Maruja | Page 9

some one is coming. Don't move; remain as you are. If
you care for me, Carroll, collect yourself, and don't let that man think
he has found US ridiculous." Her voice changed from its tone of slight
caressing pleading to one of suppressed pride. "HE will not laugh much,
Captain Carroll; truly, no."
The figure of Garnier, bright, self-possessed, courteous, appeared at the
opening of the labyrinth. Too well-bred to suggest, even in
complimentary raillery, a possible sentimental situation, his politeness
went further. It was so kind in them to guide an awkward stranger by
their voices to the places where he could not stupidly intrude!
"You are just in time to interrupt or to hear a story that I have been
threatening to tell," she said, composedly; "an old Spanish legend of
this house. You are in the majority now, you two, and can stop me if
you choose. Thank you. I warn you it is stupid; it isn't new; but it has
the excuse of being suggested by this very spot." She cast a quick look
of subtle meaning at Carroll, and throughout her recital appealed more
directly to him, in a manner delicately yet sufficiently marked to partly
soothe his troubled spirit.
"Far back, in the very old times, Caballeros," said Maruja, standing by
the table in mock solemnity, and rapping upon it with her fan, "this
place was the home of the coyote. Big and little, father and mother,
Senor and Senora Coyotes, and the little muchacho coyotes had their
home in the dark canada, and came out over these fields, yellow with
wild oats and red with poppies, to seek their prey. They were happy.

For why? They were the first; they had no history, you comprehend, no
tradition. They married as they liked" (with a glance at Carroll),
"nobody objected; they increased and multiplied. But the plains were
fertile; the game was plentiful; it was not fit that it should be for the
beasts alone. And so, in the course of time, an Indian chief, a heathen,
Koorotora, built his wigwam here."
"I beg your pardon," said Garnier, in apparent distress, "but I caught the
gentleman's name imperfectly."
Fully aware that the questioner only wished to hear again her musical
enunciation of the consonants, she repeated, "Koorotora," with an
apologetic glance at Carroll, and went on. "This gentleman had no
history or tradition to bother him, either; whatever Senor Coyote
thought of the matter, he contented himself with robbing Senor
Koorotora's wigwam when he could, and skulking around the Indian's
camp at night. The old chief prospered, and made many journeys round
the country, but always kept his camp here. This lasted until the time
when the holy Fathers came from the South, and Portala, as you have
all read, uplifted the wooden Cross on the sea-coast over there, and left
it for the heathens to wonder at. Koorotora saw it on one of his
journeys, and came back to the canada full of this wonder. Now,
Koorotora had a wife."
"Ah, we shall commence now. We are at the beginning. This is better
than Senora Coyota," said Garnier, cheerfully.
"Naturally, she was anxious to see the wonderful object. She saw it,
and she saw the holy Fathers, and they converted her against the
superstitious heathenish wishes of her husband. And more than that,
they came here--"
"And converted the land also; is it not so? It was a lovely site for a
mission," interpolated Garnier, politely.
"They built a mission and brought as many of Koorotora's people as
they could into the sacred fold. They brought them in in a queer fashion
sometimes, it is said; dragoons from the Presidio, Captain Carroll,

lassoing them and bringing them in at the tails of their horses. All
except Koorotora. He defied them; he cursed them and his wife in his
wicked heathenish fashion, and said that they too should lose the
mission through the treachery of some woman, and that the coyote
should yet prowl through the ruined walls of the church. The holy
Fathers pitied the wicked man--and built themselves a lovely garden.
Look at that pear-tree! There is all that is left of it!"
She turned with a mock heroic gesture, and pointed her fan to the
pear-tree. Garnier lifted his hands in equally simulated wonder. A
sudden recollection of the coyote of the morning recurred to Carroll
uneasily. "And the Indians," he said, with an effort to shake off the
feeling; "they, too, have vanished."
"All that remained of them is in yonder mound. It is the grave of the
chief and his people. He never lived to see the fulfillment of his
prophecy. For it was a year after his death that our ancestor, Manuel
Guitierrez, came from old Spain to the Presidio