Music: The Magpie's Reveille (Indian Gambling Song)."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!
"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!
"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!
Music.CHAPTER IX
Music.
M
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!"
Doña Angela“You Lied to me—All of You!”
“You Lied to me—All of You!”
She cowered and mumbled in a sort of palsiedfear, 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.
The dawn was near. All the night she had walked in her room alone, stunned and wordless over this thing she could not fight, or reason, or pray away; and now, having heard it all,—even of his calls for her when unconscious,—she had let fall for the first time the cold mask she had worn since the deathof Doña Luisa, and since the significance of her vow had been revealed to her by the days and nights of Rafael's life.
She wept in a wild abandonment of grief at the hopeless vista of years reaching on to the edge of the world where death is. It had all been dreary enough before; but now—
When the birds began their welcome of the day she was still lying prone, but silent. The tempest of feeling had passed, and her Indian woman stroked her hair softly, and waited, and did not speak. At last she rose, and looked out on the yellowing light touching the purple of the mountains.
"This is only a dream of the night, Polonia," she said, with a great sigh; "sleep again, and forget it all."
But the old woman clung with trembling hands to the folds of the girl's gown, and rested her cheek on the silken slippers.
"And the curse, darling? what of the curse of the lie?"
"Curses come home to the people who utter them," said the girl, drearily. "On my head they all lie—the curse by which I was made blind for a little, little while of life, and which now allows me to see when it is too late. The curse of God has followed our people; no blessing of the Church can wipe it out."
"But I—I—beloved?"
"The sin that is for love is not so black a sin, and it was your love the padre trusted to—your fear that I was bewitched and lost. But it is all over; we are in a new land, and this is a new life."
"And—he is happy—without thee?"
"I have seen his wife; people call her beautiful. I saw him almost touching her, yet I did not scream."
"Mother of God! his wife!"
"I heard her name,—it was enough. His I did not need to ask; I remembered."
"But—dear one—it is better that he is married. Pardon, beloved—I am at thy feet, and I feel thy heartache. But, after all, is it not to thank the saints that he is married?"
"Perhaps. Otherwise, he might say to me some day, 'Come!' And the witchcraft of the ring might hold, and—"
"Holy Mother! and then—"
"And I—God knows what I might do, Polonia."
And then the old Indian woman was left alone, mumbling prayers and crossing herself.
Later she got up and went to the priest of Our Lady of the Angels and brought a bottle of holy water to sprinkle on the threshold of the street door, and all sides of Doña Raquel's room, that no curseof witchcraft or bad dream of the night might have power over the days.
It was broad daylight when Rafael came home whistling gayly a dance of melody. He had been gifted with unusual good luck, and his pockets were full of gold pieces. He threw a buckskin sack of coin on his wife's bed before he noticed that she was not lying there.
"Hola! Raquelita mia! There is plenty to pay for masses; your priests always want money for that sort of thing. Since you look after my soul, I pay for the prayers when I have good luck."
Raquel arose from where she knelt at the little altar in the corner.
"Oh, is that where you are? What need to pay the priests when you do enough praying for an army?"
She smiled absently, but did not speak. He stood watching her as she brushed her mass of dark, slightly waving hair.
"Let your woman do that," he said at last, with perfunctory solicitude. "It tires your arm, and I don't want you tired to-day. There is a picnic, and we should go."
"Which of our friends make it?"
"It is Doña Maria Downing, who, as our oneneighbor down the country, wants to add to the entertainment Los Angeles gives you. It is to make peace with the bishop, I think; at least, so it looks. He is invited. You can help them to be friends. Is that not the duty of us both as good Catholics?"
She halted in her task and looked at him quietly. He was plainly set on being very agreeable, for some reason; too seldom had he mentioned their faith but to scoff at the rigid rules of his mother and his wife.
"You want it very much," she said; "but why? You do not care at all for Doña Maria's personal peace with the bishop. That can be arranged without a picnic to the hills. It only needs that they give back, of their own free will, that which belongs to the Church, and make a confession that it was wrongly held."
"If you would only talk to her of this graciously, instead of demanding it," persisted Rafael, gently, "much could be effected. Doña Angela thinks for certain—"
"Doña Angela?"
"Oh, I mean her—the relative who is with her now—the Mrs. Bryton who drove with her yesterday. The bishop asked who she was—you remember?"
"I remember," she said, quietly, though a littleshudder touched her. "But I am tired of this town, Rafael. I meant to tell you so this morning. I want to ride home to-day. Doña Maria's merry-makings do not attract me. Our business here is over; let us go."
"Holy God! but you are a wife for a man!" he cried in sudden fury. "I weigh you down with jewels and silks and laces, and you would bury them all with yourself in that old rat-hole of a Mission. I wish to God the padre and Doña Maria had blown down every brick of it before you saw the accursed place!"
"Accursed? The Church of God? Rafael!"
"Ay, accursed, since you will know!" he repeated. "Every old Indian of San Juan can tell you that."
"Some Indian, perhaps, who has had to be whipped by the padres," she remarked, with quiet scorn.
"You don't believe me?" he cried. "Well, you shall! Sit down—sit down and listen for once, and you will be glad to keep out of the curse-haunted place."
She regarded him with a little tolerant smile, and drew a serape of blue around her, and curled herself on the foot of the bed and waited.
"It is early for stories," she observed; "but since it is your pleasure—"
"Not any pleasure has any of it been to me from first to last," he retorted, "nor any pleasure will it be to whoever holds it! You think you are strong, your saints will help you! But no saint ever put on an altar—not even that of the Virgin herself—can take off the curse from San Juan till the altar is bathed in human blood, as the tiles of the floor have been bathed—that is the curse of Sahirit."
She stared at him with wide eyes and blanching face.
"Until the altar is bathed in human blood, as the tiles of the floor have been," she whispered. "Rafael! That—that is of a religion older than the life of Christianity in Mexico. God of Gods! Does it follow me here?"
"Followyou!" and he laughed contemptuously; "it is a story older than our grandfathers. Only the old Indians whisper it now each time ill luck comes to any of us—and I've had enough! When they picked up Miguel tramped into the earth by the cattle, only the white men would help—no Indian; they knew it was the curse coming true."
"Tell me," she said, briefly. Her lips were white, and she shuddered with cold, and drew the serape close.
"You'd rather hear some old Indian tell it," heanswered; "they make one chill when they count on their fingers and toes the things the curse has brought. We had a curse of our own in the Arteaga family: my mother was always in prayer because of that; she never knew that Miguel had bought an interest in another."
"Go on—tell me! How comes the rule of the Aztec altar to this Christian temple?"
"Aztec? I did not say Aztec. I know nothing of their mummeries. But it can't be that—there have been no Aztecs since the time of Cortez and the priests."
"I—I have heard there is one hill tribe still refusing the saints, and giving the sun worship," she said, slowly. "But go on; tell me!"
"Sun-worship! yes, that's the thing!" he cried. "A man, who was a heretic of Mexico and a great builder of stone, killed a priest and a woman down there. Some say the woman was his wife. He was to have his head cut off for it, but word went down from here that such a man was needed by the priests of San Juan; they wished to build a stone church instead of adobe brick, as all the others were, if only a master mason could be sent to them. They had soldiers to guard him, even if the man chanced to be a convict, as many of the guards had been, and theygot the viceroy to help; and in the end the heretic who had killed a priest was sent to San Juan. The old Indios say he looked as big as two men, and he worked as he pleased. When the padres interfered he sat down and looked at the piles of stone and did nothing, and nothing could move him. They could have shot and buried him, but that would not build their church, which was to be the finest in the Californias. So they had to let him alone, and he built it as pleased himself. Their ground plan only he accepted. It was like a cross, as you see it now, but on no other part of the church was any symbol of Christianity—only stars and other things which some say are flowers and some say are suns and moons, and on the corner-stone and key-stone of the high altar is carved a thing no Christian can read, not even the padres—and somewhere in those symbols is held the curse."
Rũelas me fecit. Me Llama San Juan. 1796.“Rũelas me fecit.Me Llama San Juan. 1796.”
“Rũelas me fecit.
Me Llama San Juan. 1796.”
"Who says? Did he?"
"He? No; he died laughing, and refused the blessing of the priest. One thing only he said when he read the words on the oldest bell, as he built a place in the tower for it. The name of the maker is on the bell; you can see it yet; it is Ruelas. 'So Ruelas made you—iron-tongue,' a soldier heard him say, 'and your name is San Juan. Well, SeñorRuelas, you only have your name in this work. The good padres will see that my name is forgotten, but instead of a name, I will leave myself, and so long as stone stands on stone I will call louder and farther than your iron tongue when rung your loudest! When the storms of centuries shall beat out every star and moon and sun in the stone of the temple, the man from Culiacan will be remembered here in Sahirit.'"
"Sahirit?"
"The Indian name for the valley was 'Quanis Savit Sahirit'; you can see it on the church records."
"And it means?"
"No one knows, and no one cares; it may mean another curse, for all I know. The Indios either do not know or will not tell."
"But—" and she drew in a long breath of relief—"what the man from Culiacan said to the bell—the thing the soldier heard—was not a curse; it was only that the beautiful work should be remembered."
"Oh, yes, that! But there was a prophecy years before, when the corner-stone was set in its place and blessed by the padres, and the Indios were all there on their knees saying a rosary, and the viceroy and all the dignitaries. An Indian hunter was also there from the south, and he was a stranger. Helooked at the thing carved on the corner-stone, and he looked at the builder, who leaned against the wall and laughed when the holy water touched it; and the stranger crossed himself, for his mother was a convert; but to the captain of the guard he said the thing I told you, and the captain of the guard was of my father's family. So it was repeated down to our time."
"But the words—he said what of a prophecy?"
"He said human blood, and not holy water, must baptize the stones and the altar of a temple with those signs. He was afraid the padre would put malediction on him if he told him that the blessing of a Christian saint was not so strong as the gods of the Indians, but he would not stand or kneel beside the lines where the church was to be, and he would not tell why he was afraid. He said he did not know what would happen there: it might be a tidal wave from the sea in sight, or it might be a pestilence, for the people were very wicked and very dirty, but it was marked with a sign for evil, and it would be well if the walls never went higher."
"Well?"
"They tried to get him to tell the padre, so that the builder might be whipped, but the stranger Indian was afraid. He said he wanted to live to see his children again, and they lived south in the hill country;and he ran away when they tried to keep him, but he had warned some old Indios, and when the first earthquake cracked the walls, they all remembered."
"And—?"
"The mason laughed, but mended the cracked walls and went on at work, always singing, always working, even before sunrise. The old Indios who helped said it was at sunrise hour only that he worked on the keystones with the suns and star things, but they maybe lied. And after the dedication of the church he died as he lived, laughing and a heretic; and when the earthquake came and the tower of the bells fell, and the tiles of the floor were wet with the blood of the thirty-nine lives crushed out there, then the old Indios whispered and remembered many things; for the prophecy of the strange learned Indian of the south had come true."
"And—the altar? Did—some one—"
Her lips were stiff as with cold, and she could scarcely articulate.
"Holy God! how white you are, Raquel!" he exclaimed. "I thought you were not a coward like the other women. Take this wine—take it! Por Dios, but you gave me a fright!"
She swallowed the wine, and smiled absently at his excitement, and drew the serape closer. She did notspeak again for a long time, just sat staring out toward the blue of the hills.
"Are you in a trance?" he demanded. "Santa Maria, but you are a wife to come home to! If I interest you at all, I have to talk to you of things bad enough to scare the devil. Now you see why Doña Maria blows down the walls—they were accursed from the beginning. She thinks maybe she is doing a pious thing, who knows?"
"Selling to others the stone that is accursed?"
"Oh, that is a side issue. But I think truly, Raquelita, she is afraid of the bishop now, since you have come. I even think she wants to be friends; Doña Angela told me. She has promised that she will build a chapel there of adobe, if the bishop will give his benediction. Much of bad luck is coming to them, and she is growing afraid."
"Yes; she has no sense of justice in her; she has only fear," returned Raquel. "Let her build chapels if she likes, but the blessing of God was put on those stone walls, as well as the curse of a heretic, and what she has done is sacrilege. I will do nothing to countenance it, or allow it to continue."
"But, at least, you will do one thing," he said, emphatically. "You have heard enough of the curse to show you why it is no place for human beings tolive. Only half the curse is carried out. The tiles have been baptized by human blood—but not the altar. You will stay here with live people, and let the old ruin wait alone for the curse to be lifted."
"I will go back," she said, with sudden decision, dropping the serape from around her shoulders and beginning to braid her hair. "No, you need not swear like that, Rafael; God would shut His ears if He heard you. You have told me a fine story of fear, and some of it may be true, but our duty lies there. We may lift the curse; we can go back and try."
Her husband sprang to his feet and flung his chair crashing into the low window opening on a veranda. The shattered glass fell in a glittering heap, but the noise of it did not drown his oaths.
"It is no use at all to break the windows of our friends, Rafael," observed his wife; "and neither the saints nor Our Lady the Virgin will allow such curses as yours to be heard. There are dangers here for—for both of us, perhaps,—dangers more to be afraid of than the walls of the good padres. I ride back to-day."
"You think of it as all past, that curse?" he demanded, threateningly. "Well, you think so! Priests have gone mad there, though the Church keeps it quiet. Since the year Don Eduardo and Doña Mariabought it, what has happened? All their land is slipping away. To-day she is building an adobe on the old Mission ranch, to hold one hundred and sixty acres in case they lose all the rest of their thirty miles of ranches. Two of her sons have been killed in the streets—one by a woman. All that remains is slipping slowly through their fingers. It is like a handful of wheat: the closer they try to hold it, the less they have in their hands. All they try is of no use. When they first bought those old walls of the Mission at Pico's auction, they were masters of the land, but what of that?"
"If it is a curse, they earned it by tearing down the temple consecrated to God, that is all!"
"All? Miguel, my brother, blew down no walls; he did no harm to anything at all. He only bought an interest in the Mission lands, and claimed some living-rooms as his share, and he is struck like the others by the curse, and does not die in his bed either, but is trampled into the earth until no one can see him!"
"But that may be the other curse working—the curse on the Arteagas. You people seem to have earned a great many! Is it not time some of the family should try to live for blessings?"
He did not answer, only stared at her with angry eyes and lips twitching in wrath he could not express.She looked at him an instant, and stretched out her arms wearily. All the glorious world of love about them, yet never aught of harmony in their two lives linked together. She had never seen the life domestic of young people. She did not know what it might mean to other women, but there were days when she grew sick with the dread of future years, the endless prison of her vow, the—
Suddenly she turned to him with a little gesture of appeal, almost tremulous. It was such weary work to battle constantly; and his mother—
"Rafael," she said, gently, "the blessings are in the world somewhere—shall not we try to find them? The old lives of the maledictions are gone. Ours is the new life, and we have done no wrong to expiate. And it may be, if we live as—as your mother would have wanted us to live, that the saints—"
"To the bottom of the sea with your saints!" he broke in, angrily. "Por Dios! you are always dragging the dead out of their graves to make the days like a funeral. I prefer most the picnic in the hills, and I go to-day."
"So do I," she answered; "but it will be to the hills of the south by the sea. To-night the moon shines, and the ride will be better than a picnic of your political friends."
"By—"
"It is no sort of use for you to make empty oaths, Rafael. I leave this town to-day; with you if you are wise, without you if you are not. But I myself—I go!"
He went out and slammed the door, and directly she heard him tell Juan Castillas that he had married one of the wooden saints of the Mission come to life.
"I am glad it is not one with the broken glass eyes and the missing fingers," laughed Juan. "Doña Raquel is the most beautiful woman in the Californias to-day."
She turned from the window and looked at herself in the mirror. The most beautiful woman in the Californias! Was that so? Could it be? Yet what was beauty, after all, if—
Between herself and the glass another face seemed to arise,—the blue-eyed childish face for which she had been forgotten.
"Holy Mother!" she moaned, and covered her own with her hands. "Of what use is beauty to a woman who is not beloved?"
Music: El Tormento de Amor.Tormento de amor,passion que devora,Tu marchi tastela fuente de mi vida.CHAPTER X
Music: El Tormento de Amor.Tormento de amor,passion que devora,Tu marchi tastela fuente de mi vida.
Tormento de amor,passion que devora,Tu marchi tastela fuente de mi vida.
Tormento de amor,passion que devora,Tu marchi tastela fuente de mi vida.
I
"I wasted the holy water on the doorway of the sala and the bedroom," grumbled old Polonia, ensconced among the serapes on the carreta; "I should have kept it for the road to the sea. She rides away from him alone; but it is a witchcraft, all the same."
Secretly the old woman gave sympathy to the handsome Rafael, who loved women of gaiety and fine clothes. The town was a very good place to stay, and the band played, and there was a good circus; and to choose instead a nasty old Mission where a cross priest scolded, and smoked, and drank himself stupid each dinner-time! What kind of a girl would go back there?
Still, the old Indian knew that she was not of wood, like the statues in the old church, let the husband think as he might! Last night had proven she could be her mother's own child in a storm of passion. It was perhaps for the best that she did not love her husband so madly; for if he should ever prove untrue,—and men of course were so—what might not happen?
She thought of the witchcraft of the mother, and crossed herself.
The moon, the beautiful moon of the month of Mary! shone round and silvered in the blue above the mountains, as the blaze of the sun sank into the western sea. South lay the ranch of San Joaquin, and Raquel, for all her thirty-mile ride, was sorry. She would have no excuse to ride past; it was the one slight of the country to pass the house of an acquaintance, and this family was one deserving of honor. The soft dusk of warm lands had stretched over the level. The sweet clover along the road had a deeper note of perfume, and the patches of mustard bloom added its own spicy fragrance. Gladly she would have ridden on alone in the perfect night, but it would not do. She cared little for the herd of people, but she always tried to keep in mind what the Doña Luisa would have done in the little dutiestoward the opinion of the valley, and she had no idea of making a scandal, or of appearing to ride in secret from the town where her husband was still detained.
So, when the dogs barked, she galloped forward to the ranch-house, and was met with excited welcome from the mistress and her two vivacious daughters and their cousin Ana Mendez. All the news of the town they asked for. They had heard wonderful things of the courtesy shown her by the new bishop, who was not given to showing much pronounced attention to even the devout of the faith. They had rejoiced each day to hear of the honors showered on her by the families of the city. It was as if a queen had arrived in their valley—and to leave it all and ride alone in the night!
Ana cut their queries short and bade them see to old Polonia, that she might be fed and rested well, and the driver also, and then carried her guest to her own room, where she put her hands on Raquel's shoulders and looked into her eyes, and then without a word led her to the shrine in the corner, where they both knelt.
When the prayer was over and she had seen her guest supplied with bread, and red wine, and olives, and sliced beef, she regarded her sadly a moment, noting that only the wine was swallowed, and that the girl looked pale in the candle-light.
"Poor little dear," she said, softly, and patted her shoulder and spoke with the tenderness of intimacy. "I think now thou wert only a child that morning in the wedding-veil, when she gave thee that vow and died. Thou hast such strength in looks, my Raquelita, no one remembers how young in life thou art. But I see now how it is. Rafael is the son of my mother's cousin, and I know that blood! You but give the word, and my uncle shall ride to Los Angeles in the morning and say what is right to be said to Rafael. We know those boys—Miguel too," and she crossed herself. "My uncle always look himself to the door-key when that Miguel Arteaga come with a serenade. Oh, we know those boys in this valley better than their mother, who thought to guard Rafael from the heretics. Holy Mary! No heretic in the land lived worse than the life on Miguel Arteaga's ranches!"
"That does not make any difference at all," said the girl, wearily. "I took the vow, 'So long as we both shall live.' That seems a long time, my dear Ana, but I must have not one other thought in this life."
"And he sends thee home?"
"No; this is not his fault—do not think it," and she evaded the eyes of Ana. "He will follow, now that I have come; I am most certain of that; buthe was in a rage, of course, and if I would live there in the town he would do anything to please me, almost. But I feel weak some days. I—I am not strong enough to fight the people there whom his mother was afraid of. In my own house they will not come. In my own valley I may keep my promise."
"Poor little dear," moaned Ana again. It was a good hope, and the girl did not seem to have much else to live for; but Ana had known the Arteaga men for many years, and had her doubts.
"It is time that Rafael were at home," she conceded. "Juan Flores is around the range again; some say El Capitan is with him, and they are on this side. Last night they had supper at Trabuco ranch; they did no harm there, but that does not mean that he will do no harm elsewhere. Avila let him have horses once when the marshal was close behind; since that time Avila's house is safe, and his herds as well."
"And Capitan?"
"Oh!" Ana's tone was carefully careless. "No one seems certain he is along. He does not so often come this way; for a year he has been somewhere in Sonora—only when the horses are picked for the government, or the Arteagas have a fine lot broken,does he cross to this country. There is where Rafael needs guarding more than from heretics."
"From Capitan? He—he—would not kill—"
"No," said Ana, slowly; "I never think he wants Rafael to die; he only wants him not to be happy; always he wants Rafael to remember he is not so far away but he can do him harm. Rafael hates the lonely Mission valley on account of that. In a town Capitan never can make him afraid so much."
"Rafael is not a coward, I think," returned Raquel.
"No, but he knows Capitan does not forget—there was a girl between them once. Rafael is the handsomer, so he got her. Oh, that is long ago. But Rafael was foolish and laughed too loud, and so he has to pay!"
"But I think that is a mistake. I heard all about the trouble; his mother told me. Capitan fights the government only, and takes horses from the Arteagas because they go with the Americanos as friends; that is all. We heard it all at San Luis Rey as we drove north—you remember?"
"Oh, yes, I am not forgetting that," and Ana laughed. "I listen all the time to what his mother thinks she knows about that; and it is true, too, but not all the truth. I could tell you—"
She stopped suddenly, not certain it was wise totell the girl the thing causing her amusement, for, after all, it was not really funny; it was serious enough in itself, it might frighten the girl very much. No other in her place would live one hour in the valley, or ride at night with only one man and an old Indian woman as guard.
"If you know that I have been told lies, you had better tell me the truth," said Raquel. "It may cost me more to find it out alone than to hear it from a friend."
"That is true," agreed Ana, after a moment of thought. She went to the door and looked in the outer room to be sure no curious ears were there. She could hear ecstatic cries from the girls, who were giving old Polonia good things to eat, and plying her with endless questions. She was recounting the brilliant worldly scenes her old eyes had lately witnessed, and pitying herself a little that she could not remain; for each day had been finer than the day before. And the horse-races, and the fine cavaliers, and Doña Raquel always in the finest carriage—Holy Mary! but it was a thing to see!
Ana closed the door tightly and came back and sat down beside Raquel and took her hand.
"My aunt and the girls are over their heads in delight out there," she remarked, dryly; "and I will tellyou a thing no one has been told concerning that ride from San Luis Rey. Rafael lost some fine horses that night—do you remember?"
Raquel did not; she might have heard—but Doña Luisa's death, all that sorrow, all the many and quick changes, had blotted out the fainter records of that day.
"Well, when we stopped for coffee at the camp the cook told us; you may not have heard. However, they were taken after you went into the river. You have not forgotten that?"
"How could I? Oh, yes, I remember! The priest told me that night. How strange it should have all been crowded out of my mind! He told me to give Rafael a message of warning. What was it? What was it?"
She clasped her hands over her brows and tried to remember. Her first meeting with Rafael beside the dead body of his mother had driven out of her mind the message she was to have delivered. It was a warning, a warning of some sort; that much she was sure of, and—what was it about her father—her father's name?
"I think," said Ana, speaking softly and watching her, "that he told you Felipe Estevan's daughter had saved Rafael Arteaga a treasure that night."
"Anita! So he did; and you know the words, the very words he spoke to me!"
"I know more, Raquel mia; I know what the treasure was."
"And—?"
"It is not nice to tell," and Ana hesitated. "But he saw you there that evening with his own eyes."
"The priest?"
"Yes, the priest. He saved you from being carried to the hills by the Juan Flores robbers, while Capitan took others of the men and secured the chests of wedding gifts from the old Mission. Oh, it was all planned for the one big revenge on Rafael Arteaga. But he saw you, and so—"
"And that priest saved me from them, Anita?"
"Yes, he saved you—the priest—and sent you back to your friends, and sent the men across the mesas—because you were Estevan's daughter. But he did not try to save Rafael's horses; that night many of the finest were headed eastward and never came back."
"And if—if the padre had not been there at the right moment, I—"
"It is not a nice story, at all," acknowledged Ana. "They are rough men. One of them would have married you, and you would never have cared to see your friends again, and Rafael never would have found you."
"Mother of God! He hates Rafael like that, yet lets him live?"
Ana laughed a little and shrugged her shoulders.
"Capitan is like that," she observed. "No one is like him. If Rafael's life were in danger this hour, Capitan would ride to save him. Oh, he does not mean that he shall die while young, and handsome, and rich, and beloved!"
Her tone had a little hard ring for a moment; her eyes were sparkling with a certain admiration for the character she was describing. The story had brought the color back to Raquel's face, and she listened feverishly. What strange, strange things could be possible in the smiling valleys of San Juan! For the moment she forgot the dull ache in her heart which had driven her to ride alone back to sanctuary.
"And you know all this, Anita; even the words of the padre! How?"
She caught Ana's hands in hers impetuously, and made her look in her eyes.
"He told me," said her friend, simply.
"Then you know him? You see him sometimes?"
"Sometimes."
"And he is called—?"
"Libertad."
"Padre Libertad—the Liberated? I never haveheard him spoken of. Where can I find him? Anita, I will go alone, but this feud shall be ended. He will help me. And I—I never knew what he saved me from that night. I scarcely thanked him. He was so strange, so abrupt, so masterful, I accepted all he did, and never knew! Tell me. Anita. I will go to him—I will—"
"No one goes to him," said Ana. "He never stays in one place. If you see him, you see him—but—"
"But he comes to San Juan?"
"Oh, yes, he comes to San Juan once a year at least, so they will not forget him."
Ana's lips curled in a little smile, quickly suppressed.
"But, Anita, that he tells you all these things, so that you know the reasons of Capitan—"
"Oh, Capitan is a sort of cousin of our family. Even when he is outcast, I do not want him to lose his soul; so I—my people do not know—but always I pay for a mass when I hear that the robbers have killed a man. I never think that Capitan would like to kill; still, it might happen. So I remember—as I remembered him when I was a little girl, and when I was married—and I pay for a mass, that is all."
"I am glad to-night, very glad you tell me all this, Anita. Not glad that it is so, but, thanks to God, it is something to do—to do—to do!"
"And what?" asked Ana, regarding her curiously. Heretofore the wife of Rafael had appeared to her self-restrained and cold, but to-night—
Raquel caught her hand and pressed it, and laughed.
"You are saving me to-night, Anita, and you do not know it," she said, with feverish intensity. "I was unhappy when I rode to your door; so tired of all the world that I could think of nothing sweeter than to ride on and on to the sea, and into it, and go to sleep there."
"Raquel! That is a mortal sin!"
"So it is, but I shall do penance, and when the padre comes again, O my dear Ana, you alone will not pay for the masses; we can do many things for good together, you and I. You must come to me to the Mission; you must! I have had many things to fight alone, Anita, and I never can tell you what they are. But this new thing we can fight together, darling—you for your relation and I for my husband and my promise; and, the saints helping us, we shall win, Anita, and it will all come right; and thanks to God I came to you this night!"
Her eyes were alight with excitement, her cheeks flushed and burning. Once or twice she shivered slightly; and Ana, who had been reassured by the beautiful color so quickly replacing the pallor of the cheeks, grew all at once apprehensive, as she noticedthat the hands of Raquel were very cold indeed, and that her laugh was nervous, and that her teeth chattered, and that the words she tried to utter grew indistinct.
"Holy Mary! I have given her a fever," gasped Ana. "That my tongue had been blistered, before I babbled all that to her! Raquel, for the love of God don't shake like that, and don't laugh at me! Stop it! The laugh is the worst of all! Raquel—Raquelita—darling mine!"
But Ana's frenzy of fear was so irresistibly funny, that Raquel continued to laugh, and the laughter grew louder after the other women were called in, and helped to undress her and wrap her in blankets to smother the chill. That night, candles never went out in the house, and Ana knelt before the altar with prayers to the saints that they might undo the folly of her tongue. But old Polonia knelt instead by the couch of Raquel and cursed the American, that he had not died there in Mexico.
In the early dawn Polonia crept unseen to the aquia, and of soft clay made an image of him, and thrust pins through every vital portion of it, that there might be no chance left of life in the man it represented; then, having finished her work, she left it where the sun would dry it, and crept back to the room and curled up on a rug, and slept the sleep of the content.
The good holy water she had paid money for had failed. But there are always two ways. If the saints refuse to help, there is always the devil left. If the padres did not get more effective holy water, whose fault was it that poor souls had to seek help elsewhere? She would do penance, of course, after the man died, and perhaps pay for a mass, and that would make it all right for everybody, and was so easy! She went to sleep wondering if he would die from a slow lingering disease, or how it would be. It was inconvenient that one was not allowed to select the very way the end must come. But the devil would know what she would like best,—that the foot of his horse might go down in a gopher-hole and pitch him on his head just so that the neck would break, quick, like the snapping of a finger. And no one would ever guess how it had been brought about!