At last the night arrived for the gold quest. The guests had gone.
Roldan, Adan, and Rafael were alone on their side of the great house.
They waited, kicking their heels together with leashed impatience,
until eleven o'clock. The family and servants of Casa Encarnacion went
to bed at ten o'clock, but it was the custom of Don Tiburcio to go the
rounds a half or three quarters of an hour later and see that his
strict laws were as strictly obeyed. To-night, when he opened the doors
of the three young dons in succession, heels were still, and breathing
was as monotonous as his own would be an hour later. At eleven the boys
dressed and swung from their windows, not daring to leave by the
courtyard. Nor did they dare go to the corral and abstract three
horses. Much to their distaste, for there was nothing the Californian
hated so much as to travel on two legs, they were obliged to walk the
miles between the Casa and the hills. But their legs were young and
their brains eager; in little over an hour they were in sight of the
Mission.
It looked very white and ghostly in the pale blaze of the moon, a huge
mass, full of prayer and discontent. Close beside it, but without the
walls, the Indians slept in the rancheria, quiescent enough, for they
had no Anastacio. At midnight the great bells in the tower had rung
out, filling the valley with their sweet silver clamour; but as the
boys approached and skirted the wall, some distance to the right, the
Mission might have been as lifeless as it is this year, in its
desertion and decay.
The hills were a mile behind. The Mission, like all of its kind, stood
on a broad open, that no hostile tribe might approach unseen. Cows and
horses lay in their first heavy sleep, their breathing hardly ruffling
the profound stillness. So great an air of repose did the silent walls
and sleeping beasts give to the landscape that the boys felt the quiet
of the night as they had not done in the other valley, and drew closer
together, almost holding their breath lest the priests might hear it. A
quarter of an hour later they were among the hills and standing before
the aperture whose secrets were known only to Padre Osuna. They glanced
at each other out of the corners of their eyes. Brave as they were,
they did not altogether like the idea of a possible encounter with a
rattlesnake or a bear in the dark and narrow confines of a cave. And if
there should be another earthquake! However, they had not come to turn
back, and Roldan pushed boldly in, the others following close.
For a time their way lay along a narrow passage. They had made two
abrupt turns before they dared to light the lantern they had brought.
When Rafael did, it revealed nothing but earthy walls and the imprint
of feet on the ground. After a little, however, the passage suddenly
widened, and it was Adan who uttered the first exclamation of surprise.
It was, indeed, a hoarse gurgle. The walls were veined with what
appeared to be irregular bands of dirty crystal, pricked with
glittering yellow. There were, perhaps, a thousand of these little
points bared from the jealous earth, and they shone with a steady
baleful glare, magnetising six youthful eyes, stirring in three
careless brains the ghosts of ancient gold-lust, whose concrete
substance lay in the marble vaults of Spain. Immediately Roldan's
sympathy went out to the priest; and he knew that that commanding
intelligence could teach him one thing the less.
There was a rough pick on the ground, and many junks of quartz. Roldan
struck and rubbed two pieces together. In a moment his palm was filled
with jagged pieces of yellow metal. He blew on them lovingly, then put
them in his pocket.
"Dios de mi alma!" gasped Rafael, whose eyes were bulging from his
head. "It is as beautiful as the stars of the sky,--the stars in the
milky way with the film over them."
"But we need no more stars," said Adan. "We shall take away our pockets
full, but what shall we do with it? Surely this was not made to rot
with the earth. But it is too small for what you call money, if that is
so big as you say, Roldan. It would make fine nails for a church door."
"Now is not the time to think what you will do with it," said Roldan.
"It is enough that we have it to get. Much is very loose in the
crystal. Rub free all that you can, and fill every pocket. We will take
all we can carry away, and come again and again. Some day, when we are
men, perhaps, we will find a use for it. I for one do not believe that
anything that makes you love it can do harm. Does not the Church teach
us to love all things? Now let us work and not talk."
The boys in turn hacked out great pieces of quartz and rubbed the free
gold loose. Much of it could only be crushed out in machinery made for
the purpose, but a sufficient quantity of the quartz was poor and soft.
As the boys worked, they grew more and more silent, more and more
absorbed. They forgot their delight in rodeo, coliar, bear-hunts,
bull-fights, riding about the ranches from morning till noon, the race,
the religious processions, the dulces of their mothers' cooks. A new
and mighty passion possessed them, the strongest they had ever known.
Their lips were pressed hard together--those soft Spanish lips that
were usually half apart--their eyes glowed with a steady fire. Their
chests rose and fell in short regular spasms.
Suddenly a thrill ran through Roldan. He had felt it before when a
rattlesnake, ready to strike, had fixed its green malignant eyes upon
him. He flashed the lantern about swiftly, twisting his neck with deep
anxiety. It would be no minor adventure to encounter a coiled rattler
in this narrow place. Then he saw something white shining out of the
darkness high above the rays, a large white disk, in which glittered
two points of light inexpressibly infuriate.
Roldan sprang to his feet with a warning cry. The other boys, greed
routed by the danger sense, were on their feet as quickly. As the three
lads, none very tall for his age, faced the gigantic bulk of the
priest, they looked cornered and helpless.
The priest, unconsciously beyond doubt, lifted his huge hands, opening
and shutting them slowly. The movement had an ugly significance, and
the hands, in the miserable glimmer of light, looked like great bats,
and seemed to pervade the cavern. Involuntarily the boys squirmed. Then
Roldan, mindful always of his proud position as captain of his small
band, stepped in front of that band and spoke with a vocal control that
did him much credit, considering that his heart seemed to be kicking in
the middle of his stomach.
"These hills are just beyond the Mission grant, Padre Osuna," he said.
"Nor are they on any rancho. Therefore what is in them is as much ours
as any man's. This is the first time that we have been here, but it
will not be the last; and when I am the governor of all the
Californias, I shall send many Indians to dig the very heart out of
these hills. So pick out all that you can now, Padre Osuna, for ten
years hence--"
As he spoke fear gave place to exultation in finding himself pitted
against a man whom he intuitively respected more than any he had ever
met, and whom he knew most men feared and none understood. Moreover, he
heard two sets of teeth clattering behind him, and that alone would
have sent the blood of a born leader of men back to its skin.
But his speech did not proceed to the finish. The priest swooped down
and caught the three necks between his hands, easily spanning them,
pressing the heads hard together. Then he lifted the boys high in the
air and held them there, a kicking, humiliated trio. The blanched olive
of his face was reflected in the pallid brows at the extremity of his
rigid arms. His voice, which had been lost in passion, found itself.
"And when your Indians come, Senor Don Roldan," he said, "they will
find three skeletons six feet beneath the floor of this cave. You will
never leave this cave, not one of you. When you are dead for want of
food and drink, I shall return and bury you. And no one will seek you
here." Suddenly he dashed them to the ground. "A thousand curses go
with you," he shrieked, "to make a murderer of me. I was near enough to
hell before--"
"And our fingers will scratch the ground beneath your feet,"
interrupted Roldan, who between mortification and rage felt equal
himself to murder, but determined as ever to hold his own. "Our skulls
will grin at you from every corner as you work--"
"I don't care!" shouted the priest. "I don't care! Here you rot. This
gold is mine. No man shall touch it but myself."
"But if we promise never to return, and to tell no man of what we
know," interposed Rafael, feebly.
The priest laughed. "With the glitter of gold in your brains? You could
not keep an oath on the cross." He turned swiftly and strode down the
passage.
"What will he do?" gasped Adan.
"Roll a stone over the entrance and secure it with others," said
Roldan. "There are plenty nigh. If we follow, he will beat us back with
those fists, and one blow would crack our skulls in two."
"Then what shall we do? Rot here? Starve to death? Madre de dios!"
"We have been between the teeth of death before, have we not? We shall
have many more adventures, my friends."
But although he spoke confidently he was profoundly disturbed. This was
no ordinary predicament. He knew that unless the priest relented they
stood small chance of seeing sun and stars again. Would he relent?
Roldan's own indomitable will and growing ambitions responded to the
awful forces in the man, overgrown and abnormal as they had become.
That the priest had some great end in view to which this gold was the
means, and that the gold itself had roused in him a controlling
passion, he could not doubt. The priest himself had told him something,
the gold the rest. With a sudden impulse of hatred Roldan emptied his
pockets of the metal and stamped upon it. He quieted suddenly, then
stamped again, with added vigour. Then he dropped and laid his ear to
the ground.
"Stamp, Adan," he said, "and hard."
Adan shook his blood through his veins, and obeyed. Roldan sprang to
his feet. "We are above the tunnel of the Mission," he said. "And we
have a pickaxe. All we have to do is to dig."