The three remaining brothers were absent from the Mission: Fray Bernardo, hunting elk in the sierra; Fray José, gallivanting at Puebla de los Angeles, ten days' journey distant; Fray Cris-toval, lassoing colts upon the plain. Augustin, thus left to his own resources, had just eaten his vespertine frijolitos and chile Colorado, and was enjoying a post-coenal smoke of fragrant pouche under the shadow of his own fig-tree.
Whilst thus employed, an Indian dressed in Mexican attire approached him hat in hand, and, making a reverential bow, asked his directions concerning domestic business of the Mission.
"Hola! friend José," cried Fray Augustin, in a thick guttural voice, "_pensaba yo_--I was thinking that it was very nearly this time three years ago when those _malditos Americanos_ came by here and ran off with so many of our cavallada."
"True, reverend father," answered the administrator, "just three years ago, all but fifteen days: I remember it well. _Maldit os sean_--curse them!"
"_Quizas môôchos_--a great many, I daresay. But they did not fight fairly--charged right upon us, and gave us no time to do anything. They don't know how to fight, these Mericanos; come right at you, before you can swing a lasso, hallooing like _Indios bravos_."
"But, José, how many did they leave dead on the field?"
"_Valgame Dios!_ thirteen dead, and many more wounded."
"That's it! Now if these savages come again (and the Chemeguaba, who came in yesterday, says he saw a large trail), we must fight _adentro_ --within--outside is no go; for, as you very properly say, José, these Americans don't know how to fight, and kill us before--before we can kill them! _Vayal_."
At this moment there issued from the door of the Mission Don Antonio Velez Trueba, a Gachu-pin--that is, a native of Old Spain--a wizened old hidalgo refugee, who had left the mother country on account of his political opinions, which were stanchly Carlist, and had found his way --how, he himself scarcely knew--from Mexico to San Francisco in Upper California, where, having a most perfect contempt for everything Mexican, and hearing that in the Mission of San Fernando, far away, were a couple of Spanish padres of _sangre regular_, he had started into the wilderness to ferret them out; and having escaped all dangers on the route (which, however, were hardly dangers to the Don, who could not realize the idea of scalp-taking savages), had arrived with a whole skin at the Mission. There he was received with open arms by his countryman Fray Augustin, who made him welcome to all the place afforded, and there he harmlessly smoked away his time; his heart far away on the banks of the Genii and in the grape-bearing vegas of his beloved Andalusia, his withered cuerpo in the sierras of Upper California. Don Antonio was the walking essence of a Spaniard of the _ancien régime_. His family dated from the Flood, and with the exception of sundry refreshing jets of Moorish blood, injected into the Truebas during the Moorish epoch, no strange shoot was ever engrafted on their genealogical tree. The marriages of the family were ever confined to the family itself--never looking to fresh blood in a station immediately below it, which was not hidal-gueno; nor above, since anything higher in rank than the Trueba y Trueba family, _no habia_, there was not.