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 Dona 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 Dona
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, senora," 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 Dona 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 Dona 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, Jose."
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 Jose. "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!"
Jose 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 Jose 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 canyon. 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.
Jose 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 senora 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 Dona 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 Dona Angela cared to drive
alone--and would excuse them--
Dona 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 Jose. 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 Jose 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 Senora 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!
[Music: _La Noche Fatal_.]
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.