MARUJA

by

BRET HARTE

MARUJA

CHAPTER I

Morning was breaking on the high road to San Jose.  The long lines of
dusty, level track were beginning to extend their vanishing point in
the growing light; on either side the awakening fields of wheat and
oats were stretching out and broadening to the sky.  In the east and
south the stars were receding before the coming day; in the west a few
still glimmered, caught among the bosky hills of the canada del
Raimundo, where night seemed to linger.  Thither some obscure,
low-flying birds were slowly winging; thither a gray coyote, overtaken
by the morning, was awkwardly limping.  And thither a tramping wayfarer
turned, plowing through the dust of the highway still unslaked by the
dewless night, to climb the fence and likewise seek the distant cover.

For some moments man and beast kept an equal pace and gait with a
strange similarity of appearance and expression; the coyote bearing
that resemblance to his more civilized and harmless congener, the dog,
which the tramp bore to the ordinary pedestrians, but both exhibiting
the same characteristics of lazy vagabondage and semi-lawlessness; the
coyote's slouching amble and uneasy stealthiness being repeated in the
tramp's shuffling step and sidelong glances. Both were young, and
physically vigorous, but both displayed the same vacillating and
awkward disinclination to direct effort.  They continued thus half a
mile apart unconscious of each other, until the superior faculties of
the brute warned him of the contiguity of aggressive civilization, and
he cantered off suddenly to the right, fully five minutes before the
barking of dogs caused the man to make a detour to the left to avoid
entrance upon a cultivated domain that lay before him.

The trail he took led to one of the scant water-courses that issued,
half spent, from the canada, to fade out utterly on the hot June plain.
It was thickly bordered with willows and alders, that made an arbored
and feasible path through the dense woods and undergrowth.  He
continued along it as if aimlessly; stopping from time to time to look
at different objects in a dull mechanical fashion, as if rather to
prolong his useless hours, than from any curious instinct, and to
occasionally dip in the unfrequent pools of water the few crusts of
bread he had taken from his pocket. Even this appeared to be suggested
more by coincidence of material in the bread and water, than from the
promptings of hunger.  At last he reached a cup-like hollow in the
hills lined with wild clover and thick with resinous odors.  Here he
crept under a manzanita-bush and disposed himself to sleep.  The act
showed he was already familiar with the local habits of his class, who
used the unfailing dry starlit nights for their wanderings, and spent
the hours of glaring sunshine asleep or resting in some wayside shadow.

Meanwhile the light quickened, and gradually disclosed the form and
outline of the adjacent domain.  An avenue cut through a park-like
wood, carefully cleared of the undergrowth of gigantic ferns peculiar
to the locality, led to the entrance of the canada.  Here began a vast
terrace of lawn, broken up by enormous bouquets of flower-beds
bewildering in color and profusion, from which again rose the flowering
vines and trailing shrubs that hid pillars, veranda, and even the long
facade of a great and dominant mansion. But the delicacy of floral
outlines running to the capitals of columns and at times mounting to
the pediment of the roof, the opulence of flashing color or the massing
of tropical foliage, could not deprive it of the imperious dignity of
size and space. Much of this was due to the fact that the original
casa--an adobe house of no mean pretensions, dating back to the early
Spanish occupation--had been kept intact, sheathed in a shell of
dark-red wood, and still retaining its patio; or inner court-yard,
surrounded by low galleries, while additions, greater in extent than
the main building, had been erected--not as wings and projections, but
massed upon it on either side, changing its rigid square outlines to a
vague parallelogram.  While the patio retained the Spanish conception
of al fresco seclusion, a vast colonnade of veranda on the southern
side was a concession to American taste, and its breadth gave that
depth of shadow to the inner rooms which had been lost in the thinner
shell of the new erection.  Its cloistered gloom was lightened by the
red fires of cardinal flowers dropping from the roof, by the yellow
sunshine of the jessamine creeping up the columns, by billows of
heliotropes breaking over its base as a purple sea.  Nowhere else did
the opulence of this climate of blossoms show itself as vividly.  Even
the Castilian roses, that grew as vines along the east front, the
fuchsias, that attained the dignity of trees, in the patio, or the four
or five monster passion-vines that bestarred the low western wall, and
told over and over again their mystic story--paled before the sensuous
glory of the south veranda.

As the sun arose, that part of the quiet house first touched by its
light seemed to waken.  A few lounging peons and servants made their
appearance at the entrance of the patio, occasionally reinforced by an
earlier life from the gardens and stables.  But the south facade of the
building had not apparently gone to bed at all: lights were still
burning dimly in the large ball-room; a tray with glasses stood upon
the veranda near one of the open French windows, and further on, a
half-shut yellow fan lay like a fallen leaf.  The sound of
carriage-wheels on the gravel terrace brought with it voices and
laughter and the swiftly passing vision of a char-a-bancs filled with
muffled figures bending low to avoid the direct advances of the sun.

As the carriage rolled away, four men lounged out of a window on the
veranda, shading their eyes against the level beams.  One was still in
evening dress, and one in the uniform of a captain of artillery; the
others had already changed their gala attire, the elder of the party
having assumed those extravagant tweeds which the tourist from Great
Britain usually offers as a gentle concession to inferior yet more
florid civilization.  Nevertheless, he beamed back heartily on the sun,
and remarked, in a pleasant Scotch accent, that:  Did they know it was
very extraordinary how clear the morning was, so free from clouds and
mist and fog?  The young man in evening dress fluently agreed to the
facts, and suggested, in idiomatic French-English, that one
comprehended that the bed was an insult to one's higher nature and an
ingratitude to their gracious hostess, who had spread out this lovely
garden and walks for their pleasure; that nothing was more beautiful
than the dew sparkling on the rose, or the matin song of the little
birds.

The other young man here felt called upon to point out the fact that
there was no dew in California, and that the birds did not sing in that
part of the country.  The foreign young gentleman received this
statement with pain and astonishment as to the fact, with passionate
remorse as to his own ignorance.  But still, as it was a charming day,
would not his gallant friend, the Captain here, accept the challenge of
the brave Englishman, and "walk him" for the glory of his flag and a
thousand pounds?

The gallant Captain, unfortunately, believed that if he walked out in
his uniform he would suffer some delay from being interrogated by
wayfarers as to the locality of the circus he would be pleasantly
supposed to represent, even if he escaped being shot as a rare
California bird by the foreign sporting contingent.  In these
circumstances, he would simply lounge around the house until his
carriage was ready.

Much as it pained him to withdraw from such amusing companions, the
foreign young gentleman here felt that he, too, would retire for the
present to change his garments, and glided back through the window at
the same moment that the young officer carelessly stepped from the
veranda and lounged towards the shrubbery.

"They've been watching each other for the last hour.  I wonder what's
up?" said the young man who remained.

The remark, without being confidential, was so clearly the first
sentence of natural conversation that the Scotchman, although relieved,
said, "Eh, man?" a little cautiously.

"It's as clear as this sunshine that Captain Carroll and Garnier are
each particularly anxious to know what the other is doing or intends to
do this morning."

"Why did they separate, then?" asked the other.

"That's a mere blind.  Garnier's looking through his window now at
Carroll, and Carroll is aware of it."

"Eh!" said the Scotchman, with good-humored curiosity.  "Is it a
quarrel?  Nothing serious, I hope.  No revolvers and bowie-knives, man,
before breakfast, eh?"

"No," laughed the younger man.  "No!  To do Maruja justice, she
generally makes a fellow too preposterous to fight.  I see you don't
understand.  You're a stranger; I'm an old habitue of the house--let me
explain.  Both of these men are in love with Maruja; or, worse than
that, they firmly believe her to be in love with THEM."

"But Miss Maruja is the eldest daughter of our hostess, is she not?"
said the Scotchman; "and I understood from one of the young ladies that
the Captain had come down from the Fort particularly to pay court to
Miss Amita, the beauty."

"Possibly.  But that wouldn't prevent Maruja from flirting with him."

"Eh! but are you not mistaken, Mr. Raymond?  Certainly a more quiet,
modest, and demure young lassie I never met."

"That's because she sat out two waltzes with you, and let you do the
talking, while she simply listened."

The elder man's fresh color for an instant heightened, but he recovered
himself with a good-humored laugh.  "Likely--likely. She's a capital
good listener."

"You're not the first man that found her eloquent.  Stanton, your
banking friend, who never talks of anything but mines and stocks, says
she's the only woman who has any conversation; and we can all swear
that she never said two words to him the whole time she sat next to him
at dinner.  But she looked at him as if she had.  Why, man, woman, and
child all give her credit for any grace that pleases themselves.  And
why?  Because she's clever enough not to practice any one of them--as
graces.  I don't know the girl that claims less and gets more.  For
instance, you don't call her pretty?" ...

"Wait a bit.  Ye'll not get on so fast, my young friend; I'm not
prepared to say that she's not," returned the Scotchman, with
good-humored yet serious caution.

"But you would have been prepared yesterday, and have said it.  She can
produce the effect of the prettiest girl here, and without challenging
comparison.  Nobody thinks of her--everybody experiences her."

"You're an enthusiast, Mr. Raymond.  As an habitue of the house, of
course, you--"

"Oh, my time came with the rest," laughed the young man, with
unaffected frankness.  "It's about two years ago now."

"I see--you were not a marrying man."

"Pardon me--it was because I was."

The Scotchman looked at him curiously.

"Maruja is an heiress.  I am a mining engineer."

"But, my dear fellow, I thought that in your country--"

"In MY country, yes.  But we are standing on a bit of old Spain. This
land was given to Dona Maria Saltonstall's ancestors by Charles V.
Look around you.  This veranda, this larger shell of the ancient casa,
is the work of the old Salem whaling captain that she married, and is
all that is American here.  But the heart of the house, as well as the
life that circles around the old patio, is Spanish.  The Dona's family,
the Estudillos and Guitierrez, always looked down upon this alliance
with the Yankee captain, though it brought improvement to the land, and
increased its value forty-fold, and since his death ever opposed any
further foreign intervention.  Not that that would weigh much with
Maruja if she took a fancy to any one; Spanish as she is throughout, in
thought and grace and feature, there is enough of the old Salem
witches' blood in her to defy law and authority in following an
unhallowed worship.  There are no sons; she is the sole heiress of the
house and estate--though, according to the native custom, her sisters
will be separately portioned from the other property, which is very
large."

"Then the Captain might still make a pretty penny on Amita," said the
Scotchman.

"If he did not risk and lose it all on Maruja.  There is enough of the
old Spanish jealousy in the blood to make even the gentle Amita never
forgive his momentary defection."

Something in his manner made the Scotchman think that Raymond spoke
from baleful experience.  How else could this attractive young fellow,
educated abroad and a rising man in his profession, have failed to
profit by his contiguity to such advantages, and the fact of his being
an evident favorite?

"But with this opposition on the part of the relatives to any further
alliances with your countrymen, why does our hostess expose her
daughters to their fascinating influence?" said the elder man, glancing
at his companion.  "The girls seem to have the usual American freedom."

"Perhaps they are therefore the less likely to give it up to the first
man who asks them.  But the Spanish duenna still survives in the
family--the more awful because invisible.  It's a mysterious fact that
as soon as a fellow becomes particularly attached to any one--except
Maruja--he receives some intimation from Pereo."

"What! the butler?  That Indian-looking fellow?  A servant?"

"Pardon me--the mayordomo.  The old confidential servitor who stands in
loco parentis.  No one knows what he says.  If the victim appeals to
the mistress, she is indisposed; you know she has such bad health.  If
in his madness he makes a confidante of Maruja, that finishes him."

"How?"

"Why, he ends by transferring his young affections to her--with the
usual result."

"Then you don't think our friend the Captain has had this confidential
butler ask his intentions yet?"

"I don't think it will be necessary," said the other, dryly.

"Umph!  Meantime, the Captain has just vanished through yon shrubbery.
I suppose that's the end of the mysterious espionage you have
discovered.  No!  De'il take it! but there's that Frenchman popping out
of the myrtlebush.  How did the fellow get there?  And, bless me!
here's our lassie, too!"

"Yes!" said Raymond, in a changed voice, "It's Maruja!"

She had approached so noiselessly along the bank that bordered the
veranda, gliding from pillar to pillar as she paused before each to
search for some particular flower, that both men felt an uneasy
consciousness.  But she betrayed no indication of their presence by
look or gesture.  So absorbed and abstracted she seemed that, by a
common instinct, they both drew nearer the window, and silently waited
for her to pass or recognize them.

She halted a few paces off to fasten a flower in her girdle.  A small
youthful figure, in a pale yellow dress, lacking even the maturity of
womanly outline.  The full oval of her face, the straight line of her
back, a slight boyishness in the contour of her hips, the infantine
smallness of her sandaled feet and narrow hands, were all suggestive of
fresh, innocent, amiable youth--and nothing more.

Forgetting himself, the elder man mischievously crushed his companion
against the wall in mock virtuous indignation.  "Eh, sir," he
whispered, with an accent that broadened with his feelings.  "Eh, but
look at the puir wee lassie!  Will ye no be ashamed o' yerself for
putting the tricks of a Circe on sic a honest gentle bairn?  Why, man,
you'll be seein' the sign of a limb of Satan in a bit thing with the
mother's milk not yet out of her! She a flirt, speerin' at men, with
that modest downcast air?  I'm ashamed of ye, Mister Raymond.  She's
only thinking of her breakfast, puir thing, and not of yon callant.
Another sacrilegious word and I'll expose you to her.  Have ye no pity
on youth and innocence?"

"Let me up," groaned Raymond, feebly, "and I'll tell you how old she
is.  Hush--she's looking."

The two men straightened themselves.  She had, indeed, lifted her eyes
towards the window.  They were beautiful eyes, and charged with
something more than their own beauty.  With a deep brunette setting
even to the darkened cornea, the pupils were blue as the sky above
them.  But they were lit with another intelligence.  The soul of the
Salem whaler looked out of the passion-darkened orbits of the mother,
and was resistless.

She smiled recognition of the two men with sedate girlishness and a
foreign inclination of the head over the flowers she was holding. Her
straight, curveless mouth became suddenly charming with the parting of
her lips over her white teeth, and left the impress of the smile in a
lighting of the whole face even after it had passed. Then she moved
away.  At the same moment Garnier approached her.

"Come away, man, and have our walk," said the Scotchman, seizing
Raymond's arm.  "We'll not spoil that fellow's sport."

"No; but she will, I fear.  Look, Mr. Buchanan, if she hasn't given him
her flowers to carry to the house while she waits here for the Captain!"

"Come away, scoffer!" said Buchanan, good-humoredly, locking his arm in
the young man's and dragging him from the veranda towards the avenue,
"and keep your observations for breakfast."

CHAPTER II

In the mean time, the young officer, who had disappeared in the
shrubbery, whether he had or had not been a spectator of the scene,
exhibited some signs of agitation.  He walked rapidly on, occasionally
switching the air with a wand of willow, from which he had impatiently
plucked the leaves, through an alley of ceanothus, until he reached a
little thicket of evergreens, which seemed to oppose his further
progress.  Turning to one side, however, he quickly found an entrance
to a labyrinthine walk, which led him at last to an open space and a
rustic summer-house that stood beneath a gnarled and venerable
pear-tree.  The summerhouse was a quaint stockade of dark madrono
boughs thatched with red-wood bark, strongly suggestive of deeper
woodland shadow.  But in strange contrast, the floor, table, and
benches were thickly strewn with faded rose-leaves, scattered as if in
some riotous play of children.  Captain Carroll brushed them aside
hurriedly with his impatient foot, glanced around hastily, then threw
himself on the rustic bench at full length and twisted his mustache
between his nervous fingers.  Then he rose as suddenly, with a few
white petals impaled on his gilded spurs and stepped quickly into the
open sunlight.

He must have been mistaken!  Everything was quiet around him, the
far-off sound of wheels in the avenue came faintly, but nothing more.

His eye fell upon the pear-tree, and even in his preoccupation he was
struck with the signs of its extraordinary age.  Twisted out of all
proportion, and knotted with excrescences, it was supported by iron
bands and heavy stakes, as if to prop up its senile decay.  He tried to
interest himself in the various initials and symbols deeply carved in
bark, now swollen and half obliterated.  As he turned back to the
summer-house, he for the first time noticed that the ground rose behind
it into a long undulation, on the crest of which the same singular
profusion of rose-leaves were scattered. It struck him as being
strangely like a gigantic grave, and that the same idea had occurred to
the fantastic dispenser of the withered flowers.  He was still looking
at it, when a rustle in the undergrowth made his heart beat
expectantly.  A slinking gray shadow crossed the undulation and
disappeared in the thicket.  It was a coyote.  At any other time the
extraordinary appearance of this vivid impersonation of the wilderness,
so near a centre of human civilization and habitation, would have
filled him with wonder.  But he had room for only a single thought now.
Would SHE come?

Five minutes passed.  He no longer waited in the summer-house, but
paced impatiently before the entrance to the labyrinth.  Another five
minutes.  He was deceived, undoubtedly.  She and her sisters were
probably waiting for him and laughing at him on the lawn.  He ground
his heel into the clover, and threw his switch into the thicket.  Yet
he would give her one--only one moment more.

"Captain Carroll!"

The voice had been and was to HIM the sweetest in the world; but even a
stranger could not have resisted the spell of its musical inflection.
He turned quickly.  She was advancing towards him from the summer-house.

"Did you think I was coming that way--where everybody could follow me?"
she laughed, softly.  "No; I came through the thicket over there,"
indicating the direction with her flexible shoulder, "and nearly lost
my slipper and my eyes--look!"  She threw back the inseparable lace
shawl from her blond head, and showed a spray of myrtle clinging like a
broken wreath to her forehead.  The young officer remained gazing at
her silently.

"I like to hear you speak my name," he said, with a slight hesitation
in his breath.  "Say it again."

"Car-roll, Car-roll, Car-roll," she murmured gently to herself two or
three times, as if enjoying her own native trilling of the r's. "It's a
pretty name.  It sounds like a song.  Don Carroll, eh!  El Capitan Don
Carroll."

"But my first name is Henry," he said, faintly.

"'Enry--that's not so good.  Don Enrico will do.  But El Capitan
Carroll is best of all.  I must have it always: El Capitan Carroll!"

"Always?"  He colored like a boy.

"Why not?"  He was confusedly trying to look through her brown lashes;
she was parrying him with the steel of her father's glance. "Come!
Well!  Captain Carroll!  It was not to tell me your name--that I knew
already was pretty--Car-roll!" she murmured again, caressing him with
her lashes; "it was not for this that you asked me to meet you face to
face in this--cold"--she made a movement of drawing her lace over her
shoulders--"cold daylight.  That belonged to the lights and the dance
and the music of last night.  It is not for this you expect me to leave
my guests, to run away from Monsieur Garnier, who pays compliments, but
whose name is not pretty--from Mr. Raymond, who talks OF me when he
can't talk TO me. They will say, This Captain Carroll could say all
that before them."

"But if they knew," said the young officer, drawing closer to her with
a paling face but brightening eyes, "if they knew I had anything else
to say, Miss Saltonstall--something--pardon me--did I hurt your
hand?--something for HER alone--is there one of them that would have
the right to object?  Do not think me foolish, Miss Saltonstall--but--I
beg--I implore you to tell me before I say more."

"Who would have a right?" said Maruja, withdrawing her hand but not her
dangerous eyes.  "Who would dare forbid you talking to me of my sister?
I have told you that Amita is free--as we all are."

Captain Carroll fell back a few steps and gazed at her with a troubled
face.  "It is possible that you have misunderstood, Miss Saltonstall?"
he faltered.  "Do you still think it is Amita that I"--he stopped and
added passionately, "Do you remember what I told you?--have you
forgotten last night?"

"Last night was--last night!" said Maruja, slightly lifting her
shoulders.  "One makes love at night--one marries in daylight.  In the
music, in the flowers, in the moonlight, one says everything; in the
morning one has breakfast--when one is not asked to have councils of
war with captains and commandantes.  You would speak of my sister,
Captain Car-roll--go on.  Dona Amita Carroll sounds very, very pretty.
I shall not object."  She held out both her hands to him, threw her
head back, and smiled.

He seized her hands passionately.  "No, no! you shall hear me--you
shall understand me.  I love YOU, Maruja--you, and you alone.  God
knows I can not help it--God knows I would not help it if I could. Hear
me.  I will be calm.  No one can hear us where we stand.  I am not mad.
I am not a traitor!  I frankly admired your sister.  I came here to see
her.  Beyond that, I swear to you, I am guiltless to her--to you.  Even
she knows no more of me than that.  I saw you, Maruja.  From that
moment I have thought of nothing--dreamed of nothing else."

"That is--three, four, five days and one afternoon ago!  You see, I
remember.  And now you want--what?"

"To let me love you, and you only.  To let me be with you.  To let me
win you in time, as you should be won.  I am not mad, though I am
desperate.  I know what is due to your station and mine--even while I
dare to say I love you.  Let me hope, Maruja, I only ask to hope."

She looked at him until she had absorbed all the burning fever of his
eyes, until her ears tingled with his passionate voice, and then--she
shook her head.

"It can not be, Carroll--no! never!"

He drew himself up under the blow with such simple and manly dignity
that her eyes dropped for the moment.  "There is another, then?" he
said, sadly.

"There is no one I care for better than you.  No!  Do not be foolish.
Let me go.  I tell you that because you can be nothing to me--you
understand, to ME.  To my sister Amita, yes."

The young soldier raised his head coldly.  "I have pressed you hard,
Miss Saltonstall--too hard, I know, for a man who has already had his
answer; but I did not deserve this.  Good-by."

"Stop," she said, gently.  "I meant not to hurt you, Captain Carroll.
If I had, it is not thus I would have done.  I need not have met you
here.  Would you have loved me the less if I had avoided this meeting?"

He could not reply.  In the depths of his miserable heart, he knew that
he would have loved her the same.

"Come," she said, laying her hand softly on his arm, "do not be angry
with me for putting you back only five days to where you were when you
first entered our house.  Five days is not much of happiness or sorrow
to forget, is it, Carroll--Captain Carroll?" Her voice died away in a
faint sigh.  "Do not be angry with me, if--knowing you could be nothing
more--I wanted you to love my sister, and my sister to love you.  We
should have been good friends--such good friends."

"Why do you say, 'Knowing it could he nothing more'?" said Carroll,
grasping her hand suddenly.  "In the name of Heaven, tell me what you
mean!"

"I mean I can not marry unless I marry one of my mother's race. That is
my mother's wish, and the will of her relations.  You are an American,
not of Spanish blood."

"But surely this is not your determination?"

She shrugged her shoulders.  "What would you?  It is the determination
of my people."

"But knowing this"--he stopped; the quick blood rose to his face.

"Go on, Captain Carroll.  You would say, Knowing this, why did I not
warn you?  Why did I not say to you when we first met, You have come to
address my sister; do not fall in love with me--I can not marry a
foreigner."

"You are cruel, Maruja.  But, if that is all, surely this prejudice can
be removed?  Why, your mother married a foreigner--an American."

"Perhaps that is why," said the girl, quietly.  She cast down her long
lashes, and with the point of her satin slipper smoothed out the soft
leaves of the clover at her feet.  "Listen; shall I tell you the story
of our house?  Stop! some one is coming.  Don't move; remain as you
are.  If you care for me, Carroll, collect yourself, and don't let that
man think he has found US ridiculous."  Her voice changed from its tone
of slight caressing pleading to one of suppressed pride.  "HE will not
laugh much, Captain Carroll; truly, no."

The figure of Garnier, bright, self-possessed, courteous, appeared at
the opening of the labyrinth.  Too well-bred to suggest, even in
complimentary raillery, a possible sentimental situation, his
politeness went further.  It was so kind in them to guide an awkward
stranger by their voices to the places where he could not stupidly
intrude!

"You are just in time to interrupt or to hear a story that I have been
threatening to tell," she said, composedly; "an old Spanish legend of
this house.  You are in the majority now, you two, and can stop me if
you choose.  Thank you.  I warn you it is stupid; it isn't new; but it
has the excuse of being suggested by this very spot."  She cast a quick
look of subtle meaning at Carroll, and throughout her recital appealed
more directly to him, in a manner delicately yet sufficiently marked to
partly soothe his troubled spirit.

"Far back, in the very old times, Caballeros," said Maruja, standing by
the table in mock solemnity, and rapping upon it with her fan, "this
place was the home of the coyote.  Big and little, father and mother,
Senor and Senora Coyotes, and the little muchacho coyotes had their
home in the dark canada, and came out over these fields, yellow with
wild oats and red with poppies, to seek their prey.  They were happy.
For why?  They were the first; they had no history, you comprehend, no
tradition.  They married as they liked" (with a glance at Carroll),
"nobody objected; they increased and multiplied.  But the plains were
fertile; the game was plentiful; it was not fit that it should be for
the beasts alone.  And so, in the course of time, an Indian chief, a
heathen, Koorotora, built his wigwam here."

"I beg your pardon," said Garnier, in apparent distress, "but I caught
the gentleman's name imperfectly."

Fully aware that the questioner only wished to hear again her musical
enunciation of the consonants, she repeated, "Koorotora," with an
apologetic glance at Carroll, and went on.  "This gentleman had no
history or tradition to bother him, either; whatever Senor Coyote
thought of the matter, he contented himself with robbing Senor
Koorotora's wigwam when he could, and skulking around the Indian's camp
at night.  The old chief prospered, and made many journeys round the
country, but always kept his camp here.  This lasted until the time
when the holy Fathers came from the South, and Portala, as you have all
read, uplifted the wooden Cross on the sea-coast over there, and left
it for the heathens to wonder at. Koorotora saw it on one of his
journeys, and came back to the canada full of this wonder.  Now,
Koorotora had a wife."

"Ah, we shall commence now.  We are at the beginning.  This is better
than Senora Coyota," said Garnier, cheerfully.

"Naturally, she was anxious to see the wonderful object.  She saw it,
and she saw the holy Fathers, and they converted her against the
superstitious heathenish wishes of her husband.  And more than that,
they came here--"

"And converted the land also; is it not so?  It was a lovely site for a
mission," interpolated Garnier, politely.

"They built a mission and brought as many of Koorotora's people as they
could into the sacred fold.  They brought them in in a queer fashion
sometimes, it is said; dragoons from the Presidio, Captain Carroll,
lassoing them and bringing them in at the tails of their horses.  All
except Koorotora.  He defied them; he cursed them and his wife in his
wicked heathenish fashion, and said that they too should lose the
mission through the treachery of some woman, and that the coyote should
yet prowl through the ruined walls of the church.  The holy Fathers
pitied the wicked man--and built themselves a lovely garden.  Look at
that pear-tree!  There is all that is left of it!"

She turned with a mock heroic gesture, and pointed her fan to the
pear-tree.  Garnier lifted his hands in equally simulated wonder. A
sudden recollection of the coyote of the morning recurred to Carroll
uneasily.  "And the Indians," he said, with an effort to shake off the
feeling; "they, too, have vanished."

"All that remained of them is in yonder mound.  It is the grave of the
chief and his people.  He never lived to see the fulfillment of his
prophecy.  For it was a year after his death that our ancestor, Manuel
Guitierrez, came from old Spain to the Presidio with a grant of twenty
leagues to settle where he chose.  Dona Maria Guitierrez took a fancy
to the canada.  But it was a site already in possession of the Holy
Church.  One night, through treachery, it was said, the guards were
withdrawn and the Indians entered the mission, slaughtered the lay
brethren, and drove away the priests. The Commandant at the Presidio
retook the place from the heathens, but on representation to the
Governor that it was indefensible for the peaceful Fathers without a
large military guard, the official ordered the removal of the mission
to Santa Cruz, and Don Manuel settled his twenty leagues grant in the
canada.  Whether he or Dona Maria had anything to do with the Indian
uprising, no one knows; but Father Pedro never forgave them.  He is
said to have declared at the foot of the altar that the curse of the
Church was on the land, and that it should always pass into the hands
of the stranger."

"And that was long ago, and the property is still in the family," said
Carroll, hurriedly, answering Maruja's eyes.

"In the last hundred years there have been no male heirs," continued
Maruja, still regarding Carroll.  "When my mother, who was the eldest
daughter, married Don Jose Saltonstall against the wishes of the
family, it was said that the curse would fall.  Sure enough,
Caballeros, it was that year that the forged grants of Micheltorrena
were discovered; and in our lawsuit your government, Captain, handed
over ten leagues of the llano land to the Doctor West, our neighbor."

"Ah, the gray-headed gentleman who lunched here the other day?  You are
friends, then?  You bear no malice?" said Garnier.

"What would you?" said Maruja, with a slight shrug of her shoulders.
"He paid his money to the forger.  Your corregidores upheld him, and
said it was no forgery," she continued, to Carroll.

In spite of the implied reproach, Carroll felt relieved.  He began to
be impatient of Garnier's presence, and longed to renew his suit.
Perhaps his face showed something of this, for Maruja added, with mock
demureness, "It's always dreadful to be the eldest sister; but think
what it is to be in the direct line of a curse! Now, there's
Amita--SHE'S free to do as she likes, with no family responsibility;
while poor me!"  She dropped her eyes, but not until they had again
sought and half-reproved the brightening eyes of Carroll.

"But," said Garnier, with a sudden change from his easy security and
courteous indifference to an almost harsh impatience, "you do not mean
to say, Mademoiselle, that you have the least belief in this rubbish,
this ridiculous canard?"

Maruja's straight mouth quickly tightened over her teeth.  She shot a
significant glance at Carroll, but instantly resumed her former manner.

"It matters little what a foolish girl like myself believes.  The rest
of the family, even the servants and children, all believe it. It is a
part of their religion.  Look at these flowers around the pear-tree,
and scattered on that Indian mound.  They regularly find their way
there on saints' days and festas.  THEY are not rubbish, Monsieur
Garnier; they are propitiatory sacrifices.  Pereo would believe that a
temblor would swallow up the casa if we should ever forego these
customary rites.  Is it a mere absurdity that forced my father to build
these modern additions around the heart of the old adobe house, leaving
it untouched, so that the curse might not be fulfilled even by
implication?"

She had assumed an air of such pretty earnestness and passion; her
satin face was illuminated as by some softly sensuous light within more
bewildering than mere color, that Garnier, all devoted eyes and
courteous blandishment, broke out: "But this curse must fall harmlessly
before the incarnation of blessing; Miss Saltonstall has no more to
fear than the angels.  She is the one predestined through her charm,
through her goodness, to lift it forever."

Carroll could not have helped echoing the aspirations of his rival, had
not the next words of his mistress thrilled him with superstitious
terror.

"A thousand thanks, Senor.  Who knows?  But I shall have warning when
it falls.  A day or two before the awful invader arrives, a coyote
suddenly appears in broad daylight, mysteriously, near the casa.  This
midnight marauder, now banished to the thickest canyon, comes again to
prowl around the home of his ancestors.  Caramba! Senor Captain, what
are you staring at?  You frighten me!  Stop it, I say!"

She had turned upon him, stamping her little foot in quite a
frightened, childlike way.

"Nothing," laughed Carroll, the quick blood returning to his cheek.
"But you must not be angry with one for being quite carried away with
your dramatic intensity.  By Jove!  I thought I could see the WHOLE
thing while you were speaking--the old Indian, the priest, and the
coyote!"  His eyes sparkled.  The wild thought had occurred to him that
perhaps, in spite of himself, he was the young woman's predestined
fate; and in the very selfishness of his passion he smiled at the mere
material loss of lands and prestige that would follow it.  "Then the
coyote has always preceded some change in the family fortunes?" he
asked, boldly.

"On my mother's wedding-day," said Maruja, in a lower voice, "after the
party had come from church to supper in the old casa, my father asked,
'What dog is that under the table?'  When they lifted the cloth to
look, a coyote rushed from the very midst of the guests and dashed out
across the patio.  No one knew how or when he entered."

"Heaven grant that we do not find he has eaten our breakfast!" said
Garnier, gayly, "for I judge it is waiting us.  I hear your sister's
voice among the others crossing the lawn.  Shall we tear ourselves away
from the tombs of our ancestors, and join them?"

"Not as I am looking now, thank you," said Maruja, throwing the lace
over her head.  "I shall not submit myself to a comparison of their
fresher faces and toilets by you two gentlemen.  Go you both and join
them.  I shall wait and say an Ave for the soul of Koorotora, and slip
back alone the way I came."

She had steadily evaded the pleading glance of Carroll, and though her
bright face and unblemished toilet showed the inefficiency of her
excuse, it was evident that her wish to be alone was genuine and
without coquetry.  They could only lift their hats and turn regretfully
away.

As the red cap of the young officer disappeared amidst the evergreen
foliage, the young woman uttered a faint sigh, which she repeated a
moment after as a slight nervous yawn.  Then she opened and shut her
fan once or twice, striking the sticks against her little pale palm,
and then, gathering the lace under her oval chin with one hand, and
catching her fan and skirt with the other, bent her head and dipped
into the bushes.  She came out on the other side near a low fence, that
separated the park from a narrow lane which communicated with the high
road beyond.  As she neared the fence, a slinking figure limped along
the lane before her.  It was the tramp of the early morning.

They raised their heads at the same moment and their eyes met.  The
tramp, in that clearer light, showed a spare, but bent figure, roughly
clad in a miner's shirt and canvas trousers, splashed and streaked with
soil, and half hidden in a ragged blue cast-off army overcoat lazily
hanging from one shoulder.  His thin sun-burnt face was not without a
certain sullen, suspicious intelligence, and a look of half-sneering
defiance.  He stopped, as a startled, surly animal might have stopped
at some unusual object, but did not exhibit any other discomposure.
Maruja stopped at the same moment on her side of the fence.

The tramp looked at her deliberately, and then slowly lowered his eyes.
"I'm looking for the San Jose road, hereabouts.  Ye don't happen to
know it?" he said, addressing himself to the top of the fence.

It had been said that it was not Maruja's way to encounter man, woman,
or child, old or young, without an attempt at subjugation. Strong in
her power and salient with fascination, she leaned gently over the
fence, and with the fan raised to her delicate ear, made him repeat his
question under the soft fire of her fringed eyes. He did so, but
incompletely, and with querulous laziness.

"Lookin'--for--San Jose road--here'bouts."

"The road to San Jose," said Maruja, with gentle slowness, as if not
unwilling to protract the conversation, "is about two miles from here.
It is the high road to the left fronting the plain. There is another
way, if--"

"Don't want it!  Mornin'."

He dropped his head suddenly forward, and limped away in the sunlight.

Breakfast, usually a movable feast at La Mision Perdida, had been
prolonged until past midday; the last of the dance guests had flown,
and the home party--with the exception of Captain Carroll, who had
returned to duty at his distant post--were dispersing; some as riding
cavalcades to neighboring points of interest; some to visit certain
notable mansions which the wealth of a rapid civilization had erected
in that fertile valley.  One of these in particular, the work of a
breathless millionaire, was famous for the spontaneity of its growth
and the reckless extravagance of its appointments.

"If you go to Aladdin's Palace," said Maruja, from the top step of the
south porch, to a wagonette of guests, "after you've seen the stables
with mahogany fittings for one hundred horses, ask Aladdin to show you
the enchanted chamber, inlaid with California woods and paved with gold
quartz."

"We would have a better chance if the Princess of China would only go
with us," pleaded Garnier, gallantly.

"The Princess will stay at home with her mother, like a good girl,"
returned Maruja, demurely.

"A bad shot of Garnier's this time," whispered Raymond to Buchanan, as
the vehicle rolled away with them.  "The Princess is not likely to
visit Aladdin again."

"Why?"

"The last time she was there, Aladdin was a little too Persian in his
extravagance: offered her his house, stables, and himself."

"Not a bad catch--why, he's worth two millions, I hear."

"Yes; but his wife is as extravagant as himself."

"His WIFE, eh?  Ah, are you serious; or must you say something
derogatory of the lassie's admirers too?" said Buchanan, playfully
threatening him with his cane.  "Another word, and I'll throw you from
the wagon."

After their departure, the outer shell of the great house fell into a
profound silence, so hollow and deserted that one might have thought
the curse of Koorotora had already descended upon it.  Dead leaves of
roses and fallen blossoms from the long line of vine-wreathed columns
lay thick on the empty stretch of brown veranda, or rustled and crept
against the sides of the house, where the regular breath of the
afternoon "trades" began to arise.  A few cardinal flowers fell like
drops of blood before the open windows of the vacant ball-room, in
which the step of a solitary servant echoed faintly.  It was Maruja's
maid, bringing a note to her young mistress, who, in a flounced morning
dress, leaned against the window.  Maruja took it, glanced at it
quietly, folded it in a long fold, and put it openly in her belt.
Captain Carroll, from whom it came, might have carried one of his
despatches as methodically. The waiting-woman noticed the act, and was
moved to suggest some more exciting confidences.

"The Dona Maruja has, without doubt, noticed the bouquet on her
dressing-room table from the Senor Garnier?"

The Dona Maruja had.  The Dona Maruja had also learned with pain that,
bribed by Judas-like coin, Faquita had betrayed the secrets of her
wardrobe to the extent of furnishing a ribbon from a certain yellow
dress to the Senor Buchanan to match with a Chinese fan. This was
intolerable!

Faquita writhed in remorse, and averred that through this solitary act
she had dishonored her family.

The Dona Maruja, however, since it was so, felt that the only thing
left to do was to give her the polluted dress, and trust that the Devil
might not fly away with her.

Leaving the perfectly consoled Faquita, Maruja crossed the large hall,
and, opening a small door, entered a dark passage through the thick
adobe wall of the old casa, and apparently left the present century
behind her.  A peaceful atmosphere of the past surrounded her not only
in the low vaulted halls terminating in grilles or barred windows; not
only in the square chambers whose dark rich but scanty furniture was
only a foil to the central elegance of the lace-bordered bed and
pillows; but in a certain mysterious odor of dried and desiccated
religious respectability that penetrated everywhere, and made the
grateful twilight redolent of the generations of forgotten Guitierrez
who had quietly exhaled in the old house.  A mist as of incense and
flowers that had lost their first bloom veiled the vista of the long
corridor, and made the staring blue sky, seen through narrow windows
and loopholes, glitter like mirrors let into the walls.  The chamber
assigned to the young ladies seemed half oratory and half
sleeping-room, with a strange mingling of the convent in the bare white
walls, hung only with crucifixes and religious emblems, and of the
seraglio in the glimpses of lazy figures, reclining in the deshabille
of short silken saya, low camisa, and dropping slippers.  In a broad
angle of the corridor giving upon the patio, its balustrade hung with
brightly colored serapes and shawls, surrounded by voluble domestics
and relations, the mistress of the casa half reclined in a hammock and
gave her noonday audience.

Maruja pushed her way through the clustered stools and cushions to her
mother's side, kissed her on the forehead, and then lightly perched
herself like a white dove on the railing.  Mrs. Saltonstall, a dark,
corpulent woman, redeemed only from coarseness by a certain softness of
expression and refinement of gesture, raised her heavy brown eyes to
her daughter's face.

"You have not been to bed, Mara?"

"No, dear.  Do I look it?"

"You must lie down presently.  They tell me that Captain Carroll
returned suddenly this morning."

"Do you care?"

"Who knows?  Amita does not seem to fancy Jose, Esteban, Jorge, or any
of her cousins.  She won't look at Juan Estudillo.  The Captain is not
bad.  He is of the government.  He is--"

"Not more than ten leagues from here," said Maruja, playing with the
Captain's note in her belt.  "You can send for him, dear little mother.
He will be glad."

"You will ever talk lightly--like your father!  She was not then
grieved--our Amita--eh?"

"She and Dorotea and the two Wilsons went off with Raymond and your
Scotch friend in the wagonette.  She did not cry--to Raymond."

"Good," said Mrs. Saltonstall, leaning back in her hammock. "Raymond is
an old friend.  You had better take your siesta now, child, to be
bright for dinner.  I expect a visitor this afternoon--Dr. West."

"Again!  What will Pereo say, little mother?"

"Pereo," said the widow, sitting up again in her hammock, with
impatience, "Pereo is becoming intolerable.  The man is as mad as Don
Quixote; it is impossible to conceal his eccentric impertinence and
interference from strangers, who can not understand his confidential
position in our house or his long service.  There are no more
mayordomos, child.  The Vallejos, the Briones, the Castros, do without
them now.  Dr. West says, wisely, they are ridiculous survivals of the
patriarchal system."

"And can be replaced by intelligent strangers," interrupted Maruja,
demurely.

"The more easily if the patriarchal system has not been able to
preserve the respect due from children to parents.  No, Maruja! No; I
am offended.  Do not touch me!  And your hair is coming down, and your
eyes have rings like owls.  You uphold this fanatical Pereo because he
leaves YOU alone and stalks your poor sisters and their escorts like
the Indian, whose blood is in his veins.  The saints only can tell if
he did not disgust this Captain Carroll into flight.  He believes
himself the sole custodian of the honor of our family--that he has a
sacred mission from this Don Fulano of Koorotora to avert its fate.
Without doubt he keeps up his delusions with aguardiente, and passes
for a prophet among the silly peons and servants.  He frightens the
children with his ridiculous stories, and teaches them to decorate that
heathen mound as if it were a shrine of Our Lady of Sorrows.  He was
almost rude to Dr. West yesterday."

"But you have encouraged him in his confidential position here," said
Maruja.  "You forget, my mother, how you got him to 'duena' Euriqueta
with the Colonel Brown; how you let him frighten the young Englishman
who was too attentive to Dorotea; how you set him even upon poor
Raymond, and failed so dismally that I had to take him myself in hand."

"But if I choose to charge him with explanations that I can not make
myself without derogating from the time-honored hospitality of the
casa, that is another thing.  It is not," said Dona Maria, with a
certain massive dignity, that, inconsistent as it was with the weakness
of her argument, was not without impressiveness, "it is not yet,
Blessed Santa Maria, that we are obliged to take notice ourself of the
pretensions of every guest beneath our roof like the match-making,
daughter-selling English and Americans.  And THEN Pereo had tact and
discrimination.  Now he is mad!  There are strangers and strangers.
The whole valley is full of them--one can discriminate, since the old
families year by year are growing less."

"Surely not," said Maruja, innocently.  "There is the excellent
Ramierrez, who has lately almost taken him a wife from the singing-hall
in San Francisco; he may yet be snatched from the fire.  There is the
youthful Jose Castro, the sole padrono of our national bull-fight at
Soquel, the famous horse-breaker, and the winner of I know not how many
races.  And have we not Vincente Peralta, who will run, it is said, for
the American Congress.  He can read and write--truly I have a letter
from him here."  She turned back the folded slip of Captain Carroll's
note and discovered another below.

Mrs. Saltonstall tapped her daughter's hand with her fan.  "You jest at
them, yet you uphold Pereo!  Go, now, and sleep yourself into a better
frame of mind.  Stop!  I hear the Doctor's horse. Run and see that
Pereo receives him properly."

Maruja had barely entered the dark corridor when she came upon the
visitor,--a gray, hard-featured man of sixty,--who had evidently
entered without ceremony.  "I see you did not wait to be announced,"
she said, sweetly.  "My mother will be flattered by your impatience.
You will find her in the patio."

"Pereo did not announce me, as he was probably still under the effect
of the aguardiente he swallowed yesterday," said the Doctor, dryly.  "I
met him outside the tienda on the highway the other night, talking to a
pair of cut-throats that I would shoot on sight."

"The mayordomo has many purchases to make, and must meet a great many
people," said Maruju.  "What would you?  We can not select HIS
acquaintances; we can hardly choose our own," she added, sweetly.

The Doctor hesitated, as if to reply, and then, with a grim
"Good-morning," passed on towards the patio.  Maruja did not follow
him. Her attention was suddenly absorbed by a hitherto unnoticed
motionless figure, that seemed to be hiding in the shadow of an angle
of the passage, as if waiting for her to pass.  The keen eyes of the
daughter of Joseph Saltonstall were not deceived.  She walked directly
towards the figure, and said, sharply, "Pereo!"

The figure came hesitatingly forward into the light of the grated
window.  It was that of an old man, still tall and erect, though the
hair had disappeared from his temples, and hung in two or three
straight, long dark elf-locks on his neck.  His face, over which one of
the bars threw a sinister shadow, was the yellow of a dried
tobacco-leaf, and veined as strongly.  His garb was a strange mingling
of the vaquero and the ecclesiastic--velvet trousers, open from the
knee down, and fringed with bullion buttons; a broad red sash around
his waist, partly hidden by a long, straight chaqueta; with a circular
sacerdotal cape of black broadcloth slipped over his head through a
slit-like opening braided with gold.  His restless yellow eyes fell
before the young girl's; and the stiff, varnished, hard-brimmed
sombrero he held in his wrinkled hands trembled.

"You are spying again, Pereo," said Maruja, in another dialect than the
one she had used to her mother.  "It is unworthy of my father's trusted
servant."

"It is that man--that coyote, Dona Maruja, that is unworthy of your
father, of your mother, of YOU!" he gesticulated, in a fierce whisper.
"I, Pereo, do not spy.  I follow, follow the track of the prowling,
stealing brute until I run him down.  Yes, it was I, Pereo, who warned
your father he would not be content with the half of the land he stole!
It was I, Pereo, who warned your mother that each time he trod the soil
of La Mision Perdida he measured the land he could take away!"  He
stopped pantingly, with the insane abstraction of a fixed idea
glittering in his eyes.

"And it was YOU, Pereo," she said, caressingly, laying her soft hand on
his heaving breast, "YOU who carried me in your arms when I was a
child.  It was you, Pereo, who took me before you on your pinto horse
to the rodeo, when no one knew it but ourselves, my Pereo, was it not?"
He nodded his head violently.  "It was you who showed me the gallant
caballeros, the Pachecos, the Castros, the Alvarados, the Estudillos,
the Peraltas, the Vallejos."  His head kept time with each name as the
fire dimmed in his wet eyes.  "You made me promise I would not forget
them for the Americanos who were here.  Good!  That was years ago!  I
am older now.  I have seen many Americans.  Well, I am still free!"

He caught her hand, and raised it to his lips with a gesture almost
devotional.  His eyes softened; as the exaltation of passion passed,
his voice dropped into the querulousness of privileged age. "Ah,
yes!--you, the first-born, the heiress--of a verity, yes!  You were
ever a Guitierrez.  But the others?  Eh, where are they now? And it was
always: 'Eh, Pereo, what shall we do to-day?  Pereo, good Pereo, we are
asked to ride here and there; we are expected to visit the new people
in the valley--what say you, Pereo?  Who shall we dine to-day?'  Or:
'Enquire me of this or that strange caballero--and if we may speak.'
Ah, it is but yesterday that Amita would say: 'Lend me thine own horse,
Pereo, that I may outstrip this swaggering Americano that clings ever
to my side,' ha! ha!  Or the grave Dorotea would whisper: 'Convey to
this Senor Presumptuous Pomposo that the daughters of Guitierrez do not
ride alone with strangers!'  Or even the little Liseta would say, he!
he!  'Why does the stranger press my foot in his great hand when he
helps me into the saddle?  Tell him that is not the way, Pereo.' Ha!
ha!"  He laughed childishly, and stopped.  "And why does Senorita Amita
now--look--complain that Pereo, old Pereo, comes between her and this
Senor Raymond---this maquinista?  Eh, and why does SHE, the lady
mother, the Castellana, shut Pereo from her councils?" he went on, with
rising excitement.  "What are these secret meetings, eh?--what these
appointments, alone with this Judas--without the family--without ME!"

"Hearken, Pereo," said the young girl, again laying her hand on the old
man's shoulder; "you have spoken truly--but you forget--the years pass.
These are no longer strangers; old friends have gone--these have taken
their place.  My father forgave the Doctor--why can not you?  For the
rest, believe in me--me--Maruja"--she dramatically touched her heart
over the international complications of the letters of Captain Carroll
and Peralta.  "I will see that the family honor does not suffer.  And
now, good Pereo, calm thyself.  Not with aguardiente, but with a bottle
of old wine from the Mision refectory that I will send to thee.  It was
given to me by thy friend, Padre Miguel, and is from the old vines that
were here.  Courage, Pereo!  And thou sayest that Amita complains that
thou comest between her and Raymond.  So!  What matter?  Let it cheer
thy heart to know that I have summoned the Peraltas, the Pachecos, the
Estudillos, all thy old friends, to dine here to-day. Thou wilt hear
the old names, even if the faces are young to thee. Courage!  Do thy
duty, old friend; let them see that the hospitality of La Mision
Perdida does not grow old, if its mayordomo does.  Faquita will bring
thee the wine.  No; not that way; thou needest not pass the patio, nor
meet that man again. Here, give me thy hand.  I will lead thee.  It
trembles, Pereo! These are not the sinews that only two years ago
pulled down the bull at Soquel with thy single lasso!  Why, look!  I
can drag thee; see!" and with a light laugh and a boyish gesture, she
half pulled, half dragged him along, until their voices were lost in
the dark corridor.

Maruja kept her word.  When the sun began to cast long shadows along
the veranda, not only the outer shell of La Mision Perdida, but the
dark inner heart of the old casa, stirred with awakened life.  Single
horsemen and carriages began to arrive; and, mingled with the modern
turnouts of the home party and the neighboring Americans, were a few of
the cumbrous vehicles and chariots of fifty years ago, drawn by gayly
trapped mules with bizarre postilions, and occasionally an outrider.
Dark faces looked from the balcony of the patio, a light cloud of
cigarette-smoke made the dark corridors the more obscure, and mingled
with the forgotten incense.  Bare-headed pretty women, with roses
starring their dark hair, wandered with childish curiosity along the
broad veranda and in and out of the French windows that opened upon the
grand saloon. Scrupulously shaved men with olive complexion, stout men
with accurately curving whiskers meeting at their dimpled chins,
lounged about with a certain unconscious dignity that made them
contentedly indifferent to any novelty of their surroundings.  For a
while the two races kept mechanically apart; but, through the tactful
gallantry of Garnier, the cynical familiarity of Raymond, and the
impulsive recklessness of Aladdin, who had forsaken his enchanted
Palace on the slightest of invitations, and returned with the party in
the hope of again seeing the Princess of China, an interchange of
civilities, of gallantries, and even of confidences, at last took
place.  Jovita Castro had heard (who had not?) of the wonders of
Aladdin's Palace, and was it of actual truth that the ladies had a
bouquet and a fan to match their dress presented to them every morning,
and that the gentlemen had a champagne cocktail sent to their rooms
before breakfast?  "Just you come, Miss, and bring your father and your
brothers, and stay a week and you'll see," responded Aladdin,
gallantly.  "Hold on!  What's your father's first name?  I'll send a
team over there for you to-morrow."  "And is it true that you
frightened the handsome Captain Carroll away from Amita?" said Dolores
Briones, over the edge of her fan to Raymond.  "Perfectly," said
Raymond, with ingenuous frankness.  "I made it a matter of life or
death.  He was a soldier, and naturally preferred the former as giving
him a better chance for promotion." "Ah! we thought it was Maruja you
liked best."  "That was two years ago," said Raymond, gravely.  "And
you Americanos can change in that time?"  "I have just experienced that
it can be done in less," he responded, over the fan, with bewildering
significance.  Nor were these confidences confined to only one
nationality.  "I always thought you Spanish gentlemen were very dark,
and wore long mustaches and a cloak," said pretty little Miss Walker,
gazing frankly into the smooth round face of the eldest Pacheco--"why,
you are as fair as I am,"  "Eaf I tink that, I am for ever mizzarable,"
he replied, with grave melancholy.  In the dead silence that followed
he was enabled to make his decorous point.  "Because I shall not ezcape
ze fate of Narcissus."  Mr. Buchanan, with the unrestrained and
irresponsible enjoyment of a traveler, entered fully into the spirit of
the scene.  He even found words of praise for Aladdin, whose
extravagance had at first seemed to him almost impious.  "Eh, but I'm
not prepared to say he is a fool, either," he remarked to his friend
the San Francisco banker.  "Those who try to pick him up for one,"
returned the banker, "will find themselves mistaken.  His is the
prodigality that loosens others' purse-strings besides his own,
Everybody contents himself with criticising his way of spending money,
but is ready to follow his way of making it."

The dinner was more formal, and when the mistress of the house, massive
in black silk, velvet and gold embroidery, moved like a pageant to the
head of her table, where she remained like a sacerdotal effigy, not
even the presence of the practical Scotchman at her side could remove
the prevailing sense of restraint.  For a while the conversation of the
relatives might have been brought with them in their antique vehicles
of fifty years ago, so faded, so worn, and so springless it was.
General Pico related the festivities at Monterey, on the occasion of
the visit of Sir George Simpson early in the present century, of which
he was an eyewitness, with great precision of detail.  Don Juan
Estudillo was comparatively frivolous, with anecdotes of Louis
Philippe, whom he had seen in Paris.  Far-seeing Pedro Guitierrez was
gloomily impressed with a Mongolian invasion of California by the
Chinese, in which the prevailing religion would be supplanted by
heathen temples, and polygamy engrafted on the Constitution.  Everybody
agreed however, that the vital question of the hour was the settlement
of land titles--Americans who claimed under preemption and the native
holders of Spanish grants were equally of the opinion.

In the midst of this the musical voice of Maruja was heard saying,
"What is a tramp?"

Raymond, on her right, was ready but not conclusive.

A tramp, if he could sing, would be a troubadour; if he could pray,
would be a pilgrim friar--in either case a natural object of womanly
solicitude.  But as he could do neither, he was simply a curse.

"And you think that is not an object of womanly solicitude?  But that
does not tell me WHAT he is."

A dozen gentlemen, swept in the radius of those softly-inquiring eyes,
here started to explain.  From them it appeared that there was no such
thing in California as a tramp, and there were also a dozen varieties
of tramp in California.

"But is he always very uncivil?" asked Maruja.

Again there were conflicting opinions.  You might have to shoot him on
sight, and you might have him invariably run from you.  When the
question was finally settled, Maruja was found to have become absorbed
in conversation with some one else.

Amita, a taller copy of Maruja, and more regularly beautiful, had built
up a little pile of bread crumbs between herself and Raymond, and was
listening to him with a certain shy, girlish interest that was as
inconsistent with the serene regularity of her face as Maruja's
self-possessed, subtle intelligence was incongruous to her youthful
figure.  Raymond's voice, when he addressed Amita, was low and earnest;
not from any significance of matter, but from its frank confidential
quality.

"They are discussing the new railroad project, and your relations are
all opposed to it; to-morrow they will each apply privately to Aladdin
for the privilege of subscribing."

"I have never seen a railroad," said Amita, slightly coloring; "but you
are an engineer, and I know they must be some thing very clever."

Notwithstanding the coolness of the night, a full moon drew the guests
to the veranda, where coffee was served, and where, mysteriously
muffled in cloaks and shawls, the party took upon itself the appearance
of groups of dominoed masqueraders, scattered along the veranda and on
the broad steps of the porch in gypsy-like encampments, from whose
cloaked shadow the moonlight occasionally glittered upon a varnished
boot or peeping satin slipper.  Two or three of these groups had
resolved themselves into detached couples, who wandered down the acacia
walk to the sound of a harp in the grand saloon or the occasional
uplifting of a thin Spanish tenor.  Two of these couples were Maruja
and Garnier, followed by Amita and Raymond.

"You are restless to-night, Maruja," said Amita, shyly endeavoring to
make a show of keeping up with her sister's boyish stride, in spite of
Raymond's reluctance.  "You are paying for your wakefulness to-day."

The same idea passed through the minds of both men.  She was missing
the excitement of Captain Carroll's presence.

"The air is so refreshing away from the house," responded Maruja, with
a bright energy that belied any suggestion of fatigue or moral
disquietude.  "I'm tired of running against those turtle-doves in the
walks and bushes.  Let us keep on to the lane.  If you are tired, Mr.
Raymond will give you his arm."

They kept on, led by the indomitable little figure, who, for once, did
not seem to linger over the attentions, both piquant and tender, with
which Garnier improved his opportunity.  Given a shadowy lane, a
lovers' moon, a pair of bright and not unkindly eyes, a charming and
not distant figure--what more could he want? Yet he wished she hadn't
walked so fast.  One might be vivacious, audacious, brilliant, at an
Indian trot; but impassioned--never! The pace increased; they were
actually hurrying.  More than that, Maruja had struck into a little
trot; her lithe body swaying from side to side, her little feet
straight as an arrow before her; accompanying herself with a quaint
musical chant, which she obligingly explained had been taught her as a
child by Pereo.  They stopped only at the hedge, where she had that
morning encountered the tramp.

There is little doubt that the rest of the party was disconcerted:
Amita, whose figure was not adapted to this Camilla-like exercise;
Raymond, who was annoyed at the poor girl's discomfiture; and Garnier,
who had lost a golden opportunity, with the faint suspicion of having
looked ridiculous.  Only Maruja's eyes, or rather the eyes of her
lamented father, seemed to enjoy it.

"You are too effeminate," she said, leaning against the fence, and
shading her eyes with her fan, as she glanced around in the staring
moonlight.  "Civilization has taken away your legs.  A man ought to be
able to trust to his feet all day, and to nothing else."

"In fact--a tramp," suggested Raymond.

"Possibly.  I think I should like to have been a gypsy, and to have
wandered about, finding a new home every night."

"And a change of linen on the early morning hedges," said Raymond. "But
do you think seriously that you and your sister are suitably clad to
commence to-night.  It is bitterly cold," he added, turning up his
collar.  "Could you begin by showing a pal the nearest haystack or
hen-roost?"

"Sybarite!"  She cast a long look over the fields and down the lane.
Suddenly she started.  "What is that?"

She pointed to a tall erect figure slowly disappearing on the other
side of the hedge.

"It's Pereo, only Pereo.  I knew him by his long serape," said Garnier,
who was nearest the hedge, complacently.  "But what is surprising, he
was not there when we came, nor did he come out of that open field.  He
must have been walking behind us on the other side of the hedge."

The eyes of the two girls sought each other simultaneously, but not
without Raymond's observant glance.  Amita's brow darkened as she moved
to her sister's side, and took her arm with a confidential pressure
that was returned.  The two men, with a vague consciousness of some
contretemps, dropped a pace behind, and began to talk to each other,
leaving the sisters to exchange a few words in a low tone as they
slowly returned to the house.

Meanwhile, Pereo's tall figure had disappeared in the shrubbery, to
emerge again in the open area by the summer-house and the old
pear-tree. The red sparks of two or three cigarettes in the shadow of
the summer-house, and the crouching forms of two shawled women came
forward to greet him.

"And what hast thou heard, Pereo?" said one of the women.

"Nothing," said Pereo, impatiently.  "I told thee I would answer for
this little primogenita with my life.  She is but leading this
Frenchman a dance, as she has led the others, and the Dona Amita and
her Raymond are but wax in her hands.  Besides, I have spoken with the
little 'Ruja to-day, and spoke my mind, Pepita, and she says there is
nothing."

"And whilst thou wert speaking to her, my poor Pereo, the devil of an
American Doctor was speaking to her mother, thy mistress--our mistress,
Pereo!  Wouldst thou know what he said?  Oh, it was nothing."

"Now, the curse of Koorotora on thee, Pepita!" said Pereo, excitedly.
"Speak, fool, if thou knowest anything!"

"Of a verity, no.  Let Faquita, then, speak: she heard it."  She
reached out her hand, and dragged Maruja's maid, not unwilling, before
the old man.

"Good!  'Tis Faquita, daughter of Gomez, and a child of the land.
Speak, little one.  What said this coyote to the mother of thy
mistress?"

"Truly, good Pereo, it was but accident that befriended me."

"Truly, for thy mistress's sake, I hoped it had been more.  But let
that go.  Come, what said he, child?"

"I was hanging up a robe behind the curtain in the oratory when Pepita
ushered in the Americano.  I had no time to fly."

"Why shouldst thou fly from a dog like this?" said one of the
cigarette-smokers who had drawn near.

"Peace!" said the old man.

"When the Dona Maria joined him they spoke of affairs.  Yes, Pereo,
she, thy mistress, spoke of affairs to this man--ay, as she might have
talked to THEE.  And, could he advise this? and could he counsel that?
and should the cattle be taken from the lower lands, and the fields
turned to grain? and had he a purchaser for Los Osos?"

"Los Osos!  It is the boundary land--the frontier--the line of the
arroyo--older than the Mision," muttered Pereo.

"Ay, and he talked of the--the--I know not what it is!--the
r-r-rail-r-road."

"The railroad," gasped the old man.  "I will tell thee what it is! It
is the cut of a burning knife through La Mision Perdida--as long as
eternity, as dividing as death.  On either side of that gash life is
blasted; wherever that cruel steel is laid the track of it is livid and
barren; it cuts down all barriers; leaps all boundaries, be they canada
or canyon; it is a torrent in the plain, a tornado in the forest; its
very pathway is destruction to whoso crosses it--man or beast; it is
the heathenish God of the Americanos; they build temples for it, and
flock there and worship it whenever it stops, breathing fire and flame
like a very Moloch."

"Eh!  St. Anthony preserve us!" said Faquita, shuddering; "and yet they
spoke of it as 'shares' and 'stocks,' and said it would double the
price of corn."

"Now, Judas pursue thee and thy railroad, Pereo," said Pepita,
impatiently.  "It is not such bagatela that Faquita is here to relate.
Go on, child, and tell all that happened."

"And then," continued Faquita, with a slight affectation of maiden
bashfulness, in the closer-drawing circle of cigarettes, "and then they
talked of other things and of themselves; and, of a verity, this
gray-bearded Doctor will play the goat and utter gallant speeches, and
speak of a lifelong devotion and of the time he should have a right to
protect--"

"The right, girl!  Didst thou say the right?  No, thou didst mistake.
It was not THAT he meant?"

"Thy life to a quarter peso that the little Faquita does not mistake,"
said the evident satirist of the household.  "Trust to Gomez' muchacha
to understand a proposal."

When the laugh was over, and the sparks of the cigarette, cleverly
whipped out of the speaker's lips by Faquita's fan, had disappeared in
the darkness, she resumed, pettishly, "I know not what you call it when
he kissed her hand and held it to his heart."

"Judas!" gasped Pereo.  "But," he added, feverishly, "she, the Dona
Maria, thy mistress, SHE summoned thee at once to call me to cast out
this dust into the open air; thou didst fly to her assistance? What!
thou sawest this, and did nothing--eh?"  He stopped, and tried to peer
into the girl's face.  "No!  Ah, I see; I am an old fool.  Yes; it was
Maruja's own mother that stood there.  He! he! he!" he laughed
piteously; "and she smiled and smiled and broke the coward's heart, as
Maruja might.  And when he was gone, she bade thee bring her water to
wash the filthy Judas stain from her hand."

"Santa Ana!" said Faquita, shrugging her shoulders.  "She did what the
veriest muchacha would have done.  When he had gone, she sat down and
cried."

The old man drew back a step, and steadied himself by the table. Then,
with a certain tremulous audacity, he began: "So! that is all you have
to tell--nothing!  Bah!  A lazy slut sleeps at her duty, and dreams
behind a curtain!  Yes, dreams!--you understand--dreams! And for this
she leaves her occupations, and comes to gossip here! Come," he
continued, steadily working himself into a passion, "come, enough of
this!  Get you gone!--you, and Pepita, and Andreas, and Victor--all of
you--back to your duty.  Away!  Am I not master here?  Off!  I say!"

There was no mistaking the rising anger of his voice.  The cowed group
rose in a frightened way and disappeared one by one silently through
the labyrinth.  Pereo waited until the last had vanished, and then,
cramming his stiff sombrero over his eyes with an ejaculation, brushed
his way through the shrubbery in the direction of the stables.

Later, when the full glory of the midnight moon had put out every
straggling light in the great house; when the long veranda slept in
massive bars of shadow, and even the tradewinds were hushed to repose,
Pereo silently issued from the stable-yard in vaquero's dress, mounted
and caparisoned.  Picking his way cautiously along the turf-bordered
edge of the gravel path, he noiselessly reached a gate that led to the
lane.  Walking his spirited mustang with difficulty until the house had
at last disappeared in the intervening foliage, he turned with an easy
canter into a border bridle-path that seemed to lead to the canada.  In
a quarter of an hour he had reached a low amphitheatre of meadows, shut
in a half circle of grassy treeless hills.

Here, putting spurs to his horse, he entered upon a singular exercise.
Twice he made a circuit of the meadow at a wild gallop, with flying
serape and loosened rein, and twice returned.  The third time his speed
increased; the ground seemed to stream from under him; in the distance
the limbs of his steed became invisible in their furious action, and,
lying low forward on his mustang's neck, man and horse passed like an
arrowy bolt around the circle. Then something like a light ring of
smoke up-curved from the saddle before him, and, slowly uncoiling
itself in mid air, dropped gently to the ground as he passed.  Again,
and once again, the shadowy coil sped upward and onward, slowly
detaching its snaky rings with a weird deliberation that was in strange
contrast to the impetuous onset of the rider, and yet seemed a part of
his fury.  And then turning, Pereo trotted gently to the centre of the
circle.

Here he divested himself of his serape, and, securing it in a
cylindrical roll, placed it upright on the ground and once more sped
away on his furious circuit.  But this time he wheeled suddenly before
it was half completed and bore down directly upon the unconscious
object.  Within a hundred feet he swerved slightly; the long detaching
rings again writhed in mid air and softly descended as he thundered
past.  But when he had reached the line of circuit again, he turned and
made directly for the road he had entered.  Fifty feet behind his
horse's heels, at the end of a shadowy cord, the luckless serape was
dragging and bounding after him!

"The old man is quiet enough this morning," said Andreas, as he groomed
the sweat-dried skin of the mustang the next day.  "It is easy to see,
friend Pinto, that he has worked off his madness on thee."

CHAPTER IV

The Rancho of San Antonio might have been a characteristic asylum for
its blessed patron, offering as it did a secure retreat from
temptations for the carnal eye, and affording every facility for
uninterrupted contemplation of the sky above, unbroken by tree or
elevation.  Unlike La Mision Perdida, of which it had been part, it was
a level plain of rich adobe, half the year presenting a billowy sea of
tossing verdure breaking on the far-off horizon line, half the year
presenting a dry and dusty shore, from which the vernal sea had ebbed,
to the low sky that seemed to mock it with a visionary sea beyond.  A
row of rough, irregular, and severely practical sheds and buildings
housed the machinery and the fifty or sixty men employed in the
cultivation of the soil, but neither residential mansion nor farmhouse
offered any nucleus of rural comfort or civilization in the midst of
this wild expanse of earth and sky.  The simplest adjuncts of country
life were unknown: milk and butter were brought from the nearest town;
weekly supplies of fresh meat and vegetables came from the same place;
in the harvest season, the laborers and harvesters lodged and boarded
in the adjacent settlement and walked to their work.  No cultivated
flower bloomed beside the unpainted tenement, though the fields were
starred in early spring with poppies and daisies; the humblest garden
plant or herb had no place in that prolific soil.  The serried ranks of
wheat pressed closely round the straggling sheds and barns and hid the
lower windows.  But the sheds were fitted with the latest agricultural
machinery; a telegraphic wire connected the nearest town with an office
in the wing of one of the buildings, where Dr. West sat, and in the
midst of the wilderness severely checked his accounts with nature.

Whether this strict economy of domestic outlay arose from an
ostentatious contempt of country life and the luxurious habits of the
former landholders, or whether it was a purely business principle of
Dr. West, did not appear.  Those who knew him best declared that it was
both.  Certain it was that unqualified commercial success crowned and
dignified his method.  A few survivors of the old native families came
to see his strange machinery, that did the work of so many idle men and
horses.  It is said that he offered to "run" the distant estate of
Joaquin Padilla from his little office amidst the grain of San Antonio.
Some shook their heads, and declared that he only sucked the juices of
the land for a few brief years to throw it away again; that in his
fierce haste he skimmed the fatness of ages of gentle cultivation on a
soil that had been barely tickled with native oaken plowshares.

His own personal tastes and habits were as severe and practical as his
business: the little wing he inhabited contained only his office, his
living room or library, his bedroom, and a bath-room. This last
inconsistent luxury was due to a certain cat-like cleanliness which was
part of his nature.  His iron-gray hair--a novelty in this country of
young Americans--was always scrupulously brushed, and his linen
spotless.  A slightly professional and somewhat old-fashioned
respectability in his black clothes was also characteristic.  His one
concession to the customs of his neighbors was the possession of two or
three of the half-broken and spirited mustangs of the country, which he
rode with the fearlessness, if not the perfect security and ease, of a
native.  Whether the subjection of this lawless and powerful survival
of a wild and unfettered nature around him was part of his plan, or
whether it was only a lingering trait of some younger prowess, no one
knew; but his grim and decorous figure, contrasting with the
picturesque and flowing freedom of the horse he bestrode, was a
frequent spectacle in road and field.

It was the second day after his visit to La Mision Perdida.  He was
sitting by his desk, at sunset, in the faint afterglow of the western
sky, which flooded the floor through the open door.  He was writing,
but presently lifted his head, with an impatient air, and called out,
"Harrison!"

The shadow of Dr. West's foreman appeared at the door.

"Who's that you're talking to?"

"Tramp, Sir."

"Hire him, or send him about his business.  Don't stand gabbling there."

"That's just it, sir.  He won't hire for a week or a day.  He says
he'll do an odd job for his supper and a shakedown, but no more."

"Pack him off! ...  Stay....  What's he like?"

"Like the rest of 'em, only a little lazier, I reckon."

"Umph!  Fetch him in."

The foreman disappeared, and returned with the tramp already known to
the reader.  He was a little dirtier and grimier than on the morning he
had addressed Maruja at La Mision Perdida; but he wore the same air of
sullen indifference, occasionally broken by furtive observation.  His
laziness--or weariness--if the term could describe the lassitude of
perfect physical condition, seemed to have increased; and he leaned
against the door as the Doctor regarded him with slow contempt.  The
silence continuing, he deliberately allowed himself to slip down into a
sitting position in the doorway, where he remained.

"You seem to have been born tired," said the Doctor, grimly.

"Yes."

"What have you got to say for yourself?"

"I told HIM," said the tramp, nodding his head towards the foreman,
"what I'd do for a supper and a bed.  I don't want anything but that."

"And if you don't get what you want on your own conditions, what'll you
do?" asked the Doctor, dryly.

"Go."

"Where did you come from?"

"States."

"Where are you going?"

"On."

"Leave him to me," said Dr. West to his foreman.  The man smiled, and
withdrew.

The Doctor bent his head again over his accounts.  The tramp, sitting
in the doorway, reached out his hand, pulled a young wheat-stalk that
had sprung up near the doorstep, and slowly nibbled it. He did not
raise his eyes to the Doctor, but sat, a familiar culprit awaiting
sentence, without fear, without hope, yet not without a certain
philosophical endurance of the situation.

"Go into that passage," said the Doctor, lifting his head as he turned
a page of his ledger, "and on the shelf you'll find some clothing
stores for the men.  Pick out something to fit you."

The tramp arose, moved towards the passage, and stopped.  "It's for the
job only, you understand?" he said.

"For the job," answered the Doctor.

The tramp returned in a few moments with overalls and woolen shirt
hanging on his arm and a pair of boots and socks in his hand.  The
Doctor had put aside his pen.  "Now go into that room and change. Stop!
First wash the dust from your feet in that bath-room."

The tramp obeyed, and entered the room.  The Doctor walked to the door,
and looked out reflectively on the paling sky.  When he turned again he
noticed that the door of the bath-room was opened, and the tramp, who
had changed his clothes by the fading light, was drying his feet.  The
Doctor approached, and stood for a moment watching him.

"What's the matter with your foot?"[1] he asked, after a pause.

"Born so."

The first and second toe were joined by a thin membrane.

"Both alike?" asked the Doctor.

"Yes," said the young man, exhibiting the other foot.

"What did you say your name was?"

"I didn't say it.  It's Henry Guest, same as my father's."

"Where were you born?"

"Dentville, Pike County, Missouri."

"What was your mother's name?"

"Spalding, I reckon."

"Where are your parents now?"

"Mother got divorced from father, and married again down South,
somewhere.  Father left home twenty years ago.  He's somewhere in
California--if he ain't dead."

"He isn't dead."

"How do you know?"

"Because I am Henry Guest, of Dentville, and"--he stopped, and, shading
his eyes with his hand as he deliberately examined the tramp, added
coldly--"your father, I reckon."

There was a slight pause.  The young man put down the boot he had taken
up.  "Then I'm to stay here?"

"Certainly not.  Here my name is only West, and I have no son. You'll
go on to San Jose, and stay there until I look into this thing.  You
haven't got any money, of course?" he asked, with a scarcely suppressed
sneer.

"I've got a little," returned the young man.

"How much?"

The tramp put his hand into his breast, and drew out a piece of folded
paper containing a single gold coin.

"Five dollars.  I've kept it a month; it doesn't cost much to live as I
do," he added, dryly.

"There's fifty more.  Go to some hotel in San Jose, and let me know
where you are.  You've got to live, and you don't want to work. Well,
you don't seem to be a fool; so I needn't tell you that if you expect
anything from me, you must leave this matter in my hands.  I have
chosen to acknowledge you to-day of my own free will: I can as easily
denounce you as an impostor to-morrow, if I choose.  Have you told your
story to any one in the valley?"

"No."

"See that you don't, then.  Before you go, you must answer me a few
more questions."

He drew a chair to his table, and dipped a pen in the ink, as if to
take down the answers.  The young man, finding the only chair thus
occupied, moved the Doctor's books aside, and sat down on the table
beside him.

The questions were repetitions of those already asked, but more in
detail, and thoroughly practical in their nature.  The answers were
given straightforwardly and unconcernedly, as if the subject was not
worth the trouble of invention or evasion.  It was difficult to say
whether questioner or answerer took least pleasure in the
interrogation, which might have referred to the concerns of a third
party.  Both, however, spoke disrespectfully of their common family,
with almost an approach to sympathetic interest.

"You might as well be going now," said the Doctor, finally rising. "You
can stop at the fonda, about two miles further on, and get your supper
and bed, if you like."

The young man slipped from the table, and lounged to the door.  The
Doctor put his hands in his pockets and followed him.  The young man,
as if in unconscious imitation, had put HIS hands in his pockets also,
and looked at him.

"I'll hear from you, then, when you are in San Jose?" said Dr. West,
looking past him into the grain, with a slight approach to constraint
in his indifference.

"Yes--if that's agreed upon," returned the young man, pausing on the
threshold.  A faint sense of some purely conventional responsibility in
their position affected them both.  They would have shaken hands if
either had offered the initiative.  A sullen consciousness of
gratuitous rectitude in the selfish mind of the father; an equally
sullen conviction of twenty years of wrong in the son, withheld them
both.  Unpleasantly observant of each other's awkwardness, they parted
with a feeling of relief.

Dr. West closed the door, lit his lamp, and, going to his desk, folded
the paper containing the memoranda he had just written and placed it in
his pocket.  Then he summoned his foreman.  The man entered, and
glanced around the room as if expecting to see the Doctor's guest still
there.

"Tell one of the men to bring round 'Buckeye.'"

The foreman hesitated.  "Going to ride to-night, sir?"

"Certainly; I may go as far as Saltonstall's.  If I do, you needn't
expect me back till morning."

"Buckeye's mighty fresh to-night, boss.  Regularly bucked his saddle
clean off an hour ago, and there ain't a man dare exercise him."

"I'll bet he don't buck his saddle off with me on it," said the Doctor,
grimly.  "Bring him along."

The man turned to go.  "You found the tramp pow'ful lazy, didn't ye?"

"I found a heap more in him than in some that call themselves smart,"
said Dr. West, unconsciously setting up an irritable defense of the
absent one.  "Hurry up that horse!"

The foreman vanished.  The Doctor put on a pair of leather leggings,
large silver spurs, and a broad soft-brimmed hat, but made no other
change in his usual half-professional conventional garb.  He then went
to the window and glanced in the direction of the highway.  Now that
his son was gone, he felt a faint regret that he had not prolonged the
interview.  Certain peculiarities in his manner, certain suggestions of
expression in his face, speech, and gesture, came back to him now with
unsatisfied curiosity.  "No matter," he said to himself; "he'll turn up
soon again--as soon as I want him, if not sooner.  He thinks he's got a
mighty soft thing here, and he isn't going to let it go.  And there's
that same d--d sullen dirty pride of his mother, for all he doesn't
cotton to her. Wonder I didn't recognize it at first.  And hoarding up
that five dollars!  That's Jane's brat, all over!  And, of course," he
added, bitterly, "nothing of ME in him.  No; nothing!  Well, well,
what's the difference?"  He turned towards the door, with a certain
sullen defiance in his face so like the man he believed he did not
resemble, that his foreman, coming upon him suddenly, might have been
startled at the likeness.  Fortunately, however, Harrison was too much
engrossed with the antics of the irrepressible Buckeye, which the
ostler had just brought to the door, to notice anything else.  The
arrival of the horse changed the Doctor's expression to one of more
practical and significant resistance.  With the assistance of two men
at the head of the restive brute, he managed to vault into the saddle.
A few wild plunges only seemed to settle him the firmer in his
seat--each plunge leaving its record in a thin red line on the animal's
flanks, made by the cruel spurs of its rider.  Any lingering desire of
following his son's footsteps was quickly dissipated by Buckeye, who
promptly bolted in the opposite direction, and, before Dr. West could
gain active control over him, they were half a mile on their way to La
Mision Perdida.

Dr. West did not regret it.  Twenty years ago he had voluntarily
abandoned a legal union of mutual unfaithfulness and misconduct, and
allowed his wife to get the divorce he might have obtained for equal
cause.  He had abandoned to her the issue of that union--an infant son.
Whatever he chose to do now was purely gratuitous; the only hold which
this young stranger had on his respect was that HE also recognized that
fact with a cold indifference equal to his own.  At present the
half-savage brute he bestrode occupied all his attention.  Yet he could
not help feeling his advancing years tell upon him more heavily that
evening; fearless as he was, his strength was no longer equal when
measured with the untiring youthful malevolence of his unbroken
mustang.  For a moment he dwelt regretfully on the lazy half-developed
sinews of his son; for a briefer instant there flashed across him the
thought that those sinews ought to replace his own; ought to be HIS to
lean upon--that thus, and thus only, could he achieve the old miracle
of restoring his lost youth by perpetuating his own power in his own
blood; and he, whose profound belief in personality had rejected all
hereditary principle, felt this with a sudden exquisite pain.  But his
horse, perhaps recognizing a relaxing grip, took that opportunity to
"buck."  Curving his back like a cat, and throwing himself into the air
with an unexpected bound, he came down with four stiff, inflexible
legs, and a shock that might have burst the saddle-girths, had not the
wily old man as quickly brought the long rowels of his spurs together
and fairly locked his heels under Buckeye's collapsing barrel.  It was
the mustang's last rebellions struggle.  The discomfited brute gave in,
and darted meekly and apologetically forward, and, as it were, left all
its rider's doubts and fears far behind in the vanishing distance.

[1] This apparent classical plagiarism is actually a fact of
identification on record in the California Law Reports.  It is
therefore unnecessary for me to add that the attendant circumstances
and characters are purely fictitious.--B. H.

CHAPTER V

Meanwhile, the subject of Dr. West's meditations was slowly making his
way along the high-road towards the fonda.  He walked more erect and
with less of a shuffle in his gait; but whether this was owing to his
having cast the old skin of garments adapted to his slouch, and because
he was more securely shod, or whether it was from the sudden
straightening of some warped moral quality, it would have been
difficult to say.  The expression of his face certainly gave no
evidence of actual and prospective good fortune; if anything, the lines
of discontent around his brow and mouth were more strongly drawn.
Apparently, his interview with his father had only the effect of
reviving and stirring into greater activity a certain dogged sentiment
that, through long years, had become languidly mechanical.  He was no
longer a beaten animal, but one roused by a chance success into a
dangerous knowledge of his power. In his honest workman's dress, he was
infinitely more to be feared than in his rags; in the lifting of his
downcast eye, there was the revelation of a baleful intelligence.  In
his changed condition, civilization only seemed to have armed him
against itself.

The fonda, a long low building, with a red-tiled roof extending over a
porch or whitewashed veranda, in which drunken vaqueros had been known
to occasionally disport their mustangs, did not offer a very reputable
appearance to the eye of young Guest as he approached it in the
gathering shadows.  One or two half-broken horses were securely
fastened to the stout cross-beams of some heavy posts driven in the
roadway before it, and a primitive trough of roughly excavated stone
stood near it.  Through a broken gate at the side there was a glimpse
of a grass-grown and deserted courtyard piled with the disused
packing-cases and barrels of the tienda, or general country shop, which
huddled under the same roof at the other end of the building.  The
opened door of the fonda showed a low-studded room fitted up with a
rude imitation of an American bar on one side, and containing a few
small tables, at which half a dozen men were smoking, drinking, and
playing cards. The faded pictorial poster of the last bull-fight at
Monterey, and an American "Sheriff's notice" were hung on the wall and
in the door-way.  A thick yellow atmosphere of cigarette smoke, through
which the inmates appeared like brown shadows, pervaded the room.

The young man hesitated before this pestilential interior, and took a
seat on a bench on the veranda.  After a moment's interval, the yellow
landlord came to the door with a look of inquiry, which Guest answered
by a demand for lodging and supper.  When the landlord had vanished
again in the cigarette fog, the several other guests, one after the
other, appeared at the doorway, with their cigarettes in their mouths
and their cards still in their hands, and gazed upon him.

There may have been some excuse for their curiosity.  As before hinted,
Guest's appearance in his overalls and woolen shirt was somewhat
incongruous, and, for some inexplicable reason, the same face and
figure which did not look inconsistent in rags and extreme poverty now
at once suggested a higher social rank both of intellect and refinement
than his workman's dress indicated.  This, added to his surliness of
manner and expression, strengthened a growing suspicion in the mind of
the party that he was a fugitive from justice--a forger, a derelict
banker, or possibly a murderer. It is only fair to say that the moral
sense of the spectators was not shocked at the suspicion, and that a
more active sympathy was only withheld by his reticence.  An
unfortunate incident seemed to complete the evidence against him.  In
impatiently responding to the landlord's curt demand for prepayment of
his supper, he allowed three or four pieces of gold to escape from his
pocket on the veranda.  In the quick glances of the party, as he
stooped to pick them up, he read the danger of his carelessness.

His sullen self-possession did not seem to be shaken.  Calling to the
keeper of the tienda, who had appeared at his door in time to witness
the Danae-like shower, he bade him approach, in English.

"What sort of knives have you got?"

"Knives, Senor?"

"Yes; bowie-knives or dirks.  Knives like that," he said, making an
imaginary downward stroke at the table before him.

The shopkeeper entered the tienda, and presently reappeared with three
or four dirks in red leather sheaths.  Guest selected the heaviest, and
tried its point on the table.

"How much?"

"Tres pesos."

The young man threw him one of his gold pieces, and slipped the knife
and its sheath in his boot.  When he had received his change from the
shopkeeper, he folded his arms and leaned back against the wall in
quiet indifference.

The simple act seemed to check aggressive, but not insinuating,
interference.  In a few moments one of the men appeared at the doorway.

"It is fine weather for the road, little comrade!"

Guest did not reply.

"Ah! the night, it ess splendid," he repeated, in broken English,
rubbing his hands, as if washing in the air.

Still no reply.

"You shall come from Sank Hosay?"

"I sha'ant."

The stranger muttered something in Spanish, but the landlord, who
reappeared to place Guest's supper on a table on the veranda, here felt
the obligation of interfering to protect a customer apparently so
aggressive and so opulent.  He pushed the inquisitor aside, with a few
hasty words, and, after Guest had finished his meal, offered to show
him his room.  It was a dark vaulted closet on the ground-floor,
gaining light from the stable-yard through a barred iron grating.  At
the first glimpse it looked like a prison cell; looking more
deliberately at the black tresseled bed, and the votive images hanging
on the wall, it might have been a tomb.

"It is the best," said the landlord.  "The Padre Vincento will have
none other on his journey."

"I suppose God protects him," said Guest; "that door don't."  He
pointed to the worm-eaten door, without bolt or fastening.

"Ah, what matter!  Are we not all friends?"

"Certainly," responded Guest, with his surliest manner, as he returned
to the veranda.  Nevertheless, he resolved not to occupy the cell of
the reverend Padre; not from any personal fear of his disreputable
neighbors, though he was fully alive to their peculiarities, but from
the nomadic instinct which was still strong in his blood.  He felt he
could not yet bear the confinement of a close room or the propinquity
of his fellow-man.  He would rest on the veranda until the moon was
fairly up, and then he would again take to the road.

He was half reclining on the bench, with the slowly closing and opening
lids of some tired but watchful animal, when the sound of wheels,
voices, and clatter of hoofs on the highway arrested his attention, and
he sat upright.  The moon was slowly lifting itself over the limitless
stretch of grain-fields before him on the other side of the road, and
dazzling him with its level lustre.  He could barely discern a
cavalcade of dark figures and a large vehicle rapidly approaching,
before it drew up tumultuously in front of the fonda.

It was a pleasure party of ladies and gentlemen on horseback and in a
four-horsed char-a-bancs returning to La Mision Perdida. Buchanan,
Raymond, and Garnier were there; Amita and Dorotea in the body of the
char-a-bancs, and Maruja seated on the box.  Much to his own
astonishment and that of some others of the party, Captain Carroll was
among the riders.  Only Maruja and her mother knew that he was recalled
to refute a repetition of the gossip already circulated regarding his
sudden withdrawal; only Maruja alone knew the subtle words which made
that call so potent yet so hopeless.

Maruja's quick eyes, observant of everything, even under the double
fire of Captain Carroll and Garnier, instantly caught those of the
erect figure on the bench in the veranda.  Surely that was the face of
the tramp she had spoken to! and yet there was a change, not only in
the dress but in the general resemblance.  After the first glance,
Guest withdrew his eyes and gazed at the other figures in the
char-a-bancs without moving a muscle.

Maruja's whims and caprices were many and original; and when, after a
sudden little cry and a declaration that she could stand her cramped
position no longer, she leaped from the box into the road, no one was
surprised.  Garnier and Captain Carroll quickly followed.

"I should like to look into the fonda while the horses are being
watered," she said, laughingly, "just to see what it is that attracts
Pereo there so often."  Before any one could restrain this new caprice,
she was already upon the veranda.

To reach the open door, she had to pass so near Guest that her soft
white flounces brushed his knees, and the flowers in her girdle left
their perfume in his face.  But he neither moved nor raised his eyes.
When she had passed, he rose quietly and stepped into the road.

On her nearer survey, Maruja was convinced it was the same man. She
remained for an instant, with a little hand on the door-post. "What a
horrid place, and what dreadful people!" she said in audible English as
she glanced quickly after Guest.  "Really, Pereo ought to be warned
against keeping such company.  Come, let us go."

She contrived to pass Guest again in regaining the carriage; but in the
few moments' further delay he walked on down the road before them, and,
by the time they were ready to start, he was slowly sauntering some
hundred yards ahead.  They passed him at a rapid trot, but the next
moment the char-a-bancs was suddenly pulled up.

"My fan!" cried Maruja.  "Blessed Santa Maria!--my fan!"

A small black object, seen distinctly in the moonlight, was lying on
the road, directly in the track of the sauntering stranger. Garnier
attempted to alight; Carroll reined in his horse.

"Stop, all of you!" said Maruja; "that man will bring it to me."

It seemed as if he would.  He stopped and picked it up, and approached
the carriage.  Maruja stood up in her seat, with her veil thrown back,
her graceful hand extended, her eyes and mouth tremulous with an
irresistible smile.  The stranger came nearer, singled out Captain
Carroll, tossed the fan to him with a slight nod, and passed on the
other side.

"One moment," said Maruja, almost harshly, to the driver.  "One
moment," she continued, drawing her purse from her pocket brusquely.
"Let me reward this civil gentleman of the road!  Here, sir;" but,
before she could continue, Carroll wheeled to her side, and interposed.
"Pray collect yourself, Miss Saltonstall," he said, hurriedly; "you can
not tell who this man may be.  He does not seem to be one who would
insult you, or whom YOU would insult gratuitously."

"Give me the fan, Captain Carroll," she said, with a soft and caressing
smile.  "Thank you."  She took it, and, breaking it through the middle
between her gloved hands, tossed it into the highway.  "You are
right--it smells of the fonda--and the road. Thank you, again.  You are
so thoughtful for me, Captain Carroll," she murmured, raising her eyes
gently to his, and then suddenly withdrawing them with a half sigh.
"But I am keeping you all.  Go on."

The carriage rolled away and Guest returned from the hedge to the
middle of the road.  San Jose lay in the opposite direction from the
disappearing cavalcade; but, on leaving the fonda, he had determined to
lead his inquisitors astray by doubling and making a circuit of the
hostelry through the fields hidden in the tall grain.  This he did,
securely passing them within sound of their voices, and was soon well
on his way again.  He avoided the highway, and, striking a trail
through the meadows, diverged to the right, where the low towers and
brown walls of a ruined mission church rose above the plain.  This
would enable him to escape any direct pursuit on the high road,
besides, from its slight elevation, giving him a more extended view of
the plain.  As he neared it, he was surprised to see that, although it
was partly dismantled, and the roof had fallen in the central aisle, a
part of it was still used as a chapel, and a light was burning behind a
narrow opening, partly window and partly shrine.  He was almost upon
it, when the figure of a man who had been kneeling beneath, with his
back towards him, rose, crossed himself devoutly, and stood upright.
Before he could turn, Guest disappeared round the angle of the wall,
and the tall erect figure of the solitary worshiper passed on without
heeding him.

But if Guest had been successful in evading the observation of the man
he had come so suddenly upon, he was utterly unconscious of another
figure that had been tracking HIM for the last ten minutes through the
tall grain, and had even succeeded in gaining the shadow of the wall
behind him; and it was this figure, and not his own, that eventually
attracted the attention of the tall stranger. The pursuing figure was
rapidly approaching the unconscious Guest; in another moment it would
have been upon him, when it was suddenly seized from behind by the tall
devotee.  There was a momentary struggle, and then it freed itself,
with the exclamation, "Pereo!"

"Yes--Pereo!" said the old man, panting from his exertions.  "And thou
art Miguel.  So thou wouldst murder a man for a few pesos!" he said,
pointing to the knife which the desperado had hurriedly hid in his
jacket, "and callest thyself a Californian!"

"'Tis only an Americano--a runaway, with some ill-gotten gold," said
Miguel, sullenly, yet with unmistakable fear of the old man. "Besides,
it was only to frighten him, the braggart.  But since thou fearest to
touch a hair of those interlopers--"

"Fearest!" said Pereo, fiercely, clutching him by the throat, and
forcing him against the wall.  "Fearest! sayest thou.  I, Pereo, fear?
Dost thou think I would soil these hands, that might strike a higher
quarry, with blood of thy game?"

"Forgive me, padrono," gasped Miguel, now thoroughly alarmed at the old
man's awakened passion; "pardon; I meant that, since thou knowest him--"

"I know him?" repeated Pereo scornfully, contemptuously throwing Miguel
aside, who at once took that opportunity to increase his distance from
the old man's arm.  "I know him?  Thou shalt see. Come hither, child,"
he called, beckoning to Guest.  "Come hither, thou hast nothing to fear
now."

Guest, who had been attracted by the sound of altercation behind him,
but who was utterly unconscious of its origin or his own relation to
it, came forward impatiently.  As he did so, Miguel took to his heels.
The act did not tend to mollify Guest's surly suspicions, and, pausing
a few feet from the old man, he roughly demanded his business with him.

Pereo raised his head, with the dignity of years and habits of command.
The face of the young man confronting him was clearly illuminated by
the moonlight.  Pereo's eyes suddenly dilated, his mouth stiffened, he
staggered back against the wall.

"Who are you?" he gasped, in uncertain English.

Believing himself the subject of some drunkard's pastime, Guest
replied, savagely, "One who has enough of this d--d nonsense, and will
stand no more of it from any one, young or old," and turned abruptly on
his heel.

"Stay, one moment, Senor, for the love of God!"

Some keen accent of agony in the old man's voice touched even Guest's
selfish nature.  He halted.

"You are--a stranger here?"--faltered Pereo.  "Yes?"

"I am."

"You do not live here?--you have no friends?"

"I told you I am a stranger.  I never was here before in my life," said
Guest, impatiently.

"True; I am a fool," said the old man, hurriedly, to himself.  "I am
mad--mad!  It is not HIS voice.  No!  It is not HIS look, now that his
face changes.  I am crazy."  He stopped, and passed his trembling hands
across his eyes.  "Pardon, Senor," he continued, recalling himself with
a humility that was almost ironical in its extravagance.  "Pardon,
pardon!  Yet, perhaps it is not too much to have wanted to know who was
the man one has saved."

"Saved!" repeated Guest, with incredulous contempt.

"Ay!" said Pereo, haughtily, drawing his figure erect; "ay, saved!
Senor."  He stopped and shrugged his shoulders.  "But let it pass--I
say--let it pass.  Take an old man's advice, friend: show not your gold
hereafter to strangers lightly, no matter how lightly you have come by
it.  Good-night!"

Guest for a moment hesitated whether to resent the old man's speech, or
to let it pass as the incoherent fancy of a brain maddened by drink.
Then he ended the discussion by turning his back abruptly and
continuing his way to the high-road.

"So!" said Pereo, looking after him with abstracted eyes, "so! it was
only a fancy.  And yet--even now, as he turned away, I saw the same
cold insolence in his eye.  Caramba!  Am I mad--mad--that I must keep
forever before my eyes, night and day, the image of that dog in every
outcast, every ruffian, every wayside bully that I meet?  No, no, good
Pereo!  Softly! this is mere madness, good Pereo," he murmured to
himself; "thou wilt have none of it; none, good Pereo.  Come, come!"
He let his head fall slowly forward on his breast, and in that action,
seeming to take up again the burden of a score more years upon his
shoulders, he moved slowly away.

When he entered the fonda half an hour later, the awe in which he was
held by the half superstitious ruffians appeared to have increased.
Whatever story the fugitive Miguel had told his companions regarding
Pereo's protection of the young stranger, it was certain that it had
its full effect.  Obsequious to the last degree, the landlord was so
profoundly touched, when Pereo, not displeased with this evidence of
his power over his countrymen, condescendingly offered to click glasses
with him, that he endeavored to placate him still further.

"It is a pity your worship was not here earlier," he began, with a
significant glance at the others, "to have seen a gallant young
stranger that was here.  A spice of wickedness about him, truly--a kind
of Don Caesar--but bearing himself like a very caballero always.  It
would have pleased your worship, who likes not those canting Puritans
such as our neighbor yonder."

"Ah," said Pereo, reflectively, warming under the potent fires of
flattery and aguardiente, "possibly I HAVE seen him.  He was like--"

"Like none of the dogs thou hast seen about San Antonio," interrupted
the landlord.  "Scarcely did he seem Americano, though he spoke no
Spanish."

The old man chuckled to himself viciously.  "And thou, thou old fool,
Pereo, must needs see a likeness to thine enemy in this poor runaway
child--this fugitive Don Juan!  He! he!"  Nevertheless, he still felt a
vague terror of the condition of mind which had produced this fancy,
and drank so deeply to dispel his nervousness that it was with
difficulty he could mount his horse again.  The exaltation of liquor,
however, appeared only to intensify his characteristics: his face
became more lugubrious and melancholy; his manner more ceremonious and
dignified; and, erect and stiff in his saddle from the waist upwards,
but leaning from side to side with the motion of his horse, like the
tall mast of some laboring sloop, he "loped" away towards the House of
the Lost Mission.  Once or twice he broke into sentimental song.
Strangely enough, his ditty was a popular Spanish refrain of some
matador's aristocratic inamorata:--

     Do you see my black eyes?
     I am Manuel's Duchess,--

sang Pereo, with infinite gravity.  His horse's hoofs seemed to keep
time with the refrain, and he occasionally waved in the air the long
leather thong of his bridle-rein.

It was quite late when he reached La Mision Perdida.  Turning into the
little lane that led to the stable-yard, he dismounted at a gate in the
hedge which led to the summerhouse of the old Mision garden, and,
throwing his reins on his mustang's neck, let the animal precede him to
the stables.  The moon shone full on the inclosure as he emerged from
the labyrinth.  With uncovered head he approached the Indian mound, and
sank on his knees before it.

The next moment he rose, with an exclamation of terror, and his hat
dropped from his trembling hand.  Directly before him, a small, gray,
wolfish-looking animal had stopped half-way down the mound on
encountering his motionless figure.  Frightened by his outcry, and
unable to retreat, the shadowy depredator had fallen back on his
slinking haunches with a snarl, and bared teeth that glittered in the
moonlight.

In an instant the expression of terror on the old man's ashen face
turned into a fixed look of insane exaltation.  His white lips moved;
he advanced a step further, and held out both hands towards the
crouching animal.

"So!  It is thou--at last!  And comest thou here thy tardy Pereo to
chide?  Comest THOU, too, to tell the poor old man his heart is cold,
his limbs are feeble, his brain weak and dizzy? that he is no longer
fit to do thy master's work?  Ay, gnash thy teeth at him! Curse
him!--curse him in thy throat!  But listen!--listen, good friend--I
will tell thee a secret--ay, good gray friar, a secret--such a secret!
A plan, all mine--fresh from this old gray head; ha! ha!--all mine!  To
be wrought by these poor old arms; ha! ha! All mine!  Listen!"

He stealthily made a step nearer the affrighted animal.  With a sudden
sidelong snap, it swiftly bounded by his side, and vanished in the
thicket; and Pereo, turning wildly, with a moan sank down helplessly on
the grave of his forefathers.

CHAPTER VI

To the open chagrin of most of the gentlemen and the unexpected relief
of some of her own sex, Maruja, after an evening of more than usual
caprice and willfulness, retired early to her chamber. Here she
beguiled Enriquita, a younger sister, to share her solitude for an
hour, and with a new and charming melancholy presented her with mature
counsel and some younger trinkets and adornments.

"Thou wilt find them but folly, 'Riquita; but thou art young, and wilt
outgrow them as I have.  I am sick of the Indian beads, everybody wears
them; but they seem to suit thy complexion.  Thou art not yet quite old
enough for jewelry; but take thy choice of these."  "'Ruja," replied
Enriquita, eagerly, "surely thou wilt not give up this necklace of
carved amber, that was brought thee from Manilla--it becomes thee so!
Everybody says it.  All the caballeros, Raymond and Victor, swear that
it sets off thy beauty like nothing else."  "When thou knowest men
better," responded Maruja, in a deep voice, "thou wilt care less for
what they say, and despise what they do.  Besides, I wore it
to-day--and--I hate it."  "But what fan wilt thou keep thyself?  The
one of sandal-wood thou hadst to-day?" continued Enriquita, timidly
eying the pretty things upon the table.  "None," responded Maruja,
didactically, "but the simplest, which I shall buy myself.  Truly, it
is time to set one's self against this extravagance.  Girls think
nothing of spending as much upon a fan as would buy a horse and saddle
for a poor man."  "But why so serious tonight, my sister?" said the
little Enriquita, her eyes filling with ready tears.  "It grieves me,"
responded Maruja, promptly, "to find thee, like the rest, giving thy
soul up to the mere glitter of the world.  However, go, child, take the
heads, but leave the amber; it would make thee yellower than thou art;
which the blessed Virgin forbid! Good-night!"

She kissed her affectionately, and pushed her from the room.
Nevertheless, after a moment's survey of her lonely chamber, she
hastily slipped on a pale satin dressing-gown, and, darting across the
passage, dashed into the bedroom of the youngest Miss Wilson, haled
that sentimental brunette from her night toilet, dragged her into her
own chamber, and, enwrapping her in a huge mantle of silk and gray fur,
fed her with chocolates and chestnuts, and, reclining on her
sympathetic shoulder, continued her arraignment of the world and its
follies until nearly daybreak.

It was past noon when Maruja awoke, to find Faquita standing by her
bedside with ill-concealed impatience.

"I ventured to awaken the Dona Maruja," she said, with vivacious
alacrity, "for news!  Terrible news!  The American, Dr. West, is found
dead this morning in the San Jose road!"

"Dr. West dead!" repeated Maruja, thoughtfully, but without emotion.

"Surely dead--very dead.  He was thrown from his horse and dragged by
the stirrups--how far, the Blessed Virgin only knows.  But he is found
dead--this Dr. West--his foot in the broken stirrup, his hand holding a
piece of the bridle!  I thought I would waken the Dona Maruja, that no
one else should break it to the Dona Maria."

"That no one else should break it to my mother?" repeated Maruja,
coldly.  "What mean you, girl?"

"I mean that no stranger should tell her," stammered Faquita, lowering
her bold eyes.

"You mean," said Maruja, slowly, "that no silly, staring,
tongue-wagging gossip should dare to break upon the morning devotions
of the lady mother with open-mouthed tales of horror!  You are wise,
Faquita!  I will tell her myself.  Help me to dress."

But the news had already touched the outer shell of the great house,
and little groups of the visitors were discussing it upon the veranda.
For once, the idle badinage of a pleasure-seeking existence was
suspended; stupid people with facts came to the fore; practical people
with inquiring minds became interesting; servants were confidentially
appealed to; the local expressman became a hero, and it was even
noticed that he was intelligent and good-looking.

"What makes it more distressing," said Raymond, joining one of the
groups, "is, that it appears the Doctor visited Mrs. Saltonstall last
evening, and left the casa at eleven.  Sanchez, who was perhaps the
last person who saw him alive, says that he noticed his horse was very
violent, and the Doctor did not seem able to control him.  The accident
probably happened half an hour later, as he was picked up about three
miles from here, and from appearances must have been dragged, with his
foot in the stirrup, fully half a mile before the girth broke and freed
the saddle and stirrup together. The mustang, with nothing on but his
broken bridle, was found grazing at the rancho as early as four
o'clock, an hour before the body of his master was discovered by the
men sent from the rancho to look for him."

"Eh, but the man must have been clean daft to have trusted himself to
one of those savage beasts of the country," said Mr. Buchanan. "And he
was no so young either--about sixty, I should say.  It didna look even
respectable, I remember, when we met him the other day, careering over
the country for all the world like one of those crazy Mexicans.  And
yet he seemed steady and sensible enough when he didna let his schemes
of 'improvements' run away with him like yon furious beastie.  Eh well,
puir man--it was a sudden ending! And his family--eh?"

"I don't think he has one--at least here," said Raymond.  "You can't
always tell in California.  I believe he was a widower."

"Ay, man, but the heirs; there must be considerable property?" said
Buchanan, impatiently.

"Oh, the heirs.  If he's made no will, which doesn't look like so
prudent and practical a man as he was--the heirs will probably crop up
some day."

"PROBABLY! crop up some day," repeated Buchanan, aghast.

"Yes.  You must remember that WE don't take heirs quite as much into
account as you do in the old country.  The loss of the MAN, and how to
replace HIM, is much more to us than the disposal of his property.
Now, Doctor West was a power far beyond his actual possessions--and we
will know very soon how much those were dependent upon him."

"What do you mean?" asked Buchanan, anxiously.

"I mean that five minutes after the news of the Doctor's death was
confirmed, your friend Mr. Stanton sent a messenger with a despatch to
the nearest telegraphic office, and that he himself drove over to catch
Aladdin before the news could reach him."

Buchanan looked uneasy; so did one or two of the native Californians
who composed the group, and who had been listening attentively.  "And
where is this same telegraphic office?" asked Buchanan, cautiously.

"I'll drive you over there presently," responded Raymond, grimly.
"There'll be nothing doing here to-day.  As Dr. West was a near
neighbor of the family, his death suspends our pleasure-seeking until
after the funeral."

Mr. Buchanan moved away.  Captain Carroll and Garnier drew nearer the
speaker.  "I trust it will not withdraw from us the society of Miss
Saltonstall," said Garnier, lightly--"at least, that she will not be
inconsolable."

"She did not seem to be particularly sympathetic with Dr. West the
other day," said Captain Carroll, coloring slightly with the
recollection of the morning in the summer-house, yet willing, in his
hopeless passion, even to share that recollection with his rival.  "Did
you not think so, Monsieur Garnier?"

"Very possibly; and, as Miss Saltonstall is quite artless and childlike
in the expression of her likes and dislikes," said Raymond, with the
faintest touch of irony, "you can judge as well as I can."

Garnier parried the thrust lightly.  "You are no kinder to our follies
than you are to the grand passions of these gentlemen. Confess, you
frightened them horribly.  You are---what is called--a bear--eh?  You
depreciate in the interests of business."

Raymond did not at first appear to notice the sarcasm.  "I only
stated," he said, gravely, "that which these gentlemen will find out
for themselves before they are many hours older.  Dr. West was the
brain of the county, as Aladdin is its life-blood.  It only remains to
be seen how far the loss of that brain affects the county.  The Stock
Exchange market in San Francisco will indicate that today in the shares
of the San Antonio and Soquel Railroad and the West Mills and
Manufacturing Co.  It is a matter that may affect even our friends
here.  Whatever West's social standing was in this house, lately he was
in confidential business relations with Mrs. Saltonstall."  He raised
his eyes for the first time to Garnier as he added, slowly, "It is to
be hoped that if our hostess has no social reasons to deplore the loss
of Dr. West, she at least will have no other."

With a lover's instinct, conscious only of some annoyance to Maruja, in
all this, Carroll anxiously looked for her appearance among the others.
He was doomed to disappointment, however.  His half-timid inquiries
only resulted in the information that Maruja was closeted with her
mother.  The penetralia of the casa was only accessible to the family;
yet, as he wandered uneasily about, he could not help passing once or
twice before the quaint low archway, with its grated door, that opened
from the central hall.  His surprise may be imagined when he suddenly
heard his name uttered in a low voice; and, looking up, he beheld the
soft eyes of Maruja at the grating.

She held the door partly open with one little hand, and made a sign for
him to enter with the other.  When he had done so, she said, "Come with
me," and preceded him down the dim corridor.  His heart beat thickly;
the incense of this sacred inner life, with its faint suggestion of
dead rose-leaves, filled him with a voluptuous languor; his breath was
lost, as if a soft kiss had taken it away; his senses swam in the light
mist that seemed to suffuse everything.  His step trembled as she
suddenly turned aside, and, opening a door, ushered him into a small
vaulted chamber.

In the first glance it seemed to be an oratory or chapel.  A large gold
and ebony crucifix hung on the wall.  There was a prie-dieu of heavy
dark mahogany in the centre of the tiled floor; there was a low ottoman
or couch, covered with a mantle of dark violet velvet, like a pall;
there were two quaintly carved stiff chairs; a religious, almost
ascetic, air pervaded the apartment; but no dreamy eastern seraglio
could have affected him with an intoxication so profoundly and
mysteriously sensuous.

Maruja pointed to a chair, and then, with a peculiarly feminine
movement, placed herself sideways upon the ottoman, half reclining on
her elbow on a high cushion, her deep billowy flounces partly veiling
the funereal velvet below.  Her oval face was pale and melancholy, her
eyes moist as if with recent tears; an expression as of troubled
passion lurked in their depths and in the corners of her mouth.
Scarcely knowing why, Carroll fancied that thus she might appear if she
were in love; and the daring thought made him tremble.

"I wanted to speak with you alone," she said, gently, as if in
explanation; "but don't look at me so.  I have had a bad night, and now
this calamity"--she stopped and then added, softly, "I want you to do a
favor for--my mother?"

Captain Carroll, with an effort, at last found his voice.  "But YOU are
in trouble; YOU are suffering.  I had no idea this unfortunate affair
came so near to you."

"Nor did I," said Maruja, closing her fan with a slight snap.  "I knew
nothing of it until my mother told me this morning.  To be frank with
you, it now appears that Dr. West was her most intimate business
adviser.  All her affairs were in his hands.  I cannot explain how, or
why, or when; but it is so."

"And is that all?" said Carroll, with boyish openness of relief. "And
you have no other sorrow?"

In spite of herself, a tender smile, such as she might have bestowed on
an impulsive boy, broke on her lips.  "And is that not enough?  What
would you?  No--sit where you are!  We are here to talk seriously.  And
you do not ask what is this favor my mother wishes?"

"No matter what it is, it shall be done," said Carroll, quickly. "I am
your mother's slave if she will but let me serve at your side.  Only,"
he paused, "I wish it was not business--I know nothing of business."

"If it were only business, Captain Carroll," said Maruja, slowly, "I
would have spoken to Raymond or the Senor Buchanan; if it were only
confidence, Pereo, our mayordomo, would have dragged himself from his
sick-bed this morning to do my mother's bidding.  But it is more than
that--it is the functions of a gentleman--and my mother, Captain
Carroll, would like to say of--a friend."

He seized her hand and covered it with kisses.  She withdrew it gently.

"What have I to do?" he asked, eagerly.

She drew a note from her belt.  "It is very simple.  You must ride over
to Aladdin with that note.  You must give it to him ALONE--more than
that, you must not let any one who may be there think you are making
any but a social call.  If he keeps you to dine--you must stay--you
will bring back anything he may give you and deliver it to me secretly
for her."

"Is that all?" asked Carroll, with a slight touch of disappointment in
his tone.

"No," said Maruja, rising impulsively.  "No, Captain Carroll--it is NOT
all!  And you shall know all, if only to prove to you how we confide in
you--and to leave you free, after you have heard it, to do as you
please."  She stood before him, quite white, opening and shutting her
fan quickly, and tapping the tiled floor with her little foot.  "I have
told you Dr. West was my mother's business adviser.  She looked upon
him as more--as a friend.  Do you know what a dangerous thing it is for
a woman who has lost one protector to begin to rely upon another?
Well, my mother is not yet old. Dr. West appreciated her--Dr. West did
not depreciate himself--two things that go far with a woman, Captain
Carroll, and my mother is a woman."  She paused, and then, with a light
toss of her fan, said: "Well, to make an end, but for this excellent
horse and this too ambitious rider, one knows not how far the old story
of my mother's first choice would have been repeated, and the curse of
Koorotora again fallen on the land."