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 Dona 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 Dona 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 Dona 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 Dona 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 Dona 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 Dona 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 Dona 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. Dona 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. Dona Luisa tells me she was a
great woman. She prays that some day the two cousins may be friends."
"Dona 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 canyon. 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!
Dona 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 canyon 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 canyon, 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.
[Music: _El Charro_.]
Nescesito buen caballo,
Buena Silla, y buen gaban.