PART I

[Illustration: "'IT WAS ONLY THE PEARLS YOU WANTED.'"]

THE SPLENDID IDLE FORTIES

_STORIES OF OLD CALIFORNIA_

BY

GERTRUDE ATHERTON

AUTHOR OF "THE CONQUEROR," "SENATOR NORTH" "THE ARISTOCRATS," ETC.

_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY HARRISON FISHER_

1902

TO

THE BOHEMIAN CLUB

OF SAN FRANCISCO

AS A SLIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF

ITS COURTESY IN PLACING

ITS FINE

LIBRARY OF CALIFORNIAN LITERATURE

AT MY DISPOSAL

NOTE

This is a revised and enlarged edition of the volume which was issued

some years ago under the title, "Before the Gringo Came."

CONTENTS

THE PEARLS OF LORETO

THE EARS OF TWENTY AMERICANS

THE WASH-TUB MAIL

THE CONQUEST OF DOÑA JACOBA

A RAMBLE WITH EULOGIA

THE ISLE OF SKULLS

THE HEAD OF A PRIEST

LA PÉRDIDA

LUKARI'S STORY

NATALIE IVANHOFF: A MEMORY OF FORT ROSS

THE VENGEANCE OF PADRE ARROYO

THE BELLS OF SAN GABRIEL

WHEN THE DEVIL WAS WELL

THE PEARLS OF LORETO

I

Within memory of the most gnarled and coffee-coloured Montereño never

had there been so exciting a race day. All essential conditions seemed

to have held counsel and agreed to combine. Not a wreath of fog floated

across the bay to dim the sparkling air. Every horse, every vaquero,

was alert and physically perfect. The rains were over; the dust was not

gathered. Pio Pico, Governor of the Californias, was in Monterey on

one of his brief infrequent visits. Clad in black velvet, covered with

jewels and ropes of gold, he sat on his big chestnut horse at the upper

end of the field, with General Castro, Doña Modeste Castro, and other

prominent Montereños, his interest so keen that more than once the

official dignity relaxed, and he shouted "Brava!" with the rest.

And what a brilliant sight it was! The flowers had faded on the hills,

for June was upon them; but gayer than the hills had been was the

race-field of Monterey. Caballeros, with silver on their wide gray hats

and on their saddles of embossed leather, gold and silver embroidery on

their velvet serapes, crimson sashes about their slender waists, silver

spurs and buckskin botas, stood tensely in their stirrups as the racers

flew by, or, during the short intervals, pressed each other with eager

wagers. There was little money in that time. The golden skeleton within

the sleeping body of California had not yet been laid bare. But ranchos

were lost and won; thousands of cattle would pass to other hands at the

next rodeo; many a superbly caparisoned steed would rear and plunge

between the spurs of a new master.

And caballeros were not the only living pictures of that memorable day

of a time for ever gone. Beautiful women in silken fluttering gowns,

bright flowers holding the mantilla from flushed awakened faces, sat

their impatient horses as easily as a gull rides a wave. The sun beat

down, making dark cheeks pink and white cheeks darker, but those great

eyes, strong with their own fires, never faltered. The old women in

attendance grumbled vague remonstrances at all things, from the heat to

intercepted coquetries. But their charges gave the good dueñas little

heed. They shouted until their little throats were hoarse, smashed

their fans, beat the sides of their mounts with their tender hands, in

imitation of the vaqueros.

"It is the gayest, the happiest, the most careless life in the world,"

thought Pio Pico, shutting his teeth, as he looked about him. "But how

long will it last? Curse the Americans! They are coming."

But the bright hot spark that convulsed assembled Monterey shot from no

ordinary condition. A stranger was there, a guest of General Castro, Don

Vicente de la Vega y Arillaga, of Los Angeles. Not that a stranger was

matter for comment in Monterey, capital of California, but this stranger

had brought with him horses which threatened to disgrace the famous

winners of the North. Two races had been won already by the black

Southern beasts.

"Dios de mi alma!" cried the girls, one to the other, "their coats are

blacker than our hair! Their nostrils pulse like a heart on fire! Their

eyes flash like water in the sun! Ay! the handsome stranger, will he

roll us in the dust? Ay! our golden horses, with the tails and manes of

silver--how beautiful is the contrast with the vaqueros in their black

and silver, their soft white linen! The shame! the shame!--if they are

put to shame! Poor Guido! Will he lose this day, when he has won so

many? But the stranger is so handsome! Dios de mi vida! his eyes are

like dark blue stars. And he is so cold! He alone--he seems not to care.

Madre de Dios! Madre de Dios! he wins again! No! no! no! Yes! Ay! yi!

yi! B-r-a-v-o!"

Guido Cabañares dug his spurs into his horse and dashed to the head of

the field, where Don Vicente sat at the left of General Castro. He was

followed hotly by several friends, sympathetic and indignant. As he

rode, he tore off his serape and flung it to the ground; even his silk

riding-clothes sat heavily upon his fury. Don Vicente smiled, and rode

forward to meet him.

"At your service, señor," he said, lifting his sombrero.

"Take your mustangs back to Los Angeles!" cried Don Guido, beside

himself with rage, the politeness and dignity of his race routed by

passion. "Why do you bring your hideous brutes here to shame me in the

eyes of Monterey? Why--"

"Yes! Why? Why?" demanded his friends, surrounding De la Vega. "This is

not the humiliation of a man, but of the North by the accursed South!

You even would take our capital from us! Los Angeles, the capital of the

Californias!"

"What have politics to do with horse-racing?" asked De la Vega, coldly.

"Other strangers have brought their horses to your field, I suppose."

"Yes, but they have not won. They have not been from the South."

By this time almost every caballero on the field was wheeling about De

la Vega. Some felt with Cabañares, others rejoiced in his defeat, but

all resented the victory of the South over the North.

"Will you run again?" demanded Cabañares.

"Certainly. Do you think of putting your knife into my neck?"

Cabañares drew back, somewhat abashed, the indifference of the other

sputtering like water on his passion.

"It is not a matter for blood," he said sulkily; "but the head is hot

and words are quick when horses run neck to neck. And, by the Mother of

God, you shall not have the last race. My best horse has not run. Viva

El Rayo!"

"Viva El Rayo!" shouted the caballeros.

"And let the race be between you two alone," cried one. "The North or

the South! Los Angeles or Monterey! It will be the race of our life."

"The North or the South!" cried the caballeros, wheeling and galloping

across the field to the doñas. "Twenty leagues to a real for Guido

Cabañares."

"What a pity that Ysabel is not here!" said Doña Modeste Castro to Pio

Pico. "How those green eyes of hers would flash to-day!"

"She would not come," said the Governor. "She said she was tired of the

race."

"Of whom do you speak?" asked De la Vega, who had rejoined them.

"Of Ysabel Herrera, La Favorita of Monterey," answered Pio Pico. "The

most beautiful woman in the Californias, since Chonita Iturbi y Moncada,

my Vicente. It is at her uncle's that I stay. You have heard me speak of

my old friend; and surely you have heard of her."

"Ay!" said De la Vega. "I have heard of her."

"Viva El Rayo!"

"Ay, the ugly brute!"

"What name? Vitriolo? Mother of God! Diablo or Demonio would suit him

better. He looks as if he had been bred in hell. He will not stand the

quirto; and El Rayo is more lightly built. We shall beat by a dozen

lengths."

The two vaqueros who were to ride the horses had stripped to their soft

linen shirts and black velvet trousers, cast aside their sombreros, and

bound their heads with tightly knotted handkerchiefs. Their spurs were

fastened to bare brown heels; the cruel quirto was in the hand of each;

they rode barebacked, winding their wiry legs in and out of a horse-hair

rope encircling the body of the animal. As they slowly passed the crowd

on their way to the starting-point at the lower end of the field, and

listened to the rattling fire of wagers and comments, they looked

defiant, and alive to the importance of the coming event.

El Rayo shone like burnished copper, his silver mane and tail glittering

as if powdered with diamond-dust. He was long and graceful of body, thin

of flank, slender of leg. With arched neck and flashing eyes, he walked

with the pride of one who was aware of the admiration he excited.

Vitriolo was black and powerful. His long neck fitted into well-placed

shoulders. He had great depth of girth, immense length from

shoulder-points to hips, big cannon-bones, and elastic pasterns. There

was neither amiability nor pride in his mien; rather a sullen sense of

brute power, such as may have belonged to the knights of the Middle

Ages. Now and again he curled his lips away from the bit and laid his

ears back as if he intended to eat of the elegant Beau Brummel stepping

so daintily beside him. Of the antagonistic crowd he took not the

slightest notice.

"The race begins! Holy heaven!" The murmur rose to a shout--a deep

hoarse shout strangely crossed and recrossed by long silver notes; a

thrilling volume of sound rising above a sea of flashing eyes and parted

lips and a vivid moving mass of colour.

Twice the horses scored, and were sent back. The third time they bounded

by the starting-post neck and neck, nose to nose. José Abrigo, treasurer

of Monterey, dashed his sombrero, heavy with silver eagles, to the

ground, and the race was begun.

Almost at once the black began to gain. Inch by inch he fought his way

to the front, and the roar with which the crowd had greeted the start

dropped into the silence of apprehension.

El Rayo was not easily to be shaken off. A third of the distance had

been covered, and his nose was abreast of Vitriolo's flank. The vaqueros

sat as if carved from sun-baked clay, as lightly as if hollowed,

watching each other warily out of the corners of their eyes.

The black continued to gain. Halfway from home light was visible between

the two horses. The pace became terrific, the excitement so intense that

not a sound was heard but that of racing hoofs. The horses swept onward

like projectiles, the same smoothness, the same suggestion of eternal

flight. The bodies were extended until the tense muscles rose under the

satin coats. Vitriolo's eyes flashed viciously; El Rayo's strained with

determination. Vitriolo's nostrils were as red as angry craters; El

Rayo's fluttered like paper in the wind.

Three-quarters of the race was run, and the rider of Vitriolo could tell

by the sound of the hoof-beats behind him that he had a good lead of at

least two lengths over the Northern champion. A smile curled the corners

of his heavy lips; the race was his already.

Suddenly El Rayo's vaquero raised his hand, and down came the maddening

quirto, first on one side, then on the other. The spurs dug; the blood

spurted. The crowd burst into a howl of delight as their favourite

responded. Startled by the sound, Vitriolo's rider darted a glance over

his shoulder, and saw El Rayo bearing down upon him like a thunder-bolt,

regaining the ground that he had lost, not by inches, but by feet. Two

hundred paces from the finish he was at the black's flanks; one hundred

and fifty, he was at his girth; one hundred, and the horses were neck

and neck; and still the quirto whirred down on El Rayo's heaving flanks,

the spurs dug deeper into his quivering flesh.

The vaquero of Vitriolo sat like an image, using neither whip nor spur,

his teeth set, his eyes rolling from the goal ahead to the rider at his

side.

The breathless intensity of the spectators had burst. They had begun to

click their teeth, to mutter hoarsely, then to shout, to gesticulate,

to shake their fists in each other's face, to push and scramble for a

better view.

"Holy God!" cried Pio Pico, carried out of himself, "the South is lost!

Vitriolo the magnificent! Ah, who would have thought? The black by the

gold! Ay! What! No! Holy Mary! Holy God!--"

Six strides more and the race is over. With the bark of a coyote the

vaquero of the South leans forward over Vitriolo's neck. The big black

responds like a creature of reason. Down comes the quirto once--only

once. He fairly lifts his horse ahead and shoots into victory, winner by

a neck. The South has vanquished the North.

The crowd yelled and shouted until it was exhausted. But even Cabañares

made no further demonstration toward De la Vega. Not only was he weary

and depressed, but the victory had been nobly won.

It grew late, and they rode to the town, caballeros pushing as close to

doñas as they dared, dueñas in close attendance, one theme on the lips

of all. Anger gave place to respect; moreover, De la Vega was the guest

of General Castro, the best-beloved man in California. They were willing

to extend the hand of friendship; but he rode last, between the General

and Doña Modeste, and seemed to care as little for their good will as

for their ill.

Pio Pico rode ahead, and as the cavalcade entered the town he broke from

it and ascended the hill to carry the news to Ysabel Herrera.

Monterey, rising to her pine-spiked hills, swept like a crescent moon

about the sapphire bay. The surf roared and fought the white sand hills

of the distant horn; on that nearest the town stood the fort, grim

and rude, but pulsating with military life, and alert for American

onslaught. In the valley the red-tiled white adobe houses studded a

little city which was a series of corners radiating from a central

irregular street. A few mansions were on the hillside to the right,

brush-crowded sand banks on the left; the perfect curve of hills, thick

with pine woods and dense green undergrowth, rose high above and around

all, a rampart of splendid symmetry.

"Ay! Ysabel! Ysabel!" cried the young people, as they swept down the

broad street. "Bring her to us, Excellency. Tell her she shall not know

until she comes down. We will tell her. Ay! poor Guido!"

The Governor turned and waved his hand, then continued the ascent of the

hill, toward a long low house which showed no sign of life.

He alighted and glanced into a room opening upon the corridor which

traversed the front. The room was large and dimly lighted by deeply set

windows. The floor was bare, the furniture of horse-hair; saints and

family portraits adorned the white walls; on a chair lay a guitar;

it was a typical Californian sala of that day. The ships brought few

luxuries, beyond raiment and jewels, to even the wealthy of that

isolated country.

"Ysabel," called the Governor, "where art thou? Come down to the town

and hear the fortune of the races. Alvarado Street streams like a comet.

Why should the Star of Monterey withhold her light?"

A girl rose from a sofa and came slowly forward to the corridor.

Discontent marred her face as she gave her hand to the Governor to

kiss, and looked down upon the brilliant town. The Señorita Doña Ysabel

Herrera was poor. Were it not for her uncle she would not have where to

lay her stately head--and she was La Favorita of Monterey, the proudest

beauty in California! Her father had gambled away his last acre, his

horse, his saddle, the serape off his back; then sent his motherless

girl to his brother, and buried himself in Mexico. Don Antonio took the

child to his heart, and sent for a widowed cousin to be her dueña. He

bought her beautiful garments from the ships that touched the port, but

had no inclination to gratify her famous longing to hang ropes of pearls

in her soft black hair, to wind them about her white neck, and band them

above her green resplendent eyes.

"Unbend thy brows," said Pio Pico. "Wrinkles were not made for youth."

Ysabel moved her brows apart, but the clouds still lay in her eyes.

"Thou dost not ask of the races, O thou indifferent one! What is the

trouble, my Ysabel? Will no one bring the pearls? The loveliest girl in

all the Californias has said, 'I will wed no man who does not bring me

a lapful of pearls,' and no one has filled the front of that pretty

flowered gown. But have reason, niña. Remember that our Alta California

has no pearls on its shores, and that even the pearl fisheries of the

terrible lower country are almost worn out. Will nothing less content

thee?"

"No, señor."

"Dios de mi alma! Thou hast ambition. No woman has had more offered her

than thou. But thou art worthy of the most that man could give. Had I

not a wife myself, I believe I should throw my jewels and my ugly old

head at thy little feet."

Ysabel glanced with some envy at the magnificent jewels with which the

Governor of the Californias was hung, but did not covet the owner. An

uglier man than Pio Pico rarely had entered this world. The upper lip of

his enormous mouth dipped at the middle; the broad thick underlip hung

down with its own weight. The nose was big and coarse, although

there was a certain spirited suggestion in the cavernous nostrils.

Intelligence and reflectiveness were also in his little eyes, and they

were far apart. A small white mustache grew above his mouth; about his

chin, from ear to ear, was a short stubby beard, whiter by contrast with

his copper-coloured skin. He looked much like an intellectual bear.

And Ysabel? In truth, she had reason for her pride. Her black hair,

unblemished by gloss or tinge of blue, fell waving to her feet.

California, haughty, passionate, restless, pleasure-loving, looked from

her dark green eyes; the soft black lashes dropped quickly when they

became too expressive. Her full mouth was deeply red, but only a faint

pink lay in her white cheeks; the nose curved at bridge and nostrils.

About her low shoulders she held a blue reboso, the finger-tips of each

slim hand resting on the opposite elbow. She held her head a little

back, and Pio Pico laughed as he looked at her.

"Dios!" he said, "but thou might be an Estenega or an Iturbi y Moncada.

Surely that lofty head better suits old Spain than the republic of

Mexico. Draw the reboso about thy head now, and let us go down. They

expect thee."

She lifted the scarf above her hair, and walked down the steep rutted

hill with the Governor, her flowered gown floating with a silken rustle

about her. In a few moments she was listening to the tale of the races.

"Ay, Ysabel! Dios de mi alma! What a day! A young señor from Los Angeles

won the race--almost all the races--the Señor Don Vicente de la Vega y

Arillaga. He has never been here, before. His horses! Madre de Dios!

They ran like hares. Poor Guido! Válgame Dios! Even thou wouldst have

been moved to pity. But he is so handsome! Look! Look! He comes now,

side by side with General Castro. Dios! his serape is as stiff with gold

as the vestments of the padre."

Ysabel looked up as a man rode past. His bold profile and thin face were

passionate and severe; his dark blue eyes were full of power. Such a

face was rare among the languid shallow men of her race.

"He rides with General Castro," whispered Benicia Ortega. "He stays with

him. We shall see him at the ball to-night."

As Don Vicente passed Ysabel their eyes met for a moment. His opened

suddenly with a bold eager flash, his arched nostrils twitching. The

colour left her face, and her eyes dropped heavily.

Love needed no kindling in the heart of the Californian.

II

The people of Monterey danced every night of their lives, and went

nowhere so promptly as to the great sala of Doña Modeste Castro, their

leader of fashion, whose gowns were made for her in the city of Mexico.

Ysabel envied her bitterly. Not because the Doña Modeste's skin was

whiter than her own, for it could not be, nor her eyes greener, for they

were not; but because her jewels were richer than Pio Pico's, and

upon all grand occasions a string of wonderful pearls gleamed in her

storm-black hair. But one feminine compensation had Ysabel: she was

taller; Doña Modeste's slight elegant figure lacked Ysabel's graceful

inches, and perhaps she too felt a pang sometimes as the girl undulated

above her like a snake about to strike.

At the fashionable hour of ten Monterey was gathered for the dance. All

the men except the officers wore black velvet or broadcloth coats and

white trousers. All the women wore white, the waist long and pointed,

the skirt full. Ysabel's gown was of embroidered crêpe. Her hair was

coiled about her head, and held by a tortoise comb framed with a narrow

band of gold. Pio Pico, splendid with stars and crescents and rings and

pins, led her in, and with his unique ugliness enhanced her beauty.

She glanced eagerly about the room whilst replying absently to the

caballeros who surrounded her. Don Vicente de la Vega was not there. The

thick circle about her parted, and General Castro bent over her hand,

begging the honour of the contradanza. She sighed, and for the moment

forgot the Southerner who had flashed and gone like the beginning of a

dream. Here was a man--the only man of her knowledge whom she could have

loved, and who would have found her those pearls. Californians had so

little ambition! Then she gave a light audacious laugh. Governor Pico

was shaking hands cordially with General Castro, the man he hated best

in California.

No two men could have contrasted more sharply than José Castro and

Pio Pico--with the exception of Alvarado the most famous men of their

country. The gold trimmings of the general's uniform were his only

jewels. His hair and beard--the latter worn _à la Basca_, a narrow strip

curving from upper lip to ear--were as black as Pio Pico's once had

been. The handsomest man in California, he had less consciousness than

the least of the caballeros. His deep gray eyes were luminous with

enthusiasm; his nose was sharp and bold; his firm sensitive mouth was

cut above a resolute chin. He looked what he was, the ardent patriot of

a doomed cause.

"Señorita," he said, as he led Ysabel out to the sweet monotonous music

of the contradanza, "did you see the caballero who rode with me to-day?"

A red light rose to Ysabel's cheek. "Which one, commandante? Many rode

with you."

"I mean him who rode at my right, the winner of the races, Vicente, son

of my old friend Juan Bautista de la Vega y Arillaga, of Los Angeles."

"It may be. I think I saw a strange face."

"He saw yours, Doña Ysabel, and is looking upon you now from the

corridor without, although the fog is heavy about him. Cannot you see

him--that dark shadow by the pillar?"

Ysabel never went through the graceful evolutions of the contradanza

as she did that night. Her supple slender body curved and swayed and

glided; her round arms were like lazy snakes uncoiling; her exquisitely

poised head moved in perfect concord with her undulating hips. Her eyes

grew brighter, her lips redder. The young men who stood near gave as

loud a vent to their admiration as if she had been dancing El Son alone

on the floor. But the man without made no sign.

After the dance was over, General Castro led her to her dueña, and

handing her a guitar, begged a song.

She began a light love-ballad, singing with the grace and style of her

Spanish blood; a little mocking thing, but with a wild break now and

again. As she sang, she fixed her eyes coquettishly on the adoring face

of Guido Cabañares, who stood beside her, but saw every movement of the

form beyond the window. Don Guido kept his ardent eyes riveted upon

her but detected no wandering in her glances. His lips trembled as he

listened, and once he brushed the tears from his eyes. She gave him

a little cynical smile, then broke her song in two. The man on the

corridor had vaulted through the window.

Ysabel, clinching her hands the better to control her jumping nerves,

turned quickly to Cabañares, who had pressed behind her, and was pouring

words into her ear.

"Ysabel! Ysabel! hast thou no pity? Dost thou not see that I am fit to

set the world on fire for love of thee? The very water boils as I drink

it--"

She interrupted him with a scornful laugh, the sharper that her voice

might not tremble. "Bring me my pearls. What is love worth when it will

not grant one little desire?"

He groaned. "I have found a vein of gold on my rancho. I can pick the

little shining pieces out with my fingers. I will have them beaten into

a saddle for thee--"

But she had turned her back flat upon him, and was making a deep

courtesy to the man whom General Castro presented.

"I appreciate the honour of your acquaintance," she murmured

mechanically.

"At your feet, señorita," said Don Vicente.

The art of making conversation had not been cultivated among the

Californians, and Ysabel plied her large fan with slow grace, at a loss

for further remark, and wondering if her heart would suffocate her. But

Don Vicente had the gift of words.

"Señorita," he said, "I have stood in the chilling fog and felt the

warmth of your lovely voice at my heart. The emotions I felt my poor

tongue cannot translate. They swarm in my head like a hive of puzzled

bees; but perhaps they look through my eyes," and he fixed his powerful

and penetrating gaze on Ysabel's green depths.

A waltz began, and he took her in his arms without asking her

indulgence, and regardless of the indignation of the mob of men about

her. Ysabel, whose being was filled with tumult, lay passive as he held

her closer than man had ever dared before.

"I love you," he said, in his harsh voice. "I wish you for my wife. At

once. When I saw you to-day standing with a hundred other beautiful

women, I said: 'She is the fairest of them all. I shall have her.' And

I read the future in"--he suddenly dropped the formal "you"--"in thine

eyes, cariña. Thy soul sprang to mine. Thy heart is locked in my heart

closer, closer than my arms are holding thee now."

The strength of his embrace was violent for a moment; but Ysabel might

have been cut from marble. Her body had lost its swaying grace; it

was almost rigid. She did not lift her eyes. But De la Vega was not

discouraged.

The music finished, and Ysabel was at once surrounded by a determined

retinue. This intruding Southerner was welcome to the honours of the

race-field, but the Star of Monterey was not for him. He smiled as he

saw the menace of their eyes.

"I would have her," he thought, "if they were a regiment of

Castros--which they are not." But he had not armed himself against

diplomacy.

"Señor Don Vicente de la Vega y Arillaga," said Don Guido Cabañares, who

had been selected as spokesman, "perhaps you have not learned during

your brief visit to our capital that the Señorita Doña Ysabel Herrera,

La Favorita of Alta California, has sworn by the Holy Virgin, by the

blessed Junipero Serra, that she will wed no man who does not bring her

a lapful of pearls. Can you find those pearls on the sands of the South,

Don Vicente? For, by the holy cross of God, you cannot have her without

them!"

For a moment De la Vega was disconcerted.

"Is this true?" he demanded, turning to Ysabel.

"What, señor?" she asked vaguely. She had not listened to the words of

her protesting admirer.

A sneer bent his mouth. "That you have put a price upon yourself? That

the man who ardently wishes to be your husband, who has even won your

love, must first hang you with pearls like--" He stopped suddenly, the

blood burning his dark face, his eyes opening with an expression of

horrified hope. "Tell me! Tell me!" he exclaimed. "Is this true?"

For the first time since she had spoken with him Ysabel was herself. She

crossed her arms and tapped her elbows with her pointed fingers.

"Yes," she said, "it is true." She raised her eyes to his and regarded

him steadily. They looked like green pools frozen in a marble wall.

The harp, the flute, the guitar, combined again, and once more he swung

her from a furious circle. But he was safe; General Castro had joined

it. He waltzed her down the long room, through one adjoining, then into

another, and, indifferent to the iron conventions of his race, closed

the door behind them. They were in the sleeping-room of Doña Modeste.

The bed with its rich satin coverlet, the bare floor, the simple

furniture, were in semi-darkness; only on the altar in the corner were

candles burning. Above it hung paintings of saints, finely executed by

Mexican hands; an ebony cross spread its black arms against the white

wall; the candles flared to a golden Christ. He caught her hands and led

her over to the altar.

"Listen to me," he said. "I will bring you those pearls. You shall have

such pearls as no queen in Europe possesses. Swear to me here, with your

hands on this altar, that you will wed me when I return, no matter how

or where I find those pearls."

He was holding her hands between the candelabra. She looked at him with

eyes of passionate surrender; the man had conquered worldly ambitions.

But he answered her before she had time to speak.

"You love me, and would withdraw the conditions. But I am ready to do a

daring and a terrible act. Furthermore, I wish to show you that I can

succeed where all other men have failed. I ask only two things now.

First, make me the vow I wish."

"I swear it," she said.

"Now," he said, his voice sinking to a harsh but caressing whisper,

"give me one kiss for courage and hope."

She leaned slowly forward, the blood pulsing in her lips; but she had

been brought up behind grated windows, and she drew back. "No," she

said, "not now."

For a moment he looked rebellious; then he laid his hands on her

shoulders and pressed her to her knees. He knelt behind her, and

together they told a rosary for his safe return.

He left her there and went to his room. From his saddle-bag he took

a long letter from an intimate friend, one of the younger Franciscan

priests of the Mission of Santa Barbara, where he had been educated. He

sought this paragraph:--

"Thou knowest, of course, my Vicente, of the pearl fisheries of Baja

California. It is whispered--between ourselves, indeed, it is

quite true--that a short while ago the Indian divers discovered an

extravagantly rich bed of pearls. Instead of reporting to any of the

companies, they have hung them all upon our Most Sacred Lady of Loreto,

in the Mission of Loreto; and there, by the grace of God, they will

remain. They are worth the ransom of a king, my Vicente, and the Church

has come to her own again."

III

The fog lay thick on the bay at dawn next morning. The white waves hid

the blue, muffled the roar of the surf. Now and again a whale threw a

volume of spray high in the air, a geyser from a phantom sea. Above the

white sands straggled the white town, ghostly, prophetic.

De la Vega, a dark sombrero pulled over his eyes, a dark serape

enveloping his tall figure, rode, unattended and watchful, out of the

town. Not until he reached the narrow road through the brush forest

beyond did he give his horse rein. The indolence of the Californian was

no longer in his carriage; it looked alert and muscular; recklessness

accentuated the sternness of his face.

As he rode, the fog receded slowly. He left the chaparral and rode by

green marshes cut with sloughs and stained with vivid patches of

orange. The frogs in the tules chanted their hoarse matins. Through

brush-covered plains once more, with sparsely wooded hills in the

distance, and again the tules, the marsh, the patches of orange. He rode

through a field of mustard; the pale yellow petals brushed his dark

face, the delicate green leaves won his eyes from the hot glare of the

ascending sun, the slender stalks, rebounding, smote his horse's flanks.

He climbed hills to avoid the wide marshes, and descended into willow

groves and fields of daisies. Before noon he was in the San Juan

Mountains, thick with sturdy oaks, bending their heads before the

madroño, that belle of the forest, with her robes of scarlet and her

crown of bronze. The yellow lilies clung to her skirts, and the buckeye

flung his flowers at her feet. The last redwoods were there, piercing

the blue air with their thin inflexible arms, gray as a dusty band of

friars. Out by the willows, whereunder crept the sluggish river, then

between the hills curving about the valley of San Juan Bautista.

At no time is California so beautiful as in the month of June. De la

Vega's wild spirit and savage purpose were dormant for the moment as he

rode down the valley toward the mission. The hills were like gold, like

mammoth fawns veiled with violet mist, like rich tan velvet. Afar, bare

blue steeps were pink in their chasms, brown on their spurs. The dark

yellow fields were as if thick with gold-dust; the pale mustard was a

waving yellow sea. Not a tree marred the smooth hills. The earth sent

forth a perfume of its own. Below the plateau from which rose the white

walls of the mission was a wide field of bright green corn rising

against the blue sky.

The padres in their brown hooded robes came out upon the long corridor

of the mission and welcomed the traveller. Their lands had gone from

them, their mission was crumbling, but the spirit of hospitality

lingered there still. They laid meat and fruit and drink on a table

beneath the arches, then sat about him and asked him eagerly for news of

the day. Was it true that the United States of America were at war with

Mexico, or about to be? True that their beloved flag might fall, and

the stars and stripes of an insolent invader rise above the fort of

Monterey?

De la Vega recounted the meagre and conflicting rumours which had

reached California, but, not being a prophet, could not tell them that

they would be the first to see the red-white-and-blue fluttering on the

mountain before them. He refused to rest more than an hour, but mounted

the fresh horse the padres gave him and went his way, riding hard and

relentlessly, like all Californians.

He sped onward, through the long hot day, leaving the hills for the

marshes and a long stretch of ugly country, traversing the beautiful San

Antonio Valley in the night, reaching the Mission of San Miguel at dawn,

resting there for a few hours. That night he slept at a hospitable

ranch-house in the park-like valley of Paso des Robles, a grim silent

figure amongst gay-hearted people who delighted to welcome him. The

early morning found him among the chrome hills; and at the Mission of

San Luis Obispo the good padres gave him breakfast. The little valley,

round as a well, its bare hills red and brown, gray and pink, violet and

black, from fire, sloping steeply from a dizzy height, impressed him

with a sense of being prisoned in an enchanted vale where no message of

the outer world could come, and he hastened on his way.

Absorbed as he was, he felt the beauty he fled past. A line of golden

hills lay against sharp blue peaks. A towering mass of gray rocks had

been cut and lashed by wind and water, earthquake and fire, into the

semblance of a massive castle, still warlike in its ruin. He slept for a

few hours that night in the Mission of Santa Ynes, and was high in the

Santa Barbara Mountains at the next noon. For brief whiles he forgot

his journey's purpose as his horse climbed slowly up the steep trails,

knocking the loose stones down a thousand feet and more upon a roof of

tree-tops which looked like stunted brush. Those gigantic masses of

immense stones, each wearing a semblance to the face of man or beast;

those awful chasms and stupendous heights, densely wooded, bare, and

many-hued, rising above, beyond, peak upon peak, cutting through the

visible atmosphere--was there no end? He turned in his saddle and looked

over low peaks and cañons, rivers and abysms, black peaks smiting the

fiery blue, far, far, to the dim azure mountains on the horizon.

"Mother of God!" he thought. "No wonder California still shakes! I would

I could have stood upon a star and beheld the awful throes of this

country's birth." And then his horse reared between the sharp spurs and

galloped on.

He avoided the Mission of Santa Barbara, resting at a rancho outside

the town. In the morning, supplied as usual with a fresh horse, he fled

onward, with the ocean at his right, its splendid roar in his ears. The

cliffs towered high above him; he saw no man's face for hours together;

but his thoughts companioned him, savage and sinister shapes whirling

about the figure of a woman. On, on, sleeping at ranchos or missions,

meeting hospitality everywhere, avoiding Los Angeles, keeping close to

the ponderous ocean, he left civilization behind him at last, and

with an Indian guide entered upon that desert of mountain-tops, Baja

California.

Rapid travelling was not possible here. There were no valleys worthy the

name. The sharp peaks, multiplying mile after mile, were like teeth of

gigantic rakes, black and bare. A wilderness of mountain-tops, desolate

as eternity, arid, parched, baked by the awful heat, the silence never

broken by the cry of a bird, a hut rarely breaking the barren monotony,

only an infrequent spring to save from death. It was almost impossible

to get food or fresh horses. Many a night De la Vega and his stoical

guide slept beneath a cactus, or in the mocking bed of a creek. The

mustangs he managed to lasso were almost unridable, and would have

bucked to death any but a Californian. Sometimes he lived on cactus

fruit and the dried meat he had brought with him; occasionally he shot

a rabbit. Again he had but the flesh of the rattlesnake roasted over

coals. But honey-dew was on the leaves.

He avoided the beaten trail, and cut his way through naked bushes spiked

with thorns, and through groves of cacti miles in length. When the thick

fog rolled up from the ocean he had to sit inactive on the rocks, or

lose his way. A furious storm dashed him against a boulder, breaking his

mustang's leg; then a torrent, rising like a tidal wave, thundered down

the gulch, and catching him on its crest, flung him upon a tree of

thorns. When dawn came he found his guide dead. He cursed his luck, and

went on.

Lassoing another mustang, he pushed on, having a general idea of the

direction he should take. It was a week before he reached Loreto, a week

of loneliness, hunger, thirst, and torrid monotony. A week, too, of

thought and bitterness of spirit. In spite of his love, which never

cooled, and his courage, which never quailed, Nature, in her guise of

foul and crooked hag, mocked at earthly happiness, at human hope, at

youth and passion.

If he had not spent his life in the saddle, he would have been worn out

when he finally reached Loreto, late one night. As it was, he slept in a

hut until the following afternoon. Then he took a long swim in the bay,

and, later, sauntered through the town.

The forlorn little city was hardly more than a collection of Indians'

huts about a church in a sandy waste. No longer the capital, even the

barracks were toppling. When De la Vega entered the mission, not a white

man but the padre and his assistant was in it; the building was thronged

with Indian worshippers. The mission, although the first built in

California, was in a fair state of preservation. The Stations in their

battered frames were mellow and distinct. The gold still gleamed in the

vestments of the padre.

For a few moments De la Vega dared not raise his eyes to the Lady of

Loreto, standing aloft in the dull blaze of adamantine candles. When he

did, he rose suddenly from his knees and left the mission. The pearls

were there.

It took him but a short time to gain the confidence of the priest and

the little population. He offered no explanation for his coming, beyond

the curiosity of the traveller. The padre gave him a room in the

mission, and spent every hour he could spare with the brilliant

stranger. At night he thanked God for the sudden oasis in his life's

desolation. The Indians soon grew accustomed to the lonely figure

wandering about the sand plains, or kneeling for hours together before

the altar in the church. And whom their padre trusted was to them as

sacred and impersonal as the wooden saints of their religion.

IV

The midnight stars watched over the mission. Framed by the cross-shaped

window sunk deep in the adobe wall above the entrance, a mass of them

assumed the form of the crucifix, throwing a golden trail full upon the

Lady of Loreto, proud in her shining pearls. The long narrow body of the

church seemed to have swallowed the shadows of the ages, and to yawn for

more.

De la Vega, booted and spurred, his serape folded about him, his

sombrero on his head, opened the sacristy door and entered the church.

In one hand he held a sack; in the other, a candle sputtering in a

bottle. He walked deliberately to the foot of the altar. In spite of

his intrepid spirit, he stood appalled for a moment as he saw the dim

radiance enveloping the Lady of Loreto. He scowled over his shoulder at

the menacing emblem of redemption and crossed himself. But had it been

the finger of God, the face of Ysabel would have shone between. He

extinguished his candle, and swinging himself to the top of the altar

plucked the pearls from the Virgin's gown and dropped them into the

sack. His hand trembled a little, but he held his will between his

teeth.

How quiet it was! The waves flung themselves upon the shore with

the sullen wrath of impotence. A seagull screamed now and again, an

exclamation-point in the silence above the waters. Suddenly De la Vega

shook from head to foot, and snatched the knife from his belt. A faint

creaking echoed through the hollow church. He strained his ears, holding

his breath until his chest collapsed with the shock of outrushing air.

But the sound was not repeated, and he concluded that it had been but a

vibration of his nerves. He glanced to the window above the doors. The

stars in it were no longer visible; they had melted into bars of flame.

The sweat stood cold on his face, but he went on with his work.

A rope of pearls, cunningly strung together with strands of sea-weed,

was wound about the Virgin's right arm. De la Vega was too nervous to

uncoil it; he held the sack beneath, and severed the strands with his

knife. As he finished, and was about to stoop and cut loose the pearls

from the hem of the Virgin's gown, he uttered a hoarse cry and stood

rigid. A cowled head, with thin lips drawn over yellow teeth, furious

eyes burning deep in withered sockets, projected on its long neck from

the Virgin's right and confronted him. The body was unseen.

"Thief!" hissed the priest. "Dog! Thou wouldst rob the Church? Accursed!

accursed!"

There was not one moment for hesitation, one alternative. Before the

priest could complete his malediction, De la Vega's knife had flashed

through the fire of the cross. The priest leaped, screeching, then

rolled over and down, and rebounded from the railing of the sanctuary.

V

Ysabel sat in the low window-seat of her bedroom, pretending to draw the

threads of a cambric handkerchief. But her fingers twitched, and her

eyes looked oftener down the hill than upon the delicate work which

required such attention. She wore a black gown flowered with yellow

roses, and a slender ivory cross at her throat. Her hair hung in two

loose braids, sweeping the floor. She was very pale, and her pallor was

not due to the nightly entertainments of Monterey.

Her dueña sat beside her. The old woman was the colour of strong coffee;

but she, too, looked as if she had not slept, and her straight old lips

curved tenderly whenever she raised her eyes to the girl's face.

There was no carpet on the floor of the bedroom of La Favorita of

Monterey, the heiress of Don Antonio Herrera, and the little bedstead

in the corner was of iron, although a heavy satin coverlet trimmed with

lace was on it. A few saints looked down from the walls; the furniture

was of native wood, square and ugly; but it was almost hidden under fine

linen elaborately worked with the deshalados of Spain.

The supper hour was over, and the light grew dim. Ysabel tossed the

handkerchief into Doña Juana's lap, and stared through the grating.

Against the faded sky a huge cloud, shaped like a fire-breathing dragon,

was heavily outlined. The smoky shadows gathered in the woods. The

hoarse boom of the surf came from the beach; the bay was uneasy, and the

tide was high: the earth had quaked in the morning, and a wind-storm

fought the ocean. The gay bright laughter of women floated up from the

town. Monterey had taken her siesta, enjoyed her supper, and was ready

to dance through the night once more.

"He is dead," said Ysabel.

"True," said the old woman.

"He would have come back to me before this."

"True."

"He was so strong and so different, mamita."

"I never forget his eyes. Very bold eyes."

"They could be soft, macheppa."

"True. It is time thou dressed for the ball at the Custom-house,

niñita."

Ysabel leaned forward, her lips parting. A man was coming up the hill.

He was gaunt; he was burnt almost black. Something bulged beneath his

serape.

Doña Juana found herself suddenly in the middle of the room. Ysabel

darted through the only door, locking it behind her. The indignant dueña

also recognized the man, and her position. She trotted to the door and

thumped angrily on the panel; sympathetic she was, but she never could

so far forget herself as to permit a young girl to talk with a man

unattended.

"Thou shalt not go to the ball to-night," she cried shrilly. "Thou shalt

be locked in the dark room. Thou shalt be sent to the rancho. Open!

open! thou wicked one. Madre de Dios! I will beat thee with my own

hands."

But she was a prisoner, and Ysabel paid no attention to her threats. The

girl was in the sala, and the doors were open. As De la Vega crossed the

corridor and entered the room she sank upon a chair, covering her face

with her hands.

He strode over to her, and flinging his serape from his shoulder opened

the mouth of a sack and poured its contents into her lap. Pearls of all

sizes and shapes--pearls black and pearls white, pearls pink and pearls

faintly blue, pearls like globes and pearls like pears, pearls as big

as the lobe of Pio Pico's ear, pearls as dainty as bubbles of frost--a

lapful of gleaming luminous pearls, the like of which caballero had

never brought to doña before.

For a moment Ysabel forgot her love and her lover. The dream of a

lifetime was reality. She was the child who had cried for the moon and

seen it tossed into her lap.

She ran her slim white fingers through the jewels. She took up handfuls

and let them run slowly back to her lap. She pressed them to her face;

she kissed them with little rapturous cries. She laid them against her

breast and watched them chase each other down her black gown. Then at

last she raised her head and met the fierce sneering eyes of De la Vega.

"So it is as I might have known. It was only the pearls you wanted. It

might have been an Indian slave who brought them to you."

She took the sack from his hand and poured back the pearls. Then she

laid the sack on the floor and stood up. She was no longer pale, and her

eyes shone brilliantly in the darkening room.

"Yes," she said; "I forgot for a moment. But during many terrible weeks,

señor, my tears have not been for the pearls."

The sudden light that was De la Vega's chiefest charm sprang to his

eyes. He took her hands and kissed them passionately.

"That sack of pearls would be a poor reward for one tear. But thou hast

shed them for me? Say that again. Mi alma! mi alma!"

"I never thought of the pearls--at least not often. At last, not at all.

I have been very unhappy, señor. Ay!"

The maiden reserve which had been knit like steel about her plastic

years burst wide. "Thou art ill! What has happened to thee? Ay, Dios!

what it is to be a woman and to suffer! Thou wilt die! Oh, Mother of

God!"

"I shall not die. Kiss me, Ysabel. Surely it is time now."

But she drew back and shook her head.

He exclaimed impatiently, but would not release her hand. "Thou meanest

that, Ysabel?"

"We shall be married soon--wait."

"I had hoped you would grant me that. For when I tell you where I got

those pearls you may drive me from you in spite of your promise--drive

me from you with the curse of the devout woman on your lips. I might

invent some excuse to persuade you to fly with me from California

to-night, and you would never know. But I am a man--a Spaniard--and a De

la Vega. I shall not lie to you."

She looked at him with wide eyes, not understanding, and he went on, his

face savage again, his voice harsh. He told her the whole story of

that night in the mission. He omitted nothing--the menacing cross, the

sacrilegious theft, the deliberate murder; the pictures were painted

with blood and fire. She did not interrupt him with cry or gasp, but her

expression changed many times. Horror held her eyes for a time, then

slowly retreated, and his own fierce pride looked back at him. She

lifted her head when he had finished, her throat throbbing, her nostrils

twitching.

"Thou hast done that--for me?"

"Ay, Ysabel!"

"Thou hast murdered thy immortal soul--for me?"

"Ysabel!"

"Thou lovest me like that! O God, in what likeness hast thou made me? In

whatsoever image it may have been, I thank Thee--and repudiate Thee!"

She took the cross from her throat and broke it in two pieces with her

strong white fingers.

"Thou art lost, eternally damned: but I will go down to hell with thee."

And she threw herself upon him and kissed him on the mouth.

For a moment he forgot the lesson thrust into his brain by the hideous

fingers of the desert. He was almost happy. He put his hands about her

warm face after a time. "We must go to-night," he said. "I went to

General Castro's to change my clothes, and learned that a ship sails

for the United States to-night. We will go on that. I dare not delay

twenty-four hours. It may be that they are upon my heels now. How can we

meet?"

Her thoughts had travelled faster than his words, and she answered at

once: "There is a ball at the Custom-house to-night. I will go. You will

have a boat below the rocks. You know that the Custom-house is on the

rocks at the end of the town, near the fort. No? It will be easier for

me to slip from the ball-room than from this house. Only tell me where

you will meet me."

"The ship sails at midnight. I too will go to the ball; for with me you

can escape more easily. Have you a maid you can trust?"

"My Luisa is faithful."

"Then tell her to be on the beach between the rocks of the Custom-house

and the Fort with what you must take with you."

Again he kissed her many times, but softly. "Wear thy pearls to-night. I

wish to see thy triumphant hour in Monterey."

"Yes," she said, "I shall wear the pearls."

VI

The corridor of the Custom-house had been enclosed to protect the

musicians and supper table from the wind and fog. The store-room had

been cleared, the floor scrubbed, the walls hung with the colours of

Mexico. All in honour of Pio Pico, again in brief exile from his beloved

Los Angeles. The Governor, blazing with diamonds, stood at the upper end

of the room by Doña Modeste Castro's side. About them were Castro and

other prominent men of Monterey, all talking of the rumoured war between

the United States and Mexico and prophesying various results. Neither

Pico nor Castro looked amiable. The Governor had arrived in the morning

to find that the General had allowed pasquinades representing his

Excellency in no complimentary light to disfigure the streets of

Monterey. Castro, when taken to task, had replied haughtily that it

was the Governor's place to look after his own dignity; he, the

Commandante-General of the army of the Californias, had more important

matters to attend to. The result had been a furious war of words, ending

in a lame peace.

"Tell us, Excellency," said José Abrigo, "what will be the outcome?"

"The Americans can have us if they wish," said Pio Pico, bitterly. "We

cannot prevent."

"Never!" cried Castro. "What? We cannot protect ourselves against the

invasion of bandoleros? Do you forget what blood stings the veins of

the Californian? A Spaniard stand with folded arms and see his country

plucked from him! Oh, sacrilege! They will never have our Californias

while a Californian lives to cut them down!"

"Bravo! bravo!" cried many voices.

"I tell you--" began Pio Pico, but Doña Modeste interrupted him. "No

more talk of war to-night," she said peremptorily. "Where is Ysabel?"

"She sent me word by Doña Juana that she could not make herself ready in

time to come with me, but would follow with my good friend, Don Antonio,

who of course had to wait for her. Her gown was not finished, I believe.

I think she had done something naughty, and Doña Juana had tried to

punish her, but had not succeeded. The old lady looked very sad.

Ah, here is Doña Ysabel now!"

"How lovely she is!" said Doña Modeste. "I think--What! what!--"

"Dios de mi Alma!" exclaimed Pio Pico, "where did she get those pearls?"

The crowd near the door had parted, and Ysabel entered on the arm of her

uncle. Don Antonio's form was bent, and she looked taller by contrast.

His thin sharp profile was outlined against her white neck, bared for

the first time to the eyes of Monterey. Her shawl had just been laid

aside, and he was near-sighted and did not notice the pearls.

She had sewn them all over the front of her white silk gown. She had

wound them in the black coils of her hair. They wreathed her neck and

roped her arms. Never had she looked so beautiful. Her great green eyes

were as radiant as spring. Her lips were redder than blood. A pink flame

burned in her oval cheeks. Her head moved like a Californian lily on its

stalk. No Montereño would ever forget her.

"El Son!" cried the young men, with one accord. Her magnificent beauty

extinguished every other woman in the room. She must not hide her light

in the contradanza. She must madden all eyes at once.

Ysabel bent her head and glided to the middle of the room. The other

women moved back, their white gowns like a snowbank against the garish

walls. The thin sweet music of the instruments rose above the boom of

the tide. Ysabel lifted her dress with curving arms, displaying arched

feet clad in flesh-coloured stockings and white slippers, and danced El

Son.

Her little feet tapped time to the music; she whirled her body with

utmost grace, holding her head so motionless that she could have

balanced a glass of water upon it. She was inspired that night; and

when, in the midst of the dance, De la Vega entered the room, a sort of

madness possessed her. She invented new figures. She glided back and

forth, bending and swaying and doubling until to the eyes of her

bewildered admirers the outlines of her lovely body were gone. Even the

women shouted their approval, and the men went wild. They pulled their

pockets inside out and flung handfuls of gold at her feet. Those who

had only silver cursed their fate, but snatched the watches from their

pockets, the rings from their fingers, and hurled them at her with

shouts and cheers. They tore the lace ruffles from their shirts; they

rushed to the next room and ripped the silver eagles from their hats.

Even Pio Pico flung one of his golden ropes at her feet, a hot blaze in

his old ugly face, as he cried:--

"Brava! brava! thou Star of Monterey!"

Guido Cabañares, desperate at having nothing more to sacrifice to his

idol, sprang upon a chair, and was about to tear down the Mexican flag,

when the music stopped with a crash, as if musicians and instruments had

been overturned, and a figure leaped into the room.

The women uttered a loud cry and crossed themselves. Even the men fell

back. Ysabel's swaying body trembled and became rigid. De la Vega, who

had watched her with folded arms, too entranced to offer her anything

but the love that shook him, turned livid to his throat. A friar, his

hood fallen back from his stubbled head, his brown habit stiff with

dirt, smelling, reeling with fatigue, stood amongst them. His eyes were

deep in his ashen face. They rolled about the room until they met De la

Vega's.

General Castro came hastily forward. "What does this mean?" he asked.

"What do you wish?"

The friar raised his arm, and pointed his shaking finger at De la Vega.

"Kill him!" he said, in a loud hoarse whisper. "He has desecrated the

Mother of God!"

Every caballero in the room turned upon De la Vega with furious

satisfaction. Ysabel had quickened their blood, and they were willing

to cool it in vengeance on the man of whom they still were jealous, and

whom they suspected of having brought the wondrous pearls which covered

their Favorita to-night.

"What? What?" they cried eagerly. "Has he done this thing?"

"He has robbed the Church. He has stripped the Blessed Virgin of her

jewels. He--has--murdered--a--priest of the Holy Catholic Church."

Horror stayed them for a moment, and then they rushed at De la Vega. "He

does not deny it!" they cried. "Is it true? Is it true?" and they surged

about him hot with menace.

"It is quite true," said De la Vega, coldly. "I plundered the shrine of

Loreto and murdered its priest."

The women panted and gasped; for a moment even the men were stunned,

and in that moment an ominous sound mingled with the roar of the surf.

Before the respite was over Ysabel had reached his side.

"He did it for me!" she cried, in her clear triumphant voice. "For

me! And although you kill us both, I am the proudest woman in all the

Californias, and I love him."

"Good!" cried Castro, and he placed himself before them. "Stand back,

every one of you. What? are you barbarians, Indians, that you would do

violence to a guest in your town? What if he has committed a crime? Is

he not one of you, then, that you offer him blood instead of protection?

Where is your pride of caste? your _hospitality_? Oh, perfidy! Fall

back, and leave the guest of your capital to those who are compelled to

judge him."

The caballeros shrank back, sullen but abashed. He had touched the quick

of their pride.

"Never mind!" cried the friar. "You cannot protect him from _that_.

Listen!"

Had the bay risen about the Custom-house?

"What is that?" demanded Castro, sharply.

"The poor of Monterey; those who love their Cross better than the

aristocrats love their caste. They know."

De la Vega caught Ysabel in his arms and dashed across the room and

corridor. His knife cut a long rift in the canvas, and in a moment they

stood upon the rocks. The shrieking crowd was on the other side of the

Custom-house.

"Marcos!" he called to his boatman, "Marcos!"

No answer came but the waves tugging at the rocks not two feet below

them. He could see nothing. The fog was thick as night.

"He is not here, Ysabel. We must swim. Anything but to be torn to pieces

by those wild-cats. Are you afraid?"

"No," she said.

He folded her closely with one arm, and felt with his foot for the edge

of the rocks. A wild roar came from behind. A dozen pistols were fired

into the air. De la Vega reeled suddenly. "I am shot, Ysabel," he said,

his knees bending. "Not in this world, my love!"

She wound her arms about him, and dragging him to the brow of the rocks,

hurled herself outward, carrying him with her. The waves tossed them on

high, flung them against the rocks and ground them there, playing with

them like a lion with its victim, then buried them.

THE EARS OF TWENTY AMERICANS

I

"God of my soul! Do not speak of hope to me. Hope? For what are those

three frigates, swarming with a horde of foreign bandits, creeping about

our bay? For what have the persons of General Vallejo and Judge Leese

been seized and imprisoned? Why does a strip of cotton, painted with a

gaping bear, flaunt itself above Sonoma? Oh, abomination! Oh, execrable

profanation! Mother of God, open thine ocean and suck them down! Smite

them with pestilence if they put foot in our capital! Shrivel their

fingers to the bone if they dethrone our Aztec Eagle and flourish their

stars and stripes above our fort! O California! That thy sons and thy

daughters should live to see thee plucked like a rose by the usurper!

And why? Why? Not because these piratical Americans have the right to

one league of our land; but because, Holy Evangelists! they want it! Our

lands are rich, our harbours are fine, gold veins our valleys, therefore

we must be plucked. The United States of America are mightier than

Mexico, therefore they sweep down upon us with mouths wide open. Holy

God! That I could choke but one with my own strong fingers. Oh!" Doña

Eustaquia paused abruptly and smote her hands together,--"O that I were

a man! That the women of California were men!"

On this pregnant morning of July seventh, eighteen hundred and

forty-six, all aristocratic Monterey was gathered in the sala of Doña

Modeste Castro. The hostess smiled sadly. "That is the wish of my

husband," she said, "for the men of our country want the Americans."

"And why?" asked one of the young men, flicking a particle of dust from

his silken riding jacket. "We shall then have freedom from the constant

war of opposing factions. If General Castro and Governor Pico are not

calling Juntas in which to denounce each other, a Carillo is pitting his

ambition against an Alvarado. The Gringos will rule us lightly and bring

us peace. They will not disturb our grants, and will give us rich prices

for our lands--"

"Oh, fool!" interrupted Doña Eustaquia. "Thrice fool! A hundred years

from now, Fernando Altimira, and our names will be forgotten in

California. Fifty years from now and our walls will tumble upon us

whilst we cook our beans in the rags that charity--American charity--has

flung us! I tell you that the hour the American flag waves above the

fort of Monterey is the hour of the Californians' doom. We have lived in

Arcadia--ingrates that you are to complain--they will run over us like

ants and sting us to death!"

"That is the prediction of my husband," said Doña Modeste. "Liberty,

Independence, Decency, Honour, how long will they be his watch-words?"

"Not a day longer!" cried Doña Eustaquia, "for the men of California are

cowards."

"Cowards! We? No man should say that to us!" The caballeros were on

their feet, their eyes flashing, as if they faced in uniform the navy of

the United States, rather than confronted, in lace ruffles and silken

smallclothes, an angry scornful woman.

"Cowards!" continued Fernando Altimira. "Are not men flocking about

General Castro at San Juan Bautista, willing to die in a cause already

lost? If our towns were sacked or our women outraged would not the

weakest of us fight until we died in our blood? But what is coming is

for the best, Doña Eustaquia, despite your prophecy; and as we cannot

help it--we, a few thousand men against a great nation--we resign

ourselves because we are governed by reason instead of by passion. No

one reverences our General more than Fernando Altimira. No grander man

ever wore a uniform! But he is fighting in a hopeless cause, and the

fewer who uphold him the less blood will flow, the sooner the struggle

will finish."

Doña Modeste covered her beautiful face and wept. Many of the women

sobbed in sympathy. Bright eyes, from beneath gay rebosas or delicate

mantillas, glanced approvingly at the speaker. Brown old men and women

stared gloomily at the floor. But the greater number followed every

motion of their master-spirit, Doña Eustaquia Ortega.

She walked rapidly up and down the long room, too excited to sit down,

flinging the mantilla back as it brushed her hot cheek. She was a woman

not yet forty, and very handsome, although the peachness of youth had

left her face. Her features were small but sharply cut; the square

chin and firm mouth had the lines of courage and violent emotions, her

piercing intelligent eyes interpreted a terrible power of love and hate.

But if her face was so strong as to be almost unfeminine, it was frank

and kind.

Doña Eustaquia might watch with joy her bay open and engulf the hated

Americans, but she would nurse back to life the undrowned bodies flung

upon the shore. If she had been born a queen she would have slain in

anger, but she would not have tortured. General Castro had flung his hat

at her feet many times, and told her that she was born to command. Even

the nervous irregularity of her step to-day could not affect the extreme

elegance of her carriage, and she carried her small head with the

imperious pride of a sovereign. She did not speak again for a moment,

but as she passed the group of young men at the end of the room her eyes

flashed from one languid face to another. She hated their rich breeches

and embroidered jackets buttoned with silver and gold, the lace

handkerchiefs knotted about their shapely throats. No man was a man who

did not wear a uniform.

Don Fernando regarded her with a mischievous smile as she approached him

a second time.

"I predict, also," he said, "I predict that our charming Doña Eustaquia

will yet wed an American--"

"What!" she turned upon him with the fury of a lioness. "Hold thy

prating tongue! I marry an American? God! I would give every league of

my ranchos for a necklace made from the ears of twenty Americans. I

would throw my jewels to the pigs, if I could feel here upon my neck

the proof that twenty American heads looked ready to be fired from the

cannon on the hill!"

Everybody in the room laughed, and the atmosphere felt lighter. Muslin

gowns began to flutter, and the seal of disquiet sat less heavily upon

careworn or beautiful faces. But before the respite was a moment old a

young man entered hastily from the street, and throwing his hat on the

floor burst into tears.

"What is it?" The words came mechanically from every one in the room.

The herald put his hand to his throat to control the swelling muscles.

"Two hours ago," he said, "Commander Sloat sent one Captain William

Mervine on shore to demand of our Commandante the surrender of the town.

Don Mariano walked the floor, wringing his hands, until a quarter of an

hour ago, when he sent word to the insolent servant of a pirate-republic

that he had no authority to deliver up the capital, and bade him go to

San Juan Bautista and confer with General Castro. Whereupon the American

thief ordered two hundred and fifty of his men to embark in boats--do

not you hear?"

A mighty cheer shook the air amidst the thunder of cannon; then another,

and another.

Every lip in the room was white.

"What is that?" asked Doña Eustaquia. Her voice was hardly audible.

"They have raised the American flag upon the Custom-house," said the

herald.

For a moment no one moved; then as by one impulse, and without a word,

Doña Modeste Castro and her guests rose and ran through the streets to

the Custom-house on the edge of the town.

In the bay were three frigates of twenty guns each. On the rocks, in the

street by the Custom-house and on its corridors, was a small army of men

in the naval uniform of the United States, respectful but determined.

About them and the little man who read aloud from a long roll of paper,

the aristocrats joined the rabble of the town. Men with sunken eyes who

had gambled all night, leaving even serape and sombrero on the gaming

table; girls with painted faces staring above cheap and gaudy satins,

who had danced at fandangos in the booths until dawn, then wandered

about the beach, too curious over the movements of the American squadron

to go to bed; shopkeepers, black and rusty of face, smoking big pipes

with the air of philosophers; Indians clad in a single garment of

calico, falling in a straight line from the neck; eagle-beaked old

crones with black shawls over their heads; children wearing only a smock

twisted about their little waists and tied in a knot behind; a few

American residents, glancing triumphantly at each other; caballeros,

gay in the silken attire of summer, sitting in angry disdain upon their

plunging, superbly trapped horses; last of all, the elegant women in

their lace mantillas and flowered rebosas, weeping and clinging to each

other. Few gave ear to the reading of Sloat's proclamation.

Benicia, the daughter of Doña Eustaquia, raised her clasped hands, the

tears streaming from her eyes. "Oh, these Americans! How I hate them!"

she cried, a reflection of her mother's violent spirit on her sweet

face.

Doña Eustaquia caught the girl's hands and flung herself upon her neck.

"Ay! California! California!" she cried wildly. "My country is flung to

its knees in the dirt."

A rose from the upper corridor of the Custom-house struck her daughter

full in the face.

II

The same afternoon Benicia ran into the sala where her mother was lying

on a sofa, and exclaimed excitedly: "My mother! My mother! It is not

so bad. The Americans are not so wicked as we have thought. The

proclamation of the Commodore Sloat has been pasted on all the walls of

the town and promises that our grants shall be secured to us under the

new government, that we shall elect our own alcaldes, that we shall

continue to worship God in our own religion, that our priests shall

be protected, that we shall have all the rights and advantages of the

American citizen--"

"Stop!" cried Doña Eustaquia, springing to her feet. Her face still

burned with the bitter experience of the morning. "Tell me of no more

lying promises! They will keep their word! Ay, I do not doubt but they

will take advantage of our ignorance, with their Yankee sharpness! I

know them! Do not speak of them to me again. If it must be, it must; and

at least I have thee." She caught the girl in her arms, and covered the

flower-like face with passionate kisses. "My little one! My darling!

Thou lovest thy mother--better than all the world? Tell me!"

The girl pressed her soft, red lips to the dark face which could express

such fierceness of love and hate.

"My mother! Of course I love thee. It is because I have thee that I do

not take the fate of my country deeper heart. So long as they do not put

their ugly bayonets between us, what difference whether the eagle or the

stars wave above the fort?"

"Ah, my child, thou hast not that love of country which is part of my

soul! But perhaps it is as well, for thou lovest thy mother the more. Is

it not so, my little one?"

"Surely, my mother; I love no one in the world but you."

Doña Eustaquia leaned back and tapped the girl's fair cheek with her

finger.

"Not even Don Fernando Altimira?"

"No, my mother."

"Nor Flujencio Hernandez? Nor Juan Perez? Nor any of the caballeros who

serenade beneath thy window?"

"I love their music, but it comes as sweetly from one throat as from

another."

Her mother gave a long sigh of relief. "And yet I would have thee marry

some day, my little one. I was happy with thy father--thanks to God he

did not live to see this day--I was as happy, for two little years, as

this poor nature of ours can be, and I would have thee be the same. But

do not hasten to leave me alone. Thou art so young! Thine eyes have yet

the roguishness of youth; I would not see love flash it aside. Thy mouth

is like a child's; I shall shed the saddest tears of my life the day

it trembles with passion. Dear little one! Thou hast been more than a

daughter to me; thou hast been my only companion. I have striven to

impart to thee the ambition of thy mother and the intellect of thy

father. And I am proud of thee, very, very proud of thee!"

Benicia pinched her mother's chin, her mischievous eyes softening. "Ay,

my mother, I have done my little best, but I never shall be you. I am

afraid I love to dance through the night and flirt my breath away better

than I love the intellectual conversation of the few people you think

worthy to sit about you in the evenings. I am like a little butterfly

sitting on the mane of a mountain lion--"

"Tush! Tush! Thou knowest more than any girl in Monterey, and I am

satisfied with thee. Think of the books thou hast read, the languages

thou hast learned from the Señor Hartnell. Ay, my little one, nobody

but thou wouldst dare to say thou cared for nothing but dancing and

flirting, although I will admit that even Ysabel Herrera could scarce

rival thee at either."

"Ay, my poor Ysabel! My heart breaks every night when I say a prayer for

her." She tightened the clasp of her arms and pressed her face close to

her mother's. "Mamacita, darling," she said coaxingly, "I have a big

favour to beg. Ay, an enormous one! How dare I ask it?"

"Aha! What is it? I should like to know. I thought thy tenderness was a

little anxious."

"Ay, mamacita! Do not refuse me or it will break my heart. On Wednesday

night Don Thomas Larkin gives a ball at his house to the officers of the

American squadron. Oh, mamacita! mamacita! _darling!_ do, do let me go!"

"Benicia! Thou wouldst meet those men? Válgame Dios! And thou art a

child of mine!"

She flung the girl from her, and walked rapidly up and down the room,

Benicia following with her little white hands outstretched. "Dearest

one, I know just how you feel about it! But think a moment. They have

come to stay. They will never go. We shall meet them everywhere--every

night--every day. And my new gown, mamacita! The beautiful silver

spangles! There is not such a gown in Monterey! Ay, I must go. And they

say the Americans hop like puppies when they dance. How I shall laugh

at them! And it is not once in the year that I have a chance to speak

English, and none of the other girls can. And all the girls, all the

girls, all the girls, will go to this ball. Oh, mamacita!"

Her mother was obliged to laugh. "Well, well, I cannot refuse you

anything; you know that! Go to the ball! Ay, yi, do not smother me! As

you have said--that little head can think--we must meet these insolent

braggarts sooner or later. So I would not--" her cheeks blanched

suddenly, she caught her daughter's face between her hands, and bent her

piercing eyes above the girl's soft depths. "Mother of God! That could

not be. My child! Thou couldst never love an American! A Gringo! A

Protestant! Holy Mary!"

Benicia threw back her head and gave a long laugh--the light rippling

laugh of a girl who has scarcely dreamed of lovers. "I love an American?

Oh, my mother! A great, big, yellow-haired bear! When I want only to

laugh at their dancing! No, mamacita, when I love an American thou shalt

have his ears for thy necklace."

III

Thomas O. Larkin, United States Consul to California until the

occupation left him without duties, had invited Monterey to meet the

officers of the _Savannah, Cyane,_ and _Levant_, and only Doña Modeste

Castro had declined. At ten o'clock the sala of his large house on the

rise of the hill was thronged with robed girls in every shade and device

of white, sitting demurely behind the wide shoulders of coffee-coloured

dowagers, also in white, and blazing with jewels. The young matrons were

there, too, although they left the sala at intervals to visit the room

set apart for the nurses and children; no Montereña ever left her little

ones at home. The old men and the caballeros wore the black coats and

white trousers which Monterey fashion dictated for evening wear; the

hair of the younger men was braided with gay ribbons, and diamonds

flashed in the lace of their ruffles.

The sala was on the second floor; the musicians sat on the corridor

beyond the open windows and scraped their fiddles and twanged their

guitars, awaiting the coming of the American officers. Before long the

regular tramp of many feet turning from Alvarado Street up the little

Primera del Este, facing Mr. Larkin's house, made dark eyes flash, lace

and silken gowns flutter. Benicia and a group of girls were standing by

Doña Eustaquia. They opened their large black fans as if to wave back

the pink that had sprung to their cheeks. Only Benicia held her head

saucily high, and her large brown eyes were full of defiant sparkles.

"Why art thou so excited, Blandina?" she asked of a girl who had grasped

her arm. "I feel as if the war between the United States and Mexico

began tonight."

"Ay, Benicia, thou hast so gay a spirit that nothing ever frightens

thee! But, Mary! How many they are! They tramp as if they would go

through the stair. Ay, the poor flag! No wonder--"

"Now, do not cry over the flag any more. Ah! there is not one to compare

with General Castro!"

The character of the Californian sala had changed for ever; the blue and

gold of the United States had invaded it.

The officers, young and old, looked with much interest at the faces,

soft, piquant, tropical, which made the effect of pansies looking

inquisitively over a snowdrift. The girls returned their glances with

approval, for they were as fine and manly a set of men as ever had faced

death or woman. Ten minutes later California and the United States were

flirting outrageously.

Mr. Larkin presented a tall officer to Benicia. That the young man was

very well-looking even Benicia admitted. True, his hair was golden, but

it was cut short, and bore no resemblance to the coat of a bear; his

mustache and brows were brown; his gray eyes were as laughing as her

own.

"I suppose you do not speak any English, señorita," he said helplessly.

"No? I spik Eenglish like the Spanish. The Spanish people no have

difficult at all to learn the other langues. But Señor Hartnell he

say it no is easy at all for the Eenglish to spik the French and the

Spanish, so I suppose you no spik one word our langue, no?"

He gallantly repressed a smile. "Thankfully I may say that I do not,

else would I not have the pleasure of hearing you speak English. Never

have I heard it so charmingly spoken before."

Benicia took her skirt between the tips of her fingers and swayed her

graceful body forward, as a tule bends in the wind.

"You like dip the flag of the conqueror in honey, señor. Ay! We need

have one compliment for every tear that fall since your eagle stab his

beak in the neck de ours."

"Ah, the loyal women of Monterey! I have no words to express my

admiration for them, señorita. A thousand compliments are not worth one

tear."

Benicia turned swiftly to her mother, her eyes glittering with pleasure.

"Mother, you hear! You hear!" she cried in Spanish. "These Americans are

not so bad, after all."

Doña Eustaquia gave the young man one of her rare smiles; it flashed

over her strong dark face, until the light of youth was there once more.

"Very pretty speech," she said, with slow precision. "I thank you, Señor

Russell, in the name of the women of Monterey."

"By Jove! Madam--señora--I assure you I never felt so cut up in my

life as when I saw all those beautiful women crying down there by the

Custom-house. I am a good American, but I would rather have thrown the

flag under your feet than have seen you cry like that. And I assure you,

dear señora, every man among us felt the same. As you have been good

enough to thank me in the name of the women of Monterey, I, in behalf of

the officers of the United States squadron, beg that you will forgive

us."

Doña Eustaquia's cheek paled again, and she set her lips for a moment;

then she held out her hand.

"Señor," she said, "we are conquered, but we are Californians; and

although we do not bend the head, neither do we turn the back. We have

invite you to our houses, and we cannot treat you like enemies. I will

say with--how you say it--truth?--we did hate the thought that you

come and take the country that was ours. But all is over and cannot

be changed. So, it is better we are good friends than poor ones;

and--and--my house is open to you, señor."

Russell was a young man of acute perceptions; moreover, he had heard

of Doña Eustaquia; he divined in part the mighty effort by which good

breeding and philosophy had conquered bitter resentment. He raised the

little white hand to his lips.

"I would that I were twenty men, señora. Each would be your devoted

servant."

"And then she have her necklace!" cried Benicia, delightedly.

"What is that?" asked Russell; but Doña Eustaquia shook her fan

threateningly and turned away.

"I no tell you everything," said Benicia, "so no be too curiosa. You no

dance the contradanza, no?"

"I regret to say that I do not. But this is a plain waltz; will you not

give it to me?"

Benicia, disregarding the angry glances of approaching caballeros, laid

her hand on the officer's shoulder, and he spun her down the room.

"Why, you no dance so bad!" she said with surprise. "I think always the

Americanos dance so terreeblay."

"Who could not dance with a fairy in his arms?"

"What funny things you say. I never been called fairy before."

"You have never been interpreted." And then, in the whirl-waltz of that

day, both lost their breath.

When the dance was over and they stood near Doña Eustaquia, he took the

fan from Benicia's hand and waved it slowly before her. She laughed

outright.

"You think I am so tired I no can fan myself?" she demanded. "How queer

are these Americanos! Why, I have dance for three days and three nights

and never estop."

"Señorita!"

"Si, señor. Oh, we estop sometimes, but no for long. It was at Sonoma

two months ago. At the house de General Vallejo."

"You certainly are able to fan yourself; but it is no reflection upon

your muscle. It is only a custom we have."

"Then I think much better you no have the custom. You no look like a man

at all when you fan like a girl."

He handed her back the fan with some choler.

"Really, señorita, you are very frank. I suppose you would have a man

lie in a hammock all day and roll cigaritos."

"Much better do that than take what no is yours."

"Which no American ever did!"

"Excep' when he pulled California out the pocket de Mexico."

"And what did Mexico do first? Did she not threaten the United States

with hostilities for a year, and attack a small detachment of our troops

with a force of seven thousand men--"

"No make any difference what she do. Si she do wrong, that no is excuse

for you do wrong."

Two angry young people faced each other.

"You steal our country and insult our men. But they can fight, Madre de

Dios! I like see General Castro take your little Commodore Sloat by the

neck. He look like a little gray rat."

"Commodore Sloat is a brave and able man, Miss Ortega, and no officer in

the United States navy will hear him insulted."

"Then much better you lock up the ears."

"My dear Captain Russell! Benicia! what is the matter?"

Mr. Larkin stood before them, an amused smile on his thin intellectual

face. "Come, come, have we not met to-night to dance the waltz of peace?

Benicia, your most humble admirer has a favour to crave of you. I would

have my countrymen learn at once the utmost grace of the Californian.

Dance El Jarabe, please, and with Don Fernando Altimira."

Benicia lifted her dainty white shoulders. She was not unwilling to

avenge herself upon the American by dazzling him with her grace and

beauty. Her eye's swift invitation brought Don Fernando, scowling, to

her side. He led her to the middle of the room, and the musicians played

the stately jig.

Benicia swept one glance of defiant coquetry at Russell from beneath

her curling lashes, then fixed her eyes upon the floor, nor raised them

again. She held her reed-like body very erect and took either side of

her spangled skirt in the tips of her fingers, lifting it just enough

to show the arched little feet in their embroidered stockings and satin

slippers. Don Fernando crossed his hands behind him, and together they

rattled their feet on the floor with dexterity and precision, whilst the

girls sang the words of the dance. The officers gave genuine applause,

delighted with this picturesque fragment of life on the edge of the

Pacific. Don Fernando listened to their demonstrations with sombre

contempt on his dark handsome face; Benicia indicated her pleasure by

sundry archings of her narrow brows, or coquettish curves of her red

lips. Suddenly she made a deep courtesy and ran to her mother, with a

long sweeping movement, like the bending and lifting of grain in the

wind. As she approached Russell he took a rose from his coat and threw

it at her. She caught it, thrust it carelessly in one of her thick

braids, and the next moment he was at her side again.

IV

Doña Eustaquia slipped from the crowd and out of the house. Drawing a

reboso about her head she walked swiftly down the street and across the

plaza. Sounds of ribaldry came from the lower end of the town, but the

aristocratic quarter was very quiet, and she walked unmolested to the

house of General Castro. The door was open, and she went down the long

hall to the sleeping room of Doña Modeste. There was no response to her

knock, and she pushed open the door and entered. The room was dimly lit

by the candles on the altar. Doña Modeste was not in the big mahogany

bed, for the heavy satin coverlet was still over it. Doña Eustaquia

crossed the room to the altar and lifted in her arms the small figure

kneeling there.

"Pray no more, my friend," she said. "Our prayers have been unheard, and

thou art better in bed or with thy friends."

Doña Modeste threw herself wearily into a chair, but took Doña

Eustaquia's hand in a tight clasp. Her white skin shone in the dim

light, and with her black hair and green tragic eyes made her look like

a little witch queen, for neither suffering nor humiliation could bend

that stately head.

"Religion is my solace," she said, "my only one; for I have not a brain

of iron nor a soul of fire like thine. And, Eustaquia, I have more cause

to pray to-night."

"It is true, then, that José is in retreat? Ay, Mary!"

"My husband, deserted by all but one hundred men, is flying southward

from San Juan Bautista. I have it from the wash-tub mail. That never is

wrong."

"Ingrates! Traitors! But it is true, Modeste--surely, no?--that our

general will not surrender? That he will stand against the Americans?"

"He will not yield. He would have marched upon Monterey and forced them

to give him battle here but for this base desertion. Now he will go to

Los Angeles and command the men of the South to rally about him."

"I knew that he would not kiss the boots of the Americans like the rest

of our men! Oh, the cowards! I could almost say to-night that I like

better the Americans than the men of my own race. _They_ are Castros! I

shall hate their flag so long as life is in me; but I cannot hate the

brave men who fight for it. But my pain is light to thine. Thy heart is

wrung, and I am sorry for thee."

"My day is over. Misfortune is upon us. Even if my husband's life is

spared--ay! shall I ever see him again?--his position will be taken

from him, for the Americans will conquer in the end. He will be

Commandante-General of the army of the Californias no longer, but--holy

God!--a ranchero, a caballero! He at whose back all California has

galloped! Thou knowest his restless aspiring soul, Eustaquia, his

ambition, his passionate love of California. Can there be happiness for

such a man humbled to the dust--no future! no hope? Ay!"--she sprang to

her feet with arms uplifted, her small slender form looking twice its

height as it palpitated against the shadows, "I feel the bitterness of

that spirit! I know how that great heart is torn. And he is alone!"

She flung herself across Doña Eustaquia's knees and burst into violent

sobbing.

Doña Eustaquia laid her strong arm about her friend, but her eyes were

more angry than soft. "Weep no more, Modeste," she said. "Rather, arise

and curse those who have flung a great man into the dust. But comfort

thyself. Who can know? Thy husband, weary with fighting, disgusted with

men, may cling the closer to thee, and with thee and thy children forget

the world in thy redwood forests or between the golden hills of thy

ranchos."

Doña Modeste shook her head. "Thou speakest the words of kindness, but

thou knowest José. Thou knowest that he would not be content to be as

other men. And, ay! Eustaquia, to think that it was opposite our own

dear home, our favourite home, that the American flag should first have

been raised! Opposite the home of José Castro!"

"To perdition with Frémont! Why did he, of all places, select San Juan

Bautista in which to hang up his American rag?"

"We never can live there again. The Gabilan Mountains would shut out the

very face of the sun from my husband."

"Do not weep, my Modeste; remember thy other beautiful ranchos. Dios de

mi alma!" she added with a flash of humour, "I revere San Juan Bautista

for your husband's sake, but I weep not that I shall visit you there no

more. Every day I think to hear that the shaking earth of that beautiful

valley has opened its jaws and swallowed every hill and adobe. God grant

that Frémont's hair stood up more than once. But go to bed, my friend.

Look, I will put you there." As if Doña Modeste were an infant, she

undressed and laid her between the linen sheets with their elaborate

drawn work, then made her drink a glass of angelica, folded and laid

away the satin coverlet, and left the house.

She walked up the plaza slowly, holding her head high. Monterey at that

time was infested by dogs, some of them very savage. Doña Eustaquia's

strong soul had little acquaintance with fear, and on her way to General

Castro's house she had paid no attention to the snarling muzzles thrust

against her gown. But suddenly a cadaverous creature sprang upon her

with a savage yelp and would have caught her by the throat had not a

heavy stick cracked its skull. A tall officer in the uniform of the

United States navy raised his cap from iron-gray hair and looked at her

with blue eyes as piercing as her own.

"You will pardon me, madam," he said, "if I insist upon attending you to

your door. It is not safe for a woman to walk alone in the streets of

Monterey at night."

Doña Eustaquia bent her head somewhat haughtily. "I thank you much,

señor, for your kind rescue. I would not like, at all, to be eaten by

the dogs. But I not like to trouble you to walk with me. I go only to

the house of the Señor Larkin. It is there, at the end of the little

street beyond the plaza."

"My dear madam, you must not deprive the United States of the pleasure

of protecting California. Pray grant my humble request to walk behind

you and keep off the dogs."

Her lips pressed each other, but pride put down the bitter retort.

"Walk by me, if you wish," she said graciously. "Why are you not at the

house of Don Thomas Larkin?"

"I am on my way there now. Circumstances prevented my going earlier."

His companion did not seem disposed to pilot the conversation, and he

continued lamely, "Have you noticed, madam, that the English frigate

_Collingwood_ is anchored in the bay?"

"I saw it in the morning." She turned to him with sudden hope. "Have

they--the English--come to help California?"

"I am afraid, dear madam, that they came to capture California at the

first whisper of war between Mexico and the United States; you know that

England has always cast a covetous eye upon your fair land. It is said

that the English admiral stormed about the deck in a mighty rage to-day

when he saw the American flag flying on the fort."

"All are alike!" she exclaimed bitterly, then controlled herself.

"You--do you admeer our country, señor? Have you in America something

more beautiful than Monterey?"

The officer looked about him enthusiastically, glad of a change of

topic, for he suspected to whom he was talking. "Madam, I have never

seen anything more perfect than this beautiful town of Monterey. What

a situation! What exquisite proportions! That wide curve of snow-white

sand about the dark blue bay is as exact a crescent as if cut with a

knife. And that semicircle of hills behind the town, with its pine and

brush forest tapering down to the crescent's points! Nor could anything

be more picturesque than this scattered little town with its bright red

tiles above the white walls of the houses and the gray walls of the

yards; its quaint church surrounded by the ruins of the old presidio;

its beautiful, strangely dressed women and men who make this corner of

the earth resemble the pages of some romantic old picture-book--"

"Ay!" she interrupted him. "Much better you feel proud that you conquer

us; for surely, señor, California shall shine like a diamond in the very

centre of America's crown." Then she held out her hand impulsively.

"Mucho gracias, señor--pardon--thank you very much. If you love my

country, señor, you must be my friend and the friend of my daughter. I

am the Señora Doña Eustaquia Carillo de Ortega, and my house is there

on the hill--you can see the light, no? Always we shall be glad to see

you."

He doffed his cap again and bent over her hand.

"And I, John Brotherton, a humble captain in the United States navy,

do sincerely thank the most famous woman of Monterey for her gracious

hospitality. And if I abuse it, lay it to the enthusiasm of the American

who is not the conqueror but the conquered."

"That was very pretty--speech. When you abuse me I put you out the door.

This is the house of Don Thomas Larkin, where is the ball. You come in,

no? You like I take your arm? Very well"

And so the articles of peace were signed.

V

"Yes, yes, indeed, Blandina," exclaimed Benicia, "they had no chance at

all last night, for we danced until dawn, and perhaps they were afraid

of Don Thomas Larkin. But we shall talk and have music to-night, and

those fine new tables that came on the last ship from Boston must not be

destroyed."

"Well, if you really think--" said Blandina, who always thought exactly

as Benicia did. She opened a door and called:--

"Flujencio."

"Well, my sister?"

A dreamy-looking young man in short jacket and trousers of red silk

entered the room, sombrero in one hand, a cigarito in the other.

"Flujencio, you know it is said that these 'Yankees' always 'whittle'

everything. We are afraid they will spoil the furniture to-night; so

tell one of the servants to cut a hundred pine slugs, and you go down

to the store and buy a box of penknives. Then they will have plenty to

amuse themselves with and will not cut the furniture."

"True! True! What a good idea! Was it Benicia's?" He gave her a glance

of languid adoration. "I will buy those knives at once, before I forget

it," and he tossed the sombrero on his curls and strode out of the

house.

"How dost thou like the Señor Lieutenant Russell, Benicia?"

Benicia lifted her chin, but her cheeks became very pink.

"Well enough. But he is like all the Americans, very proud, and thinks

too well of his hateful country. But I shall teach him how to flirt. He

thinks he can, but he cannot."

"Thou canst do it, Benicia--look! look!"

Lieutenant Russell and a brother officer were sauntering slowly by and

looking straight through the grated window at the beautiful girls in

their gayly flowered gowns. They saluted, and the girls bent their

slender necks, but dared not speak, for Doña Francesca Hernandez was in

the next room and the door was open. Immediately following the American

officers came Don Fernando Altimira on horseback. He scowled as he saw

the erect swinging figures of the conquerors, but Benicia kissed the

tips of her fingers as he flung his sombrero to the ground, and he

galloped, smiling, on his way.

That night the officers of the United States squadron met the society of

Monterey at the house of Don Jorje Hernandez. After the contradanza, to

which they could be admiring spectators only, much to the delight of the

caballeros, Benicia took the guitar presented by Flujencio, and letting

her head droop a little to one side like a lily bent on its stalk by the

breeze, sang the most coquettish song she knew. Her mahogany brown hair

hung unconfined over her white shoulders and gown of embroidered silk

with its pointed waist and full skirt. Her large brown eyes were

alternately mischievous and tender, now and again lighted by a sudden

flash. Her cheeks were pink; her round babylike arms curved with all the

grace of the Spanish woman. As she finished the song she dropped her

eyelids for a moment, then raised them slowly and looked straight at

Russell.

"By Jove, Ned, you are a lucky dog!" said a brother officer. "She's the

prettiest girl in the room! Why don't you fling your hat at her feet, as

these ardent Californians do?"

[Illustration: "RUSSELL CROSSED THE ROOM AND SAT BESIDE BENICIA."]

"My cap is in the next room, but I will go over and fling myself there

instead."

Russell crossed the room and sat down beside Benicia.

"I should like to hear you sing under those cypresses out on the ocean

about six or eight miles from here," he said to her. "I rode down the

coast yesterday. Jove! what a coast it is!"

"We will have a merienda there on some evening," said Doña Eustaquia,

who sat beside her daughter. "It is very beautiful on the big rocks to

watch the ocean, under the moonlight."

"A merienda?"

"A peek-neek."

"Good! You will not forget that?"

She smiled at his boyishness. "It will be at the next moon. I promise."

Benicia sang another song, and a half-dozen caballeros stood about

her, regarding her with glances languid, passionate, sentimental,

reproachful, determined, hopeless. Russell, leaning back in his chair,

listened to the innocent thrilling voice of the girl, and watched her

adorers, amused and stimulated. The Californian beauty was like no other

woman he had known, and the victory would be as signal as the capture of

Monterey. "More blood, perhaps," he thought, "but a victory is a poor

affair unless painted in red. It will do these seething caballeros good

to learn that American blood is quite as swift as Californian."

As the song finished, the musicians began a waltz; Russell took the

guitar from Benicia's hand and laid it on the floor.

"This waltz is mine, señorita," he said.

"I no know--"

"Señorita!" said Don Fernando Altimira, passionately, "the first waltz

is always mine. Thou wilt not give it to the American?"

"And the next is mine!"

"And the next contradanza!"

The girl's faithful retinue protested for their rights. Russell could

not understand, but he translated their glances, and bent his lips to

Benicia's ear. That ear was pink and her eyes were bright with roguish

triumph.

"I want this dance, dear señorita. I may go away any day. Orders may

come to-morrow which will send me where I never can see you again. You

can dance with these men every night of the year--"

"I give to you," said Benicia, rising hurriedly. "We must be hospitable

to the stranger who comes to-day and leaves to-morrow," she said in

Spanish to the other men. "I have plenty more dances for you."

After the dance, salads and cakes, claret and water, were brought to the

women by Indian girls, who glided about the room with borrowed grace,

their heads erect, the silver trays held well out. They wore bright red

skirts and white smocks of fine embroidered linen, open at the throat,

the sleeves very short. Their coarse hair hung in heavy braids; their

bright little eyes twinkled in square faces scrubbed until they shone

like copper.

"Captain," said Russell to Brotherton, as the men followed the host into

the supper room, "let us buy a ranch, marry two of these stunning

girls, and lie round in hammocks whilst these Western houris bring us

aguardiente and soda. What an improvement on Byron and Tom Moore! It

is all so unhackneyed and unexpected. In spite of Dana and Robinson I

expected mud huts and whooping savages. This is Arcadia, and the women

are the most elegant in America."

"Look here, Ned," said his captain, "you had better do less flirting and

more thinking while you are in this odd country. Your talents will get

rusty, but you can rub them up when you get home. Neither Californian

men nor women are to be trifled with. This is the land of passion, not

of drawing-room sentiment."

"Perhaps I am more serious than you think. What is the matter?" He spoke

to a brother officer who had joined them and was laughing immoderately.

"Do you see those Californians grinning over there?" The speaker

beckoned to a group of officers, who joined him at once. "What job do

you suppose they have put up on us? What do you suppose that mysterious

table in the sala means, with its penknives and wooden sticks? I thought

it was a charity bazaar. Well, it is nothing more nor less than a trick

to keep us from whittling up the furniture. We are all Yankees to them,

you know. Preserve my Spanish!"

The officers shouted with delight. They marched solemnly back into the

sala, and seating themselves in a deep circle about the table,

whittled the slugs all over the floor, much to the satisfaction of the

Californians.

VI

After the entertainment was over, Russell strolled about the town. The

new moon was on the sky, the stars thick and bright; but dark corners

were everywhere, and he kept his hand on his pistol. He found himself

before the long low house of Doña Eustaquia Ortega. Not a light

glimmered; the shutters were of solid wood. He walked up and down,

trying to guess which was Benicia's room.

"I am growing as romantic as a Californian," he thought; "but this

wonderful country pours its colour all through one's nature. If I

could find her window, I believe I should serenade her in true Spanish

fashion. By Jove, I remember now, she said something about looking

through her window at the pines on the hill. It must be at the back of

the house, and how am I going to get over that great adobe wall? That

gate is probably fastened with an iron bar--ah!"

He had walked to the corner of the wall surrounding the large yard

behind and at both sides of Doña Eustaquia's house, and he saw,

ascending a ladder, a tall figure, draped in a serape, its face

concealed by the shadow of a sombrero. He drew his pistol, then laughed

at himself, although not without annoyance. "A rival; and he has got

ahead of me. He is going to serenade her."

The caballero seated himself uncomfortably on the tiles that roofed the

wall, removed his sombrero, and Russell recognized Fernando Altimira. A

moment later the sweet thin chords of the guitar quivered in the quiet

air, and a tenor, so fine that even Russell stood entranced, sang to

Benicia one of the old songs of Monterey:--

EL SUSPIRO

Una mirada un suspiro,

Una lagrima querida,

Es balsamo à la herida

Que abriste en mi corazón.

Por esa lagrima cara

Objeto de mi termina,

Yo te amé bella criatura

Desde que te vi llorar.

Te acuerdas de aquella noche

En que triste y abatida

Una lagrima querida

Vi de tus ojos brotar.

Although Russell was at the base of the high wall he saw that a light

flashed. The light was followed by the clapping of little hands. "Jove!"

he thought, "am I really jealous? But damn that Californian!"

Altimira sang two more songs and was rewarded by the same

demonstrations. As he descended the ladder and reached the open street

he met Russell face to face. The two men regarded each other for a

moment. The Californian's handsome face was distorted by a passionate

scowl; Russell was calmer, but his brows were lowered.

Altimira flung the ladder to the ground, but fire-blooded as he was, the

politeness of his race did not desert him, and his struggle with English

flung oil upon his passion.

"Señor," he said, "I no know what you do it by the house of the Señorita

Benicia so late in the night. I suppose you have the right to walk in

the town si it please yourself."

"Have I not the same right as you--to serenade the Señorita Benicia? If

I had known her room, I should have been on the wall before you."

Altimira's face flushed with triumph. "I think the Señorita Benicia

no care for the English song, señor. She love the sweet words of her

country: she no care for words of ice."

Russell smiled. "Our language may not be as elastic as yours, Don

Fernando, but it is a good deal more sincere. And it can express as much

and perhaps--"

"You love Benicia?" interrupted Altimira, fiercely.

"I admire the Señorita Ortega tremendously. But I have seen her twice

only, and although we may love longer, we take more time to get there,

perhaps, than you do."

"Ay! Dios de mi vida! You have the heart of rock! You chip it off in

little pieces, one to-day, another to-morrow, and give to the woman. I,

señor, I love Benicia, and I marry her. You understand? Si you take her,

I cut the heart from your body. You understand?"

"I understand. We understand each other." Russell lifted his cap. The

Californian took his sombrero from his head and made a long sweeping

bow; and the two men parted.

VII

On the twenty-third of July, Commodore Sloat transferred his authority

to Commodore Stockton, and the new commander of the Pacific squadron

organized the California Battalion of Mounted Riflemen, appointing

Frémont major and Gillespie captain. He ordered them South at once to

intercept Castro. On the twenty-eighth, Stockton issued a proclamation

in which he asserted that Mexico was the instigator of the present

difficulties, and justified the United States in seizing the

Californias. He denounced Castro in violent terms as an usurper, a

boasting and abusive chief, and accused him of having violated every

principle of national hospitality and good faith toward Captain Frémont

and his surveying party. Stockton sailed for the South the same day

in the _Congress_, leaving a number of officers to Monterey and the

indignation of the people.

"By Jove, I don't dare to go near Doña Eustaquia," said Russell to

Brotherton. "And I'm afraid we won't have our picnic. It seems to me the

Commodore need not have used such strong language about California's

idol. The very people in the streets are ready to unlimb us; and as for

the peppery Doña--"

"Speak more respectfully of Doña Eustaquia, young man," said the older

officer, severely. "She is a very remarkable woman and not to be spoken

slightingly of by young men who are in love with her daughter."

"God forbid that I should slight her, dear Captain. Never have I so

respected a woman. She frightens the life out of me every time she

flashes those eyes of hers. But let us go and face the enemy at once,

like the brave Americans we are."

"Very well." And together they walked along Alvarado Street from the

harbour, then up the hill to the house of Doña Eustaquia.

That formidable lady and her daughter were sitting on the corridor

dressed in full white gowns, slowly wielding large black fans, for the

night was hot. Benicia cast up her eyes expressively as she rose and

courtesied to the officers, but her mother merely bent her head; nor did

she extend her hand. Her face was very dark.

Brotherton went directly to the point.

"Dear Doña Eustaquia, we deeply regret that our Commodore has used such

harsh language in regard to General Castro. But remember that he has

been here a few days only and has had no chance to learn the many noble

and valiant qualities of your General. He doubtless has been prejudiced

against him by some enemy, and he adores Frémont:--there is the trouble.

He resents Castro's treating Frémont as an enemy before the United

States had declared its intentions. But had he been correctly informed,

he undoubtedly would have conceived the same admiration and respect for

your brave General that is felt by every other man among us."

Doña Eustaquia looked somewhat mollified, but shook her head sternly.

"Much better he took the trouble to hear true. He insult all

Californians by those shemful words. All the enemies of our dear General

be glad. And the poor wife! Poor my Modeste! She fold the arms and raise

the head, but the heart is broken."

"Jove! I almost wish they had driven us out! Dear señora--" Russell and

Benicia were walking up and down the corridor--"we have become friends,

true friends, as sometimes happens--not often--between man and woman.

Cease to think of me as an officer of the United States navy, only as a

man devoted to your service. I have already spent many pleasant hours

with you. Let me hope that while I remain here neither Commodore

Stockton nor party feeling will exclude me from many more."

She raised her graceful hand to her chin with a gesture peculiar to her,

and looked upward with a glance half sad, half bitter.

"I much appreciate your friendship, Capitan Brotherton. You give me much

advice that is good for me, and tell me many things. It is like the

ocean wind when you have live long in the hot valley. Yes, dear friend,

I forget you are in the navy of the conqueror."

"Mamacita," broke in Benicia's light voice, "tell us now when we can

have the peek-neek."

"To-morrow night."

"Surely?"

"Surely, niñita."

"Castro," said Russell, lifting his cap, "peace be with thee."

VIII

The great masses of rock on the ocean's coast shone white in the

moonlight. Through the gaunt outlying rocks, lashed apart by furious

storms, boiled the ponderous breakers, tossing aloft the sparkling

clouds of spray, breaking in the pools like a million silver fishes.

High above the waves, growing out of the crevices of the massive rocks

of the shore, were weird old cypresses, their bodies bent from the

ocean as if petrified in flight before the mightier foe. On their gaunt

outstretched arms and gray bodies, seamed with time, knobs like human

muscles jutted; between the broken bark the red blood showed. From

their angry hands, clutching at the air or doubled in imprecation, long

strands of gray-green moss hung, waving and coiling, in the night wind.

Only one old man was on his hands and knees as if to crawl from the

field; but a comrade spurned him with his foot and wound his bony hand

about the coward's neck. Another had turned his head to the enemy,

pointing his index finger in scorn, although he stood alone on high.

All along the cliffs ran the ghostly army, sometimes with straining

arms fighting the air, sometimes thrust blankly outward, all with life

quivering in their arrested bodies, silent and scornful in their defeat.

Who shall say what winter winds first beat them, what great waves first

fought their deathless trunks, what young stars first shone over them?

They have outstood centuries of raging storm and rending earthquake.

Tradition says that until convulsion wrenched the Golden Gate apart the

San Franciscan waters rolled through the long valleys and emptied into

the Bay of Monterey. But the old cypresses were on the ocean just

beyond; the incoming and the outgoing of the inland ocean could not

trouble them; and perhaps they will stand there until the end of time.

Down the long road by the ocean rode a gay cavalcade. The caballeros had

haughtily refused to join the party, and the men wore the blue and gold

of the United States.

But the women wore fluttering mantillas, and their prancing

high-stepping horses were trapped with embossed leather and silver. In a

lumbering "wagon of the country," drawn by oxen, running on solid wheels

cut from the trunks of trees, but padded with silk, rode some of the

older people of the town, disapproving, but overridden by the impatient

enthusiasm of Doña Eustaquia. Through the pine woods with their softly

moving shadows and splendid aisles, out between the cypresses and rocky

beach, wound the stately cavalcade, their voices rising above the

sociable converse of the seals and the screeching of the seagulls

spiking the rocks where the waves fought and foamed. The gold on the

shoulders of the men flashed in the moonlight; the jewels of the women

sparkled and winked. Two by two they came like a conquering army to the

rescue of the cypresses. Brotherton, who rode ahead with Doña Eustaquia,

half expected to see the old trees rise upright with a deep shout of

welcome.

When they reached a point where the sloping rocks rose high above surf

and spray, they dismounted, leaving the Indian servants to tether the

horses. They climbed down the big smooth rocks and sat about in groups,

although never beyond the range of older eyes, the cypresses lowering

above them, the ocean tearing through the outer rocks to swirl and

grumble in the pools. The moon was so bright, its light so broad and

silver, they almost could imagine they saw the gorgeous mass of colour

in the pools below.

"You no have seaweed like that in Boston," said Benicia, who had a

comprehensive way of symbolizing the world by the city from which she

got many of her clothes and all of her books.

"Indeed, no!" said Russell. "The other day I sat for hours watching

those great bunches and strands that look like richly coloured chenille.

And there were stones that looked like big opals studded with vivid

jewels. God of my soul, as you say, it was magnificent! I never saw such

brilliant colour, such delicate tints! And those great rugged defiant

rocks out there, lashed by the waves! Look at that one; misty with spray

one minute, bare and black the next! They look like an old castle which

has been battered down with cannon. Captain, do you not feel romantic?"

"I feel that I never want to go into an art gallery again. No wonder the

women of California are original."

"Benicia," said Russell, "I have tried in vain to learn a Spanish song.

But teach me a Spanish phrase of endearment. All our 'darlings' and

'dearests' are too flat for California."

"Bueno; I teach you. Say after me: Mi muy querida prima. That is very

sweet. Say."

"Mi muy--"

"Querida prima."

"Que--What is it in English?"

"My--very--darling--first. It no sound so pretty in English."

"It does very well. My--very--darling--first--if all these people were

not about us, I should kiss you. You look exactly like a flower."

"Si you did, Señor Impertinencio, you get that for thanks."

Russell jumped to his feet with a shout, and shook from his neck a

little crab with a back like green velvet and legs like carven garnet.

"Did you put that crab on my neck, señorita?"

"Si, señor."

A sulky silence of ten minutes ensued, during which Benicia sent little

stones skipping down into the silvered pools, and Russell, again

recumbent, stared at the horizon.

"Si you no can talk," she said finally, "I wish you go way and let Don

Henry Tallant come talk to me. He look like he want."

"No doubt he does; but he can stay where he is. Let me kiss your hand,

Benicia, and I will forgive you."

Benicia hit his mouth lightly with the back of her hand, but he captured

it and kissed it several times.

"Your mustache feels like the cat's," said she.

He flung the hand from him, but laughed in a moment. "How sentimental

you are! Making love to you is like dragging a cannon uphill! Will you

not at least sing me a love-song? And please do not make faces in the

tender parts."

Benicia tossed her spirited head, but took her guitar from its case and

called to the other girls to accompany her. They withdrew from their

various flirtations with audible sighs, but it was Benicia's merienda,

and in a moment a dozen white hands were sweeping the long notes from

the strings.

Russell moved to a lower rock, and lying at Benicia's feet looked

upward. The scene was all above him--the great mass of white rocks,

whiter in the moonlight; the rigid cypresses aloft; the beautiful faces,

dreamy, passionate, stolid, restless, looking from the lace mantillas;

the graceful arms holding the guitars; the sweet rich voices threading

through the roar of the ocean like the melody in a grand recitativo; the

old men and women crouching like buzzards on the stones, their sharp

eyes never closing; enfolding all with an almost palpable touch, the

warm voluptuous air. Now and again a bird sang a few notes, a strange

sound in the night, or the soft wind murmured like the ocean's echo

through the pines.

The song finished. "Benicia, I love you," whispered Russell.

"We will now eat," said Benicia. "Mamma,"--she raised her voice,--"shall

I tell Raphael to bring down the supper?"

"Yes, niña."

The girl sprang lightly up the rocks, followed by Russell. The Indian

servants were some distance off, and as the young people ran through a

pine grove the bold officer of the United States squadron captured the

Californian and kissed her on the mouth. She boxed his ears and escaped

to the light.

Benicia gave her orders, Raphael and the other Indians followed her with

the baskets, and spread the supper of tomales and salads, dulces and

wine, on a large table-like rock, just above the threatening spray; the

girls sang each in turn, whilst the others nibbled the dainties Doña

Eustaquia had provided, and the Americans wondered if it were not a

vision that would disappear into the fog bearing down upon them.

A great white bank, writhing and lifting, rolling and bending, came

across the ocean slowly, with majestic stealth, hiding the swinging

waves on which it rode so lightly, shrouding the rocks, enfolding the

men and women, wreathing the cypresses, rushing onward to the pines.

"We must go," said Doña Eustaquia, rising. "There is danger to stay. The

lungs, the throat, my children. Look at the poor old cypresses."

The fog was puffing through the gaunt arms, festooning the rigid hands.

It hung over the green heads, it coiled about the gray trunks. The stern

defeated trees looked like the phantoms of themselves, a long silent

battalion of petrified ghosts. Even Benicia's gay spirit was oppressed,

and during the long ride homeward through the pine woods she had little

to say to her equally silent companion.

IX

Doña Eustaquia seldom gave balls, but once a week she opened her salas

to the more intellectual people of the town. A few Americans were ever

attendant; General Vallejo often came from Sonoma to hear the latest

American and Mexican news in her house; Castro rarely had been absent;

Alvarado, in the days of his supremacy, could always be found there, and

she was the first woman upon whom Pio Pico called when he deigned to

visit Monterey. A few young people came to sit in a corner with Benicia,

but they had little to say.

The night after the picnic some fifteen or twenty people were gathered

about Doña Eustaquia in the large sala on the right of the hall; a few

others were glancing over the Mexican papers in the little sala on the

left. The room was ablaze with many candles standing, above the heads

of the guests, in twisted silver candelabra, the white walls reflecting

their light. The floor was bare, the furniture of stiff mahogany and

horse-hair, but no visitor to that quaint ugly room ever thought of

looking beyond the brilliant face of Doña Eustaquia, the lovely eyes of

her daughter, the intelligence and animation of the people she gathered

about her. As a rule Doña Modeste Castro's proud head and strange beauty

had been one of the living pictures of that historical sala, but she was

not there to-night.

As Captain Brotherton and Lieutenant Russell entered, Doña Eustaquia was

waging war against Mr. Larkin.

"And what hast thou to say to that proclamation of thy little American

hero, thy Commodore"--she gave the word a satirical roll, impossible to

transcribe--"who is heir to a conquest without blood, who struts into

history as the Commander of the United States Squadron of the Pacific,

holding a few hundred helpless Californians in subjection? O warlike

name of Sloat! O heroic name of Stockton! O immortal Frémont, prince

of strategists and tacticians, your country must be proud of you! Your

newspapers will glorify you! Sometime, perhaps, you will have a little

history bound in red morocco all to yourselves; whilst Castro--" she

sprang to her feet and brought her open palm down violently upon the

table, "Castro, the real hero of this country, the great man ready to

die a thousand deaths for the liberty of the Californians, a man who was

made for great deeds and born for fame, he will be left to rust and rot

because we have no newspapers to glorify him, and the Gringos send what

they wish to their country! Oh, profanation! That a great man should be

covered from sight by an army of red ants!"

"By Jove!" said Russell, "I wish I could understand her! Doesn't she

look magnificent?"

Captain Brotherton made no reply. He was watching her closely, gathering

the sense of her words, full of passionate admiration for the woman. Her

tall majestic figure was quivering under the lash of her fiery temper,

quick to spring and strike. The red satin of her gown and the diamonds

on her finely moulded neck and in the dense coils of her hair grew dim

before the angry brilliancy of her eyes.

The thin sensitive lips of Mr. Larkin curled with their accustomed

humour, but he replied sincerely, "Yes, Castro is a hero, a great man on

a small canvas--"

"And they are little men on a big canvas!" interrupted Doña Eustaquia.

Mr. Larkin laughed, but his reply was non-committal. "Remember, they

have done all that they have been called upon to do, and they have done

it well. Who can say that they would not be as heroic, if opportunity

offered, as they have been prudent?"

Doña Eustaquia shrugged her shoulders disdainfully, but resumed her

seat. "You will not say, but you know what chance they would have with

Castro in a fair fight. But what chance has even a great man, when at

the head of a few renegades, against the navy of a big nation? But

Frémont! Is he to cast up his eyes and draw down his mouth to the world,

whilst the man who acted for the safety of his country alone, who showed

foresight and wisdom, is denounced as a violator of international

courtesy?"

"No," said one of the American residents who stood near, "history will

right all that. Some day the world will know who was the great and who

the little man."

"Some day! When we are under our stones! This swaggering Commodore

Stockton adores Frémont and hates Castro. His lying proclamation will be

read in his own country--"

The door opened suddenly and Don Fernando Altimira entered the room.

"Have you heard?" he cried. "All the South is in arms! The Departmental

Assembly has called the whole country to war, and men are flocking to

the standard! Castro has sworn that he will never give up the country

under his charge. Now, Mother of God! let our men drive the usurper from

the country."

Even Mr. Larkin sprang to his feet in excitement. He rapidly translated

the news to Brotherton and Russell.

"Ah! There will be a little blood, then," said the younger officer. "It

was too easy a victory to count."

Every one in the room was talking at once. Doña Eustaquia smote her

hands together, then clasped and raised them aloft.

"Thanks to God!" she cried. "California has come to her senses at last!"

Altimira bent his lips to her ear. "I go to fight the Americans," he

whispered.

She caught his hand between both her own and pressed it convulsively to

her breast. "Go," she said, "and may God and Mary protect thee. Go, my

son, and when thou returnest I will give thee Benicia. Thou art a son

after my heart, a brave man and a good Catholic."

Benicia, standing near, heard the words. For the first time Russell saw

the expression of careless audacity leave her face, her pink colour

fade.

"What is that man saying to your mother?" he demanded.

"She promise me to him when he come back; he go to join General Castro."

"Benicia!" He glanced about. Altimira had left the house. Every one was

too excited to notice them. He drew her across the hall and into the

little sala, deserted since the startling news had come. "Benicia," he

said hurriedly, "there is no time to be lost. You are such a butterfly I

hardly know whether you love me or not."

"I no am such butterfly as you think," said the girl, pathetically. "I

often am very gay, for that is my spirit, señor; but I cry sometimes in

the night."

"Well, you are not to cry any more, my very darling first!" He took her

in his arms and kissed her, and she did not box his ears. "I may be

ordered off at any moment, and what may they not do with you while I am

gone? So I have a plan! Marry me to-morrow!"

"Ay! Señor!"

"To-morrow. At your friend Blandina's house. The Hernandez like the

Americans; in fact, as we all know, Tallant is in love with Blandina and

the old people do not frown. They will let us marry there."

"Ay! Cielo santo! What my mother say? She kill me!"

"She will forgive you, no matter how angry she may be at first. She

loves you--almost as much as I do."

The girl withdrew from his arms and walked up and down the room. Her

face was very pale, and she looked older. On one side of the room hung

a large black cross, heavily mounted with gold. She leaned her face

against it and burst into tears. "Ay, my home! My mother!" she cried

under her breath. "How I can leave you? Ay, triste de mi!" She turned

suddenly to Russell, whose face was as white as her own, and put to him

the question which we have not yet answered. "What is this love?" she

said rapidly. "I no can understand. I never feel before. Always I laugh

when men say they love me; but I never laugh again. In my heart is

something that shake me like a lion shake what it go to kill, and make

me no care for my mother or my God--and you are a Protestant! I have

love my mother like I have love that cross; and now a man come--a

stranger! a conqueror! a Protestant! an American! And he twist my heart

out with his hands! But I no can help. I love you and I go."

X

The next morning, Doña Eustaquia looked up from her desk as Benicia

entered the room. "I am writing to Alvarado," she said. "I hope to be

the first to tell him the glorious news. Ay! my child, go to thy altar

and pray that the bandoleros may be driven wriggling from the land like

snakes out of a burning field!"

"But, mother, I thought you had learned to like the Gringos."

"I like the Gringos well enough, but I hate their flag! Ay! I will pull

it down with my own hands if Castro and Pico roll Stockton and Frémont

in the dust!"

"I am sorry for that, my mother, for I am going to marry an American

to-day."

Her mother laughed and glanced over the closely written page.

"I am going to marry the Lieutenant Russell at Blandina's house this

morning."

"Ay, run, run. I must finish my letter."

Benicia left the sala and crossing her mother's room entered her own.

From the stout mahogany chest she took white silk stockings and satin

slippers, and sitting down on the floor put them on. Then she opened the

doors of her wardrobe and looked for some moments at the many pretty

frocks hanging there. She selected one of fine white lawn, half covered

with deshalados, and arrayed herself. She took from the drawer of the

wardrobe a mantilla of white Spanish lace, and draped it about her head

and shoulders, fastening it back above one ear with a pink rose. Around

her throat she clasped a string of pearls, then stood quietly in the

middle of the room and looked about her. In one corner was a little

brass bedstead covered with a heavy quilt of satin and lace. The

pillow-cases were almost as fine and elaborate as her gown. In the

opposite corner was an altar with little gold candlesticks and an ivory

crucifix. The walls and floor were bare but spotless. The ugly wardrobe

built into the thick wall never had been empty: Doña Eustaquia's

generosity to the daughter she worshipped was unbounded.

Benicia drew a long hysterical breath and went over to the window. It

looked upon a large yard enclosed by the high adobe wall upon which her

lovers so often had sat and sung to her. No flowers were in the garden,

not even a tree. It was as smooth and clean as the floor of a ballroom.

About the well in the middle were three or four Indian servants

quarrelling good-naturedly. The house stood on the rise of one of the

crescent's horns. Benicia looked up at the dark pine woods on the

hill. What days she had spent there with her mother! She whirled about

suddenly and taking a large fan from the table returned to the sala.

Doña Eustaquia laughed. "Thou silly child, to dress thyself like a

bride. What nonsense is this?"

"I will be a bride in an hour, my mother."

"Go! Go, with thy nonsense! I have spoiled thee! What other girl in

Monterey would dare to dress herself like this at eleven in the morning?

Go! And do not ruin that mantilla, for thou wilt not get another. Thou

art going to Blandina's, no? Be sure thou goest no farther! I would not

let thee go there alone were it not so near. And be sure thou speakest

to no man in the street."

"No, mamacita, I will speak to no man in the street, but one awaits me

in the house. Hasta luego." And she flitted out of the door and up the

street.

XI

A few hours later Doña Eustaquia sat in the large and cooler sala

with Captain Brotherton. He read Shakespeare to her whilst she fanned

herself, her face aglow with intelligent pleasure. She had not broached

to him the uprising in the South lest it should lead to bitter words.

Although an American and a Protestant, few friends had ever stood so

close to her.

He laid down the book as Russell and Benicia entered the room. Doña

Eustaquia's heavy brows met.

"Thou knowest that I do not allow thee to walk with on the street," she

said in Spanish.

"But, mamacita, he is my husband. We were married this morning at

Blandina's," Excitement had tuned Benicia's spirit to its accustomed

pitch, and her eyes danced with mischief. Moreover, although she

expected violent reproaches, she knew the tenacious strength of her

mother's affection, and had faith in speedy forgiveness.

Brotherton opened his eyes, but Doña Eustaquia moved back her head

impatiently. "That silly joke!" Then she smiled at her own impatience.

What was Benicia but a spoiled child, and spoiled children would disobey

at times. "Welcome, my son," she said to Russell, extending her hand.

"We celebrate your marriage at the supper to-night, and the Captain

helps us, no? my friend."

"Let us have chicken with red pepper and tomato sauce," cried Russell.

"And rice with saffron; and that delightful dish with which I

remonstrate all night--olives and cheese and hard-boiled eggs and red

peppers all rolled up in corn-meal cakes."

"Enchiladas? You have them! Now, both you go over to the corner and talk

not loud, for I wish to hear my friend read."

Russell, lifting his shoulders, did as he was bidden. Benicia, with a

gay laugh, kissed her mother and flitted like a butterfly about the

room, singing gay little snatches of song.

"Oh, mamacita, mamacita," she chanted. "Thou wilt not believe thou hast

lost thy little daughter. Thou wilt not believe thou hast a son. Thou

wilt not believe I shall sleep no more in the little brass bed--"

"Benicia, hold thy saucy tongue! Sit down!" And this Benicia finally

consented to do, although smothered laughter came now and again from the

corner.

Dona Eustaquia sat easily against the straight back of her chair,

looking very handsome and placid as Brotherton read and expounded "As

You Like It" to her. Her gown of thin black silk threw out the fine

gray tones of her skin; about her neck and chest was a heavy chain of

Californian gold; her dense lustreless hair was held high with a shell

comb banded with gold; superb jewels weighted her little white hands; in

her small ears were large hoops of gold studded with black pearls. She

was perfectly contented in that hour. Her woman's vanity was at peace

and her eager mind expanding.

The party about the supper table in the evening was very gay. The long

room was bare, but heavy silver was beyond the glass doors of the

cupboard; a servant stood behind each chair; the wines were as fine

as any in America, and the favourite dishes of the Americans had been

prepared. Even Brotherton, although more nervous than was usual with

him, caught the contagion of the hour and touched his glass more than

once to that of the woman whose overwhelming personality had more than

half captured a most indifferent heart.

After supper they sat on the corridor, and Benicia sang her mocking

love-songs and danced El Son to the tinkling of her own guitar.

"Is she not a light-hearted child?" asked her mother. "But she has her

serious moments, my friend. We have been like the sisters. Every path of

the pine woods we walk together, arm in arm. We ride miles on the beach

and sit down on the rocks for hours and try to think what the seals

say one to the other. Before you come I have friends, but no other

companion; but it is good for me you come, for she think only of

flirting since the Americans take Monterey. Mira! Look at her flash the

eyes at Señor Russell. It is well he has the light heart like herself."

Brotherton made no reply.

"Give to me the guitar," she continued.

Benicia handed her the instrument and Doña Eustaquia swept the chords

absently for a moment then sang the song of the troubadour. Her rich

voice was like the rush of the wind through the pines after the light

trilling of a bird, and even Russell sat enraptured. As she sang the

colour came into her face, alight with the fire of youth. Her low notes

were voluptuous, her high notes rang with piercing sadness. As she

finished, a storm of applause came from Alvarado Street, which pulsed

with life but a few yards below them.

"No American woman ever sang like that," said Brotherton. He rose and

walked to the end of the corridor. "But it is a part of Monterey."

"Most enchanting of mothers-in-law," said Russell, "you have made it

doubly hard for us to leave you; but it grows late and my wife and I

must go. Good night," and he raised her hand to his lips.

"Good night, my son."

"Mamacita, good night," and Benicia, who had fluttered into the house

and found a reboso, kissed her mother, waved her hand to Brotherton, and

stepped from the corridor to the street.

"Come here, señorita!" cried her mother. "No walk to-night, for I have

not the wish to walk myself."

"But I go with my husband, mamma."

"Oh, no more of that joke without sense! Señor Russell, go home, that

she have reason for one moment."

"But, dear Doña Eustaquia, won't you understand that we are really

married?"

Doña Eustaquia's patience was at an end. She turned to Brotherton and

addressed a remark to him. Russell and Benicia conferred a moment, then

the young man walked rapidly down the street.

"Has he gone?" asked Doña Eustaquia. "Then let us go in the house, for

the fog comes from the bay."

They went into the little sala and sat about the table. Doña Eustaquia

picked up a silver dagger she used as a paper cutter and tapped a book

with it.

"Ay, this will not last long," she said to Brotherton. "I much am afraid

your Commodore send you to the South to fight with our men."

"I shall return," said Brotherton, absently. His eyes were fixed on the

door.

"But it will not be long that you will be there, my friend. Many people

are not killed in our wars. Once there was a great battle at Point

Rincon, near Santa Barbara, between Castro and Carillo. Carillo have

been appointed governor by Mejico, and Alvarado refuse to resign. They

fight for three days, and Castro manage so well he lose only one man,

and the others run away and not lose any."

Brotherton laughed. "I hope all our battles may be as bloodless," he

said, and then drew a short breath.

Russell, accompanied by Don Jorje and Doña Francesca Hernandez and the

priest of Monterey, entered the room.

Doña Eustaquia rose and greeted her guests with grace and hospitality.

"But I am glad to see you, my father, my friends. And you always are

welcome, Señor Russell; but no more joke. Where is our Blandina? Sit

down--Why, what is it?"

The priest spoke.

"I have that to tell you, Doña Eustaquia, which I fear will give you

great displeasure. I hoped not to be the one to tell it. I was weak to

consent, but these young people importuned me until I was weary. Doña

Eustaquia, I married Benicia to the Señor Russell to-day."

Doña Eustaquia's head had moved forward mechanically, her eyes staring

incredulously from the priest to the other members of the apprehensive

group. Suddenly her apathy left her, her arm curved upward like the neck

of a snake; but as she sprang upon Benicia her ferocity was that of a

tiger.

"What!" she shrieked, shaking the girl violently by the shoulder. "What!

ingrate! traitor! Thou hast married an American, a Protestant!"

Benicia burst into terrified sobs. Russell swung the girl from her

mother's grasp and placed his arm around her.

"She is mine now," he said. "You must not touch her again."

"Yours! Yours!" screamed Doña Eustaquia, beside herself. "Oh, Mother of

God!" She snatched the dagger from the table and, springing backward,

plunged it into the cross.

"By that sign I curse thee," she cried. "Accursed be the man who has

stolen my child! Accursed be the woman who has betrayed her mother and

her country! God! God!--I implore thee, let her die in her happiest

hour."

XII

On August twelfth Commodore Hull arrived on the frigate _Warren_, from

Mazatlan, and brought the first positive intelligence of the declaration

of war between Mexico and the United States. Before the middle of

the month news came that Castro and Pico, after gallant defence, but

overwhelmed by numbers, had fled, the one to Sonora, the other to Baja

California. A few days after, Stockton issued a proclamation to the

effect that the flag of the United States was flying over every town

in the territory of California; and Alcalde Colton announced that the

rancheros were more than satisfied with the change of government.

A month later a mounted courier dashed into Monterey with a note from

the Alcalde of Los Angeles, wrapped about a cigarito and hidden in his

hair. The note contained the information that all the South was in

arms again, and that Los Angeles was in the hands of the Californians.

Russell was ordered to go with Captain Mervine, on the _Savannah_,

to join Gillespie at San Pedro; Brotherton was left at Monterey with

Lieutenant Maddox and a number of men to quell a threatened uprising.

Later came the news of Mervine's defeat and the night of Talbot from

Santa Barbara; and by November California was in a state of general

warfare, each army receiving new recruits every day.

Doña Eustaquia, hard and stern, praying for the triumph of her people,

lived alone in the old house. Benicia, praying for the return of her

husband and the relenting of her mother, lived alone in her little house

on the hill. Friends had interceded, but Doña Eustaquia had closed her

ears. Brotherton went to her one day with the news that Lieutenant

Russell was wounded.

"I must tell Benicia," he said, "but it is you who should do that."

"She betray me, my friend."

"Oh, Eustaquia, make allowance for the lightness of youth. She barely

realized what she did. But she loves him now, and suffers bitterly. She

should be with you."

"Ay! She suffer for another! She love a strange man--an American--better

than her mother! And it is I who would die for her! Ay, you cold

Americans! Never you know how a mother can love her child."

"The Americans know how to love, señora. And Benicia was thoroughly

spoiled by her devoted mother. She was carried away by her wild spirits,

nothing more."

"Then much better she live on them now."

Doña Eustaquia sat with her profile against the light. It looked severe

and a little older, but she was very handsome in her rich black gown and

the gold chain about her strong throat. Her head, as usual, was held a

little back. Brotherton sat down beside her and took her hand.

"Eustaquia," he said, "no friendship between man and woman was ever

deeper and stronger than ours. In spite of the anxiety and excitement of

these last months we have found time to know each other very intimately.

So you will forgive me if I tell you that the more a friend loves you

the more he must be saddened by the terrible iron in your nature. Only

the great strength of your passions has saved you from hardening into an

ugly and repellent woman. You are a mother; forgive your child; remember

that she, too, is about to be a mother--"

She caught his hand between both of hers with a passionate gesture. "Oh,

my friend," she said, "do not too much reproach me! You never have a

child, you cannot know! And remember we all are not make alike. If you

are me, you act like myself. If I am you, I can forgive more easy. But

I am Eustaquia Ortega, and as I am make, so I do feel now. No judge too

hard, my friend, and--_infelez de mi!_ do not forsake me."

"I will never forsake you, Eustaquia." He rose suddenly. "I, too, am a

lonely man, if not a hard one, and I recognize that cry of the soul's

isolation."

He left her and went up the hill to Benicia's little house, half hidden

by the cypress trees that grew before it.

She was sitting in her sala working an elaborate deshalados on a baby's

gown. Her face was pale, and the sparkle had gone out of it; but she

held herself with all her mother's pride, and her soft eyes were deeper.

She rose as Captain Brotherton entered, and took his hand in both of

hers. "You are so good to come to me, and I love you for your friendship

for my mother. Tell me how she is."

"She is well, Benicia." Then he exclaimed suddenly: "Poor little girl!

What a child you are--not yet seventeen."

"In a few months, señor. Sit down. No? And I no am so young now. When we

suffer we grow more than by the years; and now I go to have the baby,

that make me feel very old."

"But it is very sad to see you alone like this, without your husband or

your mother. She will relent some day, Benicia, but I wish she would do

it now, when you most need her."

"Yes, I wish I am with her in the old house," said the girl,

pathetically, although she winked back the tears. "Never I can be happy

without her, even si _he_ is here, and you know how I love him. But I

have love her so long; she is--how you say it?--like she is part of me,

and when she no spik to me, how I can be happy with all myself when part

is gone. You understand, señor?"

"Yes, Benicia, I understand." He looked through the bending cypresses,

down the hill, upon the fair town. He had no relish for the task which

had brought him to her. She looked up and caught the expression of his

face.

"Señor!" she cried sharply. "What you go to tell me?"

"There is a report that Ned is slightly wounded; but it is not serious.

It was Altimira who did it, I believe."

She shook from head to foot, but was calmer than he had expected. She

laid the gown on a chair and stood up. "Take me to him. Si he is wound,

I go to nurse him."

"My child! You would die before you got there. I have sent a special

courier to find out the truth. If Ned is wounded, I have arranged to

have him sent home immediately."

"I wait for the courier come back, for it no is right I hurt the baby si

I can help. But si he is wound so bad he no can come, then I go to him.

It no is use for you to talk at all, señor, I go."

Brotherton looked at her in wonderment. Whence had the butterfly gone?

Its wings had been struck from it and a soul had flown in.

"Let me send Blandina to you," he said. "You must not be alone."

"I am alone till he or my mother come. I no want other. I love Blandina

before, but now she make me feel tired. She talk so much and no say

anything. I like better be alone."

"Poor child!" said Brotherton, bitterly, "truly do love and suffering

age and isolate." He motioned with his hand to the altar in her bedroom,

seen through the open door. "I have not your faith, I am afraid I have

not much of any; but if I cannot pray for you, I can wish with all the

strength of a man's heart that happiness will come to you yet, Benicia."

She shook her head. "I no know; I no believe much happiness come in

this life. Before, I am like a fairy; but it is only because I no am

_un_happy. But when the heart have wake up, señor, and the knife have

gone in hard, then, after that, always, I think, we are a little sad."

XIII

General Kearney and Lieutenant Beale walked rapidly up and down before

the tents of the wretched remnant of United States troops with which the

former had arrived overland in California. It was bitterly cold in spite

of the fine drizzling rain. Lonely buttes studded the desert, whose

palms and cacti seemed to spring from the rocks; high on one of them was

the American camp. On the other side of a river flowing at the foot of

the butte, the white tents of the Californians were scattered among the

dark huts of the little pueblo of San Pasqual.

"Let me implore you, General," said Beale, "not to think of meeting

Andres Pico. Why, your men are half starved; your few horses are

broken-winded; your mules are no match for the fresh trained mustangs of

the enemy. I am afraid you do not appreciate the Californians. They are

numerous, brave, and desperate. If you avoid them now, as Commodore

Stockton wishes, and join him at San Diego, we stand a fair chance

of defeating them. But now Pico's cavalry and foot are fresh and

enthusiastic--in painful contrast to yours. And, moreover, they know

every inch of the ground."

Kearney impatiently knocked the ashes out of his pipe. He had little

regard for Stockton, and no intention of being dictated to by a

truculent young lieutenant who spoke his mind upon all occasions.

"I shall attack them at daybreak," he said curtly. "I have one hundred

and thirty good men; and has not Captain Gillespie joined me with his

battalion? Never shall it be said that I turned aside to avoid a handful

of boasting Californians. Now go and get an hour's sleep before we

start."

The young officer shrugged his shoulders, saluted, and walked down

the line of tents. A man emerged from one of them, and he recognized

Russell.

"Hello, Ned," he said. "How's the arm?"

"'Twas only a scratch. Is Altimira down there with Pico, do you know? He

is a brave fellow! I respect that man; but we have an account to settle,

and I hope it will be done on the battle-field."

"He is with Pico, and he has done some good fighting. Most of the

Californians have. They know how to fight and they are perfectly

fearless. Kearney will find it out to-morrow. He is mad to attack them.

Why, his men are actually cadaverous. Bueno! as they say here; Stockton

sent me to guide him to San Diego. If he prefers to go through the

enemy's lines, there is nothing for me to do but take him."

"Yes, but we may surprise them. I wish to God this imitation war were

over!"

"It will be real enough before you get through. Don't worry. Well, good

night. Luck to your skin."

At daybreak the little army marched down the butte, shivering with cold,

wet to the skin. Those on horseback naturally proceeded more rapidly

than those mounted upon the clumsy stubborn mules; and Captain Johnson,

who led the advance guard of twelve dragoons, found himself, when he

came in sight of the enemy's camp, some distance ahead of the main body

of Kearney's small army. To his surprise he saw that the Californians

were not only awake, but horsed and apparently awaiting him. Whether he

was fired by valour or desperation at the sight is a disputed point;

but he made a sudden dash down the hill and across the river, almost

flinging himself upon the lances of the Californians.

Captain Moore, who was ambling down the hill on an old white horse at

the head of fifty dragoons mounted on mules, spurred his beast as he

witnessed the foolish charge of the advance, and arrived upon the field

in time to see Johnson fall dead and to take his place. Pico, seeing

that reënforcements were coming, began to retreat, followed hotly by

Moore and the horsed dragoons. Suddenly, however, Fernando Altimira

raised himself in his stirrups, looked back, laughed and galloped across

the field to General Pico.

"Look!" he said. "Only a few men on horses are after us. The mules are

stumbling half a mile behind."

Pico wheeled about, gave the word of command, and bore down upon the

Americans. Then followed a hand-to-hand conflict, the Californians

lancing and using their pistols with great dexterity, the Americans

doing the best they could with their rusty sabres and clubbed guns.

They were soon reënforced by Moore's dragoons and Gillespie's battalion,

despite the unwilling mules; but the brutes kicked and bucked at every

pistol shot and fresh cloud of smoke. The poor old horses wheezed and

panted, but stood their ground when not flung out of position by the

frantic mules. The officers and soldiers of the United States army were

a sorry sight, and in pointed contrast to the graceful Californians on

their groomed steeds, handsomely trapped, curvetting and rearing and

prancing as lightly as if on the floor of a circus. Kearney cursed his

own stupidity, and Pico laughed in his face. Beale felt satisfaction and

compunction in saturating the silk and silver of one fine saddle with

the blood of its owner. The point of the dying man's lance pierced his

face, but he noted the bleaching of Kearney's, as one dragoon after

another was flung upon the sharp rocks over which his bewildered brute

stumbled, or was caught and held aloft in the torturing arms of the

cacti.

On the edge of the battle two men had forgotten the Aztec Eagle and the

Stars and Stripes; they fought for love of a woman. Neither had had time

to draw his pistol; they fought with lance and sabre, thrusting and

parrying. Both were skilful swordsmen, but Altimira's horse was far

superior to Russell's, and he had the advantage of weapons.

"One or the other die on the rocks," said the Californian, "and si I

kill you, I marry Benicia."

Russell made no reply. He struck aside the man's lance and wounded his

wrist. But Altimira was too excited to feel pain. His face was quivering

with passion.

It is not easy to parry a lance with a sabre, and still more difficult

to get close enough to wound the man who wields it. Russell rose

suddenly in his stirrups, described a rapid half-circle with his weapon,

brought it down midway upon the longer blade, and snapped the latter in

two. Altimira gave a cry of rage, and spurring his horse sought to ride

his opponent down; but Russell wheeled, and the two men simultaneously

snatched their pistols from the holsters. Altimira fired first, but his

hand was unsteady and his ball went through a cactus. Russell raised

his pistol with firm wrist, and discharged it full in the face of the

Californian.

Then he looked over the field. Moore, fatally lanced, lay under a palm,

and many of his men were about him. Gillespie was wounded, Kearney had

received an ugly thrust. The Californians, upon the arrival of the main

body of the enemy's troops, had retreated unpursued; the mules attached

to one of the American howitzers were scampering over to the opposite

ranks, much to the consternation of Kearney. The sun, looking over the

mountain, dissipated the gray smoke, and cast a theatrical light on the

faces of the dead. Russell bent over Altimira. His head was shattered,

but his death was avenged. Never had an American troop suffered a more

humiliating defeat. Only six Californians lay on the field; and when

the American surgeon, after attending to his own wounded, offered his

services to Pico's, that indomitable general haughtily replied that he

had none.

"By Jove!" said Russell to Beale that night, "you know your

Californians! I am prouder than ever of having married one! That army is

of the stuff of which my mother-in-law is made!"

XIV

That was a gay Christmas at Monterey, despite the barricades in the

street. News had come of the defeat of Kearney at San Pasqual, and the

Montereños, inflated with hope and pride, gave little thought to the

fact that his forces were now joined with Stockton's at San Diego.

On Christmas eve light streamed from every window, bonfires flared on

the hills; the streets were illuminated, and every one was abroad. The

clear warm night was ablaze with fireworks; men and women were in their

gala gowns; rockets shot upward amidst shrieks of delight which mingled

oddly with the rolling of drums at muster; even the children caught the

enthusiasm, religious and patriotic.

"I suppose you would be glad to see even your friends driven out," said

Brotherton to Doña Eustaquia, as they walked through the brilliant town

toward the church: bells called them to witness the dramatic play of

"The Shepherds."

"I be glad to see the impertinent flag come down," said she, frankly;

"but you can make resignation from the army, and have a little store on

Alvarado Street. You can have beautiful silks and crêpes from America. I

buy of you."

"Thanks," he said grimly. "You would put a dunce cap on poor America,

and stand her in a corner. If I resign, Doña Eustaquia, it will be to

become a ranchero, not a shopkeeper. To tell the truth, I have little

desire to leave California again."

"But you were make for the fight," she said, looking up with some pride

at the tall military figure, the erect head and strong features. "You

not were make to lie in the hammock and horseback all day."

"But I should do a good deal else, señora. I should raise cattle with

some method; and I should have a library--and a wife."

"Ah! you go to marry?"

"Some day, I hope. It would be lonely to be a ranchero without a wife."

"Truly."

"What is the matter with those women?"

A group of old women stood by the roadside. Their forms were bent, their

brown faces gnarled like apples. Some were a shapeless mass of fat,

others were parchment and bone; about the head and shoulders of each was

a thick black shawl. Near them stood a number of young girls clad in

muslin petticoats, flowered with purple and scarlet. Bright satin shoes

were on their feet, cotton rebosas covered their pretty, pert little

heads. All were looking in one direction, whispering and crossing

themselves.

Doña Eustaquia glanced over her shoulder, then leaned heavily on

Brotherton's arm.

"It is Benicia," she said. "It is because she was cursed and is with

child that they cross themselves."

Brotherton held her arm closely and laid his hand on hers, but he spoke

sternly.

"The curse is not likely to do her any harm. You prayed that she should

die when happiest, and you have done your best to make her wretched."

She did not reply, and they walked slowly onward. Benicia followed,

leaning on the arm of an Indian servant. Her friends avoided her, for

they bitterly resented Altimira's death. But she gave them little

regret. Since her husband could not be with her on this Christmas eve,

she wished only for reconciliation with her mother. In spite of the

crowd she followed close behind Doña Eustaquia and Brotherton, holding

her head proudly, but ready to fall at the feet of the woman she

worshipped.

"My friend," said Doña Eustaquia, after a moment, "perhaps it is best

that I do not forgive her. Were she happy, then might the curse come

true."

"She has enough else to make her unhappy. Besides, who ever heard of

a curse coming true? It has worked its will already for the matter of

that. You kept your child from happiness with her husband during the

brief time she had him. The bitterness of death is a small matter beside

the bitterness of life. You should be satisfied."

"You are hard, my friend."

"I see your other faults only to respect and love them."

"Does she look ill, Captain?"

"She cannot be expected to look like the old Benicia. Of course she

looks ill, and needs care."

"Look over the shoulder. Does she walk heavily?"

"Very. But as haughtily as do you."

"Talk of other things for a little while, my friend."

"Truly there is much to claim the interest to-night. This may be an old

scene to you, but it is novel and fascinating to me. How lovely are

those stately girls, half hidden by their rebosas, telling their beads

as they hurry along. It is the very coquetry of religion. And those--But

here we are."

The church was handsomer without than within, for the clever old

padres that built it had more taste than their successors. About the

whitewashed walls of the interior were poor copies of celebrated

paintings--the Passion of Christ, and an extraordinary group of nude

women and grinning men representing the temptation of St. Anthony. In a

glass case a beautiful figure of the Saviour reclined on a stiff couch

clumsily covered with costly stuffs. The Virgin was dressed much like

the aristocratic ladies of Monterey, and the altar was a rainbow of

tawdry colours.

But the ceremonies were interesting, and Brotherton forgot Benicia for

the hour. After the mass the priest held out a small waxen image of the

infant Jesus, and all approached and kissed it. Then from without came

the sound of a guitar; the worshippers arose and ranged themselves

against the wall; six girls dressed as shepherdesses; a man representing

Lucifer; two others, a hermit and the lazy vagabond Bartola; a boy, the

archangel Gabriel, entered the church. They bore banners and marched

to the centre of the building, then acted their drama with religious

fervour.

The play began with the announcement by Gabriel of the birth of the

Saviour, and exhortations to repair to the manger. On the road came

the temptation of Lucifer; the archangel appeared once more; a violent

altercation ensued in which all took part, and finally the prince of

darkness was routed. Songs and fanciful by-play, brief sermons, music,

gay and solemn, diversified the strange performance. When all was over,

the players were followed by an admiring crowd to the entertainment

awaiting them.

"Is it not beautiful--our Los Pastores?" demanded Doña Eustaquia,

looking up at Brotherton, her fine face aglow with enthusiasm. "Do not

you feel the desire to be a Catholic, my friend?"

"Rather would I see two good Catholics united, dear señora," and he

turned suddenly to Benicia, who also had remained in the church, almost

at her mother's side.

"Mamacita!" cried Benicia.

Doña Eustaquia opened her arms and caught the girl passionately to her

heart; and Brotherton left the church.

XV

The April flowers were on the hills. Beds of gold-red poppies and

silver-blue baby eyes were set like tiles amidst the dense green

undergrowth beneath the pines, and on the natural lawns about the white

houses. Although hope of driving forth the intruder had gone forever in

January, Monterey had resumed in part her old gayety; despair had bred

philosophy. But Monterey was Monterey no longer. An American alcalde

with a power vested in no judge of the United States ruled over her; to

add injury to insult, he had started a newspaper. The town was full of

Americans; the United States was constructing a fort on the hill; above

all, worse than all, the Californians were learning the value of money.

Their sun was sloping to the west.

A thick India shawl hung over the window of Benicia's old room in her

mother's house, shutting out the perfume of the hills. A carpet had been

thrown on the floor, candles burned in the pretty gold candlesticks that

had stood on the altar since Benicia's childhood. On the little brass

bedstead lay Benicia, very pale and very pretty, her transparent skin

faintly reflecting the pink of the satin coverlet. By the bed sat an old

woman of the people. Her ragged white locks were bound about by a fillet

of black silk; her face, dark as burnt umber, was seamed and lined like

a withered prune; even her long broad nose was wrinkled; her dull eyes

looked like mud-puddles; her big underlip was pursed up as if she had

been speaking mincing words, and her chin was covered with a short white

stubble. Over her coarse smock and gown she wore a black cotton reboso.

In her arms she held an infant, muffled in a white lace mantilla.

Doña Eustaquia came in and bent over the baby, her strong face alight

with joy.

"Didst thou ever nurse so beautiful a baby?" she demanded.

The old woman grunted; she had heard that question before.

"See how pink and smooth it is--not red and wrinkled like other babies!

How becoming is that mantilla! No, she shall not be wrapped in blankets,

cap, and shawls."

"She catch cold, most likely," grunted the nurse.

"In this weather? No; it is soft as midsummer. I cannot get cool. Ay,

she looks like a rosebud lying in a fog-bank!" She touched the baby's

cheek with her finger, then sat on the bed, beside her daughter.

"And how dost thou feel, my little one? Thou wert a baby thyself but

yesterday, and thou art not much more to-day."

"I feel perfectly well, my mother, and--ay, Dios, so happy! Where is

Edourdo?"

"Of course! Always the husband! They are all alike! Hast thou not thy

mother and thy baby?"

"I adore you both, mamacita, but I want Edourdo. Where is he?"

Her mother grimaced. "I suppose it is no use to protest. Well, my little

one, I think he is at this moment on the hill with Lieutenant Ord."

"Why did he not come to see me before he went out?"

"He did, my daughter, but thou wert asleep. He kissed thee and stole

away."

"Where?"

"Right there on your cheek, one inch below your eyelashes."

"When will he return?"

"Holy Mary! For dinner, surely, and that will be in an hour."

"When can I get up?"

"In another week. Thou art so well! I would not have thee draw too

heavily on thy little strength. Another month and thou wilt not remember

that thou hast been ill. Then we will go to the rancho, where thou and

thy little one will have sun all day and no fog."

"Have I not a good husband, mamacita?"

"Yes; I love him like my own son. Had he been unkind to thee, I should

have killed him with my own hands; but as he has his lips to thy little

slipper, I forgive him for being an American."

"And you no longer wish for a necklace of American ears! Oh, mamma!"

Doña Eustaquia frowned, then sighed. "I do not know the American head

for which I have not more like than hate, and they are welcome to their

ears; but _the spirit_ of that wish is in my heart yet, my child. Our

country has been taken from us; we are aliens in our own land; it is the

American's. They--holy God!--permit us to live here!"

"But they like us better than their own women."

"Perhaps; they are men and like what they have not had too long."

"Mamacita, I am thirsty."

"What wilt thou have? A glass of water?"

"Water has no taste."

"I know!"

Doña Eustaquia left the room and returned with an orange. "This will be

cool and pleasant on so warm a day. It is just a little sour," she said;

but the nurse raised her bony hand.

"Do not give her that," she said in her harsh voice. "It is too soon."

"Nonsense! The baby is two weeks old. Why, I ate fruit a week after

childing. Look how dry her mouth is! It will do her good."

She pared the orange and gave it to Benicia, who ate it gratefully.

"It is very good, mamita. You will spoil me always, but that is because

you are so good. And one day I hope you will be as happy as your little

daughter; for there are other good Americans in the world. No? mamma. I

think--Mamacita!"

She sprang upward with a loud cry, the body curving rigidly; her soft

brown eyes stared horribly; froth gathered about her mouth; she gasped

once or twice, her body writhing from the agonized arms that strove to

hold it, then fell limply down, her features relaxing.

"She is dead," said the nurse.

"Benicia!" whispered Doña Eustaquia. "Benicia!"

"You have killed her," said the old woman, as she drew the mantilla

about the baby's face.

Doña Eustaquia dropped the body and moved backward from the bed. She

put out her hands and went gropingly from the room to her own, and from

thence to the sala. Brotherton came forward to meet her.

"Eustaquia!" he cried. "My friend! _My dear_! What has happened? What--"

She raised her hand and pointed to the cross. The mark of the dagger was

still there.

"Benicia!" she uttered. "The curse!" and then she fell at his feet.

THE WASH-TUB MAIL

PART I

"Mariquita! Thou good-for-nothing, thou art wringing that smock in

pieces! Thy señora will beat thee! Holy heaven, but it is hot!"

"For that reason I hurry, old Faquita. Were I as slow as thou, I should

cook in my own tallow."

"Aha, thou art very clever! But I have no wish to go back to the rancho

and wash for the cooks. Ay, yi! I wonder will La Tulita ever give me her

bridal clothes to wash. I have no faith that little flirt will marry the

Señor Don Ramon Garcia. He did not well to leave Monterey until after

the wedding. And to think--Ay! yi!"

"Thou hast a big letter for the wash-tub mail, Faquita."

"Aha, my Francesca, thou hast interest! I thought thou wast thinking

only of the bandits."

Francesca, who was holding a plunging child between her knees, actively

inspecting its head, grunted but did not look up, and the oracle of

the wash-tubs, provokingly, with slow movements of her knotted

coffee-coloured arms, flapped a dainty skirt, half-covered with drawn

work, before she condescended to speak further.

Twenty women or more, young and old, dark as pine cones, stooped or sat,

knelt or stood, about deep stone tubs sunken in the ground at the foot

of a hill on the outskirts of Monterey. The pines cast heavy shadows on

the long slope above them, but the sun was overhead. The little white

town looked lifeless under its baking red tiles, at this hour of

siesta. On the blue bay rode a warship flying the American colours. The

atmosphere was so clear, the view so uninterrupted, that the younger

women fancied they could read the name on the prow: the town was on the

right; between the bay and the tubs lay only the meadow, the road, the

lake, and the marsh. A few yards farther down the road rose a hill where

white slabs and crosses gleamed beneath the trees. The roar of the surf

came refreshingly to their hot ears. It leaped angrily, they fancied, to

the old fort on the hill where men in the uniform of the United States

moved about with unsleeping vigilance. It was the year 1847. The

Americans had come and conquered. War was over, but the invaders guarded

their new possessions.

The women about the tubs still bitterly protested against the downfall

of California, still took an absorbing interest in all matters,

domestic, social, and political. For those old women with grizzled locks

escaping from a cotton handkerchief wound bandwise about their heads,

their ample forms untrammelled by the flowing garment of calico, those

girls in bright skirts and white short-sleeved smock and young hair

braided, knew all the news of the country, past and to come, many hours

in advance of the dons and doñas whose linen they washed in the great

stone tubs: the Indians, domestic and roving, were their faithful

friends.

"Sainted Mary, but thou art more slow than a gentleman that walks!"

cried Mariquita, an impatient-looking girl. "Read us the letter. La

Tulita is the prettiest girl in Monterey now that the Señorita Ysabel

Herrera lies beneath the rocks, and Benicia Ortega has died of her

childing. But she is a flirt--that Tulita! Four of the Gringos are under

her little slipper this year, and she turn over the face and roll in the

dirt. But Don Ramon, so handsome, so rich--surely she will marry him."

Faquita shook her head slowly and wisely. "There--come

--yesterday--from--the--South--a--young--lieutenant--of--America." She

paused a moment, then proceeded leisurely, though less provokingly. "He

come over the great American deserts with General Kearney last year and

help our men to eat the dust in San Diego. He come only yesterday to

Monterey, and La Tulita is like a little wild-cat ever since. She box my

ears this morning when I tell her that the Americans are bandoleros, and

say she never marry a Californian. And never Don Ramon Garcia, ay, yi!"

By this time the fine linen was floating at will upon the water, or

lying in great heaps at the bottom of the clear pools. The suffering

child scampered up through the pines with whoops of delight. The

washing-women were pressed close about Faquita, who stood with thumbs on

her broad hips, the fingers contracting and snapping as she spoke, wisps

of hair bobbing back and forth about her shrewd black eyes and scolding

mouth.

"Who is he? Where she meet him?" cried the audience. "Oh, thou old

carreta! Why canst thou not talk faster?"

"If thou hast not more respect, Señorita Mariquita, thou wilt hear

nothing. But it is this. There is a ball last night at Doña Maria

Ampudia's house for La Tulita. She look handsome, that witch! Holy Mary!

When she walk it was like the tule in the river. You know. Why she have

that name? She wear white, of course, but that frock--it is like the

cobweb, the cloud. She has not the braids like the other girls, but the

hair, soft like black feathers, fall down to the feet. And the eyes like

blue stars! You know the eyes of La Tulita. The lashes so long, and

black like the hair. And the sparkle! No eyes ever sparkle like those.

The eyes of Ysabel Herrera look like they want the world and never

can get it. Benicia's, pobrecita, just dance like the child's. But La

Tulita's! They sparkle like the devil sit behind and strike fire out

red-hot iron--"

"Mother of God!" cried Mariquita, impatiently, "we all know thou art

daft about that witch! And we know how she looks. Tell us the story."

"Hush thy voice or thou wilt hear nothing. It is this way. La Tulita

have the castanets and just float up and down the sala, while all stand

back and no breathe only when they shout. I am in the garden in the

middle the house, and I stand on a box and look through the doors. Ay,

the roses and the nasturtiums smell so sweet in that little garden!

Well! She dance so beautiful, I think the roof go to jump off so she can

float up and live on one the gold stars all by herself. Her little feet

just twinkle! Well! The door open and Lieutenant Ord come in. He have

with him another young man, not so handsome, but so straight, so sharp

eye and tight mouth. He look at La Tulita like he think she belong to

America and is for him. Lieutenant Ord go up to Doña Maria and say, so

polite: 'I take the liberty to bring Lieutenant'--I no can remember that

name, so American! 'He come to-day from San Diego and will stay with us

for a while.' And Doña Maria, she smile and say, very sweet, 'Very glad

when I have met all of our conquerors.' And he turn red and speak very

bad Spanish and look, look, at La Tulita. Then Lieutenant Ord speak to

him in English and he nod the head, and Lieutenant Ord tell Doña Maria

that his friend like be introduced to La Tulita, and she say, 'Very

well,' and take him over to her who is now sit down. He ask her to waltz

right away, and he waltz very well, and then they dance again, and once

more. And then they sit down and talk, talk. God of my soul, but the

caballeros are mad! And Doña Maria! By and by she can stand it no more

and she go up to La Tulita and take away from the American and say, 'Do

you forget--and for a bandolero--that you are engage to my nephew?' And

La Tulita toss the head and say: 'How can I remember Ramon Garcia when

he is in Yerba Buena? I forget he is alive.' And Doña Maria is very

angry. The eyes snap. But just then the little sister of La Tulita run

into the sala, the face red like the American flag. 'Ay, Herminia!' she

just gasp. 'The donas! The donas! It has come!'"

"The donas!" cried the washing-women, old and young. "Didst thou see

it, Faquita? Oh, surely. Tell us, what did he send? Is he a generous

bridegroom? Were there jewels? And satins? Of what was the rosary?"

"Hush the voice or you will hear nothing. The girls all jump and clap

their hands and they cry: 'Come, Herminia. Come quick! Let us go and

see.' Only La Tulita hold the head very high and look like the donas is

nothing to her, and the Lieutenant look very surprise, and she talk to

him very fast like she no want him to know what they mean. But the girls

just take her hands and pull her out the house. I am after. La Tulita

look very mad, but she cannot help, and in five minutes we are at the

Casa Rivera, and the girls scream and clap the hands in the sala for

Doña Carmen she have unpack the donas and the beautiful things are on

the tables and the sofas and the chairs, Mother of God!"

"Go on! Go on!" cried a dozen exasperated voices.

"Well! Such a donas. Ay, he is a generous lover. A yellow crepe shawl

embroidered with red roses. A white one with embroidery so thick it can

stand up. A string of pearls from Baja California. (Ay, poor Ysabel

Herrera!) Hoops of gold for the little ears of La Tulita. A big chain

of California gold. A set of topaz with pearls all round. A rosary of

amethyst--purple like the violets. A big pin painted with the Ascension,

and diamonds all round. Silks and satins for gowns. A white lace

mantilla, Dios de mi alma! A black one for the visits. And the

night-gowns like cobwebs. The petticoats!" She stopped abruptly.

"And the smocks?" cried her listeners, excitedly. "The smocks? They are

more beautiful than Blandina's? They were pack in rose-leaves--"

"Ay! yi! yi! yi!" The old woman dropped her head on her breast and waved

her arms. She was a study for despair. Even she did not suspect how

thoroughly she was enjoying herself.

"What! What! Tell us! Quick, thou old snail. They were not fine? They

had not embroidery?"

"Hush the voices. I tell you when I am ready. The girls are like crazy.

They look like they go to eat the things. Only La Tulita sit on the

chair in the door with her back to all and look at the windows of Doña

Maria. They look like a long row of suns, those windows.

"I am the one. Suddenly I say: 'Where are the smocks?' And they all cry:

'Yes, where are the smocks? Let us see if he will be a good husband.

Doña Carmen, where are the smocks?'

"Doña Carmen turn over everything in a hurry. 'I did not think of the

smocks,' she say. 'But they must be here. Everything was unpack in this

room.' She lift all up, piece by piece. The girls help and so do I.

La Tulita sit still but begin to look more interested. We search

everywhere--everywhere--for twenty minutes. There--are--no--smocks!"

"God of my life! The smocks! He did not forget!"

"He forget the smocks!"

There was an impressive pause. The women were too dumfounded to comment.

Never in the history of Monterey had such a thing happened before.

Faquita continued: "The girls sit down on the floor and cry. Doña Carmen

turn very white and go in the other room. Then La Tulita jump up and

walk across the room. The lashes fall down over the eyes that look like

she is California and have conquer America, not the other way. The

nostrils just jump. She laugh, laugh, laugh. 'So!' she say, 'my rich and

generous and ardent bridegroom, he forget the smocks of the donas. He

proclaim as if by a poster on the streets that he will be a bad husband,

a thoughtless, careless, indifferent husband. He has vow by the stars

that he adore me. He has serenade beneath my window until I have beg for

mercy. He persecute my mother. And now he flings the insult of insults

in my teeth. And he with six married sisters!'

"The girls just sob. They can say nothing. No woman forgive that. Then

she say loud, 'Ana,' and the girl run in. 'Ana,' she say, 'pack this

stuff and tell José and Marcos take it up to the house of the Señor Don

Ramon Garcia. I have no use for it.' Then she say to me: 'Faquita, walk

back to Doña Maria's with me, no? I have engagement with the American.'

And I go with her, of course; I think I go jump in the bay if she tell

me; and she dance all night with that American. He no look at another

girl--all have the eyes so red, anyhow. And Doña Maria is crazy that her

nephew do such a thing, and La Tulita no go to marry him now. Ay, that

witch! She have the excuse and she take it."

For a few moments the din was so great that the crows in a neighbouring

grove of willows sped away in fear. The women talked all at once, at

the top of their voices and with no falling inflections. So rich an

assortment of expletives, secular and religious, such individuality yet

sympathy of comment, had not been called upon for duty since the seventh

of July, a year before, when Commodore Sloat had run up the American

flag on the Custom-house. Finally they paused to recover breath.

Mariquita's young lungs being the first to refill, she demanded of

Faquita:--

"And Don Ramon--when does he return?"

"In two weeks, no sooner."