The Splendid Idle Forties | Page 9

bare, and
many-hued, rising above, beyond, peak upon peak, cutting through the
visible atmosphere--was there no end? He turned in his saddle and
looked over low peaks and cañons, rivers and abysms, black peaks
smiting the fiery blue, far, far, to the dim azure mountains on the
horizon.
"Mother of God!" he thought. "No wonder California still shakes! I
would I could have stood upon a star and beheld the awful throes of
this country's birth." And then his horse reared between the sharp spurs
and galloped on.
He avoided the Mission of Santa Barbara, resting at a rancho outside
the town. In the morning, supplied as usual with a fresh horse, he fled
onward, with the ocean at his right, its splendid roar in his ears. The
cliffs towered high above him; he saw no man's face for hours together;
but his thoughts companioned him, savage and sinister shapes whirling
about the figure of a woman. On, on, sleeping at ranchos or missions,
meeting hospitality everywhere, avoiding Los Angeles, keeping close
to the ponderous ocean, he left civilization behind him at last, and with
an Indian guide entered upon that desert of mountain-tops, Baja
California.
Rapid travelling was not possible here. There were no valleys worthy
the name. The sharp peaks, multiplying mile after mile, were like teeth
of gigantic rakes, black and bare. A wilderness of mountain-tops,
desolate as eternity, arid, parched, baked by the awful heat, the silence
never broken by the cry of a bird, a hut rarely breaking the barren
monotony, only an infrequent spring to save from death. It was almost
impossible to get food or fresh horses. Many a night De la Vega and his
stoical guide slept beneath a cactus, or in the mocking bed of a creek.

The mustangs he managed to lasso were almost unridable, and would
have bucked to death any but a Californian. Sometimes he lived on
cactus fruit and the dried meat he had brought with him; occasionally
he shot a rabbit. Again he had but the flesh of the rattlesnake roasted
over coals. But honey-dew was on the leaves.
He avoided the beaten trail, and cut his way through naked bushes
spiked with thorns, and through groves of cacti miles in length. When
the thick fog rolled up from the ocean he had to sit inactive on the
rocks, or lose his way. A furious storm dashed him against a boulder,
breaking his mustang's leg; then a torrent, rising like a tidal wave,
thundered down the gulch, and catching him on its crest, flung him
upon a tree of thorns. When dawn came he found his guide dead. He
cursed his luck, and went on.
Lassoing another mustang, he pushed on, having a general idea of the
direction he should take. It was a week before he reached Loreto, a
week of loneliness, hunger, thirst, and torrid monotony. A week, too, of
thought and bitterness of spirit. In spite of his love, which never cooled,
and his courage, which never quailed, Nature, in her guise of foul and
crooked hag, mocked at earthly happiness, at human hope, at youth and
passion.
If he had not spent his life in the saddle, he would have been worn out
when he finally reached Loreto, late one night. As it was, he slept in a
hut until the following afternoon. Then he took a long swim in the bay,
and, later, sauntered through the town.
The forlorn little city was hardly more than a collection of Indians' huts
about a church in a sandy waste. No longer the capital, even the
barracks were toppling. When De la Vega entered the mission, not a
white man but the padre and his assistant was in it; the building was
thronged with Indian worshippers. The mission, although the first built
in California, was in a fair state of preservation. The Stations in their
battered frames were mellow and distinct. The gold still gleamed in the
vestments of the padre.
For a few moments De la Vega dared not raise his eyes to the Lady of

Loreto, standing aloft in the dull blaze of adamantine candles. When he
did, he rose suddenly from his knees and left the mission. The pearls
were there.
It took him but a short time to gain the confidence of the priest and the
little population. He offered no explanation for his coming, beyond the
curiosity of the traveller. The padre gave him a room in the mission,
and spent every hour he could spare with the brilliant stranger. At night
he thanked God for the sudden oasis in his life's desolation. The Indians
soon grew accustomed to the lonely figure wandering about the sand
plains, or kneeling for hours together before the altar in the church.
And whom their