PADRE MATEO rode his mule in a fashion that seemed to mark him for a belligerent man. He held his legs as stiff as posts in the stirrups, flaring them outward from the animal's sides, braced as if he sat ready to ride headlong in a charge at the first alarm, his brown gown pulled high from his shanks, which were marred by scratches from cactus and brier thorn, new and old.
All day he had ridden that wide-spread way, jaunty in spirit and ready in word, good companion for the road as ever sat in saddle at a comrade's elbow. There was no fatigue in him, hardened by his twenty years in California, where he had tramped in sandals more than once the long trail between San Diego and Monterey. But varied as his experiences had been in that land, this expedition which centered around a lady was something so strange and extraordinary in the way of duty that he found himself checking his outflying thoughts now and then to ask himself if fancy had not tricked him, and imagination contrived it all.
Padre Mateo was not displeased with his part in that outgoing expedition to the harbor of San Pedro, for even a monk may have his desire for adventure as naturally and lawfully as other men. There is no doubt that he smiled quite frequently in the shadow of his broad hat as he rode at his companion's side.
This other was a man garbed in all essentials like Pedro Mateo himself, in the brown gown of the Franciscan brotherhood, the flat-crowned black hat with broad brim, the severe cord of hemp about his waist. Only this one wore long stockings with his sandals, as the upraised gown revealed. A cloak carelessly thrown over the horn of his saddle fell down the mule's withers almost to the rider's toes.
A mule-drawn cart, its wheels almost the height of a man, came behind the two monkly travelers. It was covered with a weathered canvas, which rested not on bows, but upright pieces supporting horizontal braces, making the top square instead of round, after the fashion since the first covered cart rumbled down the long white slopes of Spain. The driver was an Indian of middle age, falling about in the second generation of the padres' era in California. In front of them, scouting the way, Cristóbal rode, mounted on a young horse thin-legged and fleet, his lariat coiled at his saddle-horn, his bow and arrows, the only weapons the neophytes were permitted, ready to his hand.
It was a winding way across a broad valley that the travelers followed, where the dark green of liveoak and the brighter leaf of sycamore stood high above the grey tone of the general landscape. Shrubs grew so near the broken road through the thickets in places that passing cart-hubs had marked them with black grease; again all growth but grass, which was dry now, and sere, fell away from open meadows where cattle grazed on the withered provender. Since leaving the pass through the hills, which they had crossed from San Fernando into this valley, they had not passed any habitation of civilized man, their road lying several miles westward of the Pueblo de Los Angeles. It was evening; the sun was in the tree-tops.
"Well, my good friend, how does the friar's gown feel to you by this time?" Padre Mateo inquired. He tilted his head back to look up into his comrade's face, his mule being two hands lower than the extraordinarily large animal which bore his friend.
"Not much of an outfit for hot weather, especially when a man's got these confounded tight Spanish breeches on under it," Juan Mojinero replied. "I tell you, Padre Mateo, if we meet any trouble on the road I think I'll skin out of this long brown sack. I like to have my legs free in a fight."
"No, no, Juan; no, no!" Padre Mateo said, shaking his head solemnly, greatly disturbed by the proposal. "Do as I have cautioned you if we meet soldiers, either on the road or at the Rancho Dominguez, where we shall arrive presently and spend the night. Bend your head a little, as a man in his thoughts, Juan, and pass them by without a word. If it becomes necessary to make explanations of your silence, I will do the talking, my boy. You are a brother of the order, simply fray, not padre, as many Franciscans are; you come from a foreign land, you have no Spanish. I will guarantee that nobody who saw you yesterday, not even sharp old Sergeant Olivera himself, would recognize you today. This gown, your lean, ascetic face, your long jaw like the jaw of a man who has fasted—"
"Fasted I have, Padre Mateo. Did I tell you that for six days in the desert northeast of your mountains I had no meat, and only such water as I could suck out of that prickly plant with leaves like beavers' tails?"
"You did not tell me, Juan. But you have earned the right to wear the gown of a monk, at least in the cause of the distressed. But remember—silence if we meet soldiers. It will only complicate your situation in this country if you fight them, and unluckily kill one of them, Juan."
"Yes, that would be an unlucky go for me," Juan said, as grave as if the vows of the Franciscans bound him, in truth. "I'd take to the woods and run my chances rather than lift my hand against a soldier, or any officer of the law, in this or any other land."
Padre Mateo nodded, considering it silently a little way.
"Yes; just so," he said. "But we must be wise, as well as cautious, and then you shall have nothing to avoid when you meet the soldiers, if such a bad chance must come to us. I never could put myself on the same footing with Padre Ignacio again if you should not return to San Fernando with me; it was harder than converting an Indian medicine man to get his consent to this masquerade. But without it you could not have ventured on the road with me. It would have been foolish to leave the mission in your own skin."
"Well, if I look as foolish as I feel, the soldiers will see through me like a spyglass."
"No soldier in the world but would take you for a friar," Padre Mateo declared.
"I'd feel suspicious if I was to meet that rawboned sergeant, Oliver, is it you call him?"
"Not even Olivera would know you," Padre Mateo insisted, his confidence profound. "Last night you were hairy as a bear; today you are clean as a fish out of the sea. Since I shaped up your hair according to the contour of your head, as a true friar's hair should be, I would see you walk with confidence within a foot of Sergeant Olivera's nose."
"Well, I hope we don't meet him; he's a feller with a mighty shrewd eye."
Day seemed to plunge its torch into the sea, the light gave way so quickly to dusk when the sun disappeared behind the low, grass-covered hills. They rode on through the twilight, Cristóbal growing dim before them. The incense of burning cedar carried faintly to them on the little wind that came rustling like a doe through the chaparral.
"I smell Fabio Dominguez' hearth-fire," Padre Mateo said. "There is the comfort of homecoming in it, a sweet assurance that is as placid as an evening bell."
"Where on earth did you learn English, Padre Mateo?" Juan inquired, his wonder widening every time the priest spoke. "You know it a 'tarnal sight better than I do, or ever will."
"I learned it in Quebec, Canada, my little son, where I was carried by my parents when a little lad. Although French is more common there, the vigor of your roaring English always made my heart jump to hear. But I am neither English nor French, but a Spaniard of the bone. My father was a sea trader, who came to anchor in Quebec for its business advantages. And so it comes."
"I beg you to pardon my curiosity; I didn't mean to pry into your life."
"It is a book for any man to read," Padre Mateo said, so simply ingenuous that no man of honor could have doubted his smallest word.
"You remember it remarkably for all the years you've been where no man's got an English word in his mouth. That's all I can say for you."
"There are many Franciscan brothers who speak English; from time to time one of them has come my way these twenty years past. The last was a friar who made a survey extending our irrigating system; he remained at San Fernando almost two years. I kept his tongue going long hours. A good plan is to talk to your own ear when you are alone, but you will not have need of that in the practice of Spanish, a matter which you must begin at once. That is Padre Ignacio's wish; he desires to be able to speak with you mouth to mouth."
"I guess I can pick it up, I'm handy with Indian talk."
"Spanish is not to be picked up like a savage jargon of the woods," Padre Mateo corrected him, almost severely, for he was touched in the spot where a Spaniard's skin is tenderest. "You shall learn it from the abecedario, as you would say the spelling-book, so you may hold speech with gentlemen without shame to yourself or your teachers. When we return, Juan Molinero, prepare yourself for this greatest pleasure that can come in the life of any man."
"I'll be proud to learn it, if I can twist my tongue around them little sliding-off sounds."
"You have a softness in your speech, as if southern winds had mellowed the harshness of your English throat. It is a strange thing, Juan, that the sweet-singing birds come from the lands of the south, where the speech of man is gentle and musical on the ear. Crows, with their harsh impertinence, are most commonly found in climes where the speech of man is also rough like a cough coming out of the breast. It is a thing to ponder. But as I have said, I like a roaring language which a man must open the mouth to let out of him, like rocks thrown from a volcano. So; we are approaching Pablo Dominguez' door."
"How far is it to the harbor?"
"Ten miles or so—too far to continue on tonight, if that is your thought, Juan. In the morning we will take the road early, returning here for the night. The day after, with fortune that is due the valiant, we shall nestle the young bird safely in the walls of San Fernando."
The Dominguez house stood back some distance from the road, on a pleasant smooth hill where pine trees grew, making a fair setting for the low brown house. A high adobe wall enclosed the grounds to fend off the cattle which roamed hill and plain in thousands. At the double gate of solid planks, which Cristóbal had opened, Padre Mateo halted, slewed in his saddle and looked hard at Juan Molinero a little while without a word.
"Juan," he said at last, his voice serious and low, "I am afraid I have allowed a romantic, adventurous desire to bring you into peril. I fear the soldiers have been sent from the mission in the design of luring you out; it came to me only as we turned in to come to the gate. Captain del Valle is a man with an ambitious heart, jealous of his authority. Turn about then, Juan, and go back to the mission. The night will shelter you."
Juan Molinero laughed, and rode through the gate.
"But it must be considered," Padre Mateo insisted, pushing after him, drumming his mule's sides with his heels. "I am too quick to jump into something while the heat is on me; that has been a lifelong fault. Now I come on this expedition when prudence and wisdom should have been heeded, bringing you to defend us against the brigands of the bosque. Captain del Valle has opened his hand, and the bird has stepped into it, woe is mine!"
"I was as keen as a hound on a frosty morning to go, Padre Mateo. Say no more."
"Something cold has come into my heart; I am afraid," Padre Mateo said.
They rode on to the dooryard, where Dominguez met them, offering the hospitality of his house. Dominguez, in the prime of his vigor, was a dark stocky man, full of words as a sack is full of wheat, for company did not come frequently to his door. Dominguez' house was not on the mission trail leading from San Diego to the north. On this harbor road there was little travel by persons of consequence, except when a ship came to San Pedro bay as now, which was perhaps not more than once a month. At other times the road was used by vaqueros riding to and from the pueblo, fishermen who came from the sea to trade their catch in the pueblo and the missions, and now and then a rancher who rode in to exchange news with his neighbor.
Dominguez held a grant from the king, as all the men of consequence who settled in California in those days were similarly favored. His house was a notable one, on account of the cedar beams which ribbed its ceilings having been brought from Mexico by ship. A woman servant was lighting many candles in the room where the Dominguez table was spread for the evening meal.
The rancher was astonished at sight of the tall friar, disappointed, too, that he had no understanding of Spanish, a fault that made him little better than a dumb man at the table so far as Dominguez' communication with him applied. Still there was a pleasure in having the stranger from a far country—Padre Mateo said he was an Englishman—bend his high head to enter the door of that house. Dominguez said so in as many words, and Mrs. Dominguez affirmed it with a smile that was full of broad white teeth. There was a young Dominguez of twenty or thereabout, and a daughter a year or two younger. These all sat at the long table with the two travelers, the young ones silent with that unembarrassed deference which graces the youth of well-bred Spanish and Mexican families.
Dominguez would have the whole story of their going and their object, nothing of which was kept from him but the identity of the masquerading friar. It was the best piece of news that had come in at the rancher's door in many a day; even young Dominguez listened with a sharpness that seemed to lift him out of his immature character, a flush deepening on his brown cheeks when his father turned to him in gaiety and said:
"Here is a wife coming for you at last, Guillermo!"
At which the young lady bent her head to hide a smile, and the mischievous banter of her bright brown eyes.
"You shall have Guillermo to go with you, Padre Mateo, if you desire," Dominguez offered. "It is a bad business to travel these roads where every bush hides a thief, with a young lady and her treasure, and only an Indian boy with bow and arrows to stand in defense. It has been shown too often that these bandits have little respect: for a priest's gown on the road in these days of affliction."
"It is too true," Padre Mateo agreed, "But I think we shall pass without harm. If we feel the need of another arm as we return, then we shall enlist Guillermo, as you suggest."
"The soldiers passed here this afternoon, I think there is little danger," Mrs. Dominguez said, not a willing party to her husband's fine plan of placing the young lady from Mexico under obligation for ther son's defense. From the soft looks with which she caressed him it was certain the mother would meet at jealous point any attempt to beguile him from her house for a year or two yet, at least.
"The soldiers could have swept this band of robbers out of the country long ago if they had so much breath for pursuit of them as they have for drinking a man's wine," Dominguez criticized, not troubling to soften his contempt and resentment. "In the past month, Padre Mateo, this Sebastian Alvitre has stolen at least twenty of my sheep, which he devours without taking the trouble to go very far away from the roadside. If the soldiers wanted him badly they could track him almost any night by the smell of tallow dripping in the fire."
"You will have heard that he robbed two priests from San Juan Capistrano not a week ago?" Padre Mateo inquired.
"May the spoil of it wither his arm!" Dominguez cursed the outlaw, his own hand lifted in solemn denunciation.
"We speak of the bandit, Sebastian Alvitre," Padre Mateo explained, turning to his companion, who attended to his meal in the thoughtful silence of a man who might have much on his heart.
"What sort of man is he?" Juan inquired, lifting his blue eyes from his plate.
"He asks what sort of man this Alvitre is, and I cannot answer him," Padre Mateo said, looking up the table where his host filled the substantial oak armchair in complacent dignity.
"For that matter, neither can I," Dominguez returned. "I have been told that he is of a vile countenance, black as a scorched loaf, but I never have seen him. Let us hope that our meeting with him, one and all of us, is far away."
"And the soldiers went this way today?" Padre Mateo inquired. "Can you tell me, doña, whether they went toward the harbor?"
"They went in that direction," Mrs. Dominguez replied, nodding her sleek black head until the long ear-pendants swung like pendulums against her neck.
"The soldiers are at the harbor," Padre Mateo said, addressing Juan, trouble clouding his hearty face. "Now, Juan when supper is over you will take the road on a fresh mule that I will procure for you, and dawn will see you safely in San Fernando. It will be a load removed from my conscience and my heart."
Juan was vexed by Padre Mateo's insistence that he make himself safe at the expense of his loyalty to a friend and duty to the expedition that he felt to be as much his own personal affair as that of any other man concerned. A flood of color, as of the rush of a hot retort, came into his face, deepening the fiery coating sun and wind had given the newly shaved portion of it that day. He turned his head slowly and fixed his steady eyes on Padre Mateo's own.
"We settled that business, once and for all, out there at the gate," he said. "When the time comes for me to turn my back to soldiers, or anybody else, I don't want to be told; I just want to sneak off with my shoulders up to my ears, like a man that's whipped his wife. I'd feel that way. Now, Padre Mateo, say no more."
Padre Mateo held his eyes up under the severe rebuke from his companion of the road, although his face was ruddier for the slow, pointed words than the good food and unstinted wine of Rancher Dominguez' table warranted. A moment of silence, eye fixed on eye, as each man probed deep into the well of the other's honesty and courage. Padre Mateo laughed, and slapped his friend's brown gown until the dust of the road rose under his hearty hand.
It was a strange business between monks, Dominguez thought, watching the by-play with round eyes. He never before had seen any expression of the small sympathies of life common to other men between these severe brown-cassocked friars who went marching up and down the long white roads with rawhide sandals on their undaunted feet.
"Who sounds on the door?" Dominguez asked, starting at the rude note that broke the placidity of his hour.
"Shall I inquire, father?" the young man asked, pushing back to rise.
"Again!" said Dominguez, resentful of this rude hand that beat so loudly on his stout oak door. "No; I will go; permit me."
The dining-hall lay at one side of the broad entrance-way, into which it opened through a wide-spanned arch. Dominguez stood for a moment under this arch, grasping the velvet curtain, bending a little, straining in doubtful pose, as if he questioned the honesty of a man who came at such an hour. In a moment his hand was heard on the chain of the door.
The traveler inquired the direction and the distance to the Pueblo de Los Angeles; Dominguez replying politely as he was asked.
"Can I buy refreshment here?" the traveler inquired.
"No," said Dominguez, his caution struck down by the challenge to his hospitality. "Enter; this is not a tavern."
The stranger was brief with his thanks; he stood waiting while Dominguez fastened the chain. Dominguez parted the curtains, the stranger stepped into the light. Juan Molinero and Padre Mateo were seated at the side of the table, their faces toward the arched door, giving them a close view of the stranger as he set foot within the room.
The traveler was a man of medium stature, heavy in the shoulders with ungraceful strength, like a laborer; a swart man, with rough-modeled features, his face overgrown with the stubble of a thick black beard. His nose, very short and small, had an upturned end, as if nature had pushed him aside with impatient thumb after finding him unsatisfactory when finished. He was a pig-eyed, peon type of man, his black mustaches small and bristling, a leering sneer in his countenance as of one who resented his position in human affairs while lacking either the merit to justify advancement at other hands, or the ability to contrive it with his own.
For a traveler who had no more to defend than this man apparently carried about him, the stranger was well armed. In addition to a sabre which almost touched the floor as he stood, he carried four pistols, two on each side, in holsters attached to the broad belt buckled around his middle over the soiled yellow sash with green stripes, which hung in frayed tassels to his thigh. There was dust on his peaked sombrero, which he kept with ill-mannered boorishness on his head, dust on his embroidered short jacket, and in the creases at the knees of his tight-fitting buff velvet pantaloons, cut so broad at the bottoms as to almost hide his feet, strapped beneath his insteps and fastened with silver buckles. He evidently had been in the saddle a long time.
"You are late on the road," said Dominguez.
"It is a habit with me," the other replied.
"Will you sit at the table, gentleman?" Dominguez put his obligation as host above the affront this coarse fellow offered himself, his family and his guests. He placed a chair beside Juan Molinero, inviting with graceful cordiality the visitor to sit to his refreshment.
"A man doesn't sit down to the business I have come for, Dominguez," the stranger replied. He snatched a pistol, with the quick movement of a man aroused to sudden passion, and presented it at Dominguez' breast. "Steady, Dominguez! One little movement and you are with the dead. So, you have not met Sebastian Alvitre? Have a good look at him, then, so you can tell the next slipfoot priest that comes to your door the color of his eyes."
Dominguez stood with shoulders squared, head erect, a little paler for the menace of the pistol, but in dignity greater than his fear.
"Alvitre, you are a coward, then, as well as a thief, to enter a man's house on this false pretense," Dominguez said.
"That will be enough, little man!" Alvitre warned, his scowl black in the threat of death. "No, sit in the chair, your hands on the table, boy," he ordered young Dominguez, who was half-risen in some design of his own courageous young heart.
Padre Mateo commanded the young man down with frantic hand, for he could see, as plainly as if the price stood printed on Alvitre's face, the cheap valuation he set on a human life.
"What is this?" Juan Molinero asked, hands on the table-edge as if to rise.
"It is the thief of whom we spoke but a little while ago," Padre Mateo whispered. "God save us now!"
"When you speak nothing good of a man, shut your window, Dominguez, and see that your shutters are closed so tight one little word cannot pass," the outlaw said, making a meaning gesture with his shoulder toward the open casement. "A man might ride on if he heard a kind word fly out, but what is to be expected of priests who make slaves of helpless Indians, and fat farmers who get gifts from the king? So I sound on your door, Dominguez; I step into your house to take from you a thousand dollars. Your wife will bring it to me, while you stand here ready to be killed if one little hair raises on your head."
"I haven't so much money, not a tenth of it," Dominguez said.
"That is a lie!" Alvitre charged. "You have sold hides and tallow lately. There is money in your chest."
"A little, only a very little," Dominguez protested, whether in truth or in desperate subterfuge perhaps only himself knew.
"In such case I will take the young lady away with me, the young dove that sits yonder. She will do instead of money, if it will please you better, Dominguez."
Young Dominguez leaped to his feet at the threat, laying hold of his heavy chair to strike the outlaw down. A second more and he would have worked his brave intention, but Alvitre, quicker than the youth, drew another pistol with his left hand. Grinning with a coyote snarl he aimed not at young Dominguez, but at the mother of the family, who sat only a little more than the length of his arm from where he stood.
Alvitre stood across the table from Juan Molinero, who sat in his place, hands on the edge of the board, the sleeves of his brown gown wide as grain sacks on his arms. On the outlaw's right hand, two feet or so beyond the pistol pointed at his breast, Dominguez stood; on his left, the son of the family had crouched down in his chair at the double command of outlaw and priest, where he sat alert and determined, palpitating in his wrath which burned in his cheeks and eyes. And there stood the obscene Alvitre, his arms in a manner outspread to aim his pistols at the hostages whom he had chosen to enforce his will upon that house.
So Juan Molinero sat, hands on the cloth, this scene fixed in his perception like the figures in a carving. There Dominguez stood, pale, watchful, ready to put his life down in vain effort to protect his own; at the foot of the table, his wife, terror in her distended eyes; near her hand the daughter of the family, a flame of resentment for this treacherous invasion, this insolent demand; and young Dominguez, straining like a poised panther, ready to leap to his own destruction in the fierce anger of his courageous heart. All this Juan Molinero saw, down to the detail of the lightest breath. Padre Mateo put out a vain hand to stay him as he rose from his place, and leaped full into the outlaw's arms.
They had the sight of that brown-clad man, whom all but one in that company thought to be a friar, his arms spread as if to embrace Alvitre, the moment before pistol-shots roared and the smoke of the discharge made confusion of the struggle. Alvitre was lying insensible on the floor at the next sight; bits of plaster were falling from the ceiling between the brown cedar beams where the bullets had struck. Juan Molinero was unbuckling sword and pistols from the outlaw's body, one substantial foot in broad sandal set on the prostrate form to guard against a sudden revival.
Dominguez shouted to the others to put out the lights, thinking at once of Alvitre's men, fearing their fire through the window. The candles on the table were blown out in a breath; mother and daughter sprang to puff out the others which stood on the sideboard across the room.
"Leave one candle burning till we bind him fast for the soldiers!" Padre Mateo called, his voice strong and loud.
"He will be held, never doubt," Dominguez panted, his knees on Alvitre's shoulders where he lay face to the floor.
Juan Molinero fastened the outlaw's pistol belt around him, and took the sabre in his hand.
"I'll see to the others," he said to Padre Mateo.
"God speed you, my son!" Padre Mateo replied. "Here," jerking off the hemp rope that was his girdle, holding it out to Dominguez, "this will hold him—bind him well."
Dominguez made a quick loop of the stout rope around Alvitre's arm, leaned over, reaching for the other one. Juan Molinero was at the door; the sharp clink of the heavy chain was in their ears. And Sebastian Alvitre, fox that had scorned and beaten the traps of many men, leaped to his feet, flinging those who clung to him aside as a man in the harvest flings sheaves of wheat. A spring, and he was on the low sill of the open window; a leap through the unfastened shutter, and he was gone in the dark.
Dominguez shouted; the last candle was blown out. They stood waiting; silent, expectant. Juan Molinero returned after a little while, to find them scarcely breathing in the dark house, where Dominguez had drawn them out of the range of windows behind his thick adobe walls.
"He was alone," Juan reported; "all I got was his horse. He slipped past me in the bushes."
Dominguez made a light, and exclaimed in amazement, and lifted his candle high.
"What is this?" he asked, turning in astonishment to Padre Mateo. "A monk went out, a cavalier returns! God save us! what is this?"
There Juan Molinero stood, in his short jacket and tight pantaloons which his long gown had hidden, Sebastian Alvitre's pistols strapped around him, the robber's sabre at his side. Close at his heels the young Indian, Cristóbal, was standing, a gleam of white teeth in his dark face, the long brown gown across his arm.
"I stripped it off, Padre Mateo, so I'd be free in case of a fight," said Juan.