For the Soul of Rafael Part 5

"We will go," decided Teresa, promptly; "at once we will go before he comes back from the corral. His brother's wife--eh? I ask myself if those people--the Americanos--are so much better than our own men, Rafael. I want no scandal and will help you with none; but if you take from him the woman he wants, I will make you a present--a fine one."

"It is a bargain!" he agreed. "I promise to earn the gift. He is a good enough fellow, but much too conceited; we will cure him!"

As Alvara came out on the veranda to tell them Dolores and Madalena were away, and to ask Teresa to call on the stranger in their stead, Teresa and Rafael were on the street.

"It is a good thing to do," he thought, contentedly rolling a cigarro and looking after them. "It is a kindness to Don Eduardo's cousin, and it is good for Teresa. For the first time since the death of Miguel she is smiling. Yes, it is a good thing."

When Bryton left the corrals, the evening had come; the afterglow was flooding the hills with pale rose, and Indian boys were driving home cows through the village street. The more time he had to consider the matter, the more impatient he grew at the reckless disregard of his new sister-in-law for the conventionalities.

Since she had married Teddy, she might at least have remained decently and quietly where he had left her. Or she might have continued her journey and joined her cousin at San Diego; but to do so mad a thing as to stop off here--he determined she should go either north or south to-morrow, if he had to carry her to the stage. He would tell her so at once.

He had arrived at that determination as he crossed the plaza and heard her laugh through the door of Alvara's house. The door was open; she was trying to teach Alvara English, at which his daughters laughed very much. It was the sharp eyes of Teresa that caught sight of Bryton first, as he involuntarily halted in the road.

"Yes, Senor Bryton, it is all true; we have robbed the Senor Mac's hotel of your sister!" she called to him with a new air of elation,--of victory.

Alvara appeared and invited him to supper, which he declined for a previous engagement with Don Antonio. His sister-in-law came out and listened to his excuses, and smiled quietly at him with the baby-blue eyes, in which he read a certain defiance.

"I would have smothered in that awful cell you took me to!" she pouted.

"These people are charming to me; they are friends of Cousin Edward's.

It was Don Rafael took them to me. He looks like a hero in a picture-book! How does it come I never met him before?"

"Perhaps because during your last visit down here he was in Mexico, making love to the girl he is to marry very soon."

"Oh! is _that_ why you are guarding him so carefully?" she said, laughingly. "Well, since I am married, I am willing to stay and dance at his wedding; but, Keith, if I had seen him first--"

She broke off, laughing at the quick anger in his eyes.

And Teresa, listening, understood the game of Rafael and the mocking laughter, and the anger of Bryton, and was as happy as she was likely to be, with Miguel under the ground.

[Music: _Danza Mexicana._]

CHAPTER III

Many things had happened, and it had been a bad day. "A day cursed of G.o.d!" said Pedro Gallardo, the driver; and against such ill fortune the carriage of Senora Luisa Arteaga made such progress as might be, from San Luis Rey to San Juan.

Clouds had drifted along the mountains each night for a week, and never the ranges a bit the better for it, until the cavalcade of Dona Luisa had started north from San Diego; and then--well, it was not what you would call a rain, it was a torrent came down. The skies had opened, and a deluge followed.

Then, after leaving San Luis Rey, a carriage-pole must break in an attempt at a runaway, and two horses were lost over that, to say nothing of the off leader, whose "sire had been the devil, and whose dam had been a witch thrice accursed in the foaling!" Their joint offspring had demonstrated his infernal lineage by breaking his own leg as well as the carriage-pole, and another untamed beast had to be roped on the range--hog-tied, and blindfolded to get the harness on him; and because of him Pedro's throat was fairly blistered with curses.

As the wheels sank into the sands or plunged from one ravine into another, Dona Luisa prayed and trusted to the saints that she might see her own valley again, and her companion, Dona Jacoba, protested, and forgetting to pray, waxed argumentative.

"Raquel was right, Luisa," she repeated for the twentieth time between her groans; "we had been wise to wait at San Diego for Rafael. She has an old head on her shoulders--you will have a wise daughter when the day comes."

"Wise! Yes--yes!" moaned Dona Luisa, shaking her head. "I thank the Virgin for that, every day, for Rafael is young, Jacoba; a baby of a wife would be his ruin. Yet--a baby might love him!"

"Our boys get love enough!" grunted Jacoba, thinking of her own sons, and her own troubles. "They need wives with sense; and our girls all go wild these days about the Americanos, so--"

[Ill.u.s.tration: RAQUEL ESTEVAN]

"The girls, too!" and Dona Luisa's tones were strident with censure. "It is bad enough when men must buy and sell with the Americanos in the markets; but the girls,--the women of California,--it is in their hands to shut the door when the Americano knocks--is it not so?"

"Oh, yes, of course--yes--it is as you say," agreed Jacoba, weakly, as she thought of the many girls of their relationship, who had opened doors very wide indeed for the Americanos, and of not a few who were to open also the door of the Church. But who could tell Dona Luisa that?

"Rafael is all I have left, now that Miguel is killed," continued the mother. "My only grandchildren are half-breeds, and only Rafael is left.

Ai! it is hard to grow old,--to let go all lines. But you know what makes me happy, Jacoba? No? It is this one big thing. Raquel will be what I was. She may suffer, but she will stand square on her feet; and she will fight as her father fought--and it will be for California."

"You think so?" asked Jacoba, doubtfully. "It may be so, but--do you expect strong fights from a girl who was half a nun? I say she knows too little of the world to fight it."

"You take from me my one hope when you say that!" and the older woman put out her hand appealingly. "Our men are wild--always! It is the women's work to save them. The death of Miguel is making me think much and quick. Rafael must be marry. There must be no more Indio women and children."

Jacoba glanced doubtfully at her friend. These five years, while Rafael had been learning California ranch life, Jacoba had lived near enough to hear much that she never could repeat to the old mother, whose life was so nearly spent, whose weakness and prejudices could never cope with the new life in the changed land--and of what use to torture her with the truth? She wished with all her heart the exile had elected to stop over at San Diego or San Luis Rey, until some little glimmer of present conditions should enlighten her.

"It is well the _donas_ came by water," she remarked, eager to find some straw of comfort in the situation. "Even extra baggage would be a care, with these roads and troubles, to say nothing of the temptation to El Capitan! Thanks to G.o.d, he never yet has had record of troubling women on the road."

"He was a fine boy," said Dona Luisa, musingly. "It is not his fault that he is an outlaw to these States. It means only that he is patriot to California. He was a fine boy."

"Ask thy son how fine he thinks El Capitan!" remarked Jacoba. "Rafael has paid him a heavy tax in his best stock. They have long ago forgotten they are cousins."

"Raquel will make him remember," said the older woman, with certainty.

"Did he not fight as he was able beside her father? Ai! he fought for California when only a boy. Do Californians forget?"

"He does not let them do so," remarked Jacoba dryly. "Much has changed, Luisa."

"I see no change, only the Indios more poor. The hills are green, as always after the rains. All these ranges are the same like we rode over them forty years ago. The hills and the sea never change, only the people. It is good to hear there is one of the young left who thinks in the old way."

"But--holy Maria!--we were never robbers, Luisa!"

"Well, we did not need to be," returned her friend. "But I tell you truly, Jacoba, I could find it in my heart to forgive a son who fought the Americanos as he does, even if they made him outlaw. He could not be outlaw to the Church, nor to me."

Jacoba said no more. Of what use was it to tell her that a few such women would be firebrands in the land if they had youth, and that the American soldiers, instead of coming peacefully to buy stock and pay good prices, would come from Los Angeles shooting,--would come with torches to burn each town where rebels hid. It was no longer little internal wars, such as they used to have in the days they both remembered, when the men who smoked or played together one month would fight under different leaders the next.

There were no faction fights now. It was one great ugly pale nation to the east, trailing slowly over the ranges and planting itself like the live-oak in the canons. The Mexicans might hate, might curse; but the curses made no difference against the heretics. They had no churches, and they laughed at the beautiful wooden saints in the old chapel. Had not some of them snuffed out candles on the graves with their accursed rifles, last All Souls' Day? Yet the sky had not fallen, and no earthquake had come! What would even prayers or holy Church do against a people so ignored by G.o.d?

But Jacoba knew there was no use to fight. She remembered what that meant in the other days. In an old adobe of San Juan's one street she had helped as a girl to nurse the wounded of San Pascual. It was years ago, but she had not forgotten the cruel wounds, or the young Americano who died in her arms there. She had never mentioned to any the reason of her hatred for war; for even with revenge in reach, on whom would she seek it?--on her brother who had killed a stranger forcing their gates?

"You do not forget how the blessed Junipero Serra himself spoke from the altar of San Juan in the old days, Luisa; our grandfather telling us that many times,--how, when the Spanish guard was hard with the Indios, he stood on the altar and say that a new people will come and put the foot on the neck of the Mexican like the Mexican tramp on the Indios. He say it, and cry--cry for the reason that the good G.o.d no can make their hearts more soft to the Indios. I think of that when I see the Americanos come. They not put the foot on the neck--but they are here!"

"Father Junipero was old then--very old--like a child, and would make of the Indios babies to be petted," returned Dona Luisa, leniently. "He was a saint--not a man; only the saints could have the patience with those Indios--I remember! One of the old scares of the padre's was that the water would fail us; yet San Juan still has its river!"

Jacoba nodded. They were likely to find the river a difficulty after the rainfall. The ford was not a good one in high water; but the thought of getting across the ford was a trifle compared to the difficulty of impressing Dona Luisa with any idea of the change she would find in the land she had known.

In sheer despair she returned once more to a safer subject, Raquel Estevan,--Raquel the wise, who was to marry with Rafael and forever build a wall about him from American influence; Raquel, who might not love, because of that dark shadow of the cloister, but who would be all the more wise for that! Still, who could tell?

"When one is young like that, one never can be sure until the right man comes," said Jacoba; "and she is handsome, your Raquel. But is it true what they say, that there was the blood of the old Mexican Indios in her mother?"