon!—and—and I wanted you to live, Excellencia! and I wanted your soul to live; and—so it was I took the word of the padre to you, and told you he was dead—and wished that he was dead—but it was all no use at all! On his hand when the fever burned was your ring—it kept him alive and he could not die, and all day and all night he said, 'Doña Espiritu! Doña Espiritu!' The padre heard, and I heard. The American brother, he heard too, and asked the Indios who was Doña Espiritu, and where did she live, that he might send for her. But it was no use. The padre made them all afraid for your soul, so that I told you the lie. Now it is all said, and my life is going out of my body at the curse of your anger."

In fact, the fear in the old creature had worked on her own nerves, so that her final words were very faint. She spoke as one half swooning, and put out her hand in pitiful plea for help.

"Ah—the good padre," said the girl, bitterly. "Well, you see how it has all ended. The padre died, and has gone to God to answer for the lie; and the man he wished dead is alive—alive—alive, and oh—Mother of God! is happy with—with—"

Her cold self-control melted in a flood of tears, and she flung herself face down on the pallet beside the frightened Indian woman, her form shaken with shuddering sobs of absolute despair.