The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 7
DOMINGUEZ had waited at his gate since Padre Mateo and his party left his house early in the morning, his pistols in his belt, his gun on his shoulder. It had been his expectant fear that Alvitre, the brigand, would return as soon as Padre Mateo and his valiant companion took the road, to revenge the humiliation he had suffered in that house.
The rancher had watched this bright-haired stranger ride away on Sebastian Alvitre's famous horse, his brown monk's gown tied to the cantle of his saddle. No amount of argument, protestation or entreaty on Padre Mateo's part had been enough to induce him to envelop his limbs in the disguise again. Dominguez did not understand the words of his reply to Padre Mateo, but his bearing and his manner seemed easily interpreted. In effect, the disguise would appear a coward's subterfuge, something that men might say was put on because he feared to meet Alvitre by day.
It was very true, thought Dominguez. He was generous and hearty in his acknowledgment of service to the stranger, but there was something bigger than a little doubt in him that this long-striding man could have leaped and grappled the outlaw without getting a bullet in his eye if he had not been shrouded in a monk's disguise. Sebastian Alvitre did not expect to meet violence in that quarter; he had not looked for a monk to leap on him like a cougar and strip him at once of his dignity and his arms. Although it was a fortunate leap for that house, and all within it, Dominguez owned without reservation, it was almost certain to result in reprisals and acts of vindictive revenge which might not leave a rafter over his head.
Now this stranger with the barbarous speech on his tongue that only Padre Mateo, of all men, could understand, was riding boldly on Alvitre's horse, Alvitre's sword and pistols at his hand, and other pistols at his saddle-horn, to say nothing of the strange long rifle in the cart. Ten men might fall in the fiery rain this man could set loose from his hands without reloading a single pistol. Well, he would need all his pistols, and more, Dominguez thought with grave foreshadowing of disaster in his breast, when Alvitre and his men leaped out of the bosque and laid hold of the reins.
It was now midafternoon; the travelers had not come in sight on their return from the harbor, although they had been gone long enough, and time to spare. Dominguez feared that Alvitre already had taken his revenge.
Dominguez knew the story of John Miller, although he did not attempt to remember a name of such alien sound; Padre Mateo had told him, without reservation, how this strange wanderer was himself an outlaw from the very fact of his presence in California. The priest had relied on the rancher's sense of justice and gratitude to keep the stranger's identity to himself if Sergeant Olivera and his men should chance that way. Dominguez respected a man who moved boldly with a peril over his head; it was his profound hope that Juan Molinero should reach the safety of the mission without mischance.
Dominguez was considering sending his wife and daughter to the mission along with Padre Mateo's cavalcade, where they would be safe from the vengeance of Alvitre, which was certain to center particularly on that house. Alvitre would not rest until he had adjusted his account of humiliation and disgrace in his followers' eyes by some notoriously cruel and outrageous deed against the Dominguez family. It was a time when men of consequence, such as Dominguez, stood alone on their defense against such as Alvitre, the military force being small, the civil government weak and indifferent, full of dissensions and jealousies. A rancher in those early times gathered his own forces about him, like a baron in his fastness, and stood or fell as he might.
Twenty men could have been summoned to stand at arms in defense of the Dominguez mansion, as it was called, but that would have left the cattle on the range unprotected. It was a very good measure of the mettle in the early Californians that Dominguez considered himself sufficient for all corners, give him his pistols and his gun.
Alvitre, the bandit, was notable in his brief day for his escape from a Mexican prison, his long ride to California on the very horse that Juan Molinero had captured, and his contempt for both church and state. He would rob a priest as readily as he would a rancher, but the poor he let pass, a provision of his code which had won him great respect and many friends, as similar exemptions have won for other bandits, before and since, among those whom it does not pay to rob.
This Alvitre had his lair in the Pueblo de Los Angeles, in that year of 1806 but a poor collection of refugees, banished ones, retired and brokendown soldiers, and such as had been induced by the government bounty offered to settlers in the California pueblos, to take up life there. The town was an unattractive and shiftless place, built around the plaza, an irrigation ditch leading water through it from the little river that ran near by. There were a few small mercantile establishments, many cantinas, or retail liquor stores, and goats and pigs, and crumbling adobe bricks, under the feet at every turn.
Here Alvitre and his four or five attendants came to spend the proceeds of their excursions upon the king's highway; here they were safe, for every hut was a refuge, and the comisionado, an ex-sergeant, was not notable as a disciplinarian in civil life, no matter what he had been in military.
All these things Dominguez had for his consideration as he stood at his gate between his eight-feet-high adobe walls. He had little hope, little confidence, that this new man, Sergeant Olivera, would do more than those who had gone before him the past year at the mission. Up to this time Alvitre had not preyed on the ranches, except to take such sheep and cattle as he wanted for food, collecting his tribute from the many travelers who passed up and down between the north and south. It appeared now that his methods were changing. The time had come to put this Alvitre down. Well, they had come within a breath of doing it. If that stranger had not gone to the door and left them alone with the wily scoundrel! But it was done; Alvitre was waiting his hour.
Padre Mateo's company arrived when the sun was resting its rim on the tiles of Dominguez' house. The young woman on whose account this expedition had been made, alighted from the covered cart when it came to a stand under the pinetrees near the door.
Dominguez was disappointed in her at first sight because he found her lacking in the voluptuousness of figure, the sprightly vivaciousness of face, such as he accounted beauty in a woman. True, she came down out of the cart with a spring in her step, and no fear of breaking her leg when she landed. Dominguez liked her for that. She was nimble and slim and fair, even fair of hair like an Andalusian, with brown eyes of a softness that fine chamois skin is to the hand. Dominguez liked her very well for that. She was thin, according to Dominguez' thought of what a woman should be, almost as flat of the bosom—not quite, certainly, to be sure—as Guillermo himself, and she was twenty-five if she was a day. For this Dominguez did not like her at all.
"She will not do for Guillermo," he said to his wife as the guest entered the door, speaking with great politeness behind his hand, regretful that the exigency demanded the warning. "It must not be encouraged."
Dominguez expressed his disappointment in her to Padre Mateo as they sat smoking in the patio after supper.
"I had hoped she would do for Guillermo, but it is not to be considered," he sighed. "She would be a grandmother by the time he was thirty."
"Nothing is so far from her thought as a husband," Padre Mateo replied. "Her first confidence to me was that she wanted to become a nun. But that, of course, cannot be. There are no convents, no nuns, in California. Poor Gertrudis! I think she will have to marry somebody, in the end."
"Doña Magdalena will be a mother to her at the mission, and Don Geronimo a second father," Dominguez said. "She is going to a life as serene as if she had become the bride of Our Señor, indeed, but what use a poor pale thing like that will be to you there I cannot imagine. She looks as if she lived on the whites of eggs."
"There is great endurance, and great souls, very often, in bodies that seem too frail to stop the sun. Remember Padre Serra, and his three hundred leagues with a sore on his leg that would have crippled an ordinary man."
"It is true," Dominguez nodded, his eyes speculative, pipe in hand. "Your tall Englishman from the yankee country—he is watching the road?"
"He is watching, with the hope in his blue eyes that Alvitre will come for his horse."
"And you did not meet the soldiers at the harbor? It is a strange thing. They must have gone to the pueblo. I tell you, Sebastian Alvitre has nothing to fear from them."
"They cannot plead the excuse that he outrides them now."
"What do you intend to do with his horse, Padre Mateo?"
"It belongs to Juan Molinero."
"Alvitre valued it equal with his life, it is said. The fellow will go desperate ways to get it back again, no doubt, even to a raid on your corrals at night. It might be better to shoot the beast, good animal that it is, and leave it beside the road where Alvitre, or somebody who will carry the news to him, will see it."
"There is a friendship growing already between the creature and our Juan," Padre Mateo said, pride and affection in his voice.
"But the man is a gentile, he may turn bandit himself, now that he has a notable horse," Dominguez argued.
"It is an ungenerous thought, unworthily expressed, Dominguez," the priest chided him. "Where would your tranquillity, your honor, have been tonight but for him? You forget too soon."
"No, I have not forgotten," Dominguez protested, not in the least abashed by the correction. "But I am a cautious man, padre; a business man. It is not wise to harbor stray dogs; too often they kill sheep. I am only considering that here this Juan of yours is, a man who has lived among savages, a stranger to our religion, our customs. In a little while he will grow uneasy shut in the bounds of the mission; he will step out, with no disguise to cover him, no friendly padre at his side. Such a man is not to be taken easily. When the soldiers challenge him, he will kill them, and then—to the bosque. So it will be, Padre Mateo."
"I would follow such a man, then," said young Guillermo, gratitude big in his breast.
"What folly!" his father corrected him.
"He sees deeper than you, Dominguez," Padre Mateo said kindly. "It is his meaning that Juan Molinero would not strike any man down without warrant, nor take the road in any enterprise that was not just and honorable. He means that a man could follow him in honor wherever he might lead. Youth has a quick heart and a quick eye. The world is often poorer because we pass its judgments lightly, with a laugh."
"I only spoke as reason leads a man to believe," Dominguez said, humbled a little by the priest's rebuke. "It might turn out that way, it might not, but as a man of business who has felt the edges of the world, I say it is a mistake to give him the horse."
"I prefer a mule for the road, it goes fast enough for me and has more spring in the step. Padre Ignacio would as soon think of mounting an elephant as a horse, and Don Geronimo has horses of his own. So, there is nobody at San Fernando who needs a horse so much as Juan."
"It is to be considered that the villainous Alvitre rode the horse to my door; that it was my gold he demanded, my daughter he insulted by his gross affront. As a matter of indemnity for an indignity suffered, I believe the horse should come to me."
"So, that is it, Dominguez?" Padre Mateo laughed. "The goose shows its head from beneath your coat at last. Well, it is done, the horse is given to Juan Molinero, and he will be a brave man, indeed, who takes it from him. The indemnity must be collected from Sebastian Alvitre, my good friend, I fear."
"It is another thing," said Dominguez, closing his mouth on the subject, a sternness fixing in his countenance which did not forecast peace in Sebastian Alvitre's ways.
Guillermo rose. His mother was in the door, daughter and guest dimly white behind her. The three came into the patio, where palms grew along the wall, and flowers which the hands of Doña Ana had brought to perfection of bloom. The scent of lemon and jasmine blossoms blent in the slow night wind, the benediction of placid domesticity.
"The land is sweet after the wild and bitter sea," said Gertrudis Sinova, standing to breathe such perfumes as chemist never blended, her arms lifted a little, her hands outspread. "There is security here; there is peace."
"If no prowling bandit comes," said Doña Ana, her voice low in dreadful caution.
"Little fear tonight, doña," Padre Mateo assured her, so calm and contented himself that his confidence spread round him like a light.
"They have been telling me of the wild robber who came last night," Gertrudis said. "It is a strange adventure to come to one's own door. I did not think there were such men in California."
"Put your fears away, then," Dominguez counseled, "and sit here near the wall. The heat of the day is in the adobe still, it will cheer you against the wind of our north country, which is not so soft as the night-winds in the land you left behind you, my dear."
"I seem to remember only storm and distress," the young woman sighed.
"It is past; here peace begins," Padre Mateo said.
"Where is the tall American with the shining hair?" she asked.
"He is standing sentinel, in the hope, I truly believe, that Sebastian Alvitre, the bandit, will come again tonight," Padre Mateo answered.
"In the hope?" Gertrudis repeated, incredible that she had understood.
"He is dissatisfied with the fiasco we made of it when he left Alvitre in our hands for a moment," Padre Mateo replied, a little laugh at his own disgrace in his words. "Yes, if Alvitre shows his head tonight it will be a long time before he runs away again."
She would have from Padre Mateo's tongue the story of Juan Molinero, of his coming to the kitchen door at San Fernando in the night, clothed in the skins of wild beasts, bearded like a patriarch, his long hair on his shoulders. She exclaimed in resentful wonder to hear that his life was forfeit under the king's decree which closed California to foreign feet; she protested like a defender of the oppressed when told of Captain del Valle's demand for his surrender on the charge that he was a spy.
"What romance! what a figure for romantic adventure! He is like Alvarado of the Noche Triste, another gallant gentleman with golden hair."
Her ardent sympathy, expressed in voice tuneful on the ear as the scented breeze was pleasant to breathe, was sweet in the ears of Padre Mateo. As for Guillermo, his father's disappointment in this young woman was not his own. Guillermo's thoughts were with his desires, and they were not in the patio that night. There was another, perhaps thought unworthy for a son of a family, with slow lids over long-slitted eyes; a soldier's daughter in the pueblo, whose smile through her barred window had made his heart faint with ecstasy, his knees weak in the sickness of a so sweet malady.
"It is secure, it is safe, knowing that the American gentleman is on guard this night," said Gertrudis, so softly that the words must have been meant for her own heart alone.
"Ah!" said Padre Mateo to himself, nodding his wise head in the dark, "the judgment of youth is quick and sure, world without end."
"But if the soldiers take him, then he must die!" she said, her words quick, sharp, as if the man's peril had been revealed to her without the splendor of romance only that moment.
"That is the fear that walks with me," Padre Mateo confessed. "I led him into the danger, but I urged him to return while he could have done so in safety. He scorned the thought."
"Certainly; I would—anybody who had looked him in the eyes would—have known he wouldn't go back. And tomorrow!" her fear leaping into her words, quickening them, giving them a panting anxiety; "if the soldiers meet us tomorrow!"
"Then Juan Molinero will find a way," Padre Mateo said, as confident as he was that his own feet were on the ground.