I had hardly finished my transcription when my hostess entered saying
that breakfast was ready in the kitchen: so no attempt at working out
the puzzle could be made at the time. Pedro's food was taken to him by
Carlota, and he did not appear before I left. During the pleasant meal,
I looked with added respect at the woman whose goodness of heart had led
her willingly to undertake, and to carry day by day for many years, the
burden of a hopeless, and I fear an ungrateful, invalid (though, indeed,
from my experience of the kindliness, and especially the strength of the
family bond among the Mexican people, I might well have been prepared
for such magnanimity).
Soon after breakfast I bade them farewell, Leandro accompanying me a
short distance to show me my road. When we came to part, no further word
had been said regarding Pedro or the mysterious chest. I said nothing,
for I had no theory to offer. When we shook hands, after thanking him
heartily I remarked that I hoped we might meet again, adding, as an
afterthought, "and in a luckier house." "Yes, senor," he said, "but it
is not the house that is unlucky: Our Lady attends to that. It was the
money, and, you see," with a smile--"I gave her the half of what was
left. Do you know, senor, sometimes I think the money was stolen from
the Church. That would account for all, is it not so? They say the
churches had much money once. Quien sabe? Adios senor."
As I turned Pancho into the trail that would bring me to the Ventura
road, my mind was busy at a clue that Leandro's parting words had
started. "F Y," the letters carved on the chest--somehow they seemed
to link up with something in my memory. Who was that Padre of whom
Robinson, in his "Life in California," spoke with a good deal of
disparagement? The surname initial was surely a "Y," and it seemed to
me that San Fernando was the Mission where the depreciated Father dwelt.
Yorba, Ybarronda, Ybaez, Ybarra--yes, that was it: Ybarra, sure enough,
and the first name was Francisco, it seemed to me; and I felt sure
now that it was at San Fernando that Robinson encountered him. All
circumstantial evidence, no doubt, but highly interesting. To try
another link--did the scraps of writing give any support to my idea?
I took out my notebook: unmistakably there were the letters "rra"
remaining where naturally the signature would be written. All the rest
of the name was gone except a fragment of rubric, but that embellishment
again made it plain that the letters were part of a name.
With that I had to be satisfied, both then and now. Matters of more
personal importance soon pushed the problem into the back of my mind.
Once, indeed, chancing on a copy of the torn inscription, I spent an
idle hour in trying to fashion the oddments into a possible connected
whole. In case the reader should be interested in such exercises, I will
give my tentative solution.
I take the writing, as far as the signature, to have been in Latin,
and this is my guesswork rendering: the reader may perhaps improve upon
it:--
In hac arca depositi sunt nummi tria millia et quingenti qui pertinent
ad hanc Missionem de Sancto Fernando, in cujus finibus ad cautelam ob
latrocinia hoc litore a piratis commissa haec arca abscondita est.
Francisco Ybarra.
Oct. 1824.
My chain of guesses, then, is that the old chest that I saw in that
house in the Sim' Hills may have once been the personal property of
Fray Francisco Ybarra, sometime priest in charge of the Mission of San
Fernando. That he, on the approach of some marauders, buried the chest,
with the stated sum of money in silver pesos of Carlos III, in some
hiding-place about the Mission precincts. That for some unguessable
reason the chest was never taken up by the priest or his successors; but
that long years afterwards, probably not less than fifty, some party of
treasure-seekers (of whom there are evidences of there having been many
at that Mission) came upon the buried chest. That it was transported by
them to the lonely house in the mountains, some twenty miles distant.
That there, a quarrel occurred over the booty, and that the survivor
or survivors of the fatal affray, if any there were, did not, for some
reason, carry off in their flight all the treasure. The rest of my
theory is embodied in the foregoing narrative.
But after all, as to the whole matter, probably there is little to be
said that is more to the point than the all-embracing phrase of Leandro,
and of Spain and Mexico in general--Quien sabe? Who knows?