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Her relatives believed her, took pity on her and found her work. Every day, with the first light of morning, Rafaela went down to the river to wash. The river was about half a kilometer from the little village. Two years passed.
"What are you going to do about it?" "You shut your jaw," vociferated Berlanga, "or I'll break it for you!" Then his rage burst out. Joining a bad act to an evil threat, he rained a volley of blows on the head of his mistress. Rafaela stopped crying, and through her gritted teeth spat out a flood of vile epithets. "You dirty dog!" she cried. "You pimp! All you know how to do is hang around women.
Rafaela always ended up the paragraphs thus, in which she described the fierce wildness of the boy: "I tell you plainly, I can't manage him." This seemed a confession of weariness, that outlined both a threat and a prophecy. The prisoner wrote her, in one of his letters: "The last jail pardon, that you may have read about in the papers, let out many of my companions. I had no such luck.
"She was always a little dearer to me than his second wife, the proud Dona Maria Ortega, perhaps because Rafaela belonged pre-eminently to San Francisco. Her father, Ensign Sal, was acting comandante of the Presidio when Vancouver visited the Coast, and Rafaela and Luis Argüello grew up together in the little adobe settlement." "Go on," said the skeptic, leaning comfortably against a tree trunk.
Scourged by poverty, which was not long in arriving, Rafaela had to move away to a little village of Castile, where she had relatives. These were poor farming people, making a hard fight for existence. By way of excuse for her coming to them, the young woman made up a story.
The very same day when Amadeo Zureda got out of jail, he received from Rafaela a letter which began thus: "Little Manolo was twenty years old, yesterday." The one-time engineer left the boat from Africa at Valencia, passed the night at an inn not far from the railroad station, and early next morning took the train which was to carry him to Ecks.
Luis rashly threatened to run away with his betrothed, while Rafaela, frightened, reminded him that there was not a priest in California or Mexico who would marry them without the king's order.
Jack retained a grip on the weapon, however, and managed to prevent Rafaela from obtaining it. Foiled in her attempt, all her bravado deserted her and running back to her chair, she sank into it and began to weep. What in the world should a fellow do in a case like this? Jack didn't know. Usually, he was equal to emergencies, but this one was something beyond his understanding.
"Do you know whether he's going to come back soon? I want to know, before locking up." A short silence followed. After a bit, Rafaela answered: "You'd better lock up, anyhow." There seemed to be something like a sob of grief in the voice of the poor woman. The old engineer, alarmed by a presentiment of something terrible, strode through the shop and went on into the house.
But after a while, under the spell of a phenomenon we may call cumulative, this charm waxes potent; it grows till some time it unexpectedly breaks forth in an enveloping, conquering passion. Now one morning it happened that Manolo Berlanga was eating breakfast in the dining-room before going to the shop. Rafaela, her back toward him, was scrubbing the floor of the hallway.
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