For the Soul of Rafael Part 23

Ana's lips curled in a little smile, quickly suppressed.

"But, Anita, that he tells you all these things, so that you know the reasons of Capitan--"

"Oh, Capitan is a sort of cousin of our family. Even when he is outcast, I do not want him to lose his soul; so I--my people do not know--but always I pay for a ma.s.s when I hear that the robbers have killed a man.

I never think that Capitan would like to kill; still, it might happen.

So I remember--as I remembered him when I was a little girl, and when I was married--and I pay for a ma.s.s, that is all."

"I am glad to-night, very glad you tell me all this, Anita. Not glad that it is so, but, thanks to G.o.d, it is something to do--to do--to do!"

"And what?" asked Ana, regarding her curiously. Heretofore the wife of Rafael had appeared to her self-restrained and cold, but to-night--

Raquel caught her hand and pressed it, and laughed.

"You are saving me to-night, Anita, and you do not know it," she said, with feverish intensity. "I was unhappy when I rode to your door; so tired of all the world that I could think of nothing sweeter than to ride on and on to the sea, and into it, and go to sleep there."

"Raquel! That is a mortal sin!"

"So it is, but I shall do penance, and when the padre comes again, O my dear Ana, you alone will not pay for the ma.s.ses; we can do many things for good together, you and I. You must come to me to the Mission; you must! I have had many things to fight alone, Anita, and I never can tell you what they are. But this new thing we can fight together, darling--you for your relation and I for my husband and my promise; and, the saints helping us, we shall win, Anita, and it will all come right; and thanks to G.o.d I came to you this night!"

Her eyes were alight with excitement, her cheeks flushed and burning.

Once or twice she shivered slightly; and Ana, who had been rea.s.sured by the beautiful color so quickly replacing the pallor of the cheeks, grew all at once apprehensive, as she noticed that the hands of Raquel were very cold indeed, and that her laugh was nervous, and that her teeth chattered, and that the words she tried to utter grew indistinct.

"Holy Mary! I have given her a fever," gasped Ana. "That my tongue had been blistered, before I babbled all that to her! Raquel, for the love of G.o.d don't shake like that, and don't laugh at me! Stop it! The laugh is the worst of all! Raquel--Raquelita--darling mine!"

But Ana's frenzy of fear was so irresistibly funny, that Raquel continued to laugh, and the laughter grew louder after the other women were called in, and helped to undress her and wrap her in blankets to smother the chill. That night, candles never went out in the house, and Ana knelt before the altar with prayers to the saints that they might undo the folly of her tongue. But old Polonia knelt instead by the couch of Raquel and cursed the American, that he had not died there in Mexico.

In the early dawn Polonia crept unseen to the aquia, and of soft clay made an image of him, and thrust pins through every vital portion of it, that there might be no chance left of life in the man it represented; then, having finished her work, she left it where the sun would dry it, and crept back to the room and curled up on a rug, and slept the sleep of the content.

The good holy water she had paid money for had failed. But there are always two ways. If the saints refuse to help, there is always the devil left. If the padres did not get more effective holy water, whose fault was it that poor souls had to seek help elsewhere? She would do penance, of course, after the man died, and perhaps pay for a ma.s.s, and that would make it all right for everybody, and was so easy! She went to sleep wondering if he would die from a slow lingering disease, or how it would be. It was inconvenient that one was not allowed to select the very way the end must come. But the devil would know what she would like best,--that the foot of his horse might go down in a gopher-hole and pitch him on his head just so that the neck would break, quick, like the snapping of a finger. And no one would ever guess how it had been brought about!

[Music: _El Sueno_]

En el sueno dichoso prove---- Delicias, rodear mi existencia.

CHAPTER XI

Tea made of Castillian rose petals, and all the other little helps of the herb family, were brewed and steamed in the kitchen of the ranch for the saving of Raquel from the grasp of a strength-sapping fever.

Conscience-stricken, Ana fought and argued against sending for Rafael.

Every hour of the day and night she was willing to watch and work, if only Raquel's illness might pa.s.s without the cause of it being known; and she was certain that the cause was the shock of learning how narrowly she had escaped kidnapping at the hands of Rafael's enemy.

Sometimes, indeed, Raquel did murmur in her sleep of "Padre Libertad"

and the water surging over her head; and then again it was "the altar--the altar--and the blood on the tiles of the temple"; then "the ring--the ring--the ring." Sometimes she would moan that the beautiful one with the happiness must not receive the ring--never the ring of Aztec witchery! Then her words would trail along in inarticulate whispers, and sink into brief periods of slumber.

Old Polonia, listening and watching, heard all. Of Padre Libertad and the dream of the water she cared not anything. Of the ring she understood, and was afraid lest a name be uttered. But when the girl moaned of the blood on the altar and on the floor of the temple, the old creature dropped in a cowering heap and screamed with fear, and begged with tears that the husband would come, and that a padre must come, for it was all of no use to do any more of anything; and that the mother of Dona Raquel had come from--from death, to tell of hidden things to her daughter, and it meant that death was in the home with them, and that Dona Raquel would never again sing with the birds, or gallop across the mesas!

Ana, trembling with fright and this a.s.surance, almost smothered old Polonia, that the others might not hear the wild prophecy, but without further delay she sent a letter to Rafael, and the man who bore it was to spare neither horses nor himself on the errand.

The man rode well, and made only one halt to change a horse at a ranch.

The sheriff of Los Angeles County, and many owners of ranches, were there. The sheriff looked at the rider and his reeking horse carefully.

"From where do you come?" he asked, and the man jerked his thumb toward the south.

"San Joaquin."

"What's up there?"

"Not anything, senor."

It never entered his head that a woman sick at the San Joaquin ranch would have interest for a party of hors.e.m.e.n who looked as if out for a hunt. But the party exchanged glances. One of them, a farmer who knew him, stepped forward.

"Where do you ride in such haste, if nothing is up?" he asked.

"I take a letter to Don Rafael; his wife is sick."

"Where?"

"At San Joaquin ranch, senor. Adios!"

He had his foot in the stirrup, when the sheriff laid his hand on his arm.

"Wait a bit," he said, quietly. "I think it is said that a picnic is given to-day by Senora Downing for Dona Raquel Arteaga who is visiting in Los Angeles. How can she be at the same time at the San Joaquin ranch?"

"I know not anything of the picnic, senor, but I know a woman rode her horse into the ranch at dark last night, and they say it is Dona Raquel Arteaga; and she has a fever, and screams and laughs all night in the room of Dona Ana. I know, for I am called after I am asleep, to get wood for a fire. No one sleeps, and outside the window I hear all what she screams, and it is enough to freeze the blood,--all of altars where blood is, and a ring that she cries for; and I am glad to get away and ride for Rafael Arteaga."

"Rather thin, isn't it, all of that story?" remarked one of the ranchmen. "Bryton, when we asked you to join us didn't you stop to send word to the Downings that you couldn't attend their little celebration in the hills?"

"Yes."

Bryton had turned from the others and was rolling a cigarro. He replied without looking up from his task.

"And it was given in honor of Dona Raquel Arteaga and the bishop?"

"I understood so."

"Understood? Why, that was the reason Arteaga gave for refusing to come along," broke in one of the other men. "I heard him."

"That's so; I did too, and I thought at the time a picnic for a woman and a priest was a mighty small excuse to give for evading--"

"Careful!" And the sheriff shot a warning glance at the speaker. "A newly married man was excused, even in Bible times, from going to the wars, so Arteaga's reason is all right."

"Just a moment," said Bryton. "I am as certain as it is possible to be of anything one does not see, that the boy tells the truth. She is there, and she is ill. Let him take the message."

"What makes you think so?" and the sheriff eyed him carefully. Bryton's jaw set stolidly, though his face flushed.