"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 Dona Luisa would
have done in the little duties toward 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;
but he 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 to tell 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 Dona 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 tell you 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 Dona 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 have heard 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 noticed that 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!
[Music: _El Sueno_]
En el sueno dichoso prove----
Delicias, rodear mi existencia.