“Take me with thee!” he cried.  “I will give thee the old man’s blessing,” and, clinging like a crab to the neck of the galloping mustang, he drove a knife toward the heart of La Perdida.  The blade turned upon itself as lightning sometimes does, and went through stringy tissues instead of fresh young blood.

Carlos plucked the limp body from the neck of the horse and flung it upon a cactus-bush, where it sprawled and stiffened among the spikes and the blood-red flowers.  But the mustang never paused; and as the fires died on the hills, the mountains opened their great arms and sheltered the happiness of two wayward hearts.

LUKARI’S STORY

“Ay, senor!  So terreeblay thing!  It is many years before—­1837, I theenk, is the year; the Americanos no have come to take California; but I remember like it is yesterday.

“You see, I living with her—­Dona Juana Ybarra her name is—­ever since I am little girl, and she too.  It is like this:  the padres make me Christian in the mission, and her family take me to work in the house; I no living on the rancheria like the Indians who work outside.  Bime by Dona Juana marrying and I go live with her.  Bime by I marrying too, and she is comadre—­godmother, you call, no?—­to my little one, and steel I living with her, and in few years my husband and little one die and I love her children like they are my own, and her too; we grow old together.

“You never see the San Ysidro rancho?  It is near to San Diego and have many, many leagues.  Don Carlos Ybarra, the husband de my senora, is very reech and very brave and proud—­too brave and proud, ay, yi!  We have a beeg adobe house with more than twenty rooms, and a corridor for the front more than one hundred feets.  Ou’side are plenty other houses where make all the things was need for eat and wear:  all but the fine closes.  They come from far,—­from Boston and Mejico.  All stand away from the hills and trees, right in the middle the valley, so can see the bad Indians when coming.  Far off, a mile I theenk, is the rancheria; no can see from the house.  No so far is the corral, where keeping the fine horses.

“Ay, we have plenty to eat and no much to do in those days.  Don Carlos and Dona Juana are very devot the one to the other, so the family living very happy, and I am in the house like before and take care the little ones.  Every night I braid my senora’s long black hair and tuck her in bed like she is a baby.  She no grow stout when she grow more old, like others, but always is muy elegante.

“Bime by the childrens grow up; and the two firs boys, Roldan and Enrique, marrying and living in San Diego.  Then are left only the senor and the senora, one little boy, Carlos, and my two beautiful senoritas, Beatriz and Ester.  Ay!  How pretty they are.  Dios de mi alma!  Where they are now?