Chapter 11

Estenega accepted Mr. Larkin's invitation, but, in spite of the genial society of the consul, he spent in his house the most wretched three weeks of his life. He dared not leave Monterey until he had passed the time of incubation, having no desire to spread the disease; he dared not write to Chonita, for the same reason. What must she think? She supposed him to have sailed, of course, but he had promised to write her from Monterey, and again from San Diego. And the uncertainty regarding his Mexican affairs was intolerable to a man of his active mind and supertense nervous system. His only comfort lay in Mr. Larkin's assurance that the national bark Joven Guipuzcoana was due within the month and would return at once. Early in the fourth week the assurance was fulfilled, and by the time he was ready to sail again his danger from contagion was over. But he embarked without writing to Chonita.

The voyage lasted a month, tedious and monotonous, more trying than his retardation on land, for there at least he could recover some serenity by violent exercise. He divided his time between pacing the deck, when the weather permitted, and writing to Chonita: long, intimate, possessing letters, which would reveal her to herself as nothing else, short of his own dominant contact, could do. At San Blas he posted his letters and welcomed the rough journey overland to the capital; but under a calm exterior he was possessed of the spirit of disquiet. As so often happens, however, his fears proved to have been vagaries of a morbid state of mind and of that habit of thought which would associate with every cause an effect of similar magnitude. Santa Ana welcomed him with friendly enthusiasm, and was ready to listen to his plans. That wily and astute politician, who was always abreast of progress and never in its lead, recognized in Estenega the coming man, and, knowing that the seizure of the Californias by the United States was only a question of time, was keenly willing to make an ally of the man who he foresaw would control them as long as he chose, both at home and in Washington. For the matter of that, he recognized the impotence of Mexico to interfere, beyond bluster, with plans any resolute Californian might choose to pursue; but it was important to Estenega's purpose that the governorship should be assured to him by the central government, and the eyes of the Mexican Congress directed elsewhere. He knew the value of the moral effect which its apparent sanction would have upon rebellious Southerners.

"I am at your service," said Santa Ana; "and the governorship is yours. But take heed that no rumor of your ultimate intentions reaches the ears of Congress until you are firmly established. If it opposed you relentlessly--and it keeps its teeth on California like a dog on a bone bigger than himself--I should have to yield; I have too much at stake myself. I will look out that any communications from enemies, including Iturbi y Moncada, are opened first by me."

Estenega wrote to Chonita again by the ship that left during his brief stay in the capital, and it was his intention to go directly to Santa Barbara upon arriving in California. But when he landed in Monterey--disinfected and careless as of old--he learned that she was about to start, perhaps already had done so, for Fort Ross, to pay a visit to the Rotscheffs. The news gave him pleasure; it had been his wish to say what he had yet to say in his own forests.

And then the plan which had been stirring restlessly in his mind for many months took imperative shape: he determined that if there was gold in California he would wring the secret out of its keeper, by gentle means or violent, and that within the next twenty-four hours.

XXIX.

Estenega drew rein the next night before the neglected Mission of San Rafael. The valley, surrounded by hills dark with the silent redwoods, bore not a trace of the populous life of the days before secularization. The padre lived alone, lodge-keeper of a valley of shadows.

He opened the door of his room on the corridor as he heard the approach of the traveler, squinting his bleared, yellow-spotted eyes. He was surly by nature, but he bowed low to the man whose power was so great in California, and whose generosity had sent him many a bullock. He cooked him supper from his frugal store, piled the logs in the open fireplace,--November was come,--and, after a bottle of wine, produced from Estenega's saddle-bag, expanded into a hermit's imitation of conviviality. Late in the night they still sat on either side of the table in the dusty, desolate room. The Forgotten had been entertained with vivid and shifting pictures of the great capital in which he had passed his boyhood. He smiled occasionally; now and again he gave a quick impatient sigh. Suddenly Estenega leaned forward and fixed him with his powerful gaze.

"Is there gold in these mountains?" he asked, abruptly.

The priest was thrown off his guard for a moment; a look of meaning flashed into his eyes, then one of cunning displaced it.

"It may be, Señor Don Diego; gold is often in the earth. But had I the unholy knowledge, I would lock it in my breast. Gold is the canker in the heart of the world. It is not for the Church to scatter the evil broadcast."

Estenega shut his teeth. Fanaticism was a more powerful combatant than avarice.

"True, my father. But think of the good that gold has wrought. Could these Missions have been built without gold?--these thousands of Indians Christianized?"

"What you say is not untrue; but for one good, ten thousand evils are wrought with the metal which the devil mixed in hell and poured through the veins of the earth."

Estenega spent a half-hour representing in concrete and forcible images the debt which civilization owed to the fact and circulation of gold. The priest replied that California was a proof that commerce could exist by barter; the money in the country was not worth speaking of.

"And no progress to speak of in a hundred years," retorted Estenega. Then he expatiated upon the unique future of California did she have gold to develop her wonderful resources. The priest said that to cut California from her Arcadian simplicity would be to start her on her journey to the devil along with the corrupt nations of the Old World. Estenega demonstrated that if there was vice in the older civilizations there was also a higher state of mental development, and that Religion held her own. He might as well have addressed the walls of the Mission. He tempted with the bait of one of the more central Missions. The priest had only the dust of ambition in the cellar of his brain.

He lost his patience at last. "I must have gold," he said, shortly; "and you shall show me where to find it. You once betrayed to my father that you knew of its existence in these hills; and you shall give me the key."

The priest looked into the eyes of steel and contemptuously determined face before him, and shut his lips. He was alone with a desperate man; he had not even a servant; he could be murdered, and his murderer go unsuspected; but the heart of the fanatic was in him. He made no reply.

"You know me," said Estenega. "I owe half my power in California to the fact that I do not make a threat to-day and forget it to-morrow. You will show me where that gold is, or I shall kill you."

"The servant of God dies when his hour comes. If I am to die by the hand of the assassin, so be it."

Estenega leaned forward and placed his strong hand about the priest's baggy throat, pushing the table against his chest. He pressed his thumb against the throttle, his second finger hard against the jugular, and the tongue rolled over the teeth, the congested eyes bulged. "It may be that you scorn death, but may not fancy the mode of it. I have no desire to kill you. Alive or dead, your life is of no more value than that of a worm. But you shall die, and die with much discomfort, unless you do as I wish." His hand relaxed its grasp, but still pressed the rough dirty throat.

"Accursed heretic!" said the priest.

"Spare your curses for the superstitious."

He saw a gleam of cunning come into the priest's eyes. "Very well; if I must I must. Let me rise, and I will conduct you."

Estenega took a piece of rope from his saddle-bag and tied it about the priest's waist and his own. "If you have any holy pitfall in view for me, I shall have the pleasure of your company. And if I am led into labyrinths to die of starvation, you at least will have a meal: I could not eat you."

If the priest was disconcerted, he did not show it. He took a lantern from a shelf, lit the fragment of candle, and, opening a door at the back, walked through the long line of inner rooms. All were heaped with rubbish. In one he found a trap-door with his foot, and descended rough steps cut out of the earth. The air rose chill and damp, and Estenega knew that the tunnel of the Mission was below, the secret exit to the hills which the early Fathers built as a last resource in case of defeat by savage tribes. When they reached the bottom of the steps the tallow dip illuminated but a narrow circle; Estenega could form no idea of the workmanship of the tunnel, except that it was not more than six feet and a few inches high, for his hat brushed the top, and that the floor and sides appeared to be of pressed clay. There was ventilation somewhere, but no light. They walked a mile or more, and then Estenega had a sense of stepping into a wider and higher excavation.

"We are no longer in the tunnel," said the priest. He lifted the lantern and swung it above his head. Estenega saw that they were in a circular room, hollowed probably out of the heart of a hill. He also saw something else.

"What is that?" he exclaimed, sharply.

The priest handed him the lantern. "Look for yourself," he said.

Estenega took the lantern, and, holding it just above his head and close to the walls, slowly traversed the room. It was belted with three strata of crystal-like quartz, sown thick with glittering yellow specks and chunks. Each stratum was about three feet wide.

"There is a fortune here," he said. He felt none of the greed of gold, merely a recognition of its power.

"Yes, señor; enough to pay the debt of a nation."

"Where are we? Under what hill? I am sorry I had not a compass with me. It was impossible to make any accurate guess of direction in that slanting tunnel. Where is the outlet?"

The priest made no reply.

Estenega turned to him peremptorily. "Answer me. How can I find this place from without?"

"You never will find it from without. When the danger from Indians was over, a pious Father closed the opening. This gold is not for you. You could not find even the trap-door by yourself."

"Then why have you brought me here?"

"To tantalize you. To punish you for your insult to the Church through me. Kill me now, if you wish. Better death than hell."

Estenega made a rapid circuit of the room. There was no mode of egress other than that by which they had entered, and no sign of any previously existing. He sprang upon the priest and shook him until the worn stumps rattled in their gums. "You dog!" he said, "to balk me with your ignorant superstition! Take me out of this place by its other entrance at once, that I may remain on the hill until morning. I would not trust your word. You shall tell me, if I have to torture you."

The priest made a sudden spring and closed with Estenega, hugging him like a bear. The lantern fell and went out. The two men stumbled blindly in the blackness, striking the walls, wrestling desperately, the priest using his teeth and panting like a beast. But he was no match for the virility and science of his young opponent. Estenega threw him in a moment and bound him with the rope. Then he found the lantern and lit the candle again. He returned to the priest and stood over him. The latter was conquered physically, but the dogged light of bigotry still burned in his eyes, although Estenega's were not agreeable to face.

Estenega was furious. He had twisted Santa Ana, one of the most subtle and self-seeking men of his time, around his finger as if he had been a yard of ribbon; Alvarado, the wisest man ever born in the Californias, was swayed by his judgment; yet all the arts of which his intellect was master fell blunt and useless before this clay-brained priest. He had more respect for the dogs in his kennels, but unless he resorted to extreme measures the creature would defeat him through sheer brute ignorance. Estenega was not a man to stop in sight of victory or to give his sword to an enemy he despised.

"You are at my mercy. You realize that now, I suppose. Will you show me the other way out?"

The priest drew down his under-lip like a snarling dog, revealing the discolored stumps. But he made no other reply.

Estenega lit a match, and, kneeling beside the priest, held it to his stubbled beard. As the flame licked the flesh the man uttered a yell like a kicked brute. Estenega sprang to his feet with an oath. "I can't do it!" he exclaimed, with bitter disgust. "I haven't the iron of cruelty in me. I am not fit to be a ruler of men." He untied the rope about the prisoner's feet. "Get up," he said, "and conduct me back as we came." The priest scrambled to his feet and hobbled down the long tunnel. They ascended the steps beneath the Mission and emerged into the room. Estenega turned swiftly to prevent the closing of the trap-door, but only in time to hear it shut with a spring and the priest kick rubbish above it.

He cut the rope which bound the other's hands. "Go," he said, "I have no further use for you. And if you report this, I need not explain to you that it will fare worse with you than it will with me."

The priest fled, and Estenega, hanging the lantern on a nail, pushed aside the rubbish with his feet, purposing to pace the room until dawn. In a few moments, however, he discovered that the despised hermit was not without his allies; ten thousand fleas, the pest of the country, assaulted every portion of his body they could reach. They swarmed down the legs of his riding-boots, up his trousers, up his sleeves, down his neck. "There is no such thing in life as tragedy," he thought. He hung the lantern outside the door to mark the room, and paced the yard until morning. But there were dark hours yet before the dawn, and during one of them a figure, when his back was turned, crept to the lantern and hung it before an adjoining room. When light came,--and the fog came first,--all Estenega's efforts to find the trap-door were unavailing, although the yard was littered with the rubbish he flung into it from the room. He suspected the trick, but there were ten rooms exactly alike, and although he cleared most of them he could discover no trace of the trap-door. He looked at the hills surrounding the Mission. They were many, and beyond there were others. He mounted his horse and rode around the buildings, listening carefully for hollow reverberation. The tunnel was too far below; he heard nothing.

He was defeated. For the first time in his life he was without resource, overwhelmed by a force stronger than his own will; and his spirit was savage within him. He had no authority to dig the floors of the Mission, for the Mission and several acres about it were the property of the Church. The priest never would take him on that underground journey again, for he had learned the weak spot in his armor, nor had he fear of death. Unless accident favored him, or some one more fortunate, the golden heart of the San Rafael hill would pulse unrifled forever.

XXX.

He turned his back upon the Mission and rode toward his home, sixty miles in a howling November wind. At Bodega Bay he learned that Governor Rotscheff had passed there two days before with a party of guests that he had gone down to Sausalito to meet. Chonita awaited him in the North. A softer mood pressed through the somberness of his spirit, and the candle of hope burned again. Gold must exist elsewhere in California, and he swore anew that it should yield itself to him. The last miles of his ride lay along the cliffs. Sometimes the steep hills covered with redwoods rose so abruptly from the trail that the undergrowth brushed him as he passed; on the other side but a few inches stood between himself and death amidst the surf pounding on the rocks a thousand feet below. The sea-gulls screamed about his head, the sea-lions barked with the hollow note of consumptives on the outlying rocks. On the horizon was a bank of fog, outlined with the crests and slopes and gulches of the mountain beside him. It sent an advance wrack scudding gracefully across the ocean to puff among the redwoods, capriciously clinging to some, ignoring others. Then came the vast white mountain rushing over the roaring ocean, up the cliffs and into the gloomy forests, blotting the lonely horseman from sight.

He arrived at his house--a big structure of logs--late in the night. His servants came out to meet him, and in a moment a fire leaped in the great fireplace in his library. He lived alone; his parents and brothers were dead, and his sisters married; but the fire made the low long room, covered with bear-skins and lined with books, as cheerful as a bachelor could expect. He found a note from the Princess Hélène Rotscheff, the famous wife of the governor, asking him to spend the following week at Fort Ross; but he was so tired that even the image of Chonita was dim; the note barely caused a throb of anticipation. After supper he flung himself on a couch before the fire and slept until morning, then went to bed and slept until afternoon. By that time he was himself again. He sent a vaquero ahead with his evening clothes, and an hour or two later started for Fort Ross, spurring his horse with a lighter heart over the cliffs. His ranchos adjoined the Russian settlement; the journey from his house to the military enclosure was not a long one. He soon rounded the point of a sloping hill and entered the spreading core formed by the mountains receding in a semicircle above the cliffs, and in whose shelter lay Fort Ross. The fort was surrounded by a stockade of redwood beams, bastions in the shape of hexagonal towers at diagonal corners. Cannon, mounted on carriages, were at each of the four entrances, in the middle of the enclosure, and in the bastions. Sentries paced the ramparts with unremitting vigilance.

Within were the long low buildings occupied by the governor and officers, the barracks, and the Russian church, with its belfry and cupola. Beyond was the "town," a collection of huts accommodating about eight hundred Indians and Siberian convicts, the workingmen of the company. All the buildings were of redwood logs or planed boards, and made a very different picture from the white towns of the South. The curving mountains were sombrous with redwoods, the ocean growled unceasingly.

Estenega threw his bridle to a soldier and went directly to the house. A servant met him on the veranda and conducted him to his room; it was late, and every one else was dressing for dinner. He changed his riding-clothes for the evening dress of modern civilization, and went at once to the drawing-room. Here all was luxury, nothing to suggest the privations of a new country. A thick red carpet covered the floor, red arras the walls; the music of Mozart and Beethoven was on the grand piano. The furniture was rich and comfortable, the large carved table was covered with French novels and European periodicals.

The candles had not been brought in, but logs blazed in the open fireplace. As Estenega crossed the room, a woman, dressed in black, rose from a deep chair, and he recognized Chonita. He sprang forward impetuously and held out his arms, but she waved him back.

"No, no," she said, hurriedly. "I want to explain why I am here. I came for two reasons. First, I could refuse the Princess Hélène no longer; she goes so soon. And then--I wanted to see you once more before I leave the world."

"Before you do what?"

"I am not going into a convent; I cannot leave my father. I am going to retire to the most secluded of our ranchos, to see no more of the world or its people. I shall take my father with me. Reinaldo and Prudencia will remain at Casa Grande."

"Nonsense!" he exclaimed, impatiently. "Do you suppose I shall let you do anything of the sort? How little you know me, my love! But we will discuss that question later. We shall be alone only a few moments now. Tell me of yourself. How are you?"

"I will tell you that, also, at another time."

And at the moment a door opened, and the governor and his wife entered and greeted Estenega with cordial hospitality. The governor was a fine-looking Russian, with a spontaneous warmth of manner; the princess a woman who possessed both elegance and vivacity, both coquetry and dignity; she could sparkle and chill, allure and suppress in the same moment. Even here, rough and wild as her surroundings were, she gave much thought to her dress; to-night her blonde harmonious loveliness was properly framed in a toilette of mignonette greens, fresh from Paris. A moment later Reinaldo and Prudencia appeared, the former as splendid a caballero as ever, although wearing the chastened air of matrimony, the latter pre-maternally consequential. Then came the officers and their wives, all brilliant in evening dress; and a moment later dinner was announced.

Estenega sat at the right of his hostess, and that trained daughter of the salon kept the table in a light ripple of conversation, sparkling herself, without striking terror to the hearts of her guests. She and Estenega were old friends, and usually indulged in lively sallies, ending some times in a sharp war of words, for she was a very clever woman; but to-night he gave her absent attention: he watched Chonita furtively, and thought of little else.

Her eyes had darker shadows beneath them than those cast by her lashes; her face was pale and slightly hollowed. She had suffered, and not for her mother. "She shall suffer no more," he thought.

"We hunt bear to-night," he heard the governor say at length.

"I should like to go," said Chonita, quickly. "I should like to go out to-night."

Immediately there was a chorus from all the Other women, excepting the Princess Hélène and Prudencia; they wanted to go too. Rotscheff, who would much rather have left them at home, consented with good grace, and Estenega's spirits rose at once. He would have a talk with Chonita that night, something he had not dared to hope for, and he suspected that she had promoted the opportunity.

The men remained in the dining-room after the ladies had withdrawn, and Estenega, restored to his normal condition, and in his natural element among these people of the world, expanded into the high spirits and convivial interest in masculine society which made him as popular with men as he was fascinating, through the exercise of more subtle faculties, to women. Reinaldo watched him with jealous impatience; no one cared to hearken to his eloquence when Estenega talked; and he had come to Fort Ross only to have a conversation with his one-time enemy. As he listened to Estenega, shorn, for the time-being, of his air of dictator and watchful ambition, a man of the world taking an enthusiastic part in the hilarity of the hour, but never sacrificing his dignity by assuming the rôle of chief entertainer, there grew within him a dull sense of inferiority: he felt, rather than knew, that neither the city of Mexico nor gratified ambitions would give him that assured ease, that perfection of breeding, that calm sense of power, concealing so gracefully the relentless will and the infinite resource which made this most un-Californian of Californians seem to his Arcadian eyes a being of a higher star. And hatred blazed forth anew.