Carlos gave a cry of derision and triumph. "My little one, our hour has come! Run and find the keys."
The big bunch of keys had been flung hastily into a corner. A moment later Carlos held the shaking form of the girl in his powerful arms. Slender and delicate as she was, she made no protest against the fierceness of that embrace.
"But come," he said. "We have only this hour for escape. When we are safe in the mountains--Come!"
He lifted her in his arms and ran down the crooked street to a corral where an hidalgo kept his finest horses. Carlos had been the vaquero of the band. The iron bars of the great doors were down--only one horse was in the corral; the others had carried the hidalgo and his friends to the fire. The brute neighed with delight as Carlos flung saddle and aquera into place, then, with La Pérdida in his arms, sprang upon its back. The vaquero dug his spurs into the shining flanks, the mustang reared, shook his small head and silver mane, and bounded through the doors.
A lean, bent, and wiry thing darted from the shadows and hung upon the horse's neck. It was the husband of La Pérdida, and his little brown face looked like an old walnut.
"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 Pérdida. 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.
"Ay, señor! 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--Doña 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 ¡n the house; I no living on the rancheria like the Indians who work outside. Bime by Doña 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.