The Doomswoman: An Historical Romance of Old California

  XXIX.

  Estenega drew rein the next night before the neglected Mission of SanRafael. The valley, surrounded by hills dark with the silentredwoods, bore not a trace of the populous life of the days beforesecularization. The padre lived alone, lodge-keeper of a valley ofshadows.

  He opened the door of his room on the corridor as he heard theapproach of the traveler, squinting his bleared, yellow-spotted eyes.He was surly by nature, but he bowed low to the man whose power was sogreat in California, and whose generosity had sent him many a bullock.He cooked him supper from his frugal store, piled the logs in the openfireplace,--November was come,--and, after a bottle of wine, producedfrom Estenega's saddle-bag, expanded into a hermit's imitation ofconviviality. Late in the night they still sat on either side of thetable in the dusty, desolate room. The Forgotten had been entertainedwith vivid and shifting pictures of the great capital in which he hadpassed his boyhood. He smiled occasionally; now and again he gave aquick impatient sigh. Suddenly Estenega leaned forward and fixed himwith 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 meaningflashed into his eyes, then one of cunning displaced it.

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

  Estenega shut his teeth. Fanaticism was a more powerful combatant thanavarice.

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

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

  Estenega spent a half-hour representing in concrete and forcibleimages the debt which civilization owed to the fact and circulationof gold. The priest replied that California was a proof that commercecould exist by barter; the money in the country was not worth speakingof.

  "And no progress to speak of in a hundred years," retorted Estenega.Then he expatiated upon the unique future of California did she havegold to develop her wonderful resources. The priest said that to cutCalifornia from her Arcadian simplicity would be to start her on herjourney to the devil along with the corrupt nations of the OldWorld. Estenega demonstrated that if there was vice in the oldercivilizations there was also a higher state of mental development, andthat Religion held her own. He might as well have addressed the wallsof the Mission. He tempted with the bait of one of the more centralMissions. The priest had only the dust of ambition in the cellar ofhis 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 myfather that you knew of its existence in these hills; and you shallgive me the key."

  The priest looked into the eyes of steel and contemptuously determinedface 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 murderergo unsuspected; but the heart of the fanatic was in him. He made noreply.

  "You know me," said Estenega. "I owe half my power in California tothe 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 thehand of the assassin, so be it."

  Estenega leaned forward and placed his strong hand about the priest'sbaggy throat, pushing the table against his chest. He pressed histhumb against the throttle, his second finger hard against thejugular, and the tongue rolled over the teeth, the congested eyesbulged. "It may be that you scorn death, but may not fancy the modeof it. I have no desire to kill you. Alive or dead, your life is of nomore value than that of a worm. But you shall die, and die with muchdiscomfort, unless you do as I wish." His hand relaxed its grasp, butstill 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; ifI must I must. Let me rise, and I will conduct you."

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

  If the priest was disconcerted, he did not show it. He took a lanternfrom a shelf, lit the fragment of candle, and, opening a door at theback, walked through the long line of inner rooms. All were heapedwith rubbish. In one he found a trap-door with his foot, and descendedrough steps cut out of the earth. The air rose chill and damp, andEstenega knew that the tunnel of the Mission was below, the secretexit to the hills which the early Fathers built as a last resource incase of defeat by savage tribes. When they reached the bottom of thesteps the tallow dip illuminated but a narrow circle; Estenega couldform no idea of the workmanship of the tunnel, except that it was notmore 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 wasventilation somewhere, but no light. They walked a mile or more,and then Estenega had a sense of stepping into a wider and higherexcavation.

  "We are no longer in the tunnel," said the priest. He lifted thelantern and swung it above his head. Estenega saw that they were in acircular room, hollowed probably out of the heart of a hill. He alsosaw 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 andclose to the walls, slowly traversed the room. It was belted withthree strata of crystal-like quartz, sown thick with glittering yellowspecks 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, senor; enough to pay the debt of a nation."

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

  The priest made no reply.

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

  "You never will find it from without. When the danger from Indians wasover, a pious Father closed the opening. This gold is not for you. Youcould 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 throughme. Kill me now, if you wish. Better death than hell."

  Estenega made a rapid circuit of the room. There was no mode ofegress other than that by which they had entered, and no sign of anypreviously existing. He sprang upon the priest and shook him untilthe worn stumps rattled in their gums. "You dog!" he said, "to balkme with your ignorant superstition! Take me out of this place by itsother 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 tortureyou."

  The priest made a sudden spring and closed with Estenega, hugginghim like a bear. The lantern fell and went out. The two men stumbledblindly in the blackness, striking the walls, wrestling desperately,the priest using his teeth and panting like a beast. But he was nomatch for the virility and science of his young opponent. Estenegathrew him in a moment and bound him with the rope. Then he found thelantern and lit the candle again. He returned to the priest and stoodover him. The latter was conquered physically, but the dogged lightof bigotry still burned in his eyes, although Estenega's were notagreeable to face.

  Estenega was furious. He had twisted Santa Ana, one of the most subtleand self-seeking men of his time, around his finger as if he hadbeen a yard of ribb
on; Alvarado, the wisest man ever born in theCalifornias, was swayed by his judgment; yet all the arts of which hisintellect was master fell blunt and useless before this clay-brainedpriest. He had more respect for the dogs in his kennels, but unlesshe resorted to extreme measures the creature would defeat him throughsheer brute ignorance. Estenega was not a man to stop in sight ofvictory or to give his sword to an enemy he despised.

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

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

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

  He cut the rope which bound the other's hands. "Go," he said, "I haveno further use for you. And if you report this, I need not explain toyou that it will fare worse with you than it will with me."

  The priest fled, and Estenega, hanging the lantern on a nail, pushedaside the rubbish with his feet, purposing to pace the room untildawn. In a few moments, however, he discovered that the despisedhermit was not without his allies; ten thousand fleas, the pest of thecountry, assaulted every portion of his body they could reach. Theyswarmed down the legs of his riding-boots, up his trousers, up hissleeves, 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, andpaced the yard until morning. But there were dark hours yet before thedawn, and during one of them a figure, when his back was turned,crept to the lantern and hung it before an adjoining room. When lightcame,--and the fog came first,--all Estenega's efforts to find thetrap-door were unavailing, although the yard was littered with therubbish he flung into it from the room. He suspected the trick, butthere were ten rooms exactly alike, and although he cleared most ofthem he could discover no trace of the trap-door. He looked at thehills surrounding the Mission. They were many, and beyond there wereothers. He mounted his horse and rode around the buildings, listeningcarefully for hollow reverberation. The tunnel was too far below; heheard nothing.

  He was defeated. For the first time in his life he was withoutresource, overwhelmed by a force stronger than his own will; and hisspirit was savage within him. He had no authority to dig the floorsof the Mission, for the Mission and several acres about it werethe property of the Church. The priest never would take him on thatunderground journey again, for he had learned the weak spot in hisarmor, nor had he fear of death. Unless accident favored him, or someone more fortunate, the golden heart of the San Rafael hill wouldpulse unrifled forever.