The pink reflection of the sunset yet lingered on the mesa and the highlands above the sea. The world of the strange new town to the north was left behind. Here among the ruins consecrated, she breathed the air of home-coming, and paced the old altar-place with noiseless step, and with closed eyes and hands clasped she murmured prayers not in the book, taught by the good nuns; and she drew great breaths of strength from the wine-like air, and knew that somewhere, riding the mesa, a man was remembering this hour of the rosary.
Ana found her later on the altar steps, with head bowed over her knees. Gaining no reply to questions, Ana felt that she had been weeping. She undressed her and put her to bed in the little chamber of the barred window facing the sea, and gave her all the care a devoted friend could in the grim isolation of the old walls.
And that was the home-coming of Raquel after her half-royal reception in the City of the Angels.
[Illustration: "HERE AMONG THE RUINS CONSECRATED"]
Con el capotin, tin, tin, tin, que es ta noche va llover. Con el capotin, tin, tin, tin, que sera al amanecer!
When Andres Pico and his men rode into San Juan with the doubtful decoration of necklaces of human ears strung on rawhide strings, there was a breath of relief from the natives: it meant that the bandits had been "confessed," according to the General's naive explanation of the absence of prisoners they knew he had taken; the backbone of the bandit gang was broken.
The vigilantes were the heroes of the hour. As the band of outlaws divided and fled in various directions, they were waited for at every pass and hewn down by the dozen. Only two--Fontez, who had shot the sheriff, and El Capitan, who had not been seen by any one at any time of the raid--were still missing. One of the prisoners, on being questioned, stated that Fontez had taken his share of the plunder and started for Lower California; and when questioned as to El Capitan, swore wrathfully, because El Capitan had disagreed with Flores over the raid, refused to be counted in, and in consequence they would all go to hell! If El Capitan had helped, things would have been different, very different. He had voted against starting out with fifty men to drive the gringos from Southern California; he had fought them before in the open, and knew them. He had told Flores he was a fool, and left them in Santiago Cañon, and ridden away, and after the slaughter of the sheriff and his men he had ridden out of the mustard on a horse of the San Joaquin brand, and told them to ride south and stop for nothing; and no one had seen him since. They had not taken his advice--and now it was all over! A little later, it certainly was over for that particular unfortunate, and his ears were added to a string decorating a swarthy ranchman, who was especially lionized because of his gruesome trophies.