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Updated: June 12, 2025
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.
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.
She felt, rather than knew, that Estenega had trampled many laws, and that he cared too little for any law but his own will to repent. And yet, there he lay, looking, in the gray light and the impersonality of sleep, as sinless as if he had been created within the hour. He looked not like a man but a spirit, a soul; and the soul was hers. Again she asked herself, what did it mean?
Such men I never have known it to fail are full of petty vanities and egoisms and contemptible weaknesses, the like of which Estenega could not be capable of.
"Go!" repeated Estenega, "lest she weep. With every tear a heart will cease to beat." The chief scrambled down from the altar and ran like a rat past Chonita, his swollen mouth dropping. The others crouched and followed, stumbling one over the other, their dark evil faces bloodless, their knees knocking together with superstitious terror.
"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.
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!
God speed the Americans: Therein lies our only chance." "What!" she cried. "You you would have the Americans? You a Californian! But you are an Estenega; that explains everything." "I am a Californian," he said, ignoring the scorn of the last words, "but I hope I have acquired some common-sense in roving about the world.
Not only is he my brother and the natural object of my love and devotion, but he is Reinaldo Iturbi y Moncada, the last male descendant of his house, and as such I hold him in a regard only second to that which I bear to my father. And with the blood in him he could not be otherwise than a great and good man." Estenega looked at her with the first stab of doubt he had felt.
Don Guillermo hobbled about delightedly, covered with tinsel and flour. Estenega had tried a dozen times to hit Chonita, but as if by instinct she faced him each time before the egg could leave his hand. Finally he pursued her down the corridor to her library, where I, fortunately, happened to be resting, and both threw themselves into chairs, breathless. "Let us stay here," he said.
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