"Pepita, Pepita, be thou watchful of those threads. Red follows yellow in the pattern, else your weaving is hit-or-miss. Santa Maria! What careless fingers! See, the blanket is streaked in color, like a pinto horse. Thy knuckles, careless one, should be made to ache, by rapping them smartly."
"Thou wilt rap no knuckles of mine, Marta. Padre Osuna forbids the matrona to strike any neophyte girl, as thou well knowest. It's hard enough to sit at a loom day after day and weave blankets, when one isn't mending them, or making baskets, or grinding maize, without being beaten, if the fingers play tricks when the thought happens elsewhere."
Marta was a matrona of the department of neophytes in the single women's quarter of the Mission San José. Her specialty was weaving blankets. The Mission sheep provided wool in plenty, and hand-made looms prepared it for use, after it had been dyed the many colors dear to the Indian taste.
"Fingers play tricks when the mind is elsewhere! Well-a-day! Why has one a mind but to direct the fingers and the feet? If Pedro Carrasca's mind ever rests on thee, when it should be on cattle-driving, behold! his pony will throw him over its head into the dry oats."
A general laugh followed from the Indian women and girls.
It was the Mission's busy season. The harvest had been abundant. Though late in coming the rains had been plentiful, and at proper intervals, so that the yield in wheat, barley, oats, and corn was scarcely below a good average. Padre Osuna had sent a vessel laden with cereals to Lower California, where bread grains were scanty and good-priced. A schooner chartered at Yerba Buena had many thousand bushels of seed-wheat on board, ready to sail to the settlements in Oregon, when a reliable supercargo was found who knew enough English to deal with the Americanos in the North.
The great matanza of the year had just been held. A half dozen trading ships were in San Francisco Bay, buying the Mission hides and tallow. Sovereignties might change, flags come and go, but trade went on forever.
The Mission's needs for the year were supplied from the "Boston" ships, in return for the commodities of the Mission. In New England a demand had sprung up for the varicolored blankets made from California wool by the Indians. Nowhere were blankets more skillfully or more durably made than at Mission San José. Accordingly, a large order had come from an Eastern supply house; and the Mission Indian women and girls worked longer hours than usual at the wooden frames. These had been set up out of doors near the lodgment of the unmarried women.
Pepita's eyes sparkled as the others laughed.
"Pedro Carrasca is no concern of mine."
"Well, maybe not," returned Marta, her black eyes twinkling in her lean face. "When the padre inspects the blanket under your hand, if he sees poor work he will scarcely sanction your betrothal to Pedro, one of the best lads in the valley, as well as a vaquero of vaqueros; and Pepita," patronizingly, "you can do good work when you try."
"There are other vaqueros besides Pedro Carrasca."
"Right you are, Pepita. Felix Ubaldo is a better rider than Pedro. Pedro's shoulders are not always straight in the saddle," said Florida Pardo.
"No such thing," defended Pepita. "When the broncho bucks, Felix goes up and down like the jumping-jacks the little boys get for Christmas."
"Come, come, children, work, work. Talk less," from the matrona.
Pepita stamped her foot. "Work, work all the time. Why was I not born a señorita, with people to serve me, instead of having to work every day like an ox drawing a carreta full of stones?"
"Saints in heaven!" from Marta. "A crow isn't born a songster, because crows have a use as well as singing birds. Pepita, thou art a blackamoor; still, thou may become a peona of the Señorita Mendoza. Modesta, her serving maid, marries soon Tomaso, peon captain."
"O, Marta, is the Señorita Carmelita thinking of making me one of her peonas? How I would like that! Will you not ask the padre to recommend me to the Señor Mendoza for his household?" The girl got up and put her arm wheedlingly about the woman.
"I'll tell thee, Pepita, Modesta's my niece, and I know of what I speak when I give you word of happenings at the great hacienda house."
The matrona folded her arms. The clicking of the looms was stilled. Indian maid and wife were as ready to hear the gossip as was Marta to tell it.
"Last Saint John's day the quality of Santa Clara valley attended high mass here. As you remember, Lady Carmelita played the organ. Padre Osuna alone excels her. The Indian choir sang, and—Pepita, thou sang well enough. I will say, Señorita Mendoza was much taken with thy solo part. But do not overpride thyself. Thy voice, like thy good looks, is but a gift to thee, not of thine own making."
"Tell us the story," the girl urged.
"Well, many white people had midday meal at Señor Mendoza's. Padre Osuna did not go, though he was invited. You see, our padre and the señor speak when they meet, and seem friendly, but——"
"O, Marta, I don't want to hear about that. Tell what was said about me at the meal."
"Don't want to hear—don't want to hear," repeated the matrona. "Well, I shall say nothing at all, if I'm not to speak my own way."
"Go on, Marta," cried several, nearly as eager as Pepita.
The matrona enjoyed their impatience for a while, affecting to be very busy over her loom. At last—
"At that midday meal Señorita Carmelita said she had heard you, Pepita, sing, and liked your voice as well as Modesta's; that she would soon need a new lady's maid and liked your appearance. Then, Señorita Galindo said she once had you for lady's maid, but sent you back to the neophyte house, because you listened at keyholes and talked too much."
"I did not. I did not," asserted Pepita.
"What did you do, then?" queried Marta.
"I didn't do anything."
"But thy tongue, vixen, is often loose, as if hung in the middle, to wag at both ends. Come now, what didst thou say when thou talkedst too much?"
"I knew Señorita Galindo was in love with Don Abelardo Peralta, and that he was not with her. When she pinched my arm for pulling her hair as I combed it, I told her that Señor Peralta was in love with a lady in Monterey, Señora Valentino."
"What did the Señorita Galindo say to that?"
"She pinched my arm more, and boxed my ears till I cried; then sent me to Padre Osuna all covered with lies." Pepita spat at the remembrance.
The women turned to their looms again. Marta walked around examining their work, admonishing, encouraging or assisting.
"Draw the threads tighter, Joséfa. Pull them equally, not one looser than the others. Calvia, use sense; your weave is uneven."
Passing her own loom she said: "This is a design after which many blankets were made for Constancia Alvarado, she who married Señor Mendoza. The señor's hair, then, was as black as any of yours. Don Marcel Hernandez has ordered six of each of these patterns. I shouldn't wonder if it means his daughter is going to marry. My man went to Spain once with Señor Hernandez, to bring back horses.
"Tula, hasten, thy loom moves slowly, as if tired. Wait till noon before resting. Very good, Encarnacion; the best you've done. And thou, too, Jesusa."
As the matrona came to Pepita's side she said in low voice: "Girl, worry thou not. Soon another takes thy loom and thou goest to service with the Lady Carmelita, without doubt. The padre will make recommend of thee; but remember his words in last Sunday's sermon: 'Have a care as to what thou seest, what thou hearest, and what thou sayest.'"
"I am not the only one that talks too much."
Marta recalled something to be done inside the house and went away, telling the weavers to be industrious during her absence.
When she was out of sight Encarnacion strolled over to the end loom. "Marta has pride that Padre Majin de Catala, of Mission Santa Clara, baptized her mother. Padre Junipero Serra himself baptized my grandfather, in San Diego Mission. Padre Junipero always said that Indians who work hard and pray the Virgin every day would be high in heaven when they died. I never heard he said that of lady's maids," looking at Pepita.
Pepita was happy in anticipation, and so made no reply.
"Last year, when I was at Yerba Buena, in the family of Señor Arguello," said Jesusa, whose loom had become silent the moment of Marta's departure, "a very old man at Mission Dolores said the sea did not always run in and out there, past Yerba Buena, but mountains once were where ships sail now. I asked him if white men had dug the way for the ocean, and he said white men never work." Jesusa was proud of her temporary residence in Yerba Buena, and brought it forward at every opportunity.
"Will the white men, then, who are not padres, go to heaven?" inquired Tula, who had abandoned her work.
The theology of none of them was equal to a reply for this question.
"Where do you suppose all the peon soldiers have gone? I saw many, many marching away this morning, Señor Mendoza leading them. San José de Guadalupe! but they looked handsome!" said Elasia, a girl who had seated herself on the ground, her hands lying idly in her lap.
"Oho! the peon Ildefranco alone didst thou see. We know," said some one.
"Yes, yes," joined in others.
"You have no need to talk. You were all watching them, and with your mouths wide open. I saw you," retorted Elasia.
Everyone began to laugh.
"Comes Marta! Comes Marta!" cried Encarnacion from her point of vantage.
There was a general scurrying to place. When the matrona came out the silence was too intense to be sincere. She went from loom to loom.
"Your work is short by many inches of what it should be. If your chili con carne and meal were to be as short to-day you would go hungry, and deserve it too. I have a mind to tell the padre how shiftless you all are, and that unless I stand over you, not one of you will work."
"She's willing enough for us to stop work if she has some tale to tell us about what Modesto heard; but if we stop a minute to breathe, at any other time, it's different," whispered one to her nearest companion, when Marta's face was in another direction.
The noon Angelus commenced ringing.
The looms were at once deserted.
In the neophyte house lived over two hundred Indian girls who were taught to read Spanish, together with such housecraft as a peona should know, while the music of the church occupied no small part in the daily curriculum. In addition, the neophytes were instructed in weaving, in embroidery, drawn work, lace-making; and from among them came the seamstresses who made elaborate gowns for the ladies of the Spanish gentry.
Talking was not allowed during meals. A book, generally the life of some saint, was read aloud by a matrona, or by some girl who was capable. To-day the book had been finished early. There was not time to begin another, so the rule of silence was dispensed with during the remainder of dinner. The girls proceeded to enjoy the unwonted privilege, their zest for eating, however, in no wise diminished.
Suddenly, pandemonium burst over the place. Indian warwhoops were mingled with the crash of musket-firing. Yelling and shouting were punctuated with pistol shots. The tawny mastiffs, night guardians of the patio, now confined in a rear yard, howled a vicious protest against this noonday interruption of their sleep.
Indian horsemen hurled themselves down the hills. Indian forms arose from the ground where they had hidden in shelter of vineyard and olive grove, and avalanched on the Mission.
Mounted renegades whirled around the buildings, cutting off avenues of escape for those within. Men on foot forced the porter's lodge in front, while others rushed through the artisans' shops in the rear.
Padre Osuna, Juan Antonio, major-domo, and nearly every able-bodied peon of the Mission were busy with the trading ships lying at the Embarcadero two leagues away, on the south arm of San Francisco Bay. The institution was defenseless before the invaders, who were under the capable command of a stocky, strongly built aborigine who sat on his horse in the road which ran alongside of the house of the girl neophytes.
"Bring up the led horses," the chief had ordered when the uproar was greatest.
The screaming of frightened women broke out in shrill notes, accompanied by the furious baying of the mastiffs straining at their chains.
A shot or two sounded in the patio.
"Some of the women have got behind the gratings and are shooting at their wooers," half laughed, half grunted the leader.
"Stanislaus," asked a man near him, "can our fellows get into this place where the girls are? At Monterey they are behind doors you couldn't smash with an ax in half a day."
"Cayetano," was the reply, "I was major-domo here for years. The task set for those of us sent inside is easy. The peonas are spunky," he continued, "but they'll be the better wives in the wild hills we go to. If the enemy comes, our tepees will not be undefended in our absence."
Indians carrying struggling neophyte peonas filled the porch of the house. They sprang to the ground below and upon the backs of the waiting mounts. Soon two hundred horses were bearing double burdens.
"Any more to come?" called Stanislaus.
"No," from a lieutenant who had been in charge of the inside squad.
"Our way of finding wives may not please the padre, but it's the only resource left us," said the chief.
"It's a quicker method than the padre's," returned the lieutenant, "and we're sure of our own pick."
"Now to the hills!" commanded the leader, adding: "When Padre Osuna trails us home he can perform a hundred double weddings at once."
The raiders spurred away eastward. Some of the girls, inert from fear, made no movement in their captors' arms, others continued screaming and struggling. Shortly their cries died away in the distance, and the desolated Mission was left to the wailing matronas and the old peons whose resistance had been too feeble to attract notice from the marauders.
As unexpectedly as had the tumult begun across the way, a clanging sounded from the topmost tower of Mendoza's hacienda house. It was an iron bar striking with lightning rapidity the rim of a bell suspended in the tower. Three strokes a second it supplied, under nicely arranged mechanism of block and pulley.
The clamor aroused every peon on the Mendoza grant, for that call meant each task must be left without delay, and all speed made to the hacienda house, as if in matter of death and life.
Peons rushed from the Arroyo Seco, leagues to the north, leaving their herds without caretakers. Plowmen in the soft vegetable fields at the mouth of the Arroyo Alameda flung the traces upon the horses' backs, and galloped the heavy work animals toward Mission San José.
Sturgeon-catchers in the far-away Alviso marshes withheld the spear as their boat floated above the rotund quarry. "Ding, dong, ding," the hills were faintly echoing. The fishermen knew their duty, and straightway discarding implement and fish, they pushed their mustangs helter-skelter through slough and marsh to their master's home ten miles distant.
Carmelita Mendoza stood in her father's bell tower, her hand firmly pressing a lever. This lever controlled the heavy tongue striking the call to rescue. The girl had witnessed from her window the attack on the Mission; had seen the renegades ride away with the stolen neophyte girls.
Stanislaus had considered the time well, knowing that Mendoza and his men were absent, as also Padre Osuna. After the fall of Yoscolo and the severe defeat of his men, the rancheros had thought the wild Indians too thoroughly cowed to attempt further depredations; thus all had relaxed vigilance, especially in the daytime.
The chief felt so secure that he sat on his horse openly in the street during the raid. The doña could hear him jesting about the Indian girls, and caught the words of his lieutenant. She was an excellent marksman. Her rifle, a recent importation from London, was in a rack near at hand. She sighted the weapon at the chief, saw his face aligned with the barrel, and knew that a pressure on the trigger would send a bullet through his body. Her hand refused to perform the office. She dropped the rifle to the hollow of her arm. Faint for the moment, she leaned against the window casing.
The outlaws streaming over the porch of the neophyte house to the ground, together with the cries of the peonas, aroused her. Again she trained the rifle on Stanislaus. Though not more than a hundred feet away he was too intent on the work at hand to scent possibility of peril. Carmelita's fingers drew on the trigger. The slightest pressure further and the chieftain would fall to an unhallowed death before the gate of the Mission which once had honored him.
She threw the gun from her in horror. Stanislaus himself did not hesitate at the shedding of blood; and was even now ready to inflict death if necessary to the success of his plans, yet she could not bring herself to be his executioner.
The girl flew to the bell-tower. As the summons rang she saw the retreating miscreants stretching over the brow of the hill directly back of Mission San José. The men with the girls were ahead in compact body, the other Indians spread out to check pursuit if any should be attempted.
In the Mendoza house the disorder was second only to that prevailing at the Mission. Women were crying, praying, and calling aloud for the Señor Mendoza, while the few men servants on the grounds ran hither and thither, catching up weapons, throwing them down, only to pick them up again and continue in their purposeless meanderings.
The peons of the rancho began arriving. By twos, threes, tens and scores they came. Bows, scythes and clubs were the arms of war they brought. Their excited wives and children, straggling in after them, increased the tumult.
The watch dogs of the Mission barked with renewed vigor. The Mission Indians, thinking the hacienda house was being plundered also, wailed yet louder in their fright. Some of the peonas swayed hysterically into the street and up to the front of the hacienda gate, followed by the elderly peons who swung in circles chanting wordless rhythms. Frightened horses tore unnoticed through the yard, snorting in terror.
At last the bell was silent.
Carmelita came to the courtyard gate. The uncanny movements of the frantic men and women were dizzying, but she steadied herself.
"Hear me," she called. "Listen!"
She waited a moment, then began: "Amigos, Stanislaus and his men have come in from their fastnesses, and have taken away from the Mission many girls. These girls are daughters of our friends, and we desire to see them married to men of this valley, the honest men who tend herds and till the soil, and who will provide food in plenty for their families. The chief will take the peonas off to the mountains of San Jacinto or San Bernardino, as I overheard. Friends mine, men of this, our beloved valley, you must skim over the mountains like hawks, overtake these ravishers, and bring back the girls to their peaceful home in the neophyte house, that our valley and Mission sleep Hot desolate to-night."
There was no response. The strong hearts had followed Mendoza away at sunrise. There remained but the hewers of wood and the drawers of water.
Finally one said: "These stolen muchachas are no relatives of ours. Forgive me, Lady Carmelita, if I say, it is the business of their fathers and brothers to undertake rescue."
The farm hand who thus spoke knew of Stanislaus as a human bloodhound, as well as a tried and dauntless warrior. He would as lief interfere with the lion and his bride as attempt to balk the chief.
"Will you see your peon brethren of the Mission sleep in tears this night? Do not the padres teach us that the sorrow of one must be the grief of all?"
No one answered. Motionless as well as voiceless were the men and women.
"An hour's delay, and the renegades may be beyond reach," she went on.
Still no response.
A cry sounded from the Mission patio, quivering with anguish. It came from some man's throat.
"Amigos," again from the girl, "listen to what you hear. Some father is stricken down in body by the renegades, but his soul is calling aloud in bitterness for his child. Who will rush after the renegades and hang to their flank, as the wolf stays the flight of the elk? Who will go, I ask?"
The Indians shifted from foot to foot. Some of the peonas looked inquiringly at their husbands. No one spoke.
"I will go," suddenly from Carmelita, her form straightening, her face paling. "Who will go with me?" she challenged. "I am only a woman, yet will I handle a rifle in such a cause as this. Who will go with me?"
A grizzled Indian stepped haltingly up to the girl. "I am only old Enrico," he said. "I used to be one of the fighting men of the señor, your father, but a bullet from Yoscolo's band smashed my hip years ago and left me fit only to hoe potatoes. Señorita doña, I will go with you and harry Stanislaus with what strength I have. I can never die in a better cause."
The señorita waited. There were no other volunteers.
Enrico, turning, faced his fellows. "I'll not say, men," he exclaimed, "but whatever ye be, go to service in the house, and let the maids there ride with the señorita doña and me to the chastising of Stanislaus. Go, for we are wasting time while the hostiles' pace marks leagues the hour. Go! Cook the feed, wash the dishes, make the beds, while the peonas do the fighting. Ye cowards! Go into the house where ye belong."
Enrico's sarcasm brought no result. He turned back to Carmelita.
The girl looked past the old peon's upturned face, over the heads of the unresponsive Indians, out into the distance, her eyes resting on the eastern hills.
"I hear no other offer. So be it. A woman and a crippled old man ride forth alone. It shall not be said that the deed of to-day passes unopposed." Her face hardened, bright spots showing in either cheek. Her mouth set in lines which bespoke the fixity of her purpose.
Enrico raised his hands with affection and reverence. "Señorita doña, these arms carried thee before thy tongue could lisp a word. I will go without thee. Thou must not——"
"Hush! hush! old friend. Zunello," to a stable boy, "two horses ready for the mounting, and two rifles. Be quick! Bring them here."
As said, so done.
"Come Enrico, I'll lend thee a shoulder to help thee to the saddleseat."
In a moment she too was on her horse. She checked its head high and reined it mountainward.
"Wait, señorita, wait! Here, doña, here! I will go. And I! So will I! So will I! I! I! I!" swelled in hoarse tones from the multitude.
"Take them at their word at once," whispered Enrico.
She needed no second prompting. Couriers were sent posthaste to San José pueblo, Yerba Buena and Monterey, with messages acquainting the different comandantes of the raid.
The Mendoza armory was opened and muskets, powder and ball apportioned to the volunteers.
While horses were being brought the señorita, with her corps of peona nurses, hastened to the Mission grounds. They found several peons who had been severely manhandled lying insensible in the patio, or trying to crawl to their quarters. A half dozen or more matronas had been beaten with clubs while offering resistance to the summary taking-away of their charges.
The injured were given first-aid treatment, and the terrified matronas encouraged to regain self-possession.
Carmelita soon left the Mission, to lead a half-unwilling band of armed mounted men up the steep grades to the east, to follow on the heels of Stanislaus, to wrest from him, if they could, the prizes his daring had gained for himself and his renegade followers.
The broad trail of the robbers led up the mountain, skirted the Great Slide and into the pass toward the valley of Calaveras where the merienda had been in late spring. Stanislaus, little apprehensive of immediate pursuit, had allowed his fighting men to crowd into the defile and mix with those carrying the neophyte girls, leaving the rear of his march unguarded. Discipline thus relaxed the riflemen passed the time bandying words with the others.
"Ha! Bartolo," from a fighting man, "the damsel with thee would better be in the saddle, and thou in her arms. Santa Cruz! if she snatches another handful of thy mop thou wilt be as bald as a buckeye."
The "damsel" was none other than Pepita, who vigorously pulled her captor's hair and beat his face whenever opportunity offered.
"She's pretty as a yearling fawn," parried Bartolo. "Art sweet-tempered and playful, little one? No?"
The "little one" replied by so energetically pushing her foot into the pit of Bartolo's stomach that he was nearly overbalanced.
"Ha! ha!" jeered the first speaker, "pass her to me, Bartolo. Otherwise it's plain who'll pound the corn and bake the tortillas in thy wickiup."
"A devil bite thee, Naciso," growled Bartolo. "Quit, thou angel," to Pepita, "or thou wilt find that in a matter of blows I can give as well as take."
At the eastern end of the pass the sides became sheer declivities; while the roadway, a sharp incline, so narrowed that a part of Stanislaus's riflemen were forced to lead the procession, the remainder to go to the rear, as a wet sponge squeezed in the middle drips at both ends.
"Halt!" like a thunder-bolt in clear sky, came a stentorian shout from the western outlet. It was Enrico, and ranged by his side and Carmelita Mendoza's were three hundred men whose carbines were gleaming in the afternoon sun.
Less than four hours elapsed since noon, and Stanislaus had calculated that no rescuing party could be organized before the following day. He was astounded. Morando, he knew, had gone to Monterey with Señor Mendoza. His scouts had brought the word shortly before the attack at the Mission.
The pursuers quickly thinned their line and stretched across the mouth of the pass.
The chief, ever quick-witted, formulated a plan on the moment—to gain time by parleying, meanwhile surreptitiously to recall his riflemen to the front, thus, with his fighters together, hold the ground till night when he would escape under cover of dark. So:
"Under whose leadership come you?" he questioned. "Captain Morando's?"
There was no reply. He repeated:
"Who's your leader, I say? Captain Morando?" his eyes searching the ranks of the newcomers.
Silently men began filtering through the press back to Stanislaus's side, in accordance with his low-toned, hurriedly given order.
"Has that one word from you left your tongue benumbed, fool? Who heads you?" inwardly swearing at his stupidity in allowing his fighting force to become divided. "Answer me. Who heads you?"
"The Señorita Doña Carmelita Mendoza," replied Enrico, impressively.
"Thou hast ever been a joker, old man," guffawed Stanislaus. "Call to mind Salinas field where our bullet overtook thee, and bawl a joke about that."
Carmelita advanced her horse a few steps. "Stanislaus, I remember you as Padre Duran's major-domo, at Mission San José. Come forth here and meet me, and let you and me alone arrange for returning the peonas to their home. For each rifle of yours we have two to oppose, and reenforcements are hurrying to join us. Come, let us speak together."
Her words to the renegade rang through the narrow cañon with the weight of a command. Amazement held the outlaw's tongue. To be summoned to war conference with a señorita was an experience hitherto unknown.
"Speak, Stanislaus," her turn, now, to insist, "or have you become dumb? Or, are you afraid to ride out to meet a woman?"
"I must have time to consult my lieutenants," dissimulated the chief. "Stand at one side, then, with your lieutenants. Let no other among you move."
The vigor of her spirit, showing through manner and speech, caused the interfiling among Stanislaus's men to lessen, then to cease.
"Is Señor Mendoza there?" he inquired. Then, in undertone, through shut teeth. "Carajo! slip along here, you scared rabbits, or I'll burn every one of you alive!"
Again the straggling rifles began pushing back to him.
"The Señor Mendoza is not here, but his daughter is. Take no further steps, not one of you, or I will order my men to fire."
Circling her horse, she gave the word: "See to your priming! Present your pieces!" as she had seen her father do on many an occasion.
"Hold, señorita!" from Stanislaus. "'Tis very fitting that we confer, but I must have my lieutenants' agreement." Then, in somewhat lower key: "Such fat wits you lieutenants are. I can beat nothing into you except with my pistol butt. Draw nearer, you rattle-pated grass-eaters."
This reached Carmelita's ears, as he intended it should; but she did not fail to catch in it the temporizing to bring to his side those of his riflemen who had not already wormed their way back.
"Girl stealer, deliver the peonas with you to us, else you and your fellow thieves will lie here, food for vulture and coyote," challenged the señorita, true daughter of the soldier de la Mendoza.
"Have care, doña," cautioned Enrico. "The miscreant's talk means treachery."
"Stanislaus is going to shoot!" screamed Pepita in warning. "He——" The last word ended in a gurgle, a hand closing around her throat.
Suddenly, the outlaws fired from the hip, with accurate aim. The bullets cut through the air. Many of Carmelita's Indians had wheeled under their horses at Pepita's cry of warning, thus saving themselves. However, not a few of the shots, flying low, found home in flesh and bone of both man and beast. The hoarse cry of stricken horses drowned the moan of fallen men. Confusion reigned among the raw recruits from the Mendoza hacienda, for the first time facing veterans. Wounded horses threshing from side to side, or struggling backward or forward, added disorder to disorder.
A fierce exhilaration possessed the señorita as the leaden whispers of death parted before her face. The heritage of twenty generations asserted itself, bringing with it the intoxication of battle and the genius of generalship. As there was no fear in her heart, so was there, for the time being, no room for sorrow at the suffering and death about her. She knew only a vehement desire to dash upon Stanislaus, beat him to the dust, scatter destruction over his men, ride triumphantly back to the foothills, and return the peonas to the arms of their matronas.
The confusion among the hacienda workmen became a panic. "Escape!" one yelled, and spurred his horse to safety. One after another burst from the ranks, to follow like frightened sheep. Volley after volley whistled after them from the outlaws' pistols and carbines. Derisive yells and laughter came from the seasoned fighters.
A figure darted past the fleeing peons. A horse was brought up across the road in front of them, and Carmelita faced the retreating mob.
"Back to the cañon's mouth!" she commanded. "I'll shoot the man who yields another step," pointing significantly to her rifle. Her eyes blazed with terrible insistence, her face chalk-white with passion.
The terrified peons paused. To their superstitious natures their young mistress was become a threatening god from another world.
"The cañon's mouth is the mouth of hell," some one found courage to say.
"It is the gate of deliverance for the girls those renegades have stolen. Back to the pass, hombres! Back to the pass! and fight till the death!" She waved her rifle over her head. "Back to the pass, hombres, and make rescue!"
She turned her horse toward the cañon. "Follow me!"
She went forward. The men obeyed. From a walk, they urged their horses into a gallop, then into topmost speed. The dispirited rabble became a fighting battalion.
Stanislaus, in curiosity to see what had become of the column so rashly attacking him, had moved back into the wake of the retreating peons.
The hoof-thunder of horses tempestuously advancing caused him to throw his force into a hollow square, fearing that some body of capable soldiery, having tracked him, was about to make a charge on him.
For the third time within half an hour the chief's senses were held in wonder. The approaching troop was the same which a few minutes before had ignominiously fled before him. Rapidly they deployed, under Carmelita's orders, the line thus formed making the men a more difficult target, as the girl had learned in watching her father train fighting peons.
"Present rifles! Aim! Fire!" the señorita called in a single breath.
The cañon shook under the deafening detonation that resulted. Boulders, loosened by the concussion, rolled down the sides of the defile. A thousand echoes reiterated the vengeance of the valley peons.
Stanislaus's Indians, massed together, withered under the tremendous fusillade. Only those in front could use their weapons to advantage, the riflemen on sides and rear of the square being in danger of hitting their fellows, if they attempted to shoot low enough to strike among their enemy.
Carmelita fired her rifle, reloaded it and fired it again and again, till the weapon clogged with powder-smut and became so heated that she could scarcely hold the barrel for sighting.
The undrilled peons from the rancho, steadied by her example, added coolness to their enthusiasm. Despite their friends falling everywhere around them, under Stanislaus's desperate defense, their line gradually was closing in on him, their carbines, flash upon flash, cracking in deadly purpose.
The Indian chieftain's number was decimated seriously; still, in hollow square formation, he slowly backed to the narrow end of the pass, here to wait for the protecting shadows of night.
Relays of peons, arriving at the Mendoza hacienda late, hastened after Carmelita and the others. These reenforcements brought dismay to the hard-driven savages fighting against time for their opportunity to escape with their booty.
Stanislaus, knowing the value of active offense in such an emergency, detached Cayetano and a body of selected men, to make a sortie.
Cayetano's face seamed. His teeth bared. "Knock the wenches on the head! Then every man for himself! or, we'll never leave this rat-trap alive."
"Cayetano, to the front, as I say! Lead the attack!" ordered the chief.
"Lead it yourself. Your bones will look as well whitening the ground as mine."
Stanislaus, without further word, struck to his death the insubordinate.
The dire fate Cayetano had wished to visit on the peonas was seconded by the menacing looks of not a few of the abductors. "Yes, knock the girls on the head! Knock the girls on the head! Let's get out of here! Curse the witches anyway!" could be heard on all sides.
"They are going to kill us! to kill us!" pierced the air laden with smoke of battle and the odor of blood. "O, save us! Save us! Have pity on us! Take us home! Mother in Heaven! O, save us!"
Goaded to frenzy by these cries, Carmelita's peons flooded across the intervening space and fell on Stanislaus, who abandoned to their fate the sortie detail he had thrown forward. With such men as he could muster he sped, with the peonas, out of the cañon into the broken country edging Calaveras Valley. Here his people seemed to scatter. Hoof-tracks led aimlessly to every quarter of the compass.
To solve the riddle the hacienda peons ran over the ground and nosed it like hounds. No one could tell in which direction to go in succor of the peonas.
From his saddle old Enrico peered at the signs which to the ordinary observer indicated that Stanislaus and his people had come in compact body to this spot, then, under centrifugal impulse, had departed hither and yon.
In his observings the man moved a little away from Carmelita, then returned.
"Señorita doña, I'm proud of the boys; they're all right—that onslaught—line lasted them about as long as a box of mice would a dozen terriers—but they can't read a trail."
"Then, you be eyes for us, Enrico," pleaded Carmelita. "Soon the sun leaves, and search to-morrow will be useless."
Enrico dismounted, slowly crawled on knees and hands, examining the ground minutely. He descended into a swiftly running stream, and studied the rocky bed through the clear water. Finally, he crept up the other side and limped away into the forest.
It seemed an age before he came back. Long shadows, forerunners of approaching night, were measuring the hills beyond. At last he was in sight, exultation lighting his face and hastening his uncertain steps.
"Señorita doña," he exclaimed, "Stanislaus is near here, on foot, and consequently at our mercy."
"How so, Enrico?" quickly from Carmelita.
"His horses left that stream riderless, as their plunging gait shows; though they went into it under bridle, as is plain from the even measure of their step. The foot impression of men's hard-leather soles lies in that creek-bed. Stanislaus and many with him wear Mission shoes of tanned cattle-skin. Furthermore," holding up a knot of ribbon, "this adornment was caught on a low-sweeping madrona branch, and these," showing several wet deer-skin moccasins inlaid with glass beads, "I plucked from crevices where the bottom of the stream is rocky. The scoundrelly renegades cannot be far away. Let us rush down on them, having caution, though, for ambuscade."
"They are bound for the cave two miles farther down the cañon, and they sought to deceive us into following riderless horses. We must cut them off before they reach the shelter," cried Carmelita.
She led the way at break-neck speed through chaparral, over gullies, up rocky heights that would have taxed the climbing abilities of a goat, down a long, thickly-shrubbed glade, to a ragged opening under a cliff. It was the exit through which, the night of the storm, Farquharson and Brown, with Yoscolo and Stanislaus, had passed from the cave which gave refuge to Carmelita and her dueña.
"Within and quickly!" called the girl, driving straight through the natural door. The peons thronged after her.
Light made its way into the many-chambered cavern through the innumerable rifts in the rocky mountain side. Carmelita led the way to the lower entrance where the carreta had come to grief. Here they waited, grim figures in the twilight silence.
"Some are coming," Enrico whispered after a moment.
They saw many forms approaching. The Indians, carrying the girls in their arms, stalked in single file, each stepping with precision in the footprints of his predecessor, to give the impression that but one man had passed that way. The semidarkness of the cave prevented their seeing anyone inside.
"Drop your rifles! Up with your hands!" Carmelita's voice gathered volume from the great spaces behind.
Stanislaus and his men were petrified.
"Drop your rifles! Up with your hands!" repeated the girl.
"Stanislaus, show yourself to be a joker. Make a jest!" mocked old Enrico.
The renegades dropped the peonas; the most of them threw away their weapons; all fled precipitately. Thus ended the memorable raid of Stanislaus, the Indian renegade, unaccountably put to rout by a delicately reared señorita.
Carmelita and the peons quickly gathered around the neophytes. Despite the severe experience of the day not one of the girls had received injury. Amid tears and laughter they loudly expressed their gratitude to their deliverers. Their vociferations were silenced by the sound of musketry discharge, in the direction toward which Stanislaus and his men had gone. Many of the peons, mad with thirst of slaughter, tore thitherward.
Soon musketry rattled again, this time much nearer the cave. The girl, leaving Enrico and a guard in charge of the peonas, rode after the men. She climbed a steep hill. Looking over a crag into the valley below, she saw that which clutched her heart.
Captain Morando lay wounded there. Stanislaus, knife in hand, was leaping down a narrow path toward him. The soldier's pistol was lying several feet away. He attempted to reach it, but ineffectually.
The Indian growled wolf-like as he neared his enemy.
"Stop!" shrieked Carmelita, springing from her horse and madly bounding down the path.
"You villain!" she flung at Stanislaus, as she faced him.
Except for the knife he was unarmed. He saw that her hands were empty. She had left her rifle on the saddle. He jumped toward her.
"Up the path, for God's sake, Carmelita!" weakly cried the stricken Captain.
"Never! I'll die first!"
The knife was cleaving the air. The girl saw only Don Alfredo.
"Pause! renegade," a deep voice sounded back of them.
Padre Osuna had vaulted from an overhanging shelf. Catching Stanislaus's wrists he wrenched the knife from his hand. Raising the desperado from the earth he hurled him with volcanic power against a tree-trunk. The creature fell senseless. Examination showed him to be stunned only.
The friar took Morando's head in his arms.
"Where the hurt, my brother?"
"My shoulder," his eyes closing in oblivion.
"O, Padre, is Alfredo much injured?" her low words trembling with emotion.
"I cannot yet tell, doña," sympathetic concern for the prostrate man showing in his face and voice as he half whispered the reply.
"The wound is deep—and ugly—on the left side, too—I don't like its looks." He seemed to be speaking to himself, as his taper fingers deftly and gently searched the course of the bullet.
Carmelita scarcely breathed.
"Get some water from that spring, doña, quick. His pulse is stopping. Bring it in his cap; there's nothing else."
The girl's feet scarcely touched the ground in performing the task.
The friar dashed the water in Morando's face. His pulse showed no quickening. Carmelita hastened for another supply of water. This was as ineffective as the first. A third capful brought a slight return of animation.
"He's a little better now."
"O, padre."
Morando looked slowly up at them.
"Better now, brother? Good," as Morando slightly nodded. "We'll have you around soon. Lie very quietly and rest."
At sight of the pallid face lying against the padre's arm, Carmelita turned and walked away, to conceal the sobbing that would not down.
"But the bullet has found no vital part. Here it is, lodged in the muscles under the arm," the friar soon announced cheeringly.
Immediately Carmelita returned, her face speaking joy, her lips silent.
"With good care our caballero will recover. Thank God!"
"Thank God!" repeated the girl, her throat hardly vocalizing the words.
"And now, señorita, mia, may we trouble thee for more water? Our pitcher lacks size, therefore must it go often to the well."
Morando drank eagerly, with the thirst of the wounded. Refreshed, he tried to move to a sitting posture. The padre gently restrained him.
"Not yet, my friend. A little more rest."
Morando again closed his eyes.
"I forgot to send you word to-day, padre," from the señorita.
"Word came, nevertheless, doña. My men cross-tracked the renegades in the hills above us and are now chasing them."
Stanislaus, regaining consciousness from a shock that would have broken the bones of an ordinary man, made an attempt for freedom. The friar's hand whirled him back.
"Estanislao, many unshriven souls have this day gone before God because of you. Have you no compunctions?"
The Indian glowered.
"Señorita, I will leave Captain Morando with you a few minutes, while I find men and improvise a litter. As for you, son of Belial," speaking to Stanislaus, "walk before me until I can get safe custody for you."
Padre Osuna drove the sulky renegade up the path.
Carmelita brought fresh water and bathed the wounded man's face. He lay very still. At last he opened his eyes.
"Carmelita, what are you doing here?"
"Never mind that till later."
"I went part way to Monterey with Señor Mendoza, then I returned to San José, where I received your message," he said in weak voice. "I could only bring a few volunteers, my soldiers having continued on with the señor."
"Please do not talk. You are not strong enough. The padre will soon bring assistance, and we will take you to my father's house."
He lay quiet once more. The girl thought he slept. Her smooth hands continued bathing his face.
"I didn't mean to offend you, Carmelita. I didn't know—of your engagement—to Don Abelardo."
"So you have heard that old story! Why, Alfredo, I have never been engaged to anyone."
His eyes opened wide. A faint flush spread over his pale cheeks.
"Never engaged—never engaged—you are not going to marry Peralta—not marry him?"
"No," she smiled.