"Likely it will if you go on hunting for adventures as the old women
hunt for fleas of a night. Do you feel able to get on my horse? It will
carry the two of us."

"If I were not equal to that much I should find another bear and go to
sleep in his arms."

XVIII

At last the night arrived for the gold quest. The guests had gone.
Roldan, Adan, and Rafael were alone on their side of the great house.
They waited, kicking their heels together with leashed impatience, until
eleven o'clock. The family and servants of Casa Encarnacion went to bed
at ten o'clock, but it was the custom of Don Tiburcio to go the rounds a
half or three quarters of an hour later and see that his strict laws
were as strictly obeyed. To-night, when he opened the doors of the three
young dons in succession, heels were still, and breathing was as
monotonous as his own would be an hour later. At eleven the boys dressed
and swung from their windows, not daring to leave by the courtyard. Nor
did they dare go to the corral and abstract three horses. Much to their
distaste, for there was nothing the Californian hated so much as to
travel on two legs, they were obliged to walk the miles between the Casa
and the hills. But their legs were young and their brains eager; in
little over an hour they were in sight of the Mission.

It looked very white and ghostly in the pale blaze of the moon, a huge
mass, full of prayer and discontent. Close beside it, but without the
walls, the Indians slept in the rancheria, quiescent enough, for they
had no Anastacio. At midnight the great bells in the tower had rung out,