Doña Concepción was forced to lead her to the little sala. She strode

into the room, big and brown and bony, looking like an avenging Amazon,

this mother of thirteen children. Her small eyes were blazing, and the

thick wrinkles about them quivered. Her lips twitched, her cheeks burned

with a dull dark red. In one hand she carried a greenhide reata. With

the other she caught her daughter's long unbound hair, twisted it about

her arm like a rope, then brought the reata down on the unprotected

shoulders with all her great strength Doña Concepción fled from the

room. Pilar made no sound. She had expected this, and had vowed that it

should not unseal her lips. The beating stopped abruptly. Doña Brígida,

still with the rope of hair about her arm, pushed Pilar through the

door, out of the convent and its gates, then straight down the hill. For

the first time the girl faltered.

"Not to the Presidio!" she gasped.

Her mother struck her shoulder with a fist as hard as iron, and Pilar

stumbled on. She knew that if she refused to walk, her mother would

carry her. They entered the Presidio. Pilar, raising her eyes for one

brief terrible moment, saw that Tomaso, her mother's head vaquero, stood

in the middle of the square holding two horses, and that every man,

woman, and child of the Presidio was outside the buildings. The

Commandante and the Alcalde were with the Governor and his staff, and

Padre Estudillo. They had the air of being present at an important

ceremony.

Amidst a silence so profound that Pilar heard the mingled music of the

pines on the hills above the Presidio and of the distant ocean, Doña

Brígida marched her to the very middle of the square, then by a

dexterous turn of her wrist forced her to her knees. With both hands she

shook her daughter's splendid silken hair from the tight rope into

which she had coiled it, then stepped back for a moment that all might

appreciate the penalty a woman must pay who disgraced her sex. The

breeze from the hills lifted the hair of Pilar, and it floated and

wreathed upward for a moment--a warm dusky cloud.

Suddenly the intense silence was broken by a loud universal hiss. Pilar,

thinking that it was part of her punishment, cowered lower, then,

obeying some impulse, looked up, and saw the back of the young priest.

He was running. As her dull gaze was about to fall again, it encountered

for a moment the indignant blue eyes of a red-haired, hard-featured, but

distinguished-looking young man, clad in sober gray. She knew him to be

the American, Malcolm Sturges, the guest of the Governor. But her mind

rapidly shed all impressions but the wretched horror of her own plight.

In another moment she felt the shears at her neck, and knew that her

disgrace was passing into the annals of Monterey, and that half her

beauty was falling from her. Then she found herself seated on the horse

in front of her mother, who encircled her waist with an arm that

pressed her vitals like iron. After that there was an interval of

unconsciousness.

When she awoke, her first impulse was to raise her head from her

mother's bony shoulder, where it bumped uncomfortably. Her listless

brain slowly appreciated the fact that she was not on her way to the

Rancho Diablo. The mustang was slowly ascending a steep mountain trail.

But her head ached, and she dropped her face into her hands. What

mattered where she was going? She was shorn, and disgraced, and

disillusioned, and unspeakably weary of body and soul.

They travelled through dense forests of redwoods and pine, only the

soft footfalls of the unshod mustang or the sudden cry of the wild-cat

breaking the primeval silence. It was night when Doña Brígida abruptly

dismounted, dragging Pilar with her. They were halfway up a rocky

height, surrounded by towering peaks black with rigid trees. Just in

front of them was an opening in the ascending wall. Beside it, with his

hand on a huge stone, stood the vaquero. Pilar knew that she had nothing

to hope from him: her mother had beaten him into submission long since.

Doña Brígida, without a word, drove Pilar into the cave, and she and the

vaquero, exerting their great strength to the full, pushed the stone

into the entrance. There was a narrow rift at the top. The cave was as

black as a starless midnight.

Then Doña Brígida spoke for the first time:--

"Once a week I shall come with food and drink. There thou wilt stay

until thy teeth fall, the skin bags from thy bones, and thou art so

hideous that all men will run from thee. Then thou canst come forth and

go and live on the charity of the father to whom thou wouldst have taken

a polluted priest."

Pilar heard the retreating footfalls of the mustangs. She was too

stunned to think, to realize the horrible fate that had befallen her.

She crouched down against the wall of the cave nearest the light, her

ear alert for the growl of a panther or the whir of a rattler's tail.

II

The night after the close of school the Governor gave a grand ball,

which was attended by the older of the convent girls who lived in

Monterey or were guests in the capital. The dowagers sat against the

wall, a coffee-coloured dado; the girls in white, the caballeros in

black silk small-clothes, the officers in their uniforms, danced to the

music of the flute and the guitar. When Elena Estudillo was alone in the

middle of the room dancing El Son and the young men were clapping and

shouting and flinging gold and silver at her feet, Sturges and Eustaquia

slipped out into the corridor. It was a dark night, the dueñas were

thinking of naught but the dance and the days of their youth, and the

violators of a stringent social law were safe for the moment. A

chance word, dropped by Sturges in the dance, and Eustaquia's eager

interrogations, had revealed the American's indignation at the barbarous

treatment of Pilar, and his deep interest in the beautiful victim.

"Señor," whispered Eustaquia, excitedly, as soon as they reached the

end of the corridor, "if you feel pity and perhaps love for my unhappy

friend, go to her rescue for the love of Mary. I have heard to-day that

her punishment is far worse than what you saw. It is so terrible that I

hardly have dared--"

"Surely, that old fiend could think of nothing else," said Sturges.

"What is she made of, anyhow?"

"Ay, yi! Her heart is black like the redwood tree that has been burnt

out by fire. Before Don Enrique ran away, she beat him many times; but,

after, she was a thousand times worse, for it is said that she loved

him in her terrible way, and that her heart burnt up when she was left

alone--"

"But Doña Pilar, señorita?"

"Ay, yi! Benito, one of the vaqueros of Doña Erigida, was in town

to-day, and he told me (I bribed him with whiskey and cigaritos--the

Commandante's, whose guest I am, ay, yi!)--he told me that Doña Erigida

did not take my unhappy friend home, but--"

"Well?" exclaimed Sturges, who was a man of few words.

Eustaquia jerked down his ear and whispered, "She took her to a cave in

the mountains and pushed her in, and rolled a huge stone as big as a

house before the entrance, and there she will leave her till she is

thirty--or dead!"

"Good God! Does your civilization, such as you've got, permit such

things?"

"The mother may discipline the child as she will. It is not the business

of the Alcalde. And no one would dare interfere for poor Pilar, for she

has committed a mortal sin against the Church--"

"I'll interfere. Where is the cave?"

"Ay, señor, I knew you would. For that I told you all. I know not where

the cave is; but the vaquero--he is in town till to-morrow. But he fears

Doña Erigida, señor, as he fears the devil. You must tell him that not

only will you give him plenty of whiskey and cigars, but that you will

send him to Mexico. Doña Brígida would kill him."

"I'll look out for him."

"Do not falter, señor, for the love of God; for no Californian will go

to her rescue. She has been disgraced and none will marry her. But you

can take her far away where no one knows--"

"Where is this vaquero to be found?"

"In a little house on the beach, under the fort, where his sweetheart

lives."

"Good night!" And he sprang from the corridor and ran toward the nearest

gate.

He found the vaquero, and after an hour's argument got his way. The man,

who had wormed the secret out of Tomaso, had only a general idea of the

situation of the cave; but he confessed to a certain familiarity with

the mountains. He was not persuaded to go until Sturges had promised to

send not only himself but his sweetheart to Mexico. Doña Brígida was

violently opposed to matrimony, and would have none of it on her rancho.

Sturges promised to ship them both off on the _Joven Guipuzcoanoa_, and

to keep them comfortably for a year in Mexico. It was not an offer to be

refused.

They started at dawn. Sturges, following Benito's advice, bought a long

gray cloak with a hood, and filled his saddle-bags with nourishing food.

The vaquero sent word to Doña Brígida that the horses he had brought in

to sell to the officers had escaped and that he was hastening down the

coast in pursuit. In spite of his knowledge of the mountains, it was

only after two days of weary search in almost trackless forests, and

more than one encounter with wild beasts, that they came upon the cave.

They would have passed it then but for the sharp eyes of Sturges, who

detected the glint of stone behind the branches which Doña Brígida had

piled against it.

He sprang down, tossed the brush aside, and inserted his fingers between

the side of the stone and the wall of the cave. But he could not move it

alone, and was about to call Benito, who was watering the mustangs at

a spring, when he happened to glance upward. A small white hand was

hanging over the top of the stone. Sturges was not a Californian, but he

sprang to his feet and pressed his lips to that hand. It was cold and

nerveless, and clasping it in his he applied his gaze to the rift above

the stone. In a moment he distinguished two dark eyes and a gleam of

white brow above. Then a faint voice said:--

"Take me out! Take me out, señor, for the love of God!"

"I have come for that. Cheer up," said Sturges, in his best Spanish.

"You'll be out in five minutes."

"And then you'll bring me his head," whispered Pilar. "Ay, Dios, what I

have suffered! I have been years here, señor, and I am nearly mad."

"Well, I won't promise you his head, but I've thrashed the life out of

him, if that will give you any satisfaction. I caught him in the woods,

and I laid on my riding-whip until he bit the grass and yelled for

mercy."

The eyes in the cave blazed with a light which reminded him

uncomfortably of Doña Erigida.

"That was well! That was well!" said Pilar. "But it is not enough. I

must have his head. I never shall sleep again till then, señor. Ay,

Dios, what I have suffered!"

"Well, we'll see about the head later. To get you out of this is the

first thing on the program. Benito!"

Benito ran forward, and together they managed to drag the stone aside.

But Pilar retreated into the darkness and covered her face with her

hands.

"Ay, Dios! Dios! I cannot go out into the sunlight. I am old and

hideous."

"Make some coffee," said Sturges to Benito. He went within and took her

hands. "Come," he said. "You have been here a week only. Your brain is

a little turned, and no wonder. You've put a lifetime of suffering

into that week. But I'm going to take care of you hereafter, and that

she-devil will have no more to say about it. I'll either take you to

your father, or to my mother in Boston--whichever you like."

Benito brought in the coffee and some fresh bread and dried meat. Pilar

ate and drank ravenously. She had found only stale bread and water in

the cave. When she had finished, she looked at Sturges with a more

intelligent light in her eyes, then thrust her straggling locks behind

her ears. She also resumed something of her old dignified composure.

"You are very kind, señor," she said graciously. "It is true that I

should have been mad in a few more days. At first I did nothing but run,

run, run--the cave is miles in the mountain; but since when I cannot

remember I have huddled against that stone, listening--listening; and at

last you came."

Sturges thought her more beautiful than ever. The light was streaming

upon her now, and although she was white and haggard she looked far less

cold and unapproachable than when he had endeavoured in vain to win a

glance from her in the church. He put his hand on her tangled hair. "You

shall suffer no more," he repeated; "and this will grow again. And that

beautiful mane--it is mine. I begged it from the Alcalde, and it is safe

in my trunk."

"Ah, you love me!" she said softly.

"Yes, I love you!" And then, as her eyes grew softer and she caught his

hand in hers with an exclamation of passionate gratitude for his gallant

rescue, he took her in his arms without more ado and kissed her.

"Yes, I could love you," she said in a moment. "For, though you are not

handsome, like the men of my race, you are true and good and brave: all

I dreamed that a man should be until that creature made all men seem

loathsome. But I will not marry you till you bring me his head--"

"Oh! come. So lovely a woman should not be so blood-thirsty. He has been

punished enough. Besides what I gave him, he's been sent off to spend

the rest of his life in some hole where he'll have neither books nor

society--"

"It is not enough! When a man betrays a woman, and causes her to be

beaten and publicly disgraced--it will be written in the books of the

Alcalde, señor!--and shut up in a cave to suffer the tortures of the

damned in hell, he should die."

"Well, I think he should myself, but I'm not the public executioner, and

one can't fight a duel with a priest--"

"Señor! Señor! Quick! Pull, for the love of God!"

It was Benito who spoke, and he was pushing with all his might against

the stone. "She comes--Doña Brígida!" he cried. "I saw her far off just

now. Stay both in there. I will take the mustangs and hide them on the

other side of the mountain and return when she is gone. That is the best

way."

"We can all go--"

"No, no! She would follow; and then--ay, Dios de mi alma! No, it is best

the señorita be there when she comes; then she will go away quietly."

They replaced the stone. Benito piled the brush against it, then made

off with the mustangs.

"Go far," whispered Pilar. "Dios, if she sees you!"

"I shall not leave you again. And even if she enter, she need not see

me. I can stand in that crevice, and I will keep quiet so long as she

does not touch you."

Doña Brígida was a half-hour reaching the cave, and meanwhile Sturges

restored the lost illusions of Pilar. Not only did he make love to her

without any of the rhetorical nonsense of the caballero, but he was big

and strong, and it was evident that he was afraid of nothing, not even

of Doña Brígida. The dreams of her silent girlhood swirled in her

imagination, but looked vague and shapeless before this vigorous

reality. For some moments she forgot everything and was happy. But there

was a black spot in her heart, and when Sturges left her for a moment to

listen, it ached for the head of the priest. She had much bad as well as

much good in her, this innocent Californian maiden; and the last week

had forced an already well-developed brain and temperament close to

maturity. She vowed that she would make herself so dear to this fiery

American that he would deny her nothing. Then, her lust for vengeance

satisfied, she would make him the most delightful of wives.

"She is coming!" whispered Sturges, "and she has the big vaquero with

her."

"Ay, Dios! If she knows all, what can we do?"

"I've told you that I have no love of killing, but I don't hesitate when

there is no alternative. If she sees me and declares war, and I cannot

get you away, I shall shoot them both. I don't know that it would keep

me awake a night. Now, you do the talking for the present."

Doña Brígida rode up to the cave and dismounted. "Pilar!" she shouted,

as if she believed that her daughter was wandering through the heart of

the mountain.

Pilar presented her eyes at the rift.

"Ay, take me out! take me out!" she wailed, with sudden diplomacy.

Her mother gave a short laugh, then broke off and sniffed.

"What is this?" she cried. "Coffee? I smell coffee!"

"Yes, I have had coffee," replied Pilar, calmly. "Benito has brought me

that, and many dulces."

"Dios!" shouted Doña Brígida. "I will tie him to a tree and beat him

till he is as green as my reata--"

"Give me the bread!--quick, quick, for the love of Heaven! It is two

days since he has been, and I have nothing left, not even a drop of

coffee."

"Then live on the memory of thy dulces and coffee! The bread and water

go back with me. Three days from now I bring them again. Meanwhile, thou

canst enjoy the fangs at thy vitals."

Pilar breathed freely again, but she cried sharply, "Ay, no! no!"

"Ay, yes! yes!"

Doña Brígida stalked up and down, while Pilar twisted her hands

together, and Sturges mused upon his future wife's talent for dramatic

invention. Suddenly Doña Brígida shouted: "Tomaso, come here! The

spring! A horse has watered here to-day--two horses! I see the little

hoof-mark and the big." She ran back to the cave, dragging Tomaso with

her. "Quick! It is well I brought my reata. Ten minutes, and I shall

have the truth. Pull there; I pull here."

"The game is up," whispered Sturges to Pilar. "And I have another plan."

He took a pistol from his hip-pocket and handed it to her. "You have a

cool head," he said; "now is the time to use it. As soon as this stone

gives way do you point that pistol at the vaquero's head, and don't let

your hand tremble or your eye falter as you value your liberty. I'll

take care of her."

Pilar nodded. Sturges threw himself against the rock and pushed with all

his strength. In a moment it gave, and the long brown talons of Pilar's

mother darted in to clasp the curve of the stone. Sturges was tempted

to cut them off; but he was a sportsman, and liked fair play. The stone

gave again, and this time he encountered two small malignant eyes. Doña

Brígida dropped her hands and screamed; but, before she could alter her

plans, Sturges gave a final push and rushed out, closely followed by

Pilar.

It was his intention to throw the woman and bind her, hand and foot; but

he had no mean opponent. Doña Brígida's surprise had not paralyzed her.

She could not prevent his exit, for she went back with the stone,

but she had sprung to the open before he reached it himself, and was

striking at him furiously with her reata. One glance satisfied Sturges

that Pilar had covered the vaquero, and he devoted the next few moments

to dodging the reata. Finally, a well-directed blow knocked it from her

hand, and then he flung himself upon her, intending to bear her to the

ground. But she stood like a rock, and closed with him, and they reeled

about the little plateau in the hard embrace of two fighting grizzlies.

There could be no doubt about the issue, for Sturges was young and wiry

and muscular; but Doña Brígida had the strength of three women, and,

moreover, was not above employing methods which he could not with

dignity resort to and could with difficulty parry. She bit at him. She

clawed at his back and shoulders. She got hold of his hair. And she was

so nimble that he could not trip her. She even roared in his ears, and

once it seemed to him that her bony shoulder was cutting through his

garments and skin. But after a struggle of some twenty minutes, little

by little her embrace relaxed; she ceased to roar, even to hiss, her

breath came in shorter and shorter gasps. Finally, her knees trembled

violently, she gave a hard sob, and her arms fell to her sides. Sturges

dragged her promptly into the cave and laid her down.

"You are a plucky old lady, and I respect you," he said. "But here you

must stay until your daughter is safely out of the country. I shall take

her far beyond your reach, and I shall marry her. When we are well out

at sea, Tomaso will come back and release you. If he attempts to do so

sooner, I shall blow his head off. Meanwhile you can be as comfortable

here as you made your daughter; and as you brought a week's supply of

bread, you will not starve."

The old woman lay and glared at him, but she made no reply. She might be

violent and cruel, but she was indomitable of spirit, and she would sue

to no man.

Sturges placed the bread and water beside her, then, aided by Tomaso,

pushed the stone into place. As he turned about and wiped his brow, he

met the eyes of the vaquero. They were averted hastily, but not before

Sturges had surprised a twinkle of satisfaction in those usually

impassive orbs. He shouted for Benito, then took the pistol from Pilar,

who suddenly looked tired and frightened.

"You are a wonderful woman," he said; "and upon my word, I believe you

get a good deal of it from your mother."

Benito came running, leading the mustangs. Sturges wrapped Pilar in the

long cloak, lifted her upon one of the mustangs, and sprang to his own.

He ordered Tomaso and Benito to precede them by a few paces and to take

the shortest cut for Monterey. It was now close upon noon, and it was

impossible to reach Monterey before dawn next day, for the mustangs were

weary; but the _Joven_ did not sail until ten o'clock.

"These are my plans," said Sturges to Pilar, as they walked their

mustangs for a few moments after a hard gallop. "When we reach the foot

of the mountain, Benito will leave us, go to your rancho, gather as much

of your clothing as he can strap on a horse, and join us at the barque.

He will have a good hour to spare, and can get fresh horses at the

ranch. We will be married at Mazatlan. Thence we will cross Mexico to

the Gulf, and take passage for New Orleans. When we are in the United

States, your new life will have really begun."

"And Tomaso will surely bring my mother from that cave, señor? I am

afraid--I feel sure he was glad to shut her in there."

"I will leave a note for the Governor. Your mother will be free within

three days, and meanwhile a little solitary meditation will do her

good."

When night came Sturges lifted Pilar from her horse to his, and pressed

her head against his shoulder. "Sleep," he said. "You are worn out."

She flung her hand over his shoulder, made herself comfortable, and was

asleep in a moment, oblivious of the dark forest and the echoing cries

of wild beasts. The strong arm of Sturges would have inspired confidence

even had it done less in her rescue. Once only she shook and cried out,

but with rage, not fear, in her tones. Her words were coherent enough:--

"His head! His head! Ay, Dios, what I have suffered!"

An hour before dawn Benito left them, mounted on the rested mustang and

leading his own. The others pushed on, over and around the foothills,

with what speed they could; for even here the trail was narrow, the pine

woods dense. It was just after dawn that Sturges saw Tomaso rein in his

mustang and peer into the shrubbery beside the trail. When he reached

the spot himself, he saw signs of a struggle. The brush was trampled

for some distance into the thicket, and several of the young trees were

wrenched almost from their roots.

"It has been a struggle between a man and a wild beast, señor,"

whispered Tomaso, for Filar still slept. "Shall I go in? The man may

breathe yet."

"Go, by all means."

Tomaso dismounted and entered the thicket. He came running back with

blinking eyes.

"Madre de Dios!" he exclaimed in a loud whisper. "It is the young

priest--Padre Domínguez. It must have been a panther, for they spring at

the breast, and his very heart is torn out, señor. Ay, yi!"

"Ah! You must inform the Church as soon as we have gone. Go on."

They had proceeded a few moments in silence, when Sturges suddenly

reined in his mustang.

"Tomaso," he whispered, "come here."

The vaquero joined him at once.

"Tomaso," said Sturges, "have you any objection to cutting off a dead

man's head?"

"No, señor."

"Then go back and cut off that priest's and wrap it in a piece of his

cassock, and carry it the best way you can."

Tomaso disappeared, and Sturges pushed back the gray hood and looked

upon the pure noble face of the girl he had chosen for wife.

"I believe in gratifying a woman's whims whenever it is practicable," he

thought.

But she made him a very good wife.

LA PÉRDIDA

On her fourteenth birthday they had married her to an old man, and at

sixteen she had met and loved a fire-hearted young vaquero. The old

husband had twisted his skinny fingers around her arm and dragged her

before the Alcalde, who had ordered her beautiful black braids cut close

to her neck, and sentenced her to sweep the streets. Carlos, the tempter

of that childish unhappy heart, was flung into prison. Such were law and

justice in California before the Americans came.

The haughty elegant women of Monterey drew their mantillas more closely

about their shocked faces as they passed La Pérdida sweeping the dirt

into little heaps. The soft-eyed girls, lovely in their white or

flowered gowns, peered curiously through the gratings of their homes at

the "lost one," whose sin they did not understand, but whose sad face

and sorry plight appealed to their youthful sympathies. The caballeros,

dashing up and down the street, and dazzling in bright silken jackets,

gold embroidered, lace-trimmed, the sun reflected in the silver of their

saddles, shot bold admiring glances from beneath their sombreros. No one

spoke to her, and she asked no one for sympathy.

She slept alone in a little hut on the outskirts of the town. With the

dawn she rose, put on her coarse smock and black skirt, made herself a

tortilla, then went forth and swept the streets. The children mocked her

sometimes, and she looked at them in wonder. Why should she be mocked or

punished? She felt no repentance; neither the Alcalde nor her husband

had convinced her of her sin's enormity; she felt only bitter resentment

that it should have been so brief. Her husband, a blear-eyed crippled

old man, loathsome to all the youth and imagination in her, had beaten

her and made her work. A man, young, strong, and good to look upon, had

come and kissed her with passionate tenderness. Love had meant to her

the glorification of a wretched sordid life; a green spot and a patch of

blue sky in the desert. If punishment followed upon such happiness,

must not the Catholic religion be all wrong in its teachings? Must not

purgatory follow heaven, instead of heaven purgatory?

She watched the graceful girls of the wealthy class flit to and fro on

the long corridors of the houses, or sweep the strings of the guitar

behind their gratings as the caballeros passed. Watchful old women were

always near them, their ears alert for every word. La Pérdida thanked

God that she had had no dueña.

One night, on her way home, she passed the long low prison where her

lover was confined. The large crystal moon flooded the red-tiled roof

projecting over the deep windows and the shallow cells. The light sweet

music of a guitar floated through iron bars, and a warm voice sang:--

"Adios, adios, de ti al ausentarme,

Para ir en poz de mi fatal estrella,

Yo llevo grabada tu imagen bella,

Aqui en mi palpitante corazon.

"Pero aunque lejos de tu lado me halle

No olvides, no, que por tu amor deliro

Enviáme siquiera un suspiro,

Que dé consuelo, a mi alma en su dolor.

"Y de tu pecho la emoción sentida

Llegue hasta herir mi lacerado oido,

Y arranque de mi pecho dolorido

Un eco que repita, adios! adios!"

La Pérdida's blood leaped through her body. Her aimless hands struck the

spiked surface of a cactus-bush, but she never knew it. When the song

finished, she crept to the grating and looked in.

"Carlos!" she whispered.

A man who lay on the straw at the back of the cell sprang to his feet

and came forward.

"My little one!" he said. "I knew that song would bring thee. I begged

them for a guitar, then to be put into a front cell." He forced his

hands through the bars and gave her life again with his strong warm

clasp.

"Come out," she said.

"Ay! they have me fast. But when they do let me out, niña, I will take

thee in my arms; and whosoever tries to tear thee away again will have

a dagger in his heart. Dios de mi vida! I could tear their flesh from

their bones for the shame and the pain they have given thee, thou poor

little innocent girl!"

"But thou lovest me, Carlos?"

"There is not an hour I am not mad for thee, not a corner of my heart

that does not ache for thee! Ay, little one, never mind; life is long,

and we are young."

She pressed nearer and laid his hand on her heart.

"Ay!" she said, "life is long."

"Holy Mary!" he cried. "The hills are on fire!"

A shout went up in the town. A flame, midway on the curving hills,

leaped to the sky, narrow as a ribbon, then swept out like a fan. The

moon grew dark behind a rolling pillar of smoke. The upcurved arms of

the pines were burnt into a wall of liquid shifting red. The caballeros

sprang to their horses, and driving the Indians before them, fled to the

hills to save the town. The indolent women of Monterey mingled their

screams with the shrill cries of the populace and the hoarse shouts of

their men. The prison sentries stood to their posts for a few moments;

then the panic claimed them, and they threw down their guns and ran with

the rest to the hills.

Carlos gave a cry of derision and triumph. "My little one, our hour has

come! Run and find the keys."

The big bunch of keys had been flung hastily into a corner. A moment

later Carlos held the shaking form of the girl in his powerful arms.

Slender and delicate as she was, she made no protest against the

fierceness of that embrace.

"But come," he said. "We have only this hour for escape. When we are

safe in the mountains--Come!"

He lifted her in his arms and ran down the crooked street to a corral

where an hidalgo kept his finest horses. Carlos had been the vaquero of

the band. The iron bars of the great doors were down--only one horse was

in the corral; the others had carried the hidalgo and his friends to the

fire. The brute neighed with delight as Carlos flung saddle and aquera

into place, then, with La Pérdida in his arms, sprang upon its back. The

vaquero dug his spurs into the shining flanks, the mustang reared, shook

his small head and silver mane, and bounded through the doors.

A lean, bent, and wiry thing darted from the shadows and hung upon the

horse's neck. It was the husband of La Pérdida, and his little brown

face looked like an old walnut.

"Take me with thee!" he cried. "I will give thee the old man's

blessing," and, clinging like a crab to the neck of the galloping

mustang, he drove a knife toward the heart of La Pérdida. The blade

turned upon itself as lightning sometimes does, and went through stringy

tissues instead of fresh young blood.

Carlos plucked the limp body from the neck of the horse and flung it

upon a cactus-bush, where it sprawled and stiffened among the spikes and

the blood-red flowers. But the mustang never paused; and as the fires

died on the hills, the mountains opened their great arms and sheltered

the happiness of two wayward hearts.

LUKARI'S STORY

"Ay, señor! So terreeblay thing! It is many years before--1837, I

theenk, is the year; the Americanos no have come to take California; but

I remember like it is yesterday.

"You see, I living with her--Doña Juana Ybarra her name is--ever since

I am little girl, and she too. It is like this: the padres make me

Christian in the mission, and her family take me to work ¡n the house;

I no living on the rancheria like the Indians who work outside. Bime by

Doña Juana marrying and I go live with her. Bime by I marrying too, and

she is comadre--godmother, you call, no?--to my little one, and steel I

living with her, and in few years my husband and little one die and

I love her children like they are my own, and her too; we grow old

together.

"You never see the San Ysidro rancho? It is near to San Diego and have

many, many leagues. Don Carlos Ybarra, the husband de my señora, is very

reech and very brave and proud--too brave and proud, ay, yi! We have a

beeg adobe house with more than twenty rooms, and a corridor for the

front more than one hundred feets. Ou'side are plenty other houses where

make all the things was need for eat and wear: all but the fine closes.

They come from far,--from Boston and Mejico. All stand away from the

hills and trees, right in the middle the valley, so can see the bad

Indians when coming. Far off, a mile I theenk, is the rancheria; no can

see from the house. No so far is the corral, where keeping the fine

horses.

"Ay, we have plenty to eat and no much to do in those days. Don Carlos

and Doña Juana are very devot the one to the other, so the family living

very happy, and I am in the house like before and take care the little

ones. Every night I braid my señora's long black hair and tuck her in

bed like she is a baby. She no grow stout when she grow more old, like

others, but always is muy elegante.

"Bime by the childrens grow up; and the two firs boys, Roldan and

Enrique, marrying and living in San Diego. Then are left only the señor

and the señora, one little boy, Carlos, and my two beautiful señoritas,

Beatriz and Ester. Ay! How pretty they are. Dios de mi alma! Where they

are now?

"Doña Beatriz is tall like the mother, and sway when she walk, like you

see the tules in the little wind. She have the eyes very black and long,

and look like she feel sleep till she get mad; then, Madre de Dios! they

opa wide and look like she is on fire inside and go to burn you too. She

have the skin very white, but I see it hot like the blood go to burst

out. Once she get furioso cause one the vaqueros hurch her horse, and

she wheep him till he yell like he is in purgatory and no have no one

say mass and get him out. But she have the disposition very sweet, and

after, she is sorry and make him a cake hersel; and we all loving her

like she is a queen, and she can do it all whatte she want.

"Doña Ester have the eyes more brown and soft, and the disposition more

mild, but very feerm, and she having her own way more often than Doña

Beatriz. She no is so tall, but very gracerful too, and walk like she

think she is tall. All the Spanish so dignify, no? She maka very kind

with the Indians when they are seek, and all loving her, but no so much

like Doña Beatriz.

"Both girls very industrioso, sewing and make the broidery; make

beautiful closes to wear at the ball. Ay, the balls! No have balls like

those in California now. Sometimes have one fifty miles away, but they

no care; jump on the horse and go, dance till the sun wake up and no

feel tire at all. Sometimes when is wedding, or rodeo, dance for one

week, then ride home like nothing have happen. In the winter the family

living in San Diego; have big house there and dance every night,

horseback in day when no rain, and have so many races and games. Ay, yi!

All the girls so pretty. No wear hats then; the reboso, no more, or

the mantilla; fix it so gracerful; and the dresses so bright colours,

sometimes with flowers all over; the skirt make very fule, and the waist

have the point. And the closes de mens! Madre de Dios! The beautiful

velvet and silk closes, broider by silver and gold! And the saddles so

fine! But you think I never go to tell you the story.

"One summer we are more gay than ever. So many caballeros love my

señoritas, but I think they never love any one, and never go to marry

at all. For a month we have the house fule; meriendas--peek-neeks, you

call, no? And races every day, dance in the night. Then all go to stay

at another rancho; it is costumbre to visit the one to the other. I feel

very sorry for two so handsome caballeros, who are more devot than any.

They looking very sad when they go, and I am sure they propose and no

was accep.

"In the evening it is very quiet, and I am sweep the corridor when I

hear two horses gallop down the valley. I fix my hand--so--like the

barrel de gun, and look, and I see, riding very hard, Don Carmelo Pelajo

and Don Rafael Arguello. The firs, he loving Doña Beatriz, the other, he

want Doña Ester. I go queeck and tell the girls, and Beatriz toss her

head and look very scornfule, but Ester blushing and the eyes look very

happy. The young mens come in in few minutes and are well treat by Don

Carlos and Doña Juana, for like them very much and are glad si the girls

marry with them.

"After supper I am turn down the bed in my señora's room when I

hear somebody spik very low ou'side on the corridor. I kneel on the

window-seat and look out, and there I see Don Rafael have his arms roun

Doña Ester and kissing her and she no mine at all. I wonder how they get

out there by themselfs, for the Spanish very streect with the girls and

no 'low that. But the young peoples always very--how you say it?--smart,

no? After while all go to bed, and I braid Doña Juana's hair and she

tell me Ester go to marry Don Rafael, and she feel very happy and I no

say one word. Then I go to Doña Beatriz's bedroom; always I fix her for

the bed, too. Ester have other woman take care her, but Beatriz love me.

She keeck me when she is little, and pull my hair, when I no give her

the dulces; but I no mine, for she have the good heart and so sweet

spression when she no is mad and always maka very kind with me. I comb

her hair and I see she look very cross and I ask her why, and she say

she hate mens, they are fools, and womens too. I ask her why she think

that, and she say she no can be spect have reason for all whatte she

think; and she throw her head aroun so I no can comb at all and keeck

out her little foot.

"'You no go to marry with Don Carlos?' I asking.

"'No!' she say, and youbetcherlife her eyes flash. 'You think I marrying

a singing, sighing, gambling, sleepy caballero? Si no can marry man I no

marry at all. Madre de Dios!' (She spik beautiful; but I no spik good

Eenglish, and you no ondrestan the Spanish.)

"'But all are very much like,' I say; 'and you no want die old maid,

no?'

"'I no care!' and then she fling hersel roun on the chair and throw her

arms roun me and cry and sob on my estomac. 'Ay, my Lukari!' she cry

when she can spik,' I hate everybody! I am tire out to exista! I want to

live! I am tire stay all alone! Oh, I want--I no know what I want! Life

is terreeblay thing, macheppa!'

"I no know at all whatte she mean, for have plenty peoples all the time,

and she never walk, so I no can think why she feel tire; but I kissing

her and smoothe her hair, for I jus love her, and tell her no cry. Bime

by she fine it some one she loving, and she is very young yet,--twenty,

no more.

"'I no stay here any longer,' she say. 'I go to ask my father take me to

Mejico, where can see something cept hills and trees and missions and

forts, and where perhaps--ay, Dios de mi alma!' Then she jump up and

take me by the shoulders and just throw me out the room and lock the

door; but I no mine, for I am use to her.

"Bueno, I think I go for walk, and bime by I come to the ranchería, and

while I am there I hear terreeblay thing from old Pepe. He say he hear

for sure that the bad Indians--who was no make Christian by the padres

and living very wild in the mountains--come killing all the white

peoples on the ranchos. He say he know sure it is true, and tell me beg

Don Carlos send to San Diego for the soldiers come take care us. I feel

so fright I hardly can walk back to the house, and I no sleep that

night. In the morning firs thing I telling Don Carlos, but he say is

nonsense and no will lissen. He is very brave and no care for nothing;

fight the Indians and killing them plenty times. The two caballeros go

away after breakfas, and when they are gone I can see my señora alone,

and I telling her. She feel very fright and beg Don Carlos send for the

soldiers, but he no will. Ay, yi! Ester is fright too; but Beatriz laugh

and say she like have some excite and killing the Indians hersel. After

while old Pepe come up to the house and tell he hear 'gain, but Don

Carlos no will ask him even where he hear, and tell him to go back to

the rancheria where belong, and make the reatas; he is so old he no can

make anything else.

"Bueno! The nex morning--bout nine o'clock--Don Carlos is at the corral

with two vaqueros and I am in the keetchen with the cook and one Indian

boy, call Franco. Never I like that boy. Something so sneak, and

he steal the dulces plenty times and walk so soffit. I am help the

cook--very good woman, but no have much sense--fry lard, when I hear

terreeblay noise--horses gallop like they jump out the earth near the

house, and many mens yell and scream and shout.

"I run to the window and whatte I see?--Indians, Indians, Indians,

thick like black ants on hill, jus race for the house, yelling like the

horses' backs been fule de pins; and Don Carlos and the two vaqueros run

like they have wings for the kitchen door, so can get in and get the

guns and fight from the windows. I know whatte they want, so I run to

the door to throw wide, and whatte I see but that devil Franco lock it

and stan in front. I jump on him so can scratch his eyes out, but he

keeck me in the estomac and for few minutes I no know it nothing.

"When I opa my eyes, the room is fule de Indians, and in the iron the

house I hear my señora and Doña Ester scream, scream, scream. I crawl up

by the window-seat and look out, and there--ay, Madre de Dios!--see on

the groun my señor dead, stuck fule de arrows; and the vaqueros, too,

of course. That maka me crazy and I run among the Indians, hitting them

with my fists, to my señora and my señoritas. Jus as I run into the sala

they go to killing my señora, but I snatch the knife and fall down on

my knees and beg and cry they no hurcha her, and bime by they say all

right. But--santa Dios!--whatte you think they do it? They tear all the

closes offa her till she is naked like my ban, and drive her out the

house with the reatas. They no letting me follow and I look out the

window and see her reel like she is drunk down the valley and scream,

scream!--Ay, Dios!

"Ester, she faint and no know it nothing. Beatriz, she have kill one

Indian with her pistol, but they take way from her, and she stan look

like the dead woman with eyes that have been in hell, in front the

chief, who looka her very hard. He is very fine look, that chief, so

tall and strong, like he can kill by sweep his arm roun, and he have

fierce black eyes and no bad nose for Indian, with nostrils that jump.

His mouth no is cruel like mos the bad Indians, nor the forehead so low.

He wear the crown de feathers, and botas, and scrape de goaskin; the

others no wear much at all. In a minute he pick up Beatriz and fling her

over his shoulder like she is the dead deer, and he tell other do the

same by Ester, and he stalk out and ride away hard. The others set fire

everything, then ride after him. They no care for me and I stand there

shriek after my señoritas and the beautiful housses burn up.

"Then I think de my señora and I run after the way she going. Bime by I

find her in a wheat field, kissing and hugging little Carlos, who go out

early and no meet the Indians; and he no ondrestan what is the matter

and dance up and down he is so fright. I tell him run fas to San Diego

and tell Don Roldan and Don Enrique whatte have happen, and he run like

he is glad to get away. Then I take off my closes and put them on my

señora and drag her along, and, bime by, we coming to a little house,

and a good woman give me some closes and in the night we coming to San

Diego. Ay! but was excite, everybody. Carlos been there two or three

hours before, and Don Roldan and Don Enrique go with the soldiers to the

hills. Everybody do it all whatte they can for my poor señora, but she

no want to speak by anybody, and go shut hersel up in a room in Don

Enrique's house and jus moan and I sit ou'side the door and moan too.

"Of course, I no am with the soldiers, but many times I hear all and I

tell you.

"The Indians have good start, and the white peoples no even see them,

but they fine the trail and follow hard. Bime by they coming to the

mountains. You ever been in the mountains back de San Diego? No the

hills, but the mountains. Ay! So bare and rofe and sharp, and the canons

so narrow and the trails so steep! No is safe to go in at all, for the

Indians can hide on the rocks, and jus shoot the white peoples down one

at the time, si they like it, when climb the gorges. The soldiers

say they no go in, for it is the duty de them to living and protec

California from the Americanos; but Don Enrique and Don Roldan say they

go, and they ride right in and no one ever spect see them any more. It

is night, so they have good chancacum to look and no be seen si Indians

no watch.

"Bime by they meet one Indian, who belong to the tribe they want, and

'fore he can shoot they point the pistol and tell him he mus show them

where are the girls. He say he taking them, and on the way he telling

them the chief and nother chief make the girls their wives. This make

them wild, and they tie up the horses so can climb more fast. But it is

no till late the nex morning when they come sudden out of a gorge and

look right into a place, very flat like a plaza, where is the pueblo

de the Indians they want. For moment no one see them, and they see the

girls--Dios de mi alma! Have been big feast, I theenk, and right where

are all the things no been clear away, Ester, she lie on the groun on

the face, and cry and sob and shake. But Beatriz, she stan very straight

in the middle, 'fore the door the big wigwam, and never look more

hansome. She never take her eyes off the chief who taking her away, and

no look discontent at all. Then the Indians see the brothers and yell

and run to get the bows and arrows. Don Enrique and Don Roldan fire the

pistols, but after all they have to run, for no can do it nothing. They

get out live but have arrows in them. And that is the las we ever hear

de my señoritas. Many time plenty white peoples watch the mountains and

sometimes go in, but no can find nothing and always are wound.

"And my poor señora! For whole year she jus sit in one room and cry so

loud all the peoples in San Diego hear her. No can do it nothing with

her. Ay, she love the husband so, and the two beautiful girls! Then

she die, and I am glad. Much better die than suffer like that. And Don

Rafael and Don Carmelo? Oh, they marrying other girls, course."

NATALIE IVANHOFF: A MEMORY OF FORT ROSS

At Fort Ross, on the northern coast of California, it is told that an

astonishing sight may be witnessed in the midnight of the twenty-third

of August. The present settlement vanishes. In its place the Fort

appears as it was when the Russians abandoned it in 1841. The

quadrilateral stockade of redwood beams, pierced with embrasures for

carronades, is compact and formidable once more. The ramparts are paced

by watchful sentries; mounted cannon are behind the iron-barred gates

and in the graceful bastions. Within the enclosure are the low log

buildings occupied by the Governor and his officers, the barracks of the

soldiers, the arsenal, and storehouses. In one corner stands the Greek

chapel, with its cupola and cross-surmounted belfry. The silver chimes

have rung this night. The Governor, his beautiful wife, and their guest,

Natalie Ivanhoff, have knelt at the jewelled altar.

At the right of the Fort is a small "town" of rude huts which

accommodates some eight hundred Indians and Siberian convicts, the

working-men of the company. Above the "town," on a high knoll, is a

large grist-mill. Describing an arc of perfect proportions, its midmost

depression a mile behind the Fort, a great mountain forms a natural

rampart. At either extreme it tapers to the jagged cliffs. On its three

lower tables the mountain is green and bare; then abruptly rises a

forest of redwoods, tall, rigid, tenebrious.

The mountain is visible but a moment. An immense white fog-bank which

has been crouching on the horizon rears suddenly and rushes across the

ocean, whose low mutter rises to a roar. It sweeps like a tidal wave

across cliffs and Fort. It halts abruptly against the face of the

mountain. In the same moment the ocean stills. It would almost seem that

Nature held her breath, awaiting some awful event.

Suddenly, in the very middle of the fog-bank, appears the shadowy figure

of a woman. She is gliding--to the right--rapidly and stealthily. Youth

is in her slender grace, her delicate profile, dimly outlined. Her long

silver-blond hair is unbound and luminously distinct from the white

fog. She walks swiftly across the lower table of the mountain, then

disappears. One sees, vaguely, a dark figure crouching along the lower

fringe of the fog. That, too, disappears.

For a moment the silence seems intensified. Then, suddenly, it is

crossed by a low whir--a strange sound in the midnight. Then a shriek

whose like is never heard save when a soul is wrenched without warning

in frightfullest torture from its body. Then another and another

and another in rapid succession, each fainter and more horrible in

suggestion than the last. With them has mingled the single frenzied cry

of a man. A moment later a confused hubbub arises from the Fort and

town, followed by the flashes of many lights and the report of musketry.

Then the fog presses downward on the scene. All sound but that of the

ocean, which seems to have drawn into its loud dull voice all the angers

of all the dead, ceases as though muffled. The fog lingers a moment,

then drifts back as it came, and Fort Ross is the Fort Ross of to-day.

And this is the story:--

When the Princess Hélène de Gagarin married Alexander Rotscheff, she

little anticipated that she would spend her honeymoon in the northern

wilds of the Californias. Nevertheless, when her husband was appointed

Governor of the Fort Ross and Bodega branch of the great Alaskan Fur

Company, she volunteered at once to go with him--being in that stage of

devotion which may be termed the emotionally heroic as distinguished

from the later of non-resistance. As the exile would last but a few

years, and as she was a lady of a somewhat adventurous spirit, to say

nothing of the fact that she was deeply in love, her interpretation of

wifely duty hardly wore the hue of martyrdom even to herself.

Notwithstanding, and although she had caused to be prepared a large case

of books and eight trunks of ravishing raiment, she decided that life in

a fort hidden between the mountains and the sea, miles away from even

the primitive Spanish civilization, might hang burdensomely at such

whiles as her husband's duties claimed him and books ceased to amuse. So

she determined to ask the friend of her twenty-three years, the Countess

Natalie Ivanhoff, to accompany her. She had, also, an unselfish motive

in so doing. Not only did she cherish for the Countess Natalie a real

affection, but her friend was as deeply wretched as she was happy.

Two years before, the Prince Alexis Mikhaïlof, betrothed of Natalie

Ivanhoff, had been, without explanation or chance of parting word,

banished to Siberia under sentence of perpetual exile. Later had come

rumour of his escape, then of death, then of recapture. Nothing definite

could be learned. When the Princess Hélène made her invitation, it was

accepted gratefully, hope suggesting that in the New World might be

found relief from the torture that was relived in every vibration of the

invisible wires that held memory fast to the surroundings in which the

terrible impressions, etchers of memory, had their genesis.

They arrived in summer, and found the long log house, with its low

ceilings and rude finish, admirably comfortable within. By aid of the

great case of things Rotscheff had brought, it quickly became an abode

of luxury. Thick carpets covered every floor; arras hid the rough walls;

books and pictures and handsome ornaments crowded each other; every

chair had been designed for comfort as well as elegance; the dining

table was hidden beneath finest damask, and glittered with silver and

crystal. It was an unwritten law that every one should dress for dinner;

and with the rich curtains hiding the gloomy mountain and the long

sweep of cliffs intersected by gorge and gulch, it was easy for the

gay congenial band of exiles to forget that they were not eating the

delicacies of their French cook and drinking their costly wines in the

Old World.

In the daytime the women--several of the officers' wives had braved the

wilderness--found much diversion in riding through the dark forests

or along the barren cliffs, attended always by an armed guard. Diego

Estenega, the Spanish magnate of the North, whose ranchos adjoined Fort

Ross, and who was financially interested in the Russian fur trade, soon

became an intimate of the Rotscheff household. A Californian by birth,

he was, nevertheless, a man of modern civilization, travelled, a

student, and a keen lover of masculine sports. Although the most

powerful man in the politics of his conservative country, he was an

American in appearance and dress. His cloth or tweed suggested the

colorous magnificence of the caballeros as little as did his thin

nervous figure and grim pallid intellectual face. Rotscheff liked him

better than any man he had ever met; with the Princess he usually waged

war, that lady being clever, quick, and wedded to her own opinions.

For Natalie he felt a sincere friendship at once. Being a man of keen

sympathies and strong impulses, he divined her trouble before he heard

her story, and desired to help her.

The Countess Natalie, despite the Governor's prohibition, was addicted

to roving over the cliffs by herself, finding kinship in the sterile

crags and futile restlessness of the ocean. She had learned that

although change of scene lightened the burden, only death would release

her from herself.

"She will get over it," said the Princess Hélène to Estenega. "I was in

love twice before I met Alex, so I know. Natalie is so beautiful that

some day some man, who will not look in the least like poor Alexis, will

make her forget."

Estenega, being a man of the world and having consequently outgrown the

cynicism of youth, also knowing women better than this fair Minerva

would know them in twenty lifetimes, thought differently, and a battle

ensued.

Natalie, meanwhile, wandered along the cliffs. She passed the town

hurriedly. Several times when in its vicinity before, the magnetism of

an intense gaze had given her a thrill of alarm, and once or twice she

had met face to face the miller's son--a forbidding youth with the

skull of the Tartar and the coarse black hair and furtive eyes of the

Indian--whose admiration of her beauty had been annoyingly apparent. She

was not conscious of observation to-day, however, and skirted the cliffs

rapidly, drawing her gray mantle about her as the wind howled by, but

did not lift the hood; the massive coils of silver-blond hair kept her

head warm.

As the Princess Hélène, despite her own faultless blondinity, had

pronounced, Natalie Ivanhoff was a beautiful woman. Her profile had the

delicate effect produced by the chisel. Her white skin was transparent

and untinted, but the mouth was scarlet. The large long eyes of a

changeful blue-gray, although limpid of surface, were heavy with the

sadness of a sad spirit. Their natural fire was quenched just as the

slight compression of her lips had lessened the sensuous fulness of

their curves.

But she had suffered so bitterly and so variously that the points had

been broken off her nerves, she told herself, and, excepting when her

trouble mounted suddenly like a wave within her, her mind was tranquil.

Grief with her had expressed itself in all its forms. She had known what

it was to be crushed into semi-insensibility; she had thrilled as the

tears rushed and the sobs shook her until every nerve ached and her very

fingers cramped; and she had gone wild at other times, burying her head,

that her screams might not be heard: the last, as imagination pictured

her lover's certain physical suffering. But of all agonies, none could

approximate to that induced by Death. When that rumour reached her,

she realized that hope had given her some measure of support, and

how insignificant all other trouble is beside that awful blank, that

mystery, whose single revelation is the houseless soul's unreturning

flight from the only world we are sure of. When the contradicting rumour

came, she clutched at hope and clung to it.

"It is the only reason I do not kill myself," she thought, as she stood

on the jutting brow of the cliff and looked down on the masses of huge

stones which, with the gaunt outlying rocks, had once hung on the face

of the crags. The great breakers boiled over them with the ponderosity

peculiar to the waters of the Pacific. The least of those breakers would

carry her far into the hospitable ocean.

"It is so easy to die and be at peace; the only thing which makes life

supportable is the knowledge of Death's quick obedience. And the tragedy

of life is not that we cannot forget, but that we can. Think of being an

old woman with not so much as a connecting current between the memory

and the heart, the long interval blocked with ten thousand petty events

and trials! It must be worse than this. I shall have gone over the cliff

long before that time comes. I would go to-day, but I cannot leave the

world while he is in it."

She drew a case from her pocket, and opened it. It showed the portrait

of a young man with the sombre eyes and cynical mouth of the northern

European, a face revealing intellect, will, passion, and much

recklessness. Eyes and hair were dark, the face smooth but for a slight

mustache.

Natalie burst into wild tears, revelling in the solitude that gave her

freedom. She pressed the picture against her face, and cried her agony

aloud to the ocean. Thrilling memories rushed through her, and she lived

again the first ecstasy of grief. She did not fling herself upon the

ground, or otherwise indulge in the acrobatics of woe, but she shook

from head to foot. Between the heavy sobs her breath came in hard gasps,

and tears poured, hiding the gray desolation of the scene.

Suddenly, through it all, she became conscious that some one was

watching her. Instinctively she knew that it was the same gaze which so

often had alarmed her. Fear routed every other passion. She realized

that she was unprotected, a mile from the Fort, out of the line of its

vision. The brutal head of the miller's son seemed to thrust itself

before her face. Overwhelmed with terror, she turned swiftly and ran,

striking blindly among the low bushes, her glance darting from right to

left. No one was to be seen for a moment; then she turned the corner of

a boulder and came upon a man. She shrieked and covered her face with

her hands, now too frightened to move. The man neither stirred nor

spoke; and, despite this alarming circumstance, her disordered brain,

in the course of a moment, conceived the thought that no subject of

Rotscheff would dare to harm her.

Moreover, her brief glance had informed her that this was not the

miller's son; which fact, illogically, somewhat tempered her fear. She

removed her hands and compelled herself to look sternly at the creature

who had dared to raise his eyes to the Countess Natalie Ivanhoff. She

was puzzled to find something familiar about him. His grizzled hair

was long, but not unkempt. The lower part of his face was covered by

a beard. He was almost fleshless; but in his sunken eyes burned

unquenchable fire, and there was a determined vigour in his gaunt

figure. He might have been any age. Assuredly, the outward seeming of

youth was not there, but its suggestion still lingered tenaciously in

the spirit which glowed through the worn husk. And about him, in spite

of the rough garb and blackened skin, was an unmistakable air of

breeding.

Natalie, as she looked, grew rigid. Then she uttered a cry of rapturous

horror, staggered, and was caught in a fierce embrace. Her stunned

senses awoke in a moment, and she clung to him, crying wildly, holding

him with straining arms, filled with bitter happiness.

In a few moments he pushed her from him and regarded her sadly.

"You are as beautiful as ever," he said; "but I--look at me! Old,

hideous, ragged! I am not fit to touch you; I never meant to. Go! I

shall never blame you."

For answer she sprang to him again.

"What difference is it how you look?" she cried, still sobbing. "Is it

not _you?_ Are not you in here just the same? What matter? What matter?

No matter what you looked through, you would be the same. Listen," she

continued rapidly, after a moment. "We are in a new country; there is

hope for us. If we can reach the Spanish towns of the South, we are

safe. I will ask Don Diego Estenega to help us, and he is not the man to

refuse. He stays with us to-night, and I will speak alone with him. Meet

me to-morrow night--where? At the grist-mill at midnight. We had better

not meet by day again. Perhaps we can go then. You will be there?"

"Will I be there? God! Of course I will be there."

And, the brief details of their flight concluded, they forgot it and all

else for the hour.

II

Natalie could not obtain speech alone with Estenega that evening; but

the next morning the Princess Hélène commanded her household and guest

to accompany her up the hill to the orchard at the foot of the forest;

and there, while the others wandered over the knolls of the shadowy

enclosure, Natalie managed to tell her story. Estenega offered his help

spontaneously.

"At twelve to-night," he said, "I will wait for you in the forest with

horses, and will guide you myself to Monterey. I have a house there, and

you can leave on the first barque for Boston."

As soon as the party returned to the Fort, Estenega excused himself and

left for his home. The day passed with maddening slowness to Natalie.

She spent the greater part of it walking up and down the immediate

cliffs, idly watching the men capturing the seals and otters, the

ship-builders across the gulch. As she returned at sunset to the

enclosure, she saw the miller's son standing by the gates, gazing at her

with hungry admiration. He inspired her with sudden fury.

"Never presume to look at me again," she said harshly. "If you do, I

shall report you to the Governor."

And without waiting to note how he accepted the mandate, she swept by

him and entered the Fort, the gates clashing behind her.

The inmates of Fort Ross were always in bed by eleven o'clock. At that

hour not a sound was to be heard but the roar of the ocean, the soft

pacing of the sentry on the ramparts, the cry of the panther in the

forest. On the evening in question, after the others had retired,

Natalie, trembling with excitement, made a hasty toilet, changing her

evening gown for a gray travelling frock. Her heavy hair came unbound,

and her shaking hands refused to adjust the close coils. As it fell over

her gray mantle it looked so lovely, enveloping her with the silver

sheen of mist, that she smiled in sad vanity, remembering happier days,

and decided to let her lover see her so. She could braid her hair at the

mill.

A moment or two before twelve she raised the window and swung herself to

the ground. The sentry was on the rampart opposite: she could not make

her exit by that gate. She walked softly around the buildings, keeping

in their shadow, and reached the gates facing the forest. They were not

difficult to unbar, and in a moment she stood without, free. She could

not see the mountain; a heavy bank of white fog lay against it, resting,

after its long flight over the ocean, before it returned, or swept

onward to ingulf the redwoods.

She went with noiseless step up the path, then turned and walked swiftly

toward the mill. She was very nervous; mingling with the low voice of

the ocean she imagined she heard the moans with which beheaded convicts

were said to haunt the night. Once she thought she heard a footstep

behind her, and paused, her heart beating audibly. But the sound ceased

with her own soft footfalls, and the fog was so dense that she could see

nothing. The ground was soft, and she was beyond the sentry's earshot;

she ran at full speed across the field, down the gorge, and up the steep

knoll. As she reached the top, she was taken in Mikhaïlof's arms. For

a few moments she was too breathless to speak; then she told him her

plans.

"Let me braid my hair," she said finally, "and we will go."

He drew her within the mill, then lit a lantern and held it above her

head, his eyes dwelling passionately on her beauty, enhanced by the

colour of excitement and rapid exercise.

"You look like the moon queen," he said. "I missed your hair, apart from

yourself."

She lifted her chin with a movement of coquetry most graceful in spite

of long disuse, and the answering fire sprang into her eyes. She looked

very piquant and a trifle diabolical. He pressed his lips suddenly

on hers. A moment later something tugged at the long locks his hand

caressed, and at the same time he became conscious that the silence

which had fallen between them was shaken by a loud whir. He glanced

upward. Natalie was standing with her back to one of the band-wheels. It

had begun to revolve; in the moment it increased its speed; and he saw a

glittering web on its surface. With an exclamation of horror, he pulled

her toward him; but he was too late. The wheel, spinning now with the

velocity of midday, caught the whole silver cloud in its spokes, and

Natalie was swept suddenly upward. Her feet hit the low rafters, and she

was whirled round and round, screams of torture torn from her rather

than uttered, her body describing a circular right angle to the shaft,

the bones breaking as they struck the opposite one; then, in swift

finality, she was sucked between belt and wheel. Mikhaïlof managed to

get into the next room and reverse the lever. The machinery stopped as

abruptly as it had started; but Natalie was out of her agony.

Her lover flung himself over the cliffs, shattering bones and skull

on the stones at their base. They made her a coffin out of the copper

plates used for their ships, and laid her in the straggling unpopulous

cemetery on the knoll across the gulch beyond the chapel.

"When we go, we will take her," said Rotscheff to his distracted wife.

But when they went, a year or two after, in the hurry of departure they

forgot her until too late. They promised to return. But they never came,

and she sleeps there still, on the lonely knoll between the sunless

forest and the desolate ocean.

THE VENGEANCE OF PADRE ARROYO

I

Pilar, from her little window just above the high wall surrounding the

big adobe house set apart for the women neophytes of the Mission of

Santa Ines, watched, morning and evening, for Andreo, as he came and

went from the rancheria. The old women kept the girls busy, spinning,

weaving, sewing; but age nods and youth is crafty. The tall young Indian

who was renowned as the best huntsman of all the neophytes, and who

supplied Padre Arroyo's table with deer and quail, never failed to keep

his ardent eyes fixed upon the grating so long as it lay within the line

of his vision. One day he went to Padre Arroyo and told him that Pilar

was the prettiest girl behind the wall--the prettiest girl in all the

Californias--and that she should be his wife. But the kind stern old

padre shook his head.

"You are both too young. Wait another year, my son, and if thou art

still in the same mind, thou shalt have her."

Andreo dared to make no protest, but he asked permission to prepare a

home for his bride. The padre gave it willingly, and the young Indian

began to make the big adobes, the bright red tiles. At the end of a

month he had built him a cabin among the willows of the rancheria, a

little apart from the others: he was in love, and association with his

fellows was distasteful. When the cabin was builded his impatience

slipped from its curb, and once more he besought the priest to allow him

to marry.

Padre Arroyo was sunning himself on the corridor of the mission,

shivering in his heavy brown robes, for the day was cold.

"Orion," he said sternly--he called all his neophytes after the

celebrities of earlier days, regardless of the names given them at the

font--"have I not told thee thou must wait a year? Do not be impatient,

my son. She will keep. Women are like apples: when they are too young,

they set the teeth on edge; when ripe and mellow, they please every

sense; when they wither and turn brown, it is time to fall from the tree

into a hole. Now go and shoot a deer for Sunday: the good padres from

San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara are coming to dine with me."

Andreo, dejected, left the padre. As he passed Pilar's window and saw a

pair of wistful black eyes behind the grating, his heart took fire. No

one was within sight. By a series of signs he made his lady understand

that he would place a note beneath a certain adobe in the wall.

Pilar, as she went to and fro under the fruit trees in the garden,

or sat on the long corridor weaving baskets, watched that adobe with

fascinated eyes. She knew that Andreo was tunnelling it, and one day a

tiny hole proclaimed that his work was accomplished. But how to get the

note? The old women's eyes were very sharp when the girls were in front

of the gratings. Then the civilizing development of Christianity

upon the heathen intellect triumphantly asserted itself. Pilar, too,

conceived a brilliant scheme. That night the padre, who encouraged any

evidence of industry, no matter how eccentric, gave her a little garden

of her own--a patch where she could raise sweet peas and Castilian

roses.

"That is well, that is well, my Nausicaa," he said, stroking her smoky

braids. "Go cut the slips and plant them where thou wilt. I will send

thee a package of sweet pea seeds."

Pilar spent every spare hour bending over her "patch"; and the hole, at

first no bigger than a pin's point, was larger at each setting of the

sun behind the mountain. The old women, scolding on the corridor, called

to her not to forget vespers.

On the third evening, kneeling on the damp ground, she drew from the

little tunnel in the adobe a thin slip of wood covered with the labour

of sleepless nights. She hid it in her smock--that first of California's

love-letters--then ran with shaking knees and prostrated herself before

the altar. That night the moon streamed through her grating, and she

deciphered the fact that Andreo had loosened eight adobes above her

garden, and would await her every midnight.

Pilar sat up in bed and glanced about the room with terrified delight.

It took her but a moment to decide the question; love had kept her awake

too many nights. The neophytes were asleep; as they turned now and

again, their narrow beds of hide, suspended from the ceiling, swung too

gently to awaken them. The old women snored loudly. Pilar slipped from

her bed and looked through the grating. Andreo was there, the dignity

and repose of primeval man in his bearing. She waved her hand and

pointed downward to the wall; then, throwing on the long coarse gray

smock that was her only garment, crept from the room and down the stair.

The door was protected against hostile tribes by a heavy iron bar, but

Pilar's small hands were hard and strong, and in a moment she stood over

the adobes which had crushed her roses and sweet peas.

As she crawled through the opening, Andreo took her hand bashfully, for

they never had spoken. "Come," he said; "we must be far away before

dawn."

They stole past the long mission, crossing themselves as they glanced

askance at the ghostly row of pillars; past the guard-house, where the

sentries slept at their post; past the rancheria; then, springing upon a

waiting mustang, dashed down the valley. Pilar had never been on a horse

before, and she clung in terror to Andreo, who bestrode the unsaddled

beast as easily as a cloud rides the wind. His arm held her closely,

fear vanished, and she enjoyed the novel sensation. Glancing over

Andreo's shoulder she watched the mass of brown and white buildings,

the winding river, fade into the mountain. Then they began to ascend

an almost perpendicular steep. The horse followed a narrow trail; the

crowding trees and shrubs clutched the blankets and smocks of the

riders; after a time trail and scene grew white: the snow lay on the

heights.

"Where do we go?" she asked.

"To Zaca Lake, on the very top of the mountain, miles above us. No one

has ever been there but myself. Often I have shot deer and birds beside

it. They never will find us there."

The red sun rose over the mountains of the east. The crystal moon sank

in the west. Andreo sprang from the weary mustang and carried Pilar to

the lake.

A sheet of water, round as a whirlpool but calm and silver, lay amidst

the sweeping willows and pine-forested peaks. The snow glittered beneath

the trees, but a canoe was on the lake, a hut on the marge.

II

Padre Arroyo tramped up and down the corridor, smiting his hands

together. The Indians bowed lower than usual, as they passed, and

hastened their steps. The soldiers scoured the country for the bold

violators of mission law. No one asked Padre Arroyo what he would do

with the sinners, but all knew that punishment would be sharp and

summary: the men hoped that Andreo's mustang had carried him beyond its

reach; the girls, horrified as they were, wept and prayed in secret for

Pilar.

A week later, in the early morning, Padre Arroyo sat on the corridor.

The mission stood on a plateau overlooking a long valley forked and

sparkled by the broad river. The valley was planted thick with olive

trees, and their silver leaves glittered in the rising sun. The mountain

peaks about and beyond were white with snow, but the great red poppies

blossomed at their feet. The padre, exiled from the luxury and society

of his dear Spain, never tired of the prospect: he loved his mission

children, but he loved Nature more.

Suddenly he leaned forward on his staff and lifted the heavy brown

hood of his habit from his ear. Down the road winding from the eastern

mountains came the echo of galloping footfalls. He rose expectantly and

waddled out upon the plaza, shading his eyes with his hand. A half-dozen

soldiers, riding closely about a horse bestridden by a stalwart young

Indian supporting a woman, were rapidly approaching the mission. The

padre returned to his seat and awaited their coming.

The soldiers escorted the culprits to the corridor; two held the horse

while they descended, then led it away, and Andreo and Pilar were alone

with the priest. The bridegroom placed his arm about the bride and

looked defiantly at Padre Arroyo, but Pilar drew her long hair about her

face and locked her hands together.

Padre Arroyo folded his arms and regarded them with lowered brows, a

sneer on his mouth.

"I have new names for you both," he said, in his thickest voice.

"Antony, I hope thou hast enjoyed thy honeymoon. Cleopatra, I hope thy

little toes did not get frost-bitten. You both look as if food had been

scarce. And your garments have gone in good part to clothe the brambles,

I infer. It is too bad you could not wait a year and love in your cabin

at the ranchería, by a good fire, and with plenty of frijoles and

tortillas in your stomachs." He dropped his sarcastic tone, and, rising

to his feet, extended his right arm with a gesture of malediction. "Do

you comprehend the enormity of your sin?" he shouted. "Have you not

learned on your knees that the fires of hell are the rewards of unlawful

love? Do you not know that even the year of sackcloth and ashes I shall

impose here on earth will not save you from those flames a million times

hotter than the mountain fire, than the roaring pits in which evil

Indians torture one another? A hundred years of their scorching breath,

of roasting flesh, for a week of love! Oh, God of my soul!"

Andreo looked somewhat staggered, but unrepentant. Pilar burst into loud

sobs of terror.

The padre stared long and gloomily at the flags of the corridor. Then he

raised his head and looked sadly at his lost sheep.

"My children," he said solemnly, "my heart is wrung for you. You

have broken the laws of God and of the Holy Catholic Church, and the

punishments thereof are awful. Can I do anything for you, excepting to

pray? You shall have my prayers, my children. But that is not enough;

I cannot--ay! I cannot endure the thought that you shall be damned.

Perhaps"--again he stared meditatively at the stones, then, after an

impressive silence, raised his eyes. "Heaven vouchsafes me an idea, my

children. I will make your punishment here so bitter that Almighty God

in His mercy will give you but a few years of purgatory after death.

Come with me."

He turned and led the way slowly to the rear of the mission buildings.

Andreo shuddered for the first time, and tightened his arm about Pilar's

shaking body. He knew that they were to be locked in the dungeons.

Pilar, almost fainting, shrank back as they reached the narrow spiral

stair which led downward to the cells. "Ay! I shall die, my Andreo!" she

cried. "Ay! my father, have mercy!"

"I cannot, my children," said the padre, sadly. "It is for the salvation

of your souls."

"Mother of God! When shall I see thee again, my Pilar?" whispered

Andreo. "But, ay! the memory of that week on the mountain will keep us

both alive."

Padre Arroyo descended the stair and awaited them at its foot.

Separating them, and taking each by the hand, he pushed Andreo ahead and

dragged Pilar down the narrow passage. At its end he took a great bunch

of keys from his pocket, and raising both hands commanded them to kneel.

He said a long prayer in a loud monotonous voice which echoed and

reëchoed down the dark hall and made Pilar shriek with terror. Then he

fairly hurled the marriage ceremony at them, and made the couple repeat

after him the responses. When it was over, "Arise," he said.

The poor things stumbled to their feet, and Andreo caught Pilar in a

last embrace.

"Now bear your incarceration with fortitude, my children; and if you do

not beat the air with your groans, I will let you out in a week. Do not

hate your old father, for love alone makes him severe, but pray, pray,

pray."

And then he locked them both in the same cell.

THE BELLS OF SAN GABRIEL

I

The Señor Capitan Don Luis de la Torre walked impatiently up and down

before the grist-mill wherein were quartered the soldiers sent by Mexico

to protect the building of the Mission of San Gabriel. The Indian

workmen were slugs; California, a vast region inhabited only by savages

and a few priests, offered slender attractions to a young officer

craving the gay pleasures of his capital and the presence of the woman

he was to marry. For months he had watched the mission church mount

slowly from foundation to towers, then spread into pillared corridors

and rooms for the clergy. He could have mapped in his mind every acre of

the wide beautiful valley girt by mountains snowed on their crest. He

had thought it all very lovely at first: the yellow atmosphere, the soft

abiding warmth, the blue reflecting lake; but the green on mountain and

flat had waxed to gold, then waned to tan and brown, and he was tired.

Not even a hostile Indian had come to be killed.

He was very good-looking, this tall young Spaniard, with his impatient

eyes and haughty intelligent face, and it is possible that the lady in

Mexico had added to his burden by doleful prayers to return. He took a

letter from his pocket, read it half through, then walked rapidly over

to the mission, seeking interest in the work of the Indians. Under the

keen merciless supervision of the padres,--the cleverest body of men

who ever set foot in America,--they were mixing and laying the adobes,

making nails and tiles, hewing aqueducts, fashioning great stone fonts

and fountains. De la Torre speculated, after his habit, upon the future

of a country so beautiful and so fertile, which a dozen priests had made

their own. Would these Indians, the poorest apologies for human beings

he had ever seen, the laziest and the dirtiest, be Christianized and

terrified into worthy citizens of this fair land? Could the clear white

flame that burned in the brains of the padres strike fire in their

neophytes' narrow skulls, create a soul in those grovelling bodies? He

dismissed the question.

Would men of race, tempted by the loveliness of this great gold-haired

houri sleeping on the Pacific, come from old and new Spain and dream

away a life of pleasure? What grapes would grow out of this rich soil

to be crushed by Indian slaves into red wine! And did gold vein those

velvet hills? How all fruits, all grains, would thrive! what superb

beasts would fatten on the thick spring grass! Ay! it was a magnificent

discovery for the Church, and great would be the power that could wrest

it from her.

There was a new people, somewhere north of Mexico, in the United States

of America. Would they ever covet and strive to rob? The worse for them

if they molested the fire-blooded Spaniard. How he should like to fight

them!

That night the sentinel gave a sudden piercing shout of warning, then

dropped dead with a poisoned arrow in his brain. Another moment, and

the soldiers had leaped from their swinging beds of hide, and headed by

their captain had reached the church they were there to defend. Through

plaza and corridors sped and shrieked the savage tribe, whose invasion

had been made with the swiftness and cunning of their race. The doors

had not been hung in the church, and the naked figures ran in upon the

heels of the soldiers, waving torches and yelling like the soulless

fiends they were. The few neophytes who retained spirit enough to fight

after the bleaching process that had chilled their native fire and

produced a result which was neither man nor beast, but a sort of

barnyard fowl, hopped about under the weight of their blankets and were

promptly despatched.

The brunt of the battle fell upon the small detachment of troops, and

at the outset they were overwhelmed by numbers, dazzled by the glare of

torches that waved and leaped in the cavern-like darkness of the church.

But they fought like Spaniards, hacking blindly with their swords,

cleaving dusky skulls with furious maledictions, using their fists,

their feet, their teeth--wrenching torches from malignant hands and

hurling them upon distorted faces. Curses and wild yells intermingled.

De la Torre fought at the head of his men until men and savages, dead

and living, were an indivisible mass, then thrust back and front,

himself unhurt. The only silent clear-brained man among them, he could

reason as he assaulted and defended, and he knew that the Spaniards

had little chance of victory--and he less of looking again upon the

treasures of Mexico. The Indians swarmed like ants over the great nave

and transept. Those who were not fighting smashed the altar and slashed

the walls. The callous stars looked through the apertures left for

windows, and shed a pallid light upon the writhing mass. The padres had

defended their altar, behind the chancel rail; they lay trampled, with

arrows vibrating in their hard old muscles.

De la Torre forced his way to the door and stood for a moment, solitary,

against the pale light of the open, then turned his face swiftly to

the night air as he fell over the threshold of the mission he had so

gallantly defended.

II

Delfina de Capalleja, after months of deferred hope, stood with the

crowd at the dock, awaiting the return of the troop which had gone to

defend the Mission of San Gabriel in its building. There was no flutter

of colour beneath her white skin, and the heavy lids almost concealed

the impatient depths of her eyes; the proud repose of her head indicated

a profound reserve and self-control. Over her white gown and black dense

hair she wore a black lace mantilla, fastened below the throat with a

large yellow rose.

The ship swung to anchor and answered the salute from the fort. Boats

were lowered, but neither officers nor soldiers descended. The murmur

of disappointment on shore rose to a shout of execration. Then, as the

ship's captain and passengers landed, a whisper ran through the crowd,

a wail, and wild sobbing. They flung themselves to the earth, beating

their heads and breasts,--all but Delfina de Capalleja, who drew her

mantilla about her face and walked away.

The authorities of the city of Mexico yielded to public clamour and

determined to cast a silver bell in honour of the slaughtered captain

and his men. The casting was to take place in the great plaza before the

cathedral, that all might attend: it was long since any episode of war

had caused such excitement and sorrow. The wild character and remoteness

of the scene of the tragedy, the meagreness of detail which stung every

imagination into action, the brilliancy and popularity of De la Torre,

above all, the passionate sympathy felt for Delfina de Capalleja,

served to shake society from peak to base, and no event had ever been

anticipated with more enthusiasm than the casting of that silver bell.

No one had seen Delfina since the arrival of the news had broken so many

hearts, and great was the curiosity regarding her possible presence at

the ceremony. Universal belief was against her ever again appearing in

public; some said that she was dead, others that she had gone into a

convent, but a few maintained that she would be high priestess at the

making of the bell which was to be the symbol and monument of her

lover's gallantry and death.

The hot sun beat upon the white adobe houses of the stately city. At the

upper end of the plaza, bending and swaying, coquetting and languishing,

were women clad in rich and vivid satins, their graceful heads and

shoulders draped with the black or white mantilla; caballeros, gay in

velvet trousers laced with gold, and serape embroidered with silver.

Eyes green and black and blue sparkled above the edge of large black

fans; fiery eyes responded from beneath silver-laden sombreros. The

populace, in gala attire, crowded the rest of the plaza and adjacent

streets, chattering and gesticulating. But all looked in vain for

Delfina de Capalleja.

Much ceremony attended the melting of the bell. Priests in white robes

stiff with gold chanted prayers above the silver bubbling in the

caldron. A full-robed choir sang the Te Deum; the regiment to which De

la Torre had belonged fired salutes at intervals; the crowd sobbed and

shouted.

Thunder of cannon, passionate swell of voices: the molten silver was

about to be poured into the mould. The crowd hushed and parted. Down the

way made for her came Delfina de Capalleja. Her black hair hung over her

long white gown. Her body bent under the weight of jewels--the jewels of

generations and the jewels of troth. Her arms hung at her sides. In her

eyes was the peace of the dead.

She walked to the caldron, and taking a heavy gold chain from her neck

flung it into the silver. It swirled like a snake, then disappeared. One

by one, amidst quivering silence, the magnificent jewels followed

the chain. Then, as she took the last bracelet from her arm, madness

possessed the breathless crowd. The indifferent self-conscious men,

the lanquid coquetting women, the fat drowsy old dowagers, all rushed,

scrambling and screaming, to the caldron, tore from their heads and

bodies the superb jewels and ropes of gold with which they were

bedecked, and flung them into the molten mass, which rose like a tide.

The electric current sprang to the people; their baubles sped like hail

through the air. So great was the excitement that a sudden convulsing

of the earth was unfelt. When not a jewel was left to sacrifice, the

caldron held enough element for five bells--the five sweet-voiced bells

which rang in the Mission of San Gabriel for more than a century.

Exhausted with shouting, the multitude was silent. Delfina de Capalleja,

who had stood with panting chest and dilating nostrils, turned from

the sacrificial caldron, the crowd parting for her again, the Laudate

Dominum swelling. As she reached the cathedral, a man who loved her,

noting a change in her face, sprang to her side. She raised her

bewildered eyes to his and thrust out her hands blankly, then fell dead

across the threshold.

WHEN THE DEVIL WAS WELL

The Devil locked the copper gates of Hell one night, and sauntered down

a Spacian pathway. The later arrivals from the planet Earth had been of

a distressingly commonplace character to his Majesty--a gentleman

of originality and attainments, whatever his disagreements with the

conventions. He was become seriously disturbed about the moral condition

of the sensational little twinkler.

"What are my own about?" he thought, as he drifted past planets which

yielded up their tributes with monotonous regularity. "What a squeezed

old orange would Earth become did I forsake it! I must not neglect it so

long again; my debt of gratitude is too great. Let me see. Where shall

I begin? It is some years since I have visited America in person,

and unquestionably she has most need of my attention; Europe is in

magnificent running order. This is a section of her, if my geography

does not fail me; but what? I do not recall it."

He poised above a country that looked as if it still hung upon the edge

of chaos: wild, fertile, massive, barren, luxuriant, crouching on the

ragged line of the Pacific. From his point of vantage he saw long ranges

of stupendous mountains, some but masses of scowling crags, some green

with forests of mammoth trees projecting their gaunt rigid arms above

a carpet of violets; indolent valleys and swirling rivers; snow on the

black peaks of the North; the riotous colour of eternal summer in the

South. Suddenly he uttered a sharp exclamation and swept downward,

halting but a mile above the ground. He frowned heavily, then smiled--a

long, placid, sardonic smile. There appeared to be but few inhabitants

in this country, and those few seemed to live either in great white

irregular buildings, surmounted by crosses, in little brown huts near

by, in the caves, or in hollowed trees on the mountains. The large

buildings were situated about sixty miles apart, in chosen valleys; they

were imposing and rambling, built about a plaza. They boasted pillared

corridors and bright red tiles on their roofs. Within the belfries were

massive silver bells, and the crosses could be seen to the furthermost

end of the valley and from the tops of the loftiest mountain.

"California!" exclaimed the Devil. "I know of her. Her scant history

is outlined in the Scarlet Book. I remember the points: Climate, the

finest, theoretically, in the world; satanically, simply magnificent.

I have waited impatiently for the stream of humanity to deflect

thitherward, but priests will answer my present purpose exactly--unless

they are all too tough. To continue, gold under that grass in

chunks--aha! I shall have to throw out an extra wing in Hell! Parched

deserts where men will die cursing; fruitful valleys, more gratifying to

my genius; about as much of one as of the other, but the latter will

get all the advertising, and the former be carefully kept out of sight.

Everything in the way of animal life, from grizzly bears to fleas. A

very remarkable State! Well, I will begin on the priests."

He shot downward, and alighted in a valley whose proportions pleased his

eye. Its shape was oval; the bare hills enclosing it were as yellow and

as bright as hammered gold; the grass was bronze-coloured, baking in the

intense heat; but the placid cows and shining horses nibbled it with the

contentment of those that know not of better things. A river, almost

concealed by bending willows and slender erect cottonwoods, wound

capriciously across the valley. The mission, simpler than some of the

others, was as neatly kept as the farm of older civilizations. Peace,

order, reigned everywhere; all things drowsed under the relentless

outpouring of the midsummer sun.

"It is well I do not mind the heat," thought his Majesty; "but I am

sensible of this. I will go within."

He drew a boot on his cloven foot, thus rendering himself invisible, and

entered a room of the long wing that opened upon the corridor. Here the

temperature was almost wintry, so thick were the adobe walls.

Two priests sat before a table, one reading aloud from a bulky

manuscript, the other staring absently out of the window. The reader

was an old man; his face was pale and spiritual; no fires burned in his

sunken eyes; his mouth was stern with the lines of self-repression. The

Devil lost all interest in him at once, and turned to the younger man.

His face was pale also, but his pallor was that of fasting and the hair

shirt; the mouth expressed the determination of the spirit to conquer

the restless longing of the eyes; his nostrils were spirited; his figure

was lean and nervous; he moved his feet occasionally, and clutched at

the brown Franciscan habit.

"Paulo," said the older priest, reprovingly, as he lifted his eyes and

noted the unbowed head, "thou art not listening to the holy counsel of

our glorious Master, our saint who has so lately ascended into heaven."

"I know Junipero Serra by heart," said Paulo, a little pettishly. "I

wish it were not too hot to go out; I should like to take a walk.

Surely, San Miguel is the hottest spot on earth. The very fleas are

gasping between the bricks."

"The Lord grant that they may die before the night! Not a wink have I

slept for two! But thou shouldest not long for recreation until the hour

comes, my son. Do thy duty and think not of when it will be over, for

it is a blessed privilege to perform it--far more so than any idle

pleasure--just as it is more blessed to give than to receive--"

Here the Devil snorted audibly, and both priests turned with a jump.

"Did you hear that, my father?"

"It is the walls cracking with the intense heat. I will resume my

reading, and do thou pay attention, my son."

"I will, my father."

And for three hours the Devil was obliged to listen to the droning voice

of the old man. He avenged himself by planting wayward and alarming

desires in Paulo's fertile soul.

Suddenly the mission was filled with the sound of clamorous silver:

the bells were ringing for vespers--a vast, rapid, unrhythmical, sweet

volume of sound which made the Devil stamp his hoofs and gnash his

teeth. The priests crossed themselves and hurried to their evening

duties, Satan following, furious, but not daring to let them out of his

sight.

The church was crowded with dusky half-clothed forms, prostrate before

the altar. The Devil, during the long service, wandered amongst them,

giving a vicious kick with his cloven foot here, pricking with the sharp

point of his tail there, breeding a fine discord and routing devotion.

When vespers were over he was obliged to follow the priests to the

refectory, but found compensation in noting that Paulo displayed a keen

relish for his meat and wine. The older man put his supper away morsel

by morsel, as if he were stuffing a tobacco-pouch.

The meal finished, Paulo sallied forth for his evening walk. The Devil

had his chance.

He was a wise Devil--a Devil of an experience so vast that the world

would go crashing through space under its weight in print. He wasted

no time with the preliminary temptations--pride, ambition, avarice. He

brought out the woman at once.

The young priest, wandering through a grove of cottonwoods, his hands

clasped listlessly behind him, his chin sunken dejectedly upon his

breast, suddenly raised his eyes and beheld a beautiful woman standing

not ten paces away. She was not a girl like her whom he had renounced

for the Church, but a woman about whose delicate warm face and slender

palpitating bosom hung the vague shadow of maturity. Her hair was the

hot brown of copper, thick and rich; her eyes were like the meeting of

flame and alcohol. The emotion she inspired was not the pure glow which

once had encouraged rather than deprecated renunciation; but at the

moment he thought it sweeter.

He sprang forward with arms outstretched, instinct conquering vows in

a manner highly satisfactory to the Devil; then, with a bitter

imprecation, turned and fled. But he heard light footfalls behind him;

he was conscious of a faint perfume, born of no earthly flower, felt a

soft panting breath. A light hand touched his face. He flung his vows to

anxious Satan, and turned to clasp the woman in his arms. But she coyly

retreated, half-resentfully, half-invitingly, wholly lovely. Satan

closed his iron hand about the vows, and the priest ran toward the

woman, the lines of repression on his face gone, the eyes conquering the

mouth. But again she retreated. He quickened his steps; she accelerated

hers; his legs were long and agile; but she was fleet of foot. Finally

she ran at full speed, her warm bright hair lifted and spreading, her

tender passionate face turned and shining through it.

They left the cottonwoods, and raced down the wide silent valley, the

cows staring with stolid disapproval, the stars pulsing in sympathy. The

priest felt no fatigue; he forgot the Church behind him, the future of

reward or torment. He wanted the woman, and was determined to have her.

He was wholly lost; and the Devil, satisfied, returned to the mission.

"Now," thought he, "for revenge on that old fool for defying me for

sixty years!"

He raised his index finger and pointed it straight at the planet Hell.

Instantly the sky darkened, the air vibrated with the rushing sound

of many forms. A moment later he was surrounded by a regiment of

abbreviated demons--a flock as thick as a grasshopper plague, twisted,

grinning, leering, hideous. He raised his finger again and they leaped

to the roofs of the mission, wrenched the tiles from their place and

sent them clattering to the pavement. They danced and wrestled on the

naked roof, yelling with their hoarse unhuman voices, singing awful

chants.

The Devil passed within, and found the good old priest on his knees, a

crucifix clasped to his breast, his white face upturned, shouting ave

marias and pater nosters at the top of his aged voice as if fearful they

would not ascend above the saturnalia on the roof. The Devil added to

his distraction by loud bursts of ribald laughter; but the father,

revolving his head as if it were on a pivot, continued to pray. Satan

began to curse like a pirate.

Suddenly, above the crashing of tiles, the hideous voices of Devil and

demon, the prayers of the padre, sounded the silver music of the

bells. Not the irregular clash which was the daily result of Indian

manipulation, but long rhythmic peals, as sweet and clear and true

as the singing of angels. The Devil and his minions, with one long,

baffled, infuriated howl, shot upward into space. Simultaneously a great

wind came roaring down the valley, uprooting trees, shaking the sturdy

mission. Thunder detonated, lightning cut its zigzag way through black

clouds like moving mountains; hail rattled to the earth; water fell

as from an overturned ocean. And through all the bells pealed and the

priest prayed.

Morning dawned so calm and clear that but for the swimming ground and

the broken tiles bestrewing it, the priest would have thought he had

dreamed a terrible nightmare. He opened the door and looked anxiously

forth for Paulo. Paulo was not to be seen. He called, but his tired

voice would not carry. Clasping his crucifix to his breast, he tottered

forth in search of his beloved young colleague. He passed the rancheria

of the Indians, and found them all asleep, worn out from a night of

terror.

He was too kind to awaken them, and pursued his way alone down the

valley, peering fearfully to right and left. The ground was ploughed,

dented, and strewn with fallen trees; the river roared like a tidal

wave. Shuddering, and crossing himself repeatedly, he passed between

the hills and entered a forest, following a path which the storm had

blasted. After a time he came to an open glade where he and Paulo

had loved to pray whilst the spring and the birds made music. To his

surprise he saw a large stone lying along the open. He wondered if some

meteor had fallen. Mortal hands--Indian hands, at least--were not strong

enough to have brought so heavy a bulk, and he had not seen it in forest

or valley before.

He approached and regarded it; then began mumbling aves and paters,

running them together as he had not done during the visitation and

storm. The stone was outlined with the shape of a man, long, young,

and slender. The face was sharply cut, refined, impassioned, and

intellectual. A smile of cynical contentment dwelt on the strong mouth.

The eyes were fixed on something before him. Involuntarily the priest's

followed them, and lingered. A tree also broke the open--one which never

had been there before--and it bore an intoxicating similitude to the

features and form of a surpassingly beautiful woman.

"Paulo! Paulo!" murmured the old man, with tears in his eyes, "would

that I had been thou!"

End of Project Gutenberg's The Splendid Idle Forties, by Gertrude Atherton