"Holy Mary! I have given her a fever," gasped Ana. "That my tongue had been blistered, before I babbled all that to her! Raquel, for the love of God don't shake like that, and don't laugh at me! Stop it! The laugh is the worst of all! Raquel--Raquelita--darling mine!"
But Ana's frenzy of fear was so irresistibly funny, that Raquel continued to laugh, and the laughter grew louder after the other women were called in, and helped to undress her and wrap her in blankets to smother the chill. That night, candles never went out in the house, and Ana knelt before the altar with prayers to the saints that they might undo the folly of her tongue. But old Polonia knelt instead by the couch of Raquel and cursed the American, that he had not died there in Mexico.
In the early dawn Polonia crept unseen to the aquia, and of soft clay made an image of him, and thrust pins through every vital portion of it, that there might be no chance left of life in the man it represented; then, having finished her work, she left it where the sun would dry it, and crept back to the room and curled up on a rug, and slept the sleep of the content.
The good holy water she had paid money for had failed. But there are always two ways. If the saints refuse to help, there is always the devil left. If the padres did not get more effective holy water, whose fault was it that poor souls had to seek help elsewhere? She would do penance, of course, after the man died, and perhaps pay for a mass, and that would make it all right for everybody, and was so easy! She went to sleep wondering if he would die from a slow lingering disease, or how it would be. It was inconvenient that one was not allowed to select the very way the end must come. But the devil would know what she would like best,--that the foot of his horse might go down in a gopher-hole and pitch him on his head just so that the neck would break, quick, like the snapping of a finger. And no one would ever guess how it had been brought about!
En el sueno dichoso prové---- Delicias, rodear mi existencia.
Tea made of Castillian rose petals, and all the other little helps of the herb family, were brewed and steamed in the kitchen of the ranch for the saving of Raquel from the grasp of a strength-sapping fever.