For the Soul of Rafael Part 2

"Don Eduardo is English. The Englishmen are used to going to h.e.l.l."

"They would deserve to go for that, if for nothing else," commented Bryton, as the report of a blast shook the ground, and across the plaza the air was filled with flying rock and brick and plaster; and then a great cloud of dust drifted upward as the Mexican workmen strolled back to their task of tearing down the old church of San Juan Capistrano, whose ma.s.sive stone walls it had taken the padres and their neophytes so many years of toil to complete.

"Not a church equal to it in the Californias; not a church equal to it dreamed of in the States when it was being built!" and the young fellow stared moodily at the devastation of it. "Can't the bishop stop that?"

"Ten years the Church fight to get it back. They must win some day--oh, yes--sure!"

"But what will they have when the suit is won, if this is allowed to go on?"

"Who knows?" queried Alvara, placidly. "We may be in our graves, senor, and not here to see it. When Eduardo wants foundation for an adobe, he blows down a stone wall; when he wants walls for a well, he blows down the arches of the patio, until bricks enough fall. It is quicker than to burn new ones."

"But the padre?"

"There is the man who is padre of San Juan Capistrano in these days,"

said Juan Alvara, briefly.

A man was coming up the middle of the road, his boots wet and muddy from irrigating-ditches, a short black pipe between his teeth. He halted to chaffer with an Indian woman who carried a basket of fish from the sea.

Contemptuously viewing the modest sea ba.s.s, he said: "Fish only a foot long--what good are they? Who is fool enough to buy such?"

"It is not to sell, father. Tia Concepcion, who is much sick, ask for these; they are to give, for she is sick."

"Humph! a sick woman to eat ten fish! They will be sending for me in the middle of the night for prayers. You go to my cook, and leave seven of these with him in the kitchen for my supper."

The Indian lowered her head and pa.s.sed on to the Mission. The padre crossed the plaza to where the group of girls stood chatting at the open gate of a patio. At his approach they fell silent, but a few brief words scattered them quickly toward their several homes, and the man of the church tramped on, the dust of the road sticking to his wet boots.

"All what brings a price and is overlooked by the Englishmen, this padre will dig up," said Juan Alvara. "He is getting rich from many fields."

"Many fields?"

"Many fields--the church, the little ranch he has picked up, and the game of _monte_ or _malilla_. He is the new sort of priest they send these days from Catalonia. No one in San Juan confesses now until Padre Sanchez comes past. If the church wins, the Mission will be blown down all the same, so long while some one pay four bits a load for brick. All is much changed. Father Sanchez is another kind--a holy man and of G.o.d."

Alvara lifted his sombrero reverently.

"The vaqueros coming with the band of horses from the beach soon," he observed. "We will go to the corrals, and help you to forget the girl--no?"

"I'm not so anxious to forget, I reckon--the girl is only a sort of dream girl. This trip was not so much to forget a girl as to--you remember Teddy, my half-brother?"

"Don Teddy? Sure--he was the life of the valley when he came to San Juan."

"Yes. Well, Teddy's married; he has married the woman who, you said, had the face of some angel."

"Not Angela, the senora who is Don Eduardo's English cousin?"

The other nodded his head grimly.

"But--" the old man stared at him sharply, and then suddenly recovered himself.

"Teddy says his wife wants to come down here while he is in Mexico,"

grunted Bryton. "What the devil can I do with her if she comes now?"

"You are a relative now--is it not so?" asked the old man, with an affectionate smile. "She is your sister."

"Sister be--" If he meant blessed, he did not look it as he tramped the veranda. "I start just the same for the south ranch to-morrow. If she comes, she can go to Mac's tavern, or to the Mission with the ghosts!"

"That would not be good to do," said Alvara seriously. "The wife of your brother must come to my house. Teresa, the widow of Miguel, is here; her English is not anything, but it is good that your sister have a lady with her in the house. Teresa, she feel very bad. Don Teddy's wife was once a widow; she will understand."

[Ill.u.s.tration: DOnA ANGELA]

"Will it make many changes in the business--his death?" asked Bryton.

"It will lose the ranches more quickly to the English and the Americans," stated the older man. "Rafael will have all the money now, and--it is good that he gets married quick. The girl--she is Estevan's daughter--she likes no English--so they say."

"Oh!--Estevan's daughter--Estevan's! I heard a queer story of that name once--a queer story!"

"He left when the Americanos came to California. Always he fought against the Americanos. He was a strong soldier, and he die there in Mexico, and all his money is for the girl if she marry; for the convent if she not marry at all."

"It was another Estevan," said Keith. "It was a story of an old Aztec temple that would make your hair curl! Might have been a relation of your soldier Estevan."

"There may be the same name in Mexico, but Felipe Estevan had no brothers."

Keith rolled a cigarro, and did not notice that the old man's hand trembled as he did the same, and that his eyes were striving in vain to appear careless.

"My Spanish was pretty queer those days, and I did not grasp the details of the story. You find all sorts of half-buried towns and temples and palaces in the country--queer places no one on earth can tell who built.

But the temple was a plain fact. Stonework cut for all the world like that," he added, pointing to the gray Mission ruin. "Zig-zags on the cornices and Aztec suns just the same over the portals. There were great old walls left, but no roof. Trees grew all through it, and right in the open was something like a bench covered with queer Indian figures of fight, and sacrifices, and the only one I ever saw down there carved out of marble."

"Yes--a bench of marble!" Alvara was listening intently, nodding his head, and forgetting to smoke.

"Well, an old miner down there told me a lurid story of the last Indian sacrifice offered up on that altar. He found the body and helped to bury it--the name was Estevan."

"It is a good name," said the old man.

"Fine! but wherever he had lived he was used to a different sort of woman from the one he met at the old temple. She was of pure Spanish and Aztec stock. The women in those temples don't usually appear to count, but she came of a long line of Aztec priests. After the Catholic Church got hold of them, they became Catholic priests instead of Aztec ones, and served the same G.o.d under a different name."

"So?" remarked Alvara.

"It seems Estevan drifted into the country with considerable money--cattle-man, I think; anyway, he had a ranch of some sort--and fell dead in love with the sister of one of these hereditary priests, and they were married. The old miner said a lot of queer old Indians gathered from the Lord only knew where, and had a great bonfire and crazy dances and ceremonies at the temple the night she was married.

They were waiting for a new priest of their own old religion to be born some day and every marriage in that family was of interest."

"Well?"

"Well--I don't know how to make clear that there are wives in the world to whom brown girls in the willows are--well--they are absolutely taboo to the husbands--understand?"

Alvara nodded silently.

"This Estevan was not used to women like that. He was crazy over the priest's sister till he got her, and then he was like many other men--he went back to the brown girls."

"And then?"