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Updated: May 12, 2025
Whether Concha were giving him her promised aid he had no means of discovering, and herein lay another cause of his general vexation. He had dined every day at the Commandante's, danced there every night. Concha had been vivacious, friendly impersonal.
She says softly, "How beautiful!" It is truly a royal domain. From the lake the ten leagues square of the Commandante's land are a panorama of varying beauties. Stretching back into the pathless forests, game, timber, wood, and building stones are at hand; a never-failing water supply for thousands of cattle is here.
There his precious herds are safe from the invader. There is danger for Valois in the Commandante's scowl when the saddest May day of his life comes. A rider on relay horses hands him a fateful despatch. "Curse the Gringos!" He strikes his table till the glasses ring. There are five huge Yankee war vessels in Monterey harbor. It is too true. This time they have come to stay.
Big generals in their shirt-sleeves galloped through the streets on little horses, collecting their men; pieces of artillery were rushed out of the barracks and held in readiness; scouts went out to reconnoitre in every conceivable direction, and the military band, playing all the national airs within their ken, paraded the public square, halting every now and then so that an officer might read to the public the Commandante's orders to the effect that all the inhabitants must remain indoors under pain of all sorts of outrageous and impossible penalties.
The commandante's house was in the center of the town. Round about was a circle of the houses of those who had owned the tobacco fields. Beyond these homes of the well-to-do were hundreds of huts. In these lived the reconcentrados, several families in each, or as many as could huddle within and not pull the roughly constructed frame of palm stalks down about their heads.
Before anyone could move I whipped out my gun and held it over the Commandante's heart, and at the same instant without turning my eyes from his face I waved my other hand at the passengers. "Take those children away," I shouted. "Don't move!" I yelled in Spanish at the soldiers. "If one of you raises his musket I'll kill him." I pressed the cocked revolver against the Commandante's chest.
In the quadrangle two companies of native soldiers and a detachment of artillery constitute the feeble garrison. Don Miguel Peralta canters up to the Commandante's residence. Evening parade is over. Listless sentinels drag over their posts with the true military laziness. Peralta is intent upon affairs both of head and heart. His comrade, the Commandante, sits late with him in sage counsel.
Business immediately afterward took the Commandante ad. in. down to the Battery at Yerba Buena. Before he left he gave orders that the large hall in the barracks, where balls usually were held, should be locked and the key given up to no one but himself. He returned in the afternoon to find that Concha had outwitted him. The sala of the Commandante's house was very large.
A few treasured books enable Maxime to amuse himself. As yet he dares not venture out of the garden. The sound of clattering hoofs causes the prisoner to drop his volume. He sits enjoying a flask of ripe claret, for he is broken down and needs recruiting. A courier spurs his foam-covered horse up to the Commandante's porch.
He has risen to his present position from the ranks, but he is of pure Spanish blood, not a drop of Indian; and my mother was a Moraga, of the best blood of Spain," he added artlessly. "As to the beauty and variety of our country, senor, of course you will visit our opulent south; but " They had dismounted at the Commandante's house in the southeast corner of the square.
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