For the Soul of Rafael Part 26

Old Polonia understood, and screamed denials in her native tongue, and then turned to the padre and pointed to the American.

"It is that man!" she cried, shrilly, "he is a devil! He does not die--not for anything! And while he lives he breaks the heart of my mistress. It is he; that is the man! Put on him the curse of the Church, father! Put on him the curse to send him to a desert where he never can find a road again!"

The padre smiled grimly. "That is all they use their religion for after a century of Christianity," he observed. "They still stick to their devil-worship, and call on the Church only when they want maledictions or absolution. Woman, you talk like a fool. Did you do this?"

He took the headless clay pin-cushion and held it before him. Polonia flashed one vindictive glance at him and then nodded her head sullenly.

It was bad luck to lie to a padre.

"It was to save her," she muttered, "but the Americano is a devil, and nothing kills him."

She turned one glance of hate and fear upon her rescuer, and moved toward the house.

"She means you?" asked the padre.

"Oh, she is crazy, that old Indian," cried Juanita; "always she makes me afraid. The Senor Bryton she never perhaps has seen until this minute.

That is her thanks that he pull her from the fire!"

The padre turned for one level look at the pale face of Ana.

"Your name is Bryton?" he then said, quietly. "Will you, Senor Bryton, see that these savages do not attempt another roasting, while I look to the woman who is dying?"

Bryton turned to Juanita.

"Is it so bad as that?" he asked. "The Dona Raquel--"

"We think she is better this evening; still, it may be a fever coming; one never knows. Ah! there are my father and the men."

Don Enrico Cordoba and some vaqueros rode madly through the corral and into the place of the huge bonfire and the still kneeling Indians. Now that their white heat of pa.s.sion was over, they remembered only the beating they would get, and crouched doggedly where the padre had bidden them; the younger ones wept with fear when Juanita told her father the story.

"Holy G.o.d!" he shouted in a rage, breaking in on her recital. "In my house to trample on my family and drag a woman to the fire! Tomas, count every head and remember every name. In three days every one shall be tied to a tree and whipped; if one runs away, she shall be caught and whipped twice,--once here on the ranch, and once on the Mission plaza of San Juan, on a Sunday after ma.s.s. You cattle, you dogs, you devils, begone from my sight!"

He struck right and left with the green-hide reata, spurring his horse after those who stumbled along too slowly to suit him, striking old and young alike as they ran wailing with terror at the promises he had made them, and which they knew would be kept. The Mexican master was quite as p.r.o.ne as the Indian servants to find acute methods of torture or punishment.

When all were despatched he rode back, puffing and laughing, to his daughters and guest, with whom he shook hands heartily.

"Holy saints! but we did ride when we saw the smoke; it looked like the house on fire. It winds a man, a ride like that at my age," and he shook his fat sides with laughter. "Come inside and have a gla.s.s of whiskey, Senor Bryton. We met at the alcalde's last year when the army officers were in San Juan? Yes, I thought so. I am glad you have come to my house, and--who knows--you maybe saved my wife and my daughters as well as the old woman. When these savages get the taste of blood, they are crazy wolves, never fighters in the open, brave only when there is a mob like that. Come in, come in! Juanita, go tell your mother we have a guest who has saved you all. What was it you said of a padre? where is he?"

"With Dona Raquel, father."

"She is worse?"

"We do not know, but thanks to the Virgin, she no longer laughs or cries. Ana is there. If she live or die, we all feel the padre has come if the husband do not."

"Humph! Oh, yes, yes, always the priests!" he grunted. "Women can't keep house without the padres. I think I build a chapel for my women; then they can pray all the time to be sure they save my soul," and he laughed skeptically; then he tossed aside his sombrero, and brought bottles and gla.s.ses to a little table of marble on the veranda. "Will you have whiskey, or the bottle of wine?"

"I prefer your own wine of the ranch, Don Enrico," and Bryton poured out the white moselle, of which the Cordoba family was justly proud; "I think the padre was also off a journey, senor; perhaps a swallow of this fine wine--"

"Oh, let the women alone to look after the wants of the padre," laughed his host. "They own my house when they are in it, though sometimes I never see them. 'How much money do you want?' I say when they come, and that ends my business with the padres! I buy and sell with them and get beaten at _monte_ or _malilla_, but I let women do the praying with them! Here comes my wife. Refugia, this is the preserver of your house, the Senor Bryton. Have some whiskey, dear; you are still pale."

"Pale! Never shall I get over this day. Think of the shame of it! Dona Raquel Arteaga has been entertained like a queen by the bishop, and when she honors our home, her servant is dragged out to be burned! The word will go out that we are savages. Enrico, never so long as you live do you leave this house again without a man in it!"

"Surely not. Drink the whiskey, dear, and be composed."

Dona Refugia drank the fiery liquor, and appeared to enjoy it very much, but it had not a quieting influence. It rather helped her to remember and recount all the details of her own stages of fear during the stampede of the self-appointed executioners.

"After the night we all had," she lamented, "to have it followed by such a day! G.o.d grant that Dona Raquel slept or was unconscious through it all. Had she seen those fiends, it might have killed her or brought back the fever. Juanita says a padre has come, which is the one lucky thing."

"Senor Bryton came first, which was a more lucky thing," said her husband; "all the saints could not have saved the woman from the fire if he had not come when he did. Such a thing has not happened here in this valley since I was a boy. Have some more of the wine; it will give you an appet.i.te for supper."

At the mention of supper his wife remembered that all the help of the kitchen might have deserted the premises under the scourging of Don Enrico's reata, and calling the girls to help, she left the gentlemen to their gla.s.ses.

At the hall she halted to ask after Raquel, and in the shadow saw her niece and the padre talking softly. Ana's head was bent as though weeping, and the hand of the padre was smoothing her hair, and his words were rea.s.suring.

"There, there! it is not so bad, after all," he was saying. "You did the best you knew; and now that I am here, there is nothing to do but--"

"Oh, I know," broke in Ana; "you say all this so I will not blame myself. You would do the same if the worst, the very worst, happened."

"It is not going to happen," he said, quietly; then, as he saw Dona Refugia in the hall, "Your friend is surely not so dangerously ill as you fear; by to-morrow--"

Ana looked up quickly at his change of tone, and arose to her feet.

"Here is my aunt," she said. "Aunt Refugia, this is a padre journeying south to Mexico. He--he came at the right moment to help Senor Bryton, and I have asked him to stay--and--"

"Of course," said Dona Refugia, promptly. "Thanks to G.o.d you are here this night! Show him to the padre's room, Ana, while I see to supper. Is she sleeping?" she asked, nodding toward the couch.

They did not know; she lay with closed eyes most of the time, and they received no replies to queries, but Ana felt that she only slept fitfully, and then her own muttered words were certain to arouse her to a sort of half wakefulness in which she was simply conscious of the presence of some one without caring in the least who it was. The entrance of the mob had not impressed her mind more clearly than the visionary pictures of the night before.

Old Polonia had again crouched outside the door, in the hall, wordless as before, and, except for some slight disarrangement of her clothing, showing less sign than might have been expected of the horrid scene she had been a part of. She had gone in to look at her mistress, had swallowed some wine offered her by Juanita, and with a short guttural laugh had settled herself outside the door as a sentinel--or near enough to hear the slightest call from Raquel.

The priest regarded her sharply and turned to Ana.

"You are certain it was not Estevan's daughter she meant to harm?" he asked, quietly, but not so low but that the sharp ears of the Indian caught the name. She pulled a corner of the mantilla from across her eyes and looked at him.

"Sure," said Ana, "why, she was her nurse, and the nurse of her mother before her. She would make a carpet of herself for Raquel's feet."

"The nurse of her mother before her," said the priest, slowly. "Then she is of that strange hill tribe of the temple mountain, and she herself is not a common Indian. To have been nurse to that family of the priests, means that her own family was ent.i.tled to notice. Yet she has followed, in her old age, to a strange land. Yes, it must mean devotion. But why does she dislike the American?"

"G.o.d knows! She could not have ever seen him before. I thought she lied."

"The hate in her eyes was no lie," observed the padre. "His presence here was lucky, but it is not explained, any more than is my own. To me it looks--well, as I said, he is in with the officers."

"And it is my fault he has seen you--my fault," murmured Ana. "If you would only go at once--"

"I think not; it is a good chance to watch the gentleman. If I were sure that old woman meant her hate for him--"

He stared at Polonia a moment, and then nodded his head.

"I'll take the chance," he decided, and went alone to her and pulled the cover entirely from her face.