The Curse of Capistrano | Page 9

time in his life he ever had allowed duty to interfere with his pleasure
and had run from good wine. Don Diego Vega smiled as he turned
toward the fireplace.
Chapter 5
A Ride in the Morning
THE FOLLOWING MORNING found the storm at an end, and there

was not a single cloud to mar the perfect blue of the sky, and the sun
was bright, and palm fronds glistened in it, and the air was bracing as it
blew down the valleys from the sea.
At midmorning, Don Diego Vega came from his house in the pueblo,
drawing on his sheepskin riding-mittens, and stood for a moment
before it, glancing across the plaza at the little tavern. From the rear of
the house an Indian servant led a horse.
Though Don Diego did not go galloping across the hills and up and
down El Camino Real like an idiot, yet he owned a fairish bit of
horseflesh. The animal had spirit and speed and endurance, and many a
young blood would have purchased him, except that Don Diego had no
use for more money and wanted to retain the beast.
The saddle was heavy and showed more silver than leather on its
surface. The bridle was heavily chased with silver, too, and from its
sides dangled leather globes studded with semiprecious stones that now
glittered in the bright sunshine as if to advertise Don Diego's wealth
and prestige to all the world.
Don Diego mounted, while half a score of men loitering around the
plaza watched and made efforts to hide their grins. It was quite the
thing in those days for a youngster to spring from the ground into his
saddle, gather up the reins, rake the beast's flanks with his great spurs,
and disappear in a cloud of dust all in one motion.
But Don Diego mounted a horse as he did everything else --without
haste or spirit. The native held a stirrup, and Don Diego inserted the toe
of his boot. Then he gathered the reins in one hand, and pulled himself
into the saddle as if it had been quite a task.
Having done that much, the native held the other stirrup and guided
Don Diego's other boot into it, and then he backed away, and Don
Diego clucked to the magnificent beast and started it, at a walk, along
the edge of the plaza toward the trail that ran to the north.
Having reached the trail, Don Diego allowed the animal to trot, and

after having covered a mile in this fashion, he urged the beast into a
slow gallop, and so rode along the highway.
Men were busy in the fields and orchards, and natives were tending the
herds. Now and then Don Diego passed a lumbering carreta, and
saluted whoever happened to be in it Once a young man he knew
passed him at a gallop, going toward the pueblo, and Don Diego
stopped his own horse to brush the dust from his garments after the
man had gone his way.
Those same garments were more gorgeous than usual this bright
morning. A glance at them was enough to establish the wealth and
position of the wearer. Don Diego had dressed with much care,
admonishing his servants because his newest serape was not pressed
properly, and spending a great deal of time over the polishing of his
boots.
He traveled for a distance of four miles and then turned from the
highroad and started up a narrow, dusty trail that led to a group of
buildings against the side of a hill in the distance. Don Diego Vega was
about to pay a visit to the hacienda of Don Carlos Pulido.
This same Don Carlos had experienced numerous vicissitudes during
the last few years. Once he had been second to none except Don
Diego's father in position, wealth, and breeding. But he had made the
mistake of getting on the wrong side of the fence politically, and he
found himself stripped of a part of his broad acres, and tax-gatherers
bothering him in the name of the governor, until there remained but a
remnant of his former fortune, but all his inherited dignity of birth.
On this morning Don Carlos was sitting on the veranda of the hacienda
meditating on the times, which were not at all to his hieing. His wife,
Dona Catalina, the sweetheart of his youth and age, was inside
directing her servants. His only child, the Senorita Lolita, likewise was
inside, plucking at the strings of a guitar and dreaming as a girl of
eighteen dreams. Don Carlos raised his silvered head and peered down
the long, twisting trail, and saw in the distance a small cloud of dust.
The dust cloud told him that a single horseman was approaching,