JUAN'S first thought was to fly to the hills directly behind the mission, a distance of two miles or more away. When he reached the corner of the church, the hasty shots of the unsteady soldiers singing over his head, he found that road blocked by the two men left by Sergeant Olivera at the front door. Behind him Sergeant Olivera was mounting and calling his men to the pursuit. Juan did not know whether soldiers had been left to watch the mission gate; it was a hazardous chance, but he had no time to linger and debate it The sound of the pursuing soldiers was loud in the road behind him as he bent low and pressed hard for that one possible exit to the open road.
At that moment he saw Cristóbal running, swift as a hare, on an angling course through a little vineyard between the tallow vat and the buildings that flanked the arcade, easily keeping abreast of Juan's galloping horse, shaping his way as if to intercept him presently. Juan knew whose arrow had struck Captain del Valle down in his impious tyranny. He believed now that Cristóbal expected to leap up behind him and share the slender chance of escape. To further this quickly caught plan of the young Indian, as he interpreted it, Juan drew his horse under the arcade and rode in close to the fronts of the little adobe houses along the way. That moment he saw Padre Mateo at the corner of the main building, where the cart track rounded it to pass the gate. Padre Mateo was beckoning him on, frantically, the sleeve of his gown flapping as he waved his arm.
Just here, when Juan expected Cristóbal to run out between the houses, Cristóbal came galloping on horseback, yelling in the exultant triumph of his wild young soul. He was riding Juan's horse, the fleet black animal taken from Sebastian Alvitre, which he had saddled and stationed at that strategic point, his plan worked out in the quick comprehension of his agile mind. Sergeant Olivera was not four rods behind them when they swept around the corner of the great mission building and saw the unguarded gate.
Unguarded but for Padre Mateo. There that honest, rustic-faced priest stood, one leaf of the ponderous oaken gate closed, the other half-swung, ready to clamp to its fellow the second they were through. Juan saw Padre Mateo's benediction in his eyes as he rode past him, leaning low over the pommel of the saddle, Sergeant Olivera's pistol balls flying so near he seemed to feel their wind.
When Sergeant Olivera came to the gate he was obliged to pull up hard, and set his horse back in the dust to save himself being pitched over the barred gate. There was an adobe wall ten feet high around the mission grounds at this point; it ran to the corner of the main building on one hand, far along the field-edge on the other. Sergeant Olivera and his soldiers could not ride over it; there was no way around.
They told the story long years afterwards, how Padre Mateo held the gate that day until Juan and Cristóbal were safe in the bosque in the mountain canyons; how he threaded his arm through the iron brackets that held the great oak bar, telling the soldiers that they must dismember him to open the gate and ride after his oppressed children. Sergeant Olivera, being a reasonable man, turned and rode back to the church, and led his men through the little burying-ground at the farther side of it, and took the roundabout way to the king's road again, where the trail of Juan Molinero and Cristóbal was by that time cold in the dust.
Juan Molinero, in the meantime, found himself in the mountains behind the mission, where it did not require much of the craft that he was master of to conceal himself from such clumsy trailers as these soldiers who went about their business with no more than half a heart, at the best. He was mounted on a good horse, provided with a good saddle, and two pistols in the holster at the saddle-horn. There was nothing more. He had no hat, no cloak, no food. He was dressed like a Spanish gentleman, in black silk jacket and buff trousers, and ruffled shirt open at his neck. His red sash was fringed and tasseled with gold thread. It was fit for nothing but to catch in harsh and thorny shrubs and hang up evidence that he had passed that way.
Cristóbal was no better provided, aside from his bow and arrows, which were his assurance of sustenance, as Juan would have felt assured with his rifle and ammunition within his reach. But Cristóbal was in a joyous mood. He had won his freedom from the cruelties of Don Geronimo at last.
Cristóbal related with pride how he had grasped the soldiers' intention when he saw them ride to the church, and how he had determined that moment to get Juan away safely out of their hands. As the first step in his swift preparations to that end he had caught Juan's horse up out of the corral and saddled it, concealing it close by Borromeo's house. Then he had crept up within easy shot of the soldiers, hiding among the clumped grapevines, and had shot Captain del Valle for two very good reasons. The first of these was that he bore him an unquenchable hatred for his debauchery of young Indian women: the second to create a commotion which he knew Juan would take advantage of to escape, exactly as it had come about.
The young man was fully aware that he could not return to his people at the mission, nor remain anywhere within reach of the military in California. There was no refuge for him in Mexico, except perhaps in distant Santa Fé, and there he might stop no longer than his description would be in reaching the military authorities.
"So, I am going to your country, Juan," he announced; "I am going away with you and be a man."
Juan agreed that it was the only course open to him to escape punishment, which would be as severe in one case as the other, let Captain del Valle be alive or dead.
"He is dead," Cristóbal declared. "Would I miss a man's heart at fifty yards, Juan?"
Juan knew very well that Cristóbal would not miss a mark so fairly presented. Captain del Valle was dead, and in that fact his own peril in California was doubly magnified. No dispensation from the viceroy could exempt him from the charge of complicity in that deed, although he was innocent in intent. He would not have lifted a hand against a soldier in Padre Ignacio's presence.
The two refugees rested in a wooded canyon where night was already deepening, although the peaks of the blasted hills were grey yet in the failing day. Cristóbal searched until he found some pieces of hard wood, to be used in the primitive method of making fire, which he tied to his saddle with great satisfaction, saying they would have no fear of means to cook their meat now. For him, the necessities and comforts of a journey, let it be never so long, were provided.
Juan was of a different mind. He had no reason, certainly, to hold the soldiers in such fear as Cristóbal, never having felt their oppression and cruelty as the Indians who had suffered under them. Their vigilance, and the valor and shrewdness of Sergeant Olivera especially, was not to be lightly held, in any case, yet Juan was confident that he could return to the mission for certain imperative reasons which urged him, and depart again undiscovered.
For one thing, he wanted his rifle. Without it on such a journey as lay ahead of him he would feel as hopeless as a man thrust out upon the sea without a plank to sustain him. And there was Gertrudis; she must be comforted and assured. Finally, and not of least importance, there was the map of the old mission trail, with the distance from water to water, and all other essentials of the road, which Padre Ignacio had prepared for him. With this to guide him, he would feel far more confident of reaching the Mississippi, and his plantation in the clearing of the Kentucky forest.
Cristóbal discounted the need of these things, actuated more by his fear that Juan would be taken by the soldiers if he should attempt to return to the mission than by the great confidence in his bow and arrow that he professed.
"I can find water in the desert, an Indian can smell water three leagues, Juan," he said. "We can hide at the water and kill deer with my arrows. The old men say there are big oxen on the other side of the desert, with long hair. The bulls have whiskers on their chins, one of them is big enough to feed twenty men."
"That is true, Cristóbal, but a white man must have a hat to keep the sun from his head in the desert. A white man's head is not as thick as an Indian's; he falls dead from the sun if he has no hat."
"Oh well, we'll make a hat for you like the one you had when you came to San Fernando," Cristóbal said, overcoming that objection readily. "I'll kill a deer in the morning, we can have you a hat in an hour."
Juan agreed to this proposal, saying that it would be a good thing to prepare for the journey and be ready to go onward in case the soldiers should prevent his return to the mission. Cristóbal, seeing that his intention to return was firmly fixed, touched Juan's shoulder gently, and turned his dark face to peer at him earnestly through the dusk.
"I know why you want to go back, my brother," he said. "It is to kill Don Geronimo. That is very good; a man must strike his enemy, and Don Geronimo is the one who betrayed you to the soldiers. They would not have known you were going if Don Geronimo had not gone to the pueblo and told them."
"That must be true, Cristóbal. But I am not going to kill Don Geronimo."
"Padre Ignacio would say that is fine, to hear you talk like that," said Cristóbal, plainly incredulous, "but a man can't love his enemy. I have tried that, Juan; it does not go very well. I used to pray for Don Geronimo when he cut me with his whip, and what good did it do? Don Geronimo only hit me harder the next time, as if God had told him what I had done, and made a fool of me."
"I'm not going to kill him, I tell you Cristóbal; I'm not going to lift my hand against Don Geronimo again."
Cristóbal was silent a long time. After a while he laid his hand on Juan's shoulder again, firmly, the pressure of understanding in his touch.
"You will let him live because of Doña Magdalena," he said. "A man could almost love his enemy when he has a wife like Doña Magdalena. She is a gentle lady."
"I have heard her speak kindly of you, Cristóbal."
"But nobody but you, Juan, and Padre Ignacio, ever stood between me and a blow. Will you go to San Fernando tonight?"
"Not tonight, Cristóbal; the soldiers might be expecting me to come back tonight. In the morning we will go farther back among the mountains, and tomorrow night I will return."
Whether Sergeant Olivera had failed to pick up their trail after they left the dusty highway, or whether he had abandoned the pursuit in the early conviction of its utter fatuity, Juan had no choice of conclusion. No soldier had come in sight from the high look-out they kept the next day. At evening Juan was ready for his return to the mission.
Cristóbal was to remain at that place in the mountains for three days, unless forced to flee onward from the soldiers, waiting Juan's return. At the end of three days, if Juan failed to come back, he was to proceed on his long and lonely seeking after a refuge in an alien land.
Juan gave the young Indian the names of people in Kentucky who would assist him; the little English that Cristóbal had learned would further his progress once he reached the country where Spanish would be no longer understood. Juan gave Cristóbal the cavalry horse, and one of Captain del Valle's pistols, with half the ammunition.
At twilight Juan rode down the canyon beside the little stream of crystal, turbulent water on his hazardous return to San Fernando, to repair the omissions of his hasty flight.