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Rivers hastened to make things clear to me. "Our deliverer" so he termed him, whereat I marvelled somewhat, "our deliverer assures me that Padre Ignacio's action is condemned greatly by his uncle, Señor de Colis, the Governor and Captain-General at San Augustin.
And all the while Ignacio's voice chimed in. "Kill 'em! Kill 'em!" The prisoners seemed about to have a very unpleasant experience indeed. There was no one to restrain the crowd except the soldiers and they sympathized with the angry people. And the crowd seemed to know that; they surged nearer. "A prison's too good for them!" they roared.
Salome's two children were not today in Senor Ignacio's home; on Sundays, after dressing them very neatly, their mother would send them to a relative of hers, the proprietress of a workshop, where they spent the afternoon. At the meal Manuel listened to the conversation without taking part.
Ignacio's face was almost touching Clif's as he hissed that. "You can't get away!" he yelled. "And, oh, the things that I shall do to you! I've got instruments up stairs to tear you to pieces, burn your eyes out but never kill you, oh, no! And all night you will scream, and all to-morrow, if I choose. And I will watch you I and the rats. And the rats will eat you, too!"
'Tis something better than either Padre Ignacio's hut or Melinza's galley, is it not? Are you content to remain?" "Madame," I said desperately, "do with me what you will; only see, I pray you, that my betrothed comes to no harm." "What should harm him?" she demanded. "Is he not the guest of my husband?" "His guest, madame, or his prisoner?" She gave me a keen glance.
"I understood that I was a prisoner of war," was the American's quiet answer. "And I understood that Spain considered itself a civilized nation." The Spaniard laughed softly. "A prisoner of war," he chuckled. "So you really expect to be treated as such and after what you have done!" "What have I done?" asked Clif. Ignacio's eyes began to dance at that; for the officer turned toward him.
"On the mountain, your Reverence, but a few varas from where he attacked you." "How? you saw him then?" asked the Padre, in unfeigned astonishment. "Saw him, your Reverence! Mother of God, I should think I did! And your Reverence shall see him too, if he ever comes again within range of Ignacio's arquebuse." "What mean you, Ignacio?" said the Padre, sitting bolt-upright in his litter.
"What security have I for this? How do I know that when I am in your power you will carry out the compact?" "You have heard the word of Gondocori. See, I will swear it on the emblem you most respect." And the cacique pressed his lips to the cross which hung from Ignacio's neck.
The Spaniards broke into a run the moment they heard Ignacio's cry; a minute later they fired a volley into the bushes, probably in order to alarm the country. It would have been hard for those five fugitives to go any faster than they did during the first few moments of that chase. They heard their enemies banging away and yelling in their rear, and they fairly flew over the ground.
What further reliance he placed on Ignacio's story is not known; but, in commemoration of a worthy Californian custom, the place was called "La Canada de la Tentacion del Pio Muletero," or "The Glen of the Temptation of the Pious Muleteer," a name which it retains to this day. The next morning the party, issuing from a narrow gorge, came upon a long valley, sear and burnt with the shadeless heat.
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