For the Soul of Rafael Part 30

To marry a girl who is like a wooden saint in a church may be a victory; it may be even romantic when she is half a nun; but it is not comforting to a husband who expects only a wife, a home.

Then across his thoughts came the blue eyes and yellow hair of the woman he had said a reluctant good-bye to in Los Angeles. There was a woman who would have met all his friends half-way, would have promoted his interests, instead of closing doors and refusing to entertain any but the slow old Spanish, who were letting all the money slip out of their hands. In a few years their names would be forgotten in the new world of commerce building, through the Americanos in Los Angeles,--the Americanos whom his wife disdained, but whom the clever little woman of the blue eyes would have won to his interests in so many ways that her influence would have weighed down all the gold of the Estevan heiress, who did not know how to use it. It is only a trick of fate that the money always goes to the wrong people.

So he thought, and smoked, and looked at Raquel Estevan de Arteaga, and wondered by what man[oe]uvre or stratagem he could break down her prejudices; he wondered, also, how a woman with such eyes and such lips could be so cold. He supposed it was inherited from the nun, her mother.

Rafael had never heard the story of the love, and revenge, and widowhood of that nun. One or two of the older people of San Juan had heard of it at the time of Estevan's death, but none knew how true it was. It seemed too much a bit out of the dark ages of the Indian records to be true of the debonair Felipe, who had ridden and fought to the admiration of all Californian Mexico, who had found women wherever he rode, and had made love as a caballero's duty. It seemed scarcely credible that he, of all men, should have met death in that way on the far southern mountain; and the older men crossed themselves and tried to forget it, and the younger ones never heard of it.

Rafael, smoking on the veranda and watching the serene face of his wife, and ascribing her coldness to the chill of convent walls, understood her no more than had Felipe Estevan understood the nun who had stepped down from her saint's niche for him; and old Polonia, sitting in the shadow, watched them both, and in her dull brain was also a query: Would he ever discover that she was not cold? And would he find out in the same way?

Both G.o.d and the devil would be needed to help them all on that day, for California was not the hill of the temple, where the Indian still ruled!

Rafael at last rode out to the range to see Don Enrico about several matters. He did not care to alarm the women concerning the rumors of the bandits, but now, since he had left Los Angeles behind, he would just as soon ride with the vigilantes as not, and Don Enrico could be trusted.

It would be five long hours before the carriage with Dona Maria and her bewitching guest reached the ranch, and one must kill time some way.

He killed more time than he had counted upon. As the sun began to lower, and he and Don Enrico turned their horses for the ranch-house, the dogs started a coyote, and with one accord the Don, his guest, and his vaqueros, took up the trail, following the howls with hue and cry over mesa and along creeks, and by the time the dark had fallen, they were far toward Trabuco. They rode back laughing and singing, and making little dashes at racing, under the early stars.

But their laughter was changed when they rode into the corral. News had come from the south, and a bad thing had happened there. The sheriff from Los Angeles had been ambushed by the Flores men at Niguel Rancho, and nine men were lying dead there. Carts were on the way to take them to San Juan for Christian burial, and Bryton had sent a messenger to Los Angeles with the word; the man had only checked his horse at San Joaquin ranch to shout out the news; that was hours ago. The Indian who had searched the ranges for Don Enrico had come back and said he was not to be found. Dona Refugia had thought it possible that they had heard the word on the ranges and ridden direct to San Juan, and thanked G.o.d they had not done so.

She went on to recount to Rafael her terror of the night before, and the awful scene from which she had by no means recovered, and now for this horror to follow so close, and the dread that they might be left alone on the ranch--well, she was having chills at the thought. Ana was the only one not afraid, but with Ana gone to San Juan Capistrano--

Rafael grasped her arm so tightly that she gasped.

"To San Juan?" he demanded. "Alone?" But he was certain of the answer before she spoke.

"Holy Maria! What a grip you have! No. Did I not tell you? Well, we are crazy over it all; we forget. No; she went with your wife, and wild horses could not have held either one of them."

"A malediction on the pair of them!" burst out Rafael. "G.o.d curse the horses they ride, that they break their necks on the way!"

"Rafael, for Jesus' sake, not so loud!" and Dona Refugia tried to put her hand over his mouth, but he dashed it aside in fury.

"Loud! Holy G.o.d! What do I care?" he demanded, wrathfully. "Do you know why they go like that? It is all a lie, that ambush story. That devil Ana Mendez has schemed to have some one ride past and call that out to you, so that they could pretend an excuse to ride anywhere away from here; and do you know why?"

Dona Refugia was past speech, and could only shake her head dumbly.

"Well, I will tell you. It is because Raquel Estevan did not mean to meet the friends you said you would be pleased to entertain on their arrival from Los Angeles. Dona Maria she will speak to, but Dona Angela is one of the heretics she vows her doors will not open to. That is the reason."

"But, Rafael--"

"Now listen to me," and he turned his fierce stride across the hall, "and G.o.d curse me if I do not keep my word!"

"Rafael!" she gasped, frightened at the white fury of his face; but he held up his hand.

"I swear she shall open her door to admit the women she slighted, first at Los Angeles and again in your home. She will find she has an Arteaga for a master. She shall open her door; she shall receive her; she shall make up for the insult to your home. By G.o.d, she shall make up, with interest!"

Then he strode out of the door, leaving Dona Refugia in a cold terror lest the guest of whom he spoke had heard his words through the closed door of Ana's room. It had been given to Mrs. Bryton on the arrival of the party an hour before, and though the door was closed, who could tell that his words might not have been heard there?

But the window on the veranda was open, and Dona Refugia breathed a sigh of relief when, a few minutes later, she saw Mrs. Bryton's fair face emerge from a bower of clematis in the garden. She had been admiring the beauty of the lilies out there, and looked like one herself,--so cool, so sweetly childish in her little appeals for admiration of the beautiful blooms she loved. Rafael met her there, and was enslaved anew by the blue eyes, as he bent over her tiny hand and kissed it furtively, and walked with her to show her Dona Refugia's carnation-beds, and under the starlight help her to see the beauties of the San Joaquin garden.

But old Polonia, who had heard his words to Dona Refugia, and who watched the two walking in the starlight, muttered in her Indian jargon, "Have a care, Don Rafael; have a care!"

Despite Rafael's doubt, it was all true about the ambush. It was quite true, and very awful. It had occurred in the morning, and Bryton had missed it only by his stay that night at the ranch. But he was also quite right when he said the two girls had left the ranch for other reasons. Raquel was quietly preparing to leave, when the word came warranting her in taking Ana. The two rode south with few words, each so wrapped in her own reasons for going that she gave no thought to the reasons of the other.

They found the town panic-stricken. Don Juan Alvara was ill, and Padre Andros absent at San Luis Rey. Raquel rode into the plaza white and weak from the long ride, but sat erect to hear of the things done and the things needed for the dead.

It was almost dark. While Ysadora the cook prepared supper, Ana questioned concerning a padre who had ridden a San Joaquin horse to San Juan that morning, but no one had seen him. Later, the animal was found grazing along Trabuco Creek. Evidently, some one had pa.s.sed with a wagon or a herd going south, and had given the padre help on the way: beyond that, no one thought, except Ana, and what she thought she did not say.

Raquel walked through the little hall of the Mission into what had once been the garden of the padres, the little enclosed bit at the back of the belfry built after the falling of the tower. It was the one little corner from which the world seemed shut out. Under the carved doorway she pa.s.sed into the old domed vestry with its stone centre cut, or worn by the dripping water, into the semblance of a leering face; "the devil's face," it was called, and people looked from its queer smile to the twisted serpent-like carving over what had once been the arch to the church itself, and wondered what the strange carvings meant, and found no one to answer. They were only a sign left by an unknown Mexican sculptor a half-century ago.

Raquel glanced at them and shuddered, and pa.s.sed out into the great unroofed, beautiful place of fluted pillars and carven cornices.

The pink reflection of the sunset yet lingered on the mesa and the highlands above the sea. The world of the strange new town to the north was left behind. Here among the ruins consecrated, she breathed the air of home-coming, and paced the old altar-place with noiseless step, and with closed eyes and hands clasped she murmured prayers not in the book, taught by the good nuns; and she drew great breaths of strength from the wine-like air, and knew that somewhere, riding the mesa, a man was remembering this hour of the rosary.

Ana found her later on the altar steps, with head bowed over her knees.

Gaining no reply to questions, Ana felt that she had been weeping. She undressed her and put her to bed in the little chamber of the barred window facing the sea, and gave her all the care a devoted friend could in the grim isolation of the old walls.

And that was the home-coming of Raquel after her half-royal reception in the City of the Angels.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "HERE AMONG THE RUINS CONSECRATED"]

[Music: _El Capotin._]

Con el capotin, tin, tin, tin, que es ta noche va llover.

Con el capotin, tin, tin, tin, que sera al amanecer!

CHAPTER XV

When Andres Pico and his men rode into San Juan with the doubtful decoration of necklaces of human ears strung on rawhide strings, there was a breath of relief from the natives: it meant that the bandits had been "confessed," according to the General's naive explanation of the absence of prisoners they knew he had taken; the backbone of the bandit gang was broken.

The vigilantes were the heroes of the hour. As the band of outlaws divided and fled in various directions, they were waited for at every pa.s.s and hewn down by the dozen. Only two--Fontez, who had shot the sheriff, and El Capitan, who had not been seen by any one at any time of the raid--were still missing. One of the prisoners, on being questioned, stated that Fontez had taken his share of the plunder and started for Lower California; and when questioned as to El Capitan, swore wrathfully, because El Capitan had disagreed with Flores over the raid, refused to be counted in, and in consequence they would all go to h.e.l.l! If El Capitan had helped, things would have been different, very different. He had voted against starting out with fifty men to drive the gringos from Southern California; he had fought them before in the open, and knew them. He had told Flores he was a fool, and left them in Santiago Canon, and ridden away, and after the slaughter of the sheriff and his men he had ridden out of the mustard on a horse of the San Joaquin brand, and told them to ride south and stop for nothing; and no one had seen him since. They had not taken his advice--and now it was all over! A little later, it certainly was over for that particular unfortunate, and his ears were added to a string decorating a swarthy ranchman, who was especially lionized because of his gruesome trophies.

In the plaza of San Juan Mission, Ana listened to the hero of the necklace reciting all the glories of the campaign, and shuddered at the ghastly witness of its veracity. Raquel, standing beside her horse, listened also and felt a loathing of it all. Regular war, such as she had heard of, had never appeared so awful as this series of slaughters from ambush, where the victors of either side decked themselves like savages.

"It is bad that we have no soldiers left who are hidalgos," she remarked. "The wild Indians carry scalps at their belts; I did not know people did so who had learned their religion from the padres."

She mounted and rode toward the sea, the only woman who dared venture alone out of sight of the protecting walls of the Mission in those days.

The man with the necklace looked after her, and then up at the line of grain-sacks still left as a barricade along the roofs of the corridor.

Behind them, men with rifles had lain through the days and nights when the panic was at its worst, and women and children had huddled in dread of ma.s.sacre in the inner court.

"Does the senora forget all that," he asked, "or is there a caballero to guard her where she rides?"

Ana turned on the hero, glad of an outlet for her pent-up anger.

"You--you butcher!" she said between her little white teeth. "You know Rafael Arteaga is not here. What other man would ride with his wife?"

"Who knows?" he laughed, easily. "The lady is not afraid, that is clear; and El Capitan is somewhere in the hills, or the willows."

She said nothing, realizing that he was watching her closely, for all his apparent carelessness. When she continued silent, he laughed and swept his sombrero to the ground and sauntered away. She knew then that he had simply tried her, to see if by any chance she showed knowledge of, or fear for, the outlaw she had never disowned as cousin.