Chapter 8

Roldan gave one rapid glance about. There was not even a tree in sight. From his point of departure an object seemed approaching, but it was too dark to tell as yet whether it was a horseman or another bear. The brute was almost on him, panting mightily. All the senses between Roldan's skeleton and his skin concentrated in the determination to live. He sprang forward and plunged his long knife into the protruding injected eye of the bear, then leaped aside, his dripping knife in his hand, and danced about the maddened beast with the agility of a modern prize-fighter. The bear, too, danced, as if obsessed by some infernal music; and the skipping, and leaping, and dodging, and waltzing of these two would have been ludicrous had it not been a matter of life and horrid death. Through it all Roldan was vaguely conscious of approaching hoofbeats, but there was no room in his consciousness for hope or despair. He was not even aware that he was panting as if his lungs and throat were bursting, nor even that his vision was a trifle blurred from constant and rapid change of focus and surcharged veins. But he executed his dance of life as unerringly as if fresh from his bed and bath. The bear, a clumsy creature at best, and streaming and blinded with his blood, was slackening a little, but there was life in him yet, and twice its measure of vengeance. Suddenly he lay down, but became so abruptly inert that Roldan was not deceived. Instead of putting himself within reach of those waiting arms he fled with all his strength. It was then that he knew how fully that strength was spent: his lungs and legs refused to work with his will and impulse after the first hundred yards, and he fell to the ground with a sensation of utter indifference, longing only for physical rest. He heard the bear plunging after, the loud sound of a horse's hoofs, mingled with a single shout, then gave up his consciousness.

He awoke in a few moments. Adan was bending over him, propping his head. "The bear?" he demanded, ashamed of the pitiful quality of his voice.

"I came just in time to rope him," replied Adan. "You were a fool, my friend, to go off alone like that--but very brave," he added hastily, knowing that Roldan did not like criticism.

"You are quite right. And this is the second time you and your lariat have saved me. Perhaps it may be the other way some time."

"Likely it will if you go on hunting for adventures as the old women hunt for fleas of a night. Do you feel able to get on my horse? It will carry the two of us."

"If I were not equal to that much I should find another bear and go to sleep in his arms."

XVIII

At last the night arrived for the gold quest. The guests had gone. Roldan, Adan, and Rafael were alone on their side of the great house. They waited, kicking their heels together with leashed impatience, until eleven o'clock. The family and servants of Casa Encarnacion went to bed at ten o'clock, but it was the custom of Don Tiburcio to go the rounds a half or three quarters of an hour later and see that his strict laws were as strictly obeyed. To-night, when he opened the doors of the three young dons in succession, heels were still, and breathing was as monotonous as his own would be an hour later. At eleven the boys dressed and swung from their windows, not daring to leave by the courtyard. Nor did they dare go to the corral and abstract three horses. Much to their distaste, for there was nothing the Californian hated so much as to travel on two legs, they were obliged to walk the miles between the Casa and the hills. But their legs were young and their brains eager; in little over an hour they were in sight of the Mission.

It looked very white and ghostly in the pale blaze of the moon, a huge mass, full of prayer and discontent. Close beside it, but without the walls, the Indians slept in the rancheria, quiescent enough, for they had no Anastacio. At midnight the great bells in the tower had rung out, filling the valley with their sweet silver clamour; but as the boys approached and skirted the wall, some distance to the right, the Mission might have been as lifeless as it is this year, in its desertion and decay.

The hills were a mile behind. The Mission, like all of its kind, stood on a broad open, that no hostile tribe might approach unseen. Cows and horses lay in their first heavy sleep, their breathing hardly ruffling the profound stillness. So great an air of repose did the silent walls and sleeping beasts give to the landscape that the boys felt the quiet of the night as they had not done in the other valley, and drew closer together, almost holding their breath lest the priests might hear it. A quarter of an hour later they were among the hills and standing before the aperture whose secrets were known only to Padre Osuna. They glanced at each other out of the corners of their eyes. Brave as they were, they did not altogether like the idea of a possible encounter with a rattlesnake or a bear in the dark and narrow confines of a cave. And if there should be another earthquake! However, they had not come to turn back, and Roldan pushed boldly in, the others following close.

For a time their way lay along a narrow passage. They had made two abrupt turns before they dared to light the lantern they had brought. When Rafael did, it revealed nothing but earthy walls and the imprint of feet on the ground. After a little, however, the passage suddenly widened, and it was Adan who uttered the first exclamation of surprise. It was, indeed, a hoarse gurgle. The walls were veined with what appeared to be irregular bands of dirty crystal, pricked with glittering yellow. There were, perhaps, a thousand of these little points bared from the jealous earth, and they shone with a steady baleful glare, magnetising six youthful eyes, stirring in three careless brains the ghosts of ancient gold-lust, whose concrete substance lay in the marble vaults of Spain. Immediately Roldan's sympathy went out to the priest; and he knew that that commanding intelligence could teach him one thing the less.

There was a rough pick on the ground, and many junks of quartz. Roldan struck and rubbed two pieces together. In a moment his palm was filled with jagged pieces of yellow metal. He blew on them lovingly, then put them in his pocket.

"Dios de mi alma!" gasped Rafael, whose eyes were bulging from his head. "It is as beautiful as the stars of the sky,--the stars in the milky way with the film over them."

"But we need no more stars," said Adan. "We shall take away our pockets full, but what shall we do with it? Surely this was not made to rot with the earth. But it is too small for what you call money, if that is so big as you say, Roldan. It would make fine nails for a church door."

"Now is not the time to think what you will do with it," said Roldan. "It is enough that we have it to get. Much is very loose in the crystal. Rub free all that you can, and fill every pocket. We will take all we can carry away, and come again and again. Some day, when we are men, perhaps, we will find a use for it. I for one do not believe that anything that makes you love it can do harm. Does not the Church teach us to love all things? Now let us work and not talk."

The boys in turn hacked out great pieces of quartz and rubbed the free gold loose. Much of it could only be crushed out in machinery made for the purpose, but a sufficient quantity of the quartz was poor and soft. As the boys worked, they grew more and more silent, more and more absorbed. They forgot their delight in rodeo, coliar, bear-hunts, bull-fights, riding about the ranches from morning till noon, the race, the religious processions, the dulces of their mothers' cooks. A new and mighty passion possessed them, the strongest they had ever known. Their lips were pressed hard together--those soft Spanish lips that were usually half apart--their eyes glowed with a steady fire. Their chests rose and fell in short regular spasms.

Suddenly a thrill ran through Roldan. He had felt it before when a rattlesnake, ready to strike, had fixed its green malignant eyes upon him. He flashed the lantern about swiftly, twisting his neck with deep anxiety. It would be no minor adventure to encounter a coiled rattler in this narrow place. Then he saw something white shining out of the darkness high above the rays, a large white disk, in which glittered two points of light inexpressibly infuriate.

Roldan sprang to his feet with a warning cry. The other boys, greed routed by the danger sense, were on their feet as quickly. As the three lads, none very tall for his age, faced the gigantic bulk of the priest, they looked cornered and helpless.

The priest, unconsciously beyond doubt, lifted his huge hands, opening and shutting them slowly. The movement had an ugly significance, and the hands, in the miserable glimmer of light, looked like great bats, and seemed to pervade the cavern. Involuntarily the boys squirmed. Then Roldan, mindful always of his proud position as captain of his small band, stepped in front of that band and spoke with a vocal control that did him much credit, considering that his heart seemed to be kicking in the middle of his stomach.

"These hills are just beyond the Mission grant, Padre Osuna," he said. "Nor are they on any rancho. Therefore what is in them is as much ours as any man's. This is the first time that we have been here, but it will not be the last; and when I am the governor of all the Californias, I shall send many Indians to dig the very heart out of these hills. So pick out all that you can now, Padre Osuna, for ten years hence--"

As he spoke fear gave place to exultation in finding himself pitted against a man whom he intuitively respected more than any he had ever met, and whom he knew most men feared and none understood. Moreover, he heard two sets of teeth clattering behind him, and that alone would have sent the blood of a born leader of men back to its skin.

But his speech did not proceed to the finish. The priest swooped down and caught the three necks between his hands, easily spanning them, pressing the heads hard together. Then he lifted the boys high in the air and held them there, a kicking, humiliated trio. The blanched olive of his face was reflected in the pallid brows at the extremity of his rigid arms. His voice, which had been lost in passion, found itself.

"And when your Indians come, Senor Don Roldan," he said, "they will find three skeletons six feet beneath the floor of this cave. You will never leave this cave, not one of you. When you are dead for want of food and drink, I shall return and bury you. And no one will seek you here." Suddenly he dashed them to the ground. "A thousand curses go with you," he shrieked, "to make a murderer of me. I was near enough to hell before--"

"And our fingers will scratch the ground beneath your feet," interrupted Roldan, who between mortification and rage felt equal himself to murder, but determined as ever to hold his own. "Our skulls will grin at you from every corner as you work--"

"I don't care!" shouted the priest. "I don't care! Here you rot. This gold is mine. No man shall touch it but myself."

"But if we promise never to return, and to tell no man of what we know," interposed Rafael, feebly.

The priest laughed. "With the glitter of gold in your brains? You could not keep an oath on the cross." He turned swiftly and strode down the passage.

"What will he do?" gasped Adan.

"Roll a stone over the entrance and secure it with others," said Roldan. "There are plenty nigh. If we follow, he will beat us back with those fists, and one blow would crack our skulls in two."

"Then what shall we do? Rot here? Starve to death? Madre de dios!"

"We have been between the teeth of death before, have we not? We shall have many more adventures, my friends."

But although he spoke confidently he was profoundly disturbed. This was no ordinary predicament. He knew that unless the priest relented they stood small chance of seeing sun and stars again. Would he relent? Roldan's own indomitable will and growing ambitions responded to the awful forces in the man, overgrown and abnormal as they had become. That the priest had some great end in view to which this gold was the means, and that the gold itself had roused in him a controlling passion, he could not doubt. The priest himself had told him something, the gold the rest. With a sudden impulse of hatred Roldan emptied his pockets of the metal and stamped upon it. He quieted suddenly, then stamped again, with added vigour. Then he dropped and laid his ear to the ground.

"Stamp, Adan," he said, "and hard."

Adan shook his blood through his veins, and obeyed. Roldan sprang to his feet. "We are above the tunnel of the Mission," he said. "And we have a pickaxe. All we have to do is to dig."

XIX

It was three hours later that a mass of loosened earth caved suddenly, carrying Adan with it. A wild yell came back. It stopped abruptly, the tag end of it shot forth like the quick last blast from a trumpet.

"Hi, Adan!" called Roldan, excitedly, peering down into the dark. "Are you hurt?"

"I know not! I know not! It is darker than a dungeon of a Mission." The voice was quite distinct. It came from no great depth.

"Get out of the way," called Roldan. "I am coming." He waited a moment, then dropped, falling on a mass of soft earth. Adan had prudently retreated a few steps. He ran forward and helped Roldan to his feet, just as Rafael came flying down.

"Now for the other end," said Roldan. "This air is not too good. And that devil may return any moment."

They ran down the tunnel. It was wide and high, built for flying priests, should the Mission be besieged and captured by savage tribes. The air was close and heavy, but free from noxious gases. Bats whirred past and rats scampered before them. Roldan paused after a moment and lit his lantern. Its thin ray leaped but a few feet ahead, but would frighten away any wild beast of the forest that might have wandered in.

The tunnel was straight. It also appeared to be endless.

"We have walked twenty leagues," groaned Adan, at the end of an hour.

"Two," said Roldan. "Without doubt this tunnel ends at the mountains, and they are four leagues from the Mission. But you have taken longer walks than this, my friend. Do you remember that night in the mountains?"

"I had forgotten it for one blessed week. Rafael, to what have we brought you? Your poor muscles are soft, where ours are now as hard as a deserter's from an American barque--ay, yi!"

"If they have but the chance to become soft once more after they too are hard!" muttered Rafael, who was panting and lagging. "That priest! that priest!"

"It is true," said Roldan, pausing abruptly. "You will not dare to return home at present--nor we. It is flight once more--to Los Angeles. We will stay there--where he would not dare touch us if he came--until he repents or makes sure that we will have told if we intend to tell. Will you come?"

"Will I? I would go to Mexico if I could. I feel that there is not room in the Californias for those hands and myself."

"I will take care of you," said Roldan, proudly, anxious to rout the memory of his recent humiliation. "But come." And Rafael, too weary and bewildered to resent the authority of his erst-while rival, trudged obediently in the rear.

"It grows colder," said Adan, significantly.

"Yes," said Roldan. "We near the mountains."

Adan stopped. "Is it the mountains again?" he asked. "If it is, then I, for one, prefer the priest."

"The mountains never scared you half as badly as the priest did," said Roldan, cruelly. "And to say nothing of the fact that we need never get lost in the mountains again, the embrace of a grizzly would be no harder and more death-sure than one in the great arms of that fiend that wears a cassock."

"True. You are always right. But promise that whatever happens you will not lead us into the Sierras."

"I promise," said Roldan, much flattered by this unconscious tribute to his leadership.

"Do you think that priest is really a devil?" asked Rafael, in an awestruck voice.

"When a man has insulted you, you do not know what you think of him," said Roldan, flushing hotly. "If he only were not a priest I'd fight him, big as he is. But at least I can outwit him. It consoles me to think of his fury when he goes to the cave and finds us gone."

"We'd better get out of this tunnel before we talk about having the best of the priest," said Adan. "Suppose he returns to kill us himself--"

"He will not return until to-morrow. Then he will have repented. He will promise to let us go free if we keep his secret. But he will not have that satisfaction, my friends. Yesterday he had a friend in Roldan Castanada; I would have done anything for him, gladly kept his secret. But to-day he has an enemy that he will do well to fear. A Spaniard never forgets an insult."

"What shall you do?" asked Rafael, eagerly. "Expose him?"

"No, I do nothing mean. But I proclaim at Los Angeles that gold has been discovered in the Californias, and in six days the hills will swarm, and the priest in his cell will gnash his teeth."

"Ay!" exclaimed Adan. "Do you feel that?"

An icy blast swept down the tunnel, roughening skin and shortening breath. A few moments later the low rhythm as of distant water came to their ears. Roldan and Adan recognised that familiar music, and set their teeth.

"And I prayed that I might never see another redwood," muttered Adan, crossing himself.

The tunnel stopped abruptly. They stood before a mass of brushwood, piled thickly to keep out wild beasts and delude the searching eye of hostile Indians. Beyond, seen in patches, was a dazzle of white.

"Snow, of course," said Adan, with a groan.

The boys pulled the branches apart without much difficulty: the priests had studied facility of egress and had raised the barrier from within. In a few moments the boys stood in the sunlight; and the mountains hemmed them in.

Adan stamped his foot savagely on the hard snow. "We are where we started a week ago," he said. "No more, no less."

"No," said Roldan, who also had felt demoralised for a moment. "The priests were too clever for that. They would want to get into the shelter of the mountains, no more. I believe that from the top of that point above the tunnel we can see the valley."

"Well, we can at least look," said Rafael, who was bitterly weary and hungry, but determined not to be outdone by these hardened adventurers.

The boys made their way up the declivity as best they could through the heavy snowdrifts, pulling themselves up by clutching at young trees and scrub. They were thinly clad and very cold, and hunger was loud of speech. When after a half-hour's weary climb, they reached the summit, they drew a long sigh of relief, but their enthusiasm was too moderate for words in present physical conditions. The valley lay below. Far away, beyond leagues of low hills and wide valleys something white reflected the sun. It was the Mission.

"We have not a moment to rest, unless we can find a safe hiding-place," said Roldan. "If he should return and find us gone, he would follow at once."

"Where shall we go?" asked the others, who, however, felt a quickening of blood and muscle at the thought that the priest might be under their feet even then.

"How near is the next rancho, and whose is it?"

"A league beyond the Mission grant. It is Don Juan Ortega's."

"Very well, we go there and ask for horses."

The boys made their way rapidly down the slope, which after all was only that of a foot-hill. Beyond were other foot-hills, and they skirted among them, finally entering a canon. It was as dark and cold and damp as the last hour of the tunnel had been, but the narrow river, roaring through its middle, had caught all the snow, and there was scarce a fleck on the narrow tilted banks. The hill opposite was the last of the foot-hills; but how to reach it? The current was very swift, and boys knew naught of the art of swimming in that land of little water.

Suddenly Roldan raised his hand with an exclamation of surprise and pointed to a ledge overhanging the stream. A hut stood there, made of sections of the redwood and pine. From its chimney, smoke was curling upward.

The boys were too hungry to pause and reflect upon the possibility of a savage inmate; they scrambled up the bank and ran along the ledge to the hut. The door was of hide. They knocked. There was no response. They flung the door aside and entered. No one was in the solitary room of the hut, but over a fire in the deep chimney place hung a large pot, in which something of agreeable savour bubbled.

Roldan glanced about. "I'd rather be invited," he said doubtfully.

But Adan had gone straight for the pot. He lifted it off the fire, fetched three broken plates and battered knives and forks from a shelf, and helped his friends and himself. Then he piously crossed himself and fell to. It was not in human necessities to withstand the fragrance of that steaming mess of squirrel, and the boys had disposed of the entire potful before they raised their eyes again. When they did, Rafael, who sat opposite the door, made a slight exclamation, and the others turned about quickly. A man stood there.

He was quite unlike any one they had ever seen. A tall lank man with rounded shoulders, lean leather-like cheeks, a preternatural length of jaw, drab hair and chin whiskers, and deeply-set china-blue eyes, made up a type uncommon in the Californias, that land of priest, soldier, caballero, and Indian. He was clad in coyote skins, and carried a gun in his hand, a brace of rabbits slung over one shoulder. He did not speak for some seconds, and when he did, it was to make a remark that was not understood. He said: "Well, I'll be durned!"

His expression was not forbidding, and Roldan recovered himself at once. He stood up and bowed profoundly.

"Senor," he said, "I beg that you will pardon us. We would have craved your hospitality had you been here, but as it was, our hunger overcame us: we have not eaten for many hours. But I am Roldan Castanada of the Rancho de los Palos Verdes, senor, and I beg that you will one day let me repay your hospitality in the house of my fathers."

"Holy smoke!" exclaimed the man, "all that high-falutin' lingo for a potful of squirril. But you're welcome enough. I don't begrudge anybody sup." Then he broke into a laugh at the puzzled faces of his guests, and translated his reply into very lame Spanish. The boys, however, were delighted to be so hospitably received, and grinned at him, warm, replete, and sheltered.

The man began at once to skin a rabbit. "Seein' as how you haint left me nothin', I may as well turn to," he said. "And it ain't every day I'm entertainin' lords."

The boys did not understand the words, but they understood the act, and reddened.

"I myself will cook the rabbit for you, senor," said Adan.

"Well, you kin," and the man nodded acquiescence.

"You are American, no?" asked Roldan.

"I am, you bet."

"From Boston, I suppose?"

The man guffawed. "Boston ought to hear that. She'd faint. No, young 'un, I'm not from no such high-toned place as Boston. I'm a Yank though, and no mistake. Vermont."

"Is that in America?"

"In Meriky? Something's wrong with your geography, young man. It's one of the U. S. and no slouch, neither."

He spoke in a curious mixture of English and of Spanish that he adapted as freely as he did his native tongue. The boys stared at him, fascinated. They thought him the most picturesque person they had ever met.

"When did you come?" asked Roldan.

"I'll answer any more questions you've got when I've got this yere rabbit inside of me. P'r'aps as you've been hungry you know that it doesn't make the tongue ambitious that way. I'll have a pipe while it's cookin'."