ning; nevertheless, Anastacio was too good a general to relax
vigilance. When night came he and the two boys went down the mountain
and sent the outpost back to sleep. They ventured out where the trees
grew far apart, and the brilliant stars of California illumined the
great valley like so many thousand watch-fires.

The three sat down side by side, their gaze directed steadily downward
and outward.

"Why do you fight at all?" asked Roldan. "You could stay in these
mountains until the Californians were dust, and not be caught."

"And live like hunted beasts. I like the valley; the sun in winter, the
cool mountains in summer. If I am victor to-morrow, all the Indians in
California will call me chief. They will run here from every Mission
and hacienda, and from every hill and mountain, like little ones to
their good father; and we will drive the priests out of the country,
and make the hidalgos, the caballeros, the soft silk-dressed donas our
friends or our slaves--as they wish. California belongs to us. The
Great Spirit put us here, not the white man. If it was for them why did
they not grow out of the earth as we did? Why were we put here at all
if our land was not for us? We were happy until these priests came to
drive us mad making boots and mud bricks and wine all day, driven like
dogs to the kennel, flogged when we wanted to lie in the sun--"

"But, Anastacio," interrupted Roldan, who had listened to this strange
outburst with the vague consciousness that the soul of an expiring race
had opened its lips for a brief moment, "you are far more clever than
most Indians. If it were not for the priests you would be no better
than the most ignorant of them."

"If I am clever now, senor, was I not clever in the beginning? You do
not make cake out of bran. The Great Spirit sent his light into me and
said: 'Thou shalt be a great chief.' I could have done as well and
better without the priests. What good did it do me to read and tell my
beads and make chocolate? Was I happy at the Mission? Not for one moon,
senor. I felt as if I had a wild beast chained in me that choked and
panted for the free life of my youth, of my fathers. I ran away from
the Mission twenty-three times--and was brought back and flogged. Many
times I would have crushed my head with a stone had it not been that
all the other Indians of the Mission ran to me like dogs, and that I
could make them tremble with a word and obey with a look. I knew that
the G