CHAPTER VIITWO TALKS, AND A TUNNELThe siesta hour was over; the caballero had spent it in proper fashion in his teepee; and now, standing out in the open, he was feeding tufts of hay to his horse and caressing the animal’s neck and nose.Half a hundred yards away the two soldiers from the presidio regarded him with animosity, holding him to blame for their assignment at the mission, where none had love for them, and their absence from the barracks-room and its wine and cards, tales and laughter.Neophytes and frailes had finished their work of repairing the adobe wall; men were grouped about the plaza; children played about the huts of tule and straw; the door of the storehouse was open and Señor Lopez stood in it talking to Pedro, the giant neophyte apparently in the service of the guest house.Though it appeared so, yet it was not bravado that drove the caballero to cross the plaza then. It was necessity; for he had given his horse the water that remained in the jug, and needed more, and remembered that there was a well in the orchard.Swinging the jug by one hand, he started briskly upthe slope toward the wall, realising that one of the soldiers was following him at a distance, and that the other remained behind to watch the teepee.An Indian lounging beside the chapel called to another, and the word was passed along. Señor Lopez straightened up and observed the caballero’s advance; Pedro followed him inside, and the door was closed. Indian women called their children into the huts; the men remained standing in groups, but closer together, and as they talked they watched the caballero from beneath shaggy brows. Frailes went about their business as if he did not exist.“It is a pleasant thing,” he mused, “to be treated in this manner by human beings.”He did not betray what he felt, however. Singing under his breath as he walked around the end of the wall, he started diagonally across the plaza, looking neither to right nor left. Neophytes turned their backs upon him, and as he passed within half a dozen feet of a fray, and called a greeting in a cheery tone, the Franciscan did not answer, did not even lift his head.He came to the wall around the orchard and swung upon it—and there stopped, poised, facing the unexpected. Señorita Anita Fernandez, Señora Vallejo and a neophyte were walking toward the well.It was not a time for hesitation, however. He sprang down on the inside and started forward, whistling, knowing they were aware of his approach and that the girl was whispering warnings to herduenna. The neophyte had filled a water jug and would have turned back, but the girl instructed him to wait,and remained standing near the well, looking down the valley toward the bay. Her face was flaming, her black eyes snapped.“Pardon,señorita,” the caballero said. “Perhaps it may look badly to you, but I give you my word of honour I did not see you enter the orchard and purposely follow you here, even though yourduennais present. I am of a family that observes the conventions,señorita, no matter what may be said of me.”“Señora Vallejo, when will you cease mumbling to yourself?” the girl demanded.“I? Mumbling? ’Tis but a frog croaking in the well.”“That comes from sleeping on the wet ground,” the caballero observed. “When last we met my voice resembled the sighing of the gentle wind through the olive trees, if memory serves me right.”Señora Vallejo had turned her back, but the caballero could see that her shoulders were shaking, and not with anger. Señorita Anita was deeply interested in the distant flashing of sun on the water.“Even such rain as we have had recently could not drown my ardour,” the caballero continued. “Yet it was growing almost unbearable—the storm and the cold and misery. How can I ever find thanks enough to give the angel who fetched me flint and steel under cover of the darkness, when I had about given up hope?”The girl whirled suddenly, suspiciously, looking not at the caballero, but at herduenna; and Señora Vallejo’s face resembled the sunset.“Nor is that all,” went on the caballero. “Flint and steel might have given me fire, but naught but an angel could have furnished me, at that moment, with cold meat and wine and other supplies.”Now Señora Vallejo whirled in her turn, and Señorita Anita turned suddenly to look down the valley again, her face flaming red. A choking sound came from her throat.“Some fray of San Diego de Alcalá must have been a holy man, since angels make dwelling here,” the man said. “For two visited me last night within the space of half an hour and left material evidences of their visits behind. It is true I had other visitors later, who left me even a teepee, but scarcely would I call them angels, knowing their breed as I do.”Sombrero in hand, he waited, hoping the girl would speak to him, if even in rebuke. There was silence for a moment, during which the two women did not look at each other, and the neophyte wondered whether he should call for aid.“Señora Vallejo,” said the girl, presently, “do you not think we should be returning to the guest house? The evening air is cold, and I would not contract a cough, since I must be at my best when Rojerio Rocha comes.”“It would be the proper thing to do; the orchard is wet.”“And I always did dislike a croaking frog,” Anita added. “Tell that Indian to throw out the water in his jar. Nobody except a senseless being would drawwater from the well now, since the storm has filled it with the surface flood.”The caballero felt his face growing red as he glanced down at the jug he held in his hand. The girl had scored again. He looked up quickly, hearing them start to move away, and for an instant their eyes met squarely.“Bullet nor arrow can harm me now!” he exclaimed. “My heart already is pierced!” And, with that last shot, he turned toward the curb of the well, put his jug down upon it, and stood with his back turned toward them, laughing to himself.He heard the girl gasp in exasperation, and exchange whispered sentences with herduenna. There was a step on the ground at his back, but not for the world would he turn.“Señor,” a soft voice said.He turned now, and swept his sombrero from his head again, and bowed low before her. Her face was still flaming, but she looked him bravely in the eyes.“Señorita?”“I feel that I must speak to you this once,señor. For the boasts you made concerning me, I forgive you freely, believing that they would not have been made unless you were in your cups. But surely you must realise that nothing can be accomplished by remaining at San Diego de Alcalá. The people dislike you,señor, and your presence is very annoying because of that. Will you not go back up El Camino Real?”“That you forgive anything I may have said pleases me,señorita,” the caballero replied. “It shows youhave a gentle heart, as was shown last night when you carried me food. I am desolated to think you have such an ill opinion of me. As for leaving San Diego de Alcalá—I cannot think of that just now,señorita.”“Not even if I ask it as a kindness,señor?”“Not even though you ask it,señorita—and I would do it for you sooner than for anyone else I know.”“It is not pretty compliments I wish,señor. Will you not forget your foolish boast, and go?”“If ever I made a boast,señorita, it was not a foolish one.”“I urge you again,señor, to go before Rojerio Rocha comes. He is expected to become my husband, and when he hears of your boast he may take it upon himself to do something unpleasant. Will you not do as I request, since I have disobeyed myduenna’sorders and lowered myself to speak with you?”“Loweredyourself,señorita?” Surprise, astonishment, a bit of pain was in the voice, and the caballero’s face went white for an instant as his fingers gripped the rim of his sombrero until it was torn. But quickly he recovered his composure, and bowed before her again. “I beg your pardon,señorita. But you mistake. It would be impossible for you to lower yourself, since angels are above punishment and accusation; it is myself—or any other man—who is elevated when you condescend to take notice of his existence.”“I—I should not have spoken as I did,” she stammered.“You should speak exactly as you desire,señorita—always. It is your privilege. As for me—it is myprivilege to remain at San Diego de Alcalá, not in opposition to your wishes, but because I—I have reason to remain. And you yourself have made it impossible for me to leave now.”“I?”“There was some question, I believe, of my punishment at the hands of this Rojerio Rocha if I remained. That in itself is a very good reason why I should not depart,señorita. Have you ever heard it said that I am a coward?”“I am sure you are not,” she replied, searching his face. “It takes a brave man to depart in the face of a charge of cowardice,señor. Will you not show your courage?”“The point is well taken,” he observed. “But I have reason for remaining, though mission and presidio and neophytes and gentiles turn against me—a twofold reason,señorita. One part of it concerns that of which, happily, you know nothing; and the other——”“Well,señor?”“I have seen you,señorita; I have heard your voice and looked into your eyes. And I intend to win you for my wife, else have no wife at all!”“Señor!You dare?”“To speak the truth——?”“I might have known insults would be my pay for speaking to you!”“Is it an insult to have a gentleman say that he loves you above all women he ever has seen, that he loved you when first he saw you, that he hopes one day to call you wife?”“It is an insult coming from such as you,señor!”“Ah! I beg your pardon! I had forgotten for the time being my name and station.”“Captain Fly-by-Night would do well to always remember those things, especially in the presence of reputable persons. I forgave you the boast concerning myself,señor; but I cannot forgive you this latest insult to my face. Go or remain as you will, your affairs are no concern of mine longer,señor. Though you starve on the doorstep of the chapel, I’ll not recognise your presence!”Señora Vallejo had been calling in a soft voice for the past five minutes. Now the girl turned from the caballero and hurried after herduenna. Leaning against the curb of the well, he watched her until she had disappeared through a hole in the wall and across the plaza.He laughed softly to himself then, and picked up the water jug, swinging it foolishly at his side, chagrined to think he had not remembered that the water in the well would be ruined for the time being, wondering if Señorita Anita really thought the jug a mere subterfuge of his to follow her and seek conversation.Turning, he looked down into the well. Surface water was seeping through the rocks of the curb, and a few feet below the level of the ground a torrent poured into the hole to splash far below.“Where is that coming from?” the caballero wondered.He walked to the other side of the curb and bent over to look better. Ten feet from the top was themouth of a small cavern in the side of the well, and from this the water was pouring in a stream half a foot deep and avarawide.“Persons do not turn a drain into a well,” he observed, watching the downpour. “There is something here that needs to be investigated.”He glanced around. No other person was in the small orchard; none was peering at him over the wall. It was almost dusk. Perhaps the soldier who had followed him from the teepee was watching through a crack in the adobe, but he could not be sure.He picked up the jug and sauntered toward the wall, stopping where a breach had been made, instead of springing over in the usual place. The soldier had turned back, and was standing at one corner of the plaza talking to a fray, and waiting.The caballero ran back to the wall again, looked around quickly, and let himself over the curb. Jutting rocks gave holds for his feet and hands. He lowered himself rapidly, until he was at the mouth of the small cavern.The volume of water pouring out was not so great now. The cavern was not a small storage-place for tallow, as he had half suspected, but a tunnel. Now the spirit of exploration was on him, and he drew himself inside. Foot by foot he made his way through the narrow gorge, splashing in water and mud to his knees, the water dripping upon him from the dirt roof.Soon he had gone so far that light from the well did not penetrate, and now he journeyed slowly, putting a foot out and feeling around before attempting astep, fearing to be plunged into a pit or another well. He had covered a distance of fifty yards when he came to a turning, and there he stopped for a moment, hesitating whether to go on.Then he heard voices, faintly at first, the voices of women, and they seemed to come from above. He heard Señora Vallejo’s deep tones raised in rebuke, the softer syllables of Señorita Anita Fernandez in justification of her act. He put out his hand to touch the wall, and found it dry and warm. The cracking of burning wood could be heard. The tunnel ended against a wall of the guest house.“Some wise old padre did this in the earlier days,” the caballero observed. “I doubt whether half a dozen men in the mission know of its existence now.”But there was another tunnel that branched away from this, and in a diagonal direction. The caballero followed it, determined to gather what knowledge he could. Less than a hundred feet, and he came up against another wall. There were no sounds here, but there was a thin streak of light entering at the end.He crept near the streak of light and applied his eyes to the crack. The day was dying, and he could see but dimly, but enough to show that he was looking into the mortuary chapel of the mission. Here, then, was another way of escape in case of danger, provided by the frailes of Serra’s time.His exploration was at an end now, and he faced the long, wet return journey through the tunnel to the well. He shivered at the thought of it, and decided it should not be made. Again he looked through thecrack; there was no one in the chapel, and, moreover, the tunnel entrance was in a dark corner. He put his fingers in the crack and tried to pull. A section of the wall gave a little. He braced himself against the side of the tunnel, exerted his strength, and a square of adobe swung inward.For a moment he waited, listening, then slipped into the chapel and swung the section of wall back into place, even scattering dust along the crack where his hands had gripped. Walking silently, he made his way to the main part of the church, meeting no one, arousing no suspicion. Presently he opened the door and stepped out into the plaza. He was seen only by neophytes, and his presence there did not arouse much curiosity among them, for even Captain Fly-by-Night, they supposed, attended to his devotions and confessed his many sins.At the corner of the plaza he came face to face with an agitated soldier, who had looked back into the orchard, missed the caballero, and searched frantically and without result. The caballero grinned in the man’s red face, and walked slowly down the slope.“Now from where, in the name of evil, did that man come?” the soldier gasped. But he got no answer then, though he gathered a solution at a later day.The caballero was building up his fire and preparing the evening meal when the soldier joined his companion beside the creek. Two neophytes hurried down the slope and made camp for the men from the presidio, building a fire and stretching a shelter of skins, and giving them food and wine. Darkness came swiftly,and to those at the mission the two fires beside the creek looked like the eyes of a giant beast about to spring on the settlement.The caballero did not attempt a serenade this night. He sat before his fire, wondering what would occur at midnight, when the Indians were to come. The presence of the soldiers complicated matters. He knew that at least one of them was watching him, and that, if he started to move away, one would follow.The hours passed, slowly it seemed to the caballero. One by one the lights in the mission buildings disappeared. The heavy fog obscured the light of the moon and stars. A cold wind crept up the valley, and the caballero wrapped his cloak around his shoulders and sat nearer the fire.
The siesta hour was over; the caballero had spent it in proper fashion in his teepee; and now, standing out in the open, he was feeding tufts of hay to his horse and caressing the animal’s neck and nose.
Half a hundred yards away the two soldiers from the presidio regarded him with animosity, holding him to blame for their assignment at the mission, where none had love for them, and their absence from the barracks-room and its wine and cards, tales and laughter.
Neophytes and frailes had finished their work of repairing the adobe wall; men were grouped about the plaza; children played about the huts of tule and straw; the door of the storehouse was open and Señor Lopez stood in it talking to Pedro, the giant neophyte apparently in the service of the guest house.
Though it appeared so, yet it was not bravado that drove the caballero to cross the plaza then. It was necessity; for he had given his horse the water that remained in the jug, and needed more, and remembered that there was a well in the orchard.
Swinging the jug by one hand, he started briskly upthe slope toward the wall, realising that one of the soldiers was following him at a distance, and that the other remained behind to watch the teepee.
An Indian lounging beside the chapel called to another, and the word was passed along. Señor Lopez straightened up and observed the caballero’s advance; Pedro followed him inside, and the door was closed. Indian women called their children into the huts; the men remained standing in groups, but closer together, and as they talked they watched the caballero from beneath shaggy brows. Frailes went about their business as if he did not exist.
“It is a pleasant thing,” he mused, “to be treated in this manner by human beings.”
He did not betray what he felt, however. Singing under his breath as he walked around the end of the wall, he started diagonally across the plaza, looking neither to right nor left. Neophytes turned their backs upon him, and as he passed within half a dozen feet of a fray, and called a greeting in a cheery tone, the Franciscan did not answer, did not even lift his head.
He came to the wall around the orchard and swung upon it—and there stopped, poised, facing the unexpected. Señorita Anita Fernandez, Señora Vallejo and a neophyte were walking toward the well.
It was not a time for hesitation, however. He sprang down on the inside and started forward, whistling, knowing they were aware of his approach and that the girl was whispering warnings to herduenna. The neophyte had filled a water jug and would have turned back, but the girl instructed him to wait,and remained standing near the well, looking down the valley toward the bay. Her face was flaming, her black eyes snapped.
“Pardon,señorita,” the caballero said. “Perhaps it may look badly to you, but I give you my word of honour I did not see you enter the orchard and purposely follow you here, even though yourduennais present. I am of a family that observes the conventions,señorita, no matter what may be said of me.”
“Señora Vallejo, when will you cease mumbling to yourself?” the girl demanded.
“I? Mumbling? ’Tis but a frog croaking in the well.”
“That comes from sleeping on the wet ground,” the caballero observed. “When last we met my voice resembled the sighing of the gentle wind through the olive trees, if memory serves me right.”
Señora Vallejo had turned her back, but the caballero could see that her shoulders were shaking, and not with anger. Señorita Anita was deeply interested in the distant flashing of sun on the water.
“Even such rain as we have had recently could not drown my ardour,” the caballero continued. “Yet it was growing almost unbearable—the storm and the cold and misery. How can I ever find thanks enough to give the angel who fetched me flint and steel under cover of the darkness, when I had about given up hope?”
The girl whirled suddenly, suspiciously, looking not at the caballero, but at herduenna; and Señora Vallejo’s face resembled the sunset.
“Nor is that all,” went on the caballero. “Flint and steel might have given me fire, but naught but an angel could have furnished me, at that moment, with cold meat and wine and other supplies.”
Now Señora Vallejo whirled in her turn, and Señorita Anita turned suddenly to look down the valley again, her face flaming red. A choking sound came from her throat.
“Some fray of San Diego de Alcalá must have been a holy man, since angels make dwelling here,” the man said. “For two visited me last night within the space of half an hour and left material evidences of their visits behind. It is true I had other visitors later, who left me even a teepee, but scarcely would I call them angels, knowing their breed as I do.”
Sombrero in hand, he waited, hoping the girl would speak to him, if even in rebuke. There was silence for a moment, during which the two women did not look at each other, and the neophyte wondered whether he should call for aid.
“Señora Vallejo,” said the girl, presently, “do you not think we should be returning to the guest house? The evening air is cold, and I would not contract a cough, since I must be at my best when Rojerio Rocha comes.”
“It would be the proper thing to do; the orchard is wet.”
“And I always did dislike a croaking frog,” Anita added. “Tell that Indian to throw out the water in his jar. Nobody except a senseless being would drawwater from the well now, since the storm has filled it with the surface flood.”
The caballero felt his face growing red as he glanced down at the jug he held in his hand. The girl had scored again. He looked up quickly, hearing them start to move away, and for an instant their eyes met squarely.
“Bullet nor arrow can harm me now!” he exclaimed. “My heart already is pierced!” And, with that last shot, he turned toward the curb of the well, put his jug down upon it, and stood with his back turned toward them, laughing to himself.
He heard the girl gasp in exasperation, and exchange whispered sentences with herduenna. There was a step on the ground at his back, but not for the world would he turn.
“Señor,” a soft voice said.
He turned now, and swept his sombrero from his head again, and bowed low before her. Her face was still flaming, but she looked him bravely in the eyes.
“Señorita?”
“I feel that I must speak to you this once,señor. For the boasts you made concerning me, I forgive you freely, believing that they would not have been made unless you were in your cups. But surely you must realise that nothing can be accomplished by remaining at San Diego de Alcalá. The people dislike you,señor, and your presence is very annoying because of that. Will you not go back up El Camino Real?”
“That you forgive anything I may have said pleases me,señorita,” the caballero replied. “It shows youhave a gentle heart, as was shown last night when you carried me food. I am desolated to think you have such an ill opinion of me. As for leaving San Diego de Alcalá—I cannot think of that just now,señorita.”
“Not even if I ask it as a kindness,señor?”
“Not even though you ask it,señorita—and I would do it for you sooner than for anyone else I know.”
“It is not pretty compliments I wish,señor. Will you not forget your foolish boast, and go?”
“If ever I made a boast,señorita, it was not a foolish one.”
“I urge you again,señor, to go before Rojerio Rocha comes. He is expected to become my husband, and when he hears of your boast he may take it upon himself to do something unpleasant. Will you not do as I request, since I have disobeyed myduenna’sorders and lowered myself to speak with you?”
“Loweredyourself,señorita?” Surprise, astonishment, a bit of pain was in the voice, and the caballero’s face went white for an instant as his fingers gripped the rim of his sombrero until it was torn. But quickly he recovered his composure, and bowed before her again. “I beg your pardon,señorita. But you mistake. It would be impossible for you to lower yourself, since angels are above punishment and accusation; it is myself—or any other man—who is elevated when you condescend to take notice of his existence.”
“I—I should not have spoken as I did,” she stammered.
“You should speak exactly as you desire,señorita—always. It is your privilege. As for me—it is myprivilege to remain at San Diego de Alcalá, not in opposition to your wishes, but because I—I have reason to remain. And you yourself have made it impossible for me to leave now.”
“I?”
“There was some question, I believe, of my punishment at the hands of this Rojerio Rocha if I remained. That in itself is a very good reason why I should not depart,señorita. Have you ever heard it said that I am a coward?”
“I am sure you are not,” she replied, searching his face. “It takes a brave man to depart in the face of a charge of cowardice,señor. Will you not show your courage?”
“The point is well taken,” he observed. “But I have reason for remaining, though mission and presidio and neophytes and gentiles turn against me—a twofold reason,señorita. One part of it concerns that of which, happily, you know nothing; and the other——”
“Well,señor?”
“I have seen you,señorita; I have heard your voice and looked into your eyes. And I intend to win you for my wife, else have no wife at all!”
“Señor!You dare?”
“To speak the truth——?”
“I might have known insults would be my pay for speaking to you!”
“Is it an insult to have a gentleman say that he loves you above all women he ever has seen, that he loved you when first he saw you, that he hopes one day to call you wife?”
“It is an insult coming from such as you,señor!”
“Ah! I beg your pardon! I had forgotten for the time being my name and station.”
“Captain Fly-by-Night would do well to always remember those things, especially in the presence of reputable persons. I forgave you the boast concerning myself,señor; but I cannot forgive you this latest insult to my face. Go or remain as you will, your affairs are no concern of mine longer,señor. Though you starve on the doorstep of the chapel, I’ll not recognise your presence!”
Señora Vallejo had been calling in a soft voice for the past five minutes. Now the girl turned from the caballero and hurried after herduenna. Leaning against the curb of the well, he watched her until she had disappeared through a hole in the wall and across the plaza.
He laughed softly to himself then, and picked up the water jug, swinging it foolishly at his side, chagrined to think he had not remembered that the water in the well would be ruined for the time being, wondering if Señorita Anita really thought the jug a mere subterfuge of his to follow her and seek conversation.
Turning, he looked down into the well. Surface water was seeping through the rocks of the curb, and a few feet below the level of the ground a torrent poured into the hole to splash far below.
“Where is that coming from?” the caballero wondered.
He walked to the other side of the curb and bent over to look better. Ten feet from the top was themouth of a small cavern in the side of the well, and from this the water was pouring in a stream half a foot deep and avarawide.
“Persons do not turn a drain into a well,” he observed, watching the downpour. “There is something here that needs to be investigated.”
He glanced around. No other person was in the small orchard; none was peering at him over the wall. It was almost dusk. Perhaps the soldier who had followed him from the teepee was watching through a crack in the adobe, but he could not be sure.
He picked up the jug and sauntered toward the wall, stopping where a breach had been made, instead of springing over in the usual place. The soldier had turned back, and was standing at one corner of the plaza talking to a fray, and waiting.
The caballero ran back to the wall again, looked around quickly, and let himself over the curb. Jutting rocks gave holds for his feet and hands. He lowered himself rapidly, until he was at the mouth of the small cavern.
The volume of water pouring out was not so great now. The cavern was not a small storage-place for tallow, as he had half suspected, but a tunnel. Now the spirit of exploration was on him, and he drew himself inside. Foot by foot he made his way through the narrow gorge, splashing in water and mud to his knees, the water dripping upon him from the dirt roof.
Soon he had gone so far that light from the well did not penetrate, and now he journeyed slowly, putting a foot out and feeling around before attempting astep, fearing to be plunged into a pit or another well. He had covered a distance of fifty yards when he came to a turning, and there he stopped for a moment, hesitating whether to go on.
Then he heard voices, faintly at first, the voices of women, and they seemed to come from above. He heard Señora Vallejo’s deep tones raised in rebuke, the softer syllables of Señorita Anita Fernandez in justification of her act. He put out his hand to touch the wall, and found it dry and warm. The cracking of burning wood could be heard. The tunnel ended against a wall of the guest house.
“Some wise old padre did this in the earlier days,” the caballero observed. “I doubt whether half a dozen men in the mission know of its existence now.”
But there was another tunnel that branched away from this, and in a diagonal direction. The caballero followed it, determined to gather what knowledge he could. Less than a hundred feet, and he came up against another wall. There were no sounds here, but there was a thin streak of light entering at the end.
He crept near the streak of light and applied his eyes to the crack. The day was dying, and he could see but dimly, but enough to show that he was looking into the mortuary chapel of the mission. Here, then, was another way of escape in case of danger, provided by the frailes of Serra’s time.
His exploration was at an end now, and he faced the long, wet return journey through the tunnel to the well. He shivered at the thought of it, and decided it should not be made. Again he looked through thecrack; there was no one in the chapel, and, moreover, the tunnel entrance was in a dark corner. He put his fingers in the crack and tried to pull. A section of the wall gave a little. He braced himself against the side of the tunnel, exerted his strength, and a square of adobe swung inward.
For a moment he waited, listening, then slipped into the chapel and swung the section of wall back into place, even scattering dust along the crack where his hands had gripped. Walking silently, he made his way to the main part of the church, meeting no one, arousing no suspicion. Presently he opened the door and stepped out into the plaza. He was seen only by neophytes, and his presence there did not arouse much curiosity among them, for even Captain Fly-by-Night, they supposed, attended to his devotions and confessed his many sins.
At the corner of the plaza he came face to face with an agitated soldier, who had looked back into the orchard, missed the caballero, and searched frantically and without result. The caballero grinned in the man’s red face, and walked slowly down the slope.
“Now from where, in the name of evil, did that man come?” the soldier gasped. But he got no answer then, though he gathered a solution at a later day.
The caballero was building up his fire and preparing the evening meal when the soldier joined his companion beside the creek. Two neophytes hurried down the slope and made camp for the men from the presidio, building a fire and stretching a shelter of skins, and giving them food and wine. Darkness came swiftly,and to those at the mission the two fires beside the creek looked like the eyes of a giant beast about to spring on the settlement.
The caballero did not attempt a serenade this night. He sat before his fire, wondering what would occur at midnight, when the Indians were to come. The presence of the soldiers complicated matters. He knew that at least one of them was watching him, and that, if he started to move away, one would follow.
The hours passed, slowly it seemed to the caballero. One by one the lights in the mission buildings disappeared. The heavy fog obscured the light of the moon and stars. A cold wind crept up the valley, and the caballero wrapped his cloak around his shoulders and sat nearer the fire.