"I wasted the holy water on the doorway of the sala and the bedroom," grumbled old Polonia, ensconced among the serapes on the carreta; "I should have kept it for the road to the sea. She rides away from him alone; but it is a witchcraft, all the same."

Secretly the old woman gave sympathy to the handsome Rafael, who loved women of gaiety and fine clothes. The town was a very good place to stay, and the band played, and there was a good circus; and to choose instead a nasty old Mission where a cross priest scolded, and smoked, and drank himself stupid each dinner-time! What kind of a girl would go back there? Still, the old Indian knew that she was not of wood, like the statues in the old church, let the husband think as he might! Last night had proven she could be her mother's own child in a storm of passion. It was perhaps for the best that she did not love her husband so madly; for if he should ever prove untrue,—and men of course were so—what might not happen?

She thought of the witchcraft of the mother, and crossed herself.

The moon, the beautiful moon of the month of Mary! shone round and silvered in the blue above the mountains, as the blaze of the sun sank into the western sea. South lay the ranch of San Joaquin, and Raquel, for all her thirty-mile ride, was sorry. She would have no excuse to ride past; it was the one slight of the country to pass the house of an acquaintance, and this family was one deserving of honor. The soft dusk of warm lands had stretched over the level. The sweet clover along the road had a deeper note of perfume, and the patches of mustard bloom added its own spicy fragrance. Gladly she would have ridden on alone in the perfect night, but it would not do. She cared little for the herd of people, but she always tried to keep in mind what the DoÑa Luisa would have done in the little duties toward the opinion of the valley, and she had no idea of making a scandal, or of appearing to ride in secret from the town where her husband was still detained.

So, when the dogs barked, she galloped forward to the ranch-house, and was met with excited welcome from the mistress and her two vivacious daughters and their cousin Ana Mendez. All the news of the town they asked for. They had heard wonderful things of the courtesy shown her by the new bishop, who was not given to showing much pronounced attention to even the devout of the faith. They had rejoiced each day to hear of the honors showered on her by the families of the city. It was as if a queen had arrived in their valley—and to leave it all and ride alone in the night!

Ana cut their queries short and bade them see to old Polonia, that she might be fed and rested well, and the driver also, and then carried her guest to her own room, where she put her hands on Raquel's shoulders and looked into her eyes, and then without a word led her to the shrine in the corner, where they both knelt.

When the prayer was over and she had seen her guest supplied with bread, and red wine, and olives, and sliced beef, she regarded her sadly a moment, noting that only the wine was swallowed, and that the girl looked pale in the candle-light. "Poor little dear," she said, softly, and patted her shoulder and spoke with the tenderness of intimacy. "I think now thou wert only a child that morning in the wedding-veil, when she gave thee that vow and died. Thou hast such strength in looks, my Raquelita, no one remembers how young in life thou art. But I see now how it is. Rafael is the son of my mother's cousin, and I know that blood! You but give the word, and my uncle shall ride to Los Angeles in the morning and say what is right to be said to Rafael. We know those boys—Miguel too," and she crossed herself. "My uncle always look himself to the door-key when that Miguel Arteaga come with a serenade. Oh, we know those boys in this valley better than their mother, who thought to guard Rafael from the heretics. Holy Mary! No heretic in the land lived worse than the life on Miguel Arteaga's ranches!"

"That does not make any difference at all," said the girl, wearily. "I took the vow, 'So long as we both shall live.' That seems a long time, my dear Ana, but I must have not one other thought in this life."

"And he sends thee home?"

"No; this is not his fault—do not think it," and she evaded the eyes of Ana. "He will follow, now that I have come; I am most certain of that; but he was in a rage, of course, and if I would live there in the town he would do anything to please me, almost. But I feel weak some days. I—I am not strong enough to fight the people there whom his mother was afraid of. In my own house they will not come. In my own valley I may keep my promise."

"Poor little dear," moaned Ana again. It was a good hope, and the girl did not seem to have much else to live for; but Ana had known the Arteaga men for many years, and had her doubts.

"It is time that Rafael were at home," she conceded. "Juan Flores is around the range again; some say El Capitan is with him, and they are on this side. Last night they had supper at Trabuco ranch; they did no harm there, but that does not mean that he will do no harm elsewhere. Avila let him have horses once when the marshal was close behind; since that time Avila's house is safe, and his herds as well."

"And Capitan?"

"Oh!" Ana's tone was carefully careless. "No one seems certain he is along. He does not so often come this way; for a year he has been somewhere in Sonora—only when the horses are picked for the government, or the Arteagas have a fine lot broken, does he cross to this country. There is where Rafael needs guarding more than from heretics."

"From Capitan? He—he—would not kill—"

"No," said Ana, slowly; "I never think he wants Rafael to die; he only wants him not to be happy; always he wants Rafael to remember he is not so far away but he can do him harm. Rafael hates the lonely Mission valley on account of that. In a town Capitan never can make him afraid so much."

"Rafael is not a coward, I think," returned Raquel.

"No, but he knows Capitan does not forget—there was a girl between them once. Rafael is the handsomer, so he got her. Oh, that is long ago. But Rafael was foolish and laughed too loud, and so he has to pay!"

"But I think that is a mistake. I heard all about the trouble; his mother told me. Capitan fights the government only, and takes horses from the Arteagas because they go with the Americanos as friends; that is all. We heard it all at San Luis Rey as we drove north—you remember?"

"Oh, yes, I am not forgetting that," and Ana laughed. "I listen all the time to what his mother thinks she knows about that; and it is true, too, but not all the truth. I could tell you—"

She stopped suddenly, not certain it was wise to tell the girl the thing causing her amusement, for, after all, it was not really funny; it was serious enough in itself, it might frighten the girl very much. No other in her place would live one hour in the valley, or ride at night with only one man and an old Indian woman as guard.

"If you know that I have been told lies, you had better tell me the truth," said Raquel. "It may cost me more to find it out alone than to hear it from a friend."

"That is true," agreed Ana, after a moment of thought. She went to the door and looked in the outer room to be sure no curious ears were there. She could hear ecstatic cries from the girls, who were giving old Polonia good things to eat, and plying her with endless questions. She was recounting the brilliant worldly scenes her old eyes had lately witnessed, and pitying herself a little that she could not remain; for each day had been finer than the day before. And the horse-races, and the fine cavaliers, and DoÑa Raquel always in the finest carriage—Holy Mary! but it was a thing to see!

Ana closed the door tightly and came back and sat down beside Raquel and took her hand.

"My aunt and the girls are over their heads in delight out there," she remarked, dryly; "and I will tell you a thing no one has been told concerning that ride from San Luis Rey. Rafael lost some fine horses that night—do you remember?"

Raquel did not; she might have heard—but DoÑa Luisa's death, all that sorrow, all the many and quick changes, had blotted out the fainter records of that day.

"Well, when we stopped for coffee at the camp the cook told us; you may not have heard. However, they were taken after you went into the river. You have not forgotten that?"

"How could I? Oh, yes, I remember! The priest told me that night. How strange it should have all been crowded out of my mind! He told me to give Rafael a message of warning. What was it? What was it?"

She clasped her hands over her brows and tried to remember. Her first meeting with Rafael beside the dead body of his mother had driven out of her mind the message she was to have delivered. It was a warning, a warning of some sort; that much she was sure of, and—what was it about her father—her father's name?

"I think," said Ana, speaking softly and watching her, "that he told you Felipe Estevan's daughter had saved Rafael Arteaga a treasure that night." "Anita! So he did; and you know the words, the very words he spoke to me!"

"I know more, Raquel mia; I know what the treasure was."

"And—?"

"It is not nice to tell," and Ana hesitated. "But he saw you there that evening with his own eyes."

"The priest?"

"Yes, the priest. He saved you from being carried to the hills by the Juan Flores robbers, while Capitan took others of the men and secured the chests of wedding gifts from the old Mission. Oh, it was all planned for the one big revenge on Rafael Arteaga. But he saw you, and so—"

"And that priest saved me from them, Anita?"

"Yes, he saved you—the priest—and sent you back to your friends, and sent the men across the mesas—because you were Estevan's daughter. But he did not try to save Rafael's horses; that night many of the finest were headed eastward and never came back."

"And if—if the padre had not been there at the right moment, I—"

"It is not a nice story, at all," acknowledged Ana. "They are rough men. One of them would have married you, and you would never have cared to see your friends again, and Rafael never would have found you." "Mother of God! He hates Rafael like that, yet lets him live?"

Ana laughed a little and shrugged her shoulders.

"Capitan is like that," she observed. "No one is like him. If Rafael's life were in danger this hour, Capitan would ride to save him. Oh, he does not mean that he shall die while young, and handsome, and rich, and beloved!"

Her tone had a little hard ring for a moment; her eyes were sparkling with a certain admiration for the character she was describing. The story had brought the color back to Raquel's face, and she listened feverishly. What strange, strange things could be possible in the smiling valleys of San Juan! For the moment she forgot the dull ache in her heart which had driven her to ride alone back to sanctuary.

"And you know all this, Anita; even the words of the padre! How?"

She caught Ana's hands in hers impetuously, and made her look in her eyes.

"He told me," said her friend, simply.

"Then you know him? You see him sometimes?"

"Sometimes."

"And he is called—?"

"Libertad."

"Padre Libertad—the Liberated? I never have heard him spoken of. Where can I find him? Anita, I will go alone, but this feud shall be ended. He will help me. And I—I never knew what he saved me from that night. I scarcely thanked him. He was so strange, so abrupt, so masterful, I accepted all he did, and never knew! Tell me. Anita. I will go to him—I will—"

"No one goes to him," said Ana. "He never stays in one place. If you see him, you see him—but—"

"But he comes to San Juan?"

"Oh, yes, he comes to San Juan once a year at least, so they will not forget him."

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

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

"Oh, Capitan is a sort of cousin of our family. Even when he is outcast, I do not want him to lose his soul; so I—my people do not know—but always I pay for a mass when I hear that the robbers have killed a man. I never think that Capitan would like to kill; still, it might happen. So I remember—as I remembered him when I was a little girl, and when I was married—and I pay for a mass, that is all."

"I am glad to-night, very glad you tell me all this, Anita. Not glad that it is so, but, thanks to God, it is something to do—to do—to do!" "And what?" asked Ana, regarding her curiously. Heretofore the wife of Rafael had appeared to her self-restrained and cold, but to-night—

Raquel caught her hand and pressed it, and laughed.

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

"Raquel! That is a mortal sin!"

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

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

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

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

In the early dawn Polonia crept unseen to the aquia, and of soft clay made an image of him, and thrust pins through every vital portion of it, that there might be no chance left of life in the man it represented; then, having finished her work, she left it where the sun would dry it, and crept back to the room and curled up on a rug, and slept the sleep of the content. The good holy water she had paid money for had failed. But there are always two ways. If the saints refuse to help, there is always the devil left. If the padres did not get more effective holy water, whose fault was it that poor souls had to seek help elsewhere? She would do penance, of course, after the man died, and perhaps pay for a mass, and that would make it all right for everybody, and was so easy! She went to sleep wondering if he would die from a slow lingering disease, or how it would be. It was inconvenient that one was not allowed to select the very way the end must come. But the devil would know what she would like best,—that the foot of his horse might go down in a gopher-hole and pitch him on his head just so that the neck would break, quick, like the snapping of a finger. And no one would ever guess how it had been brought about!