But siesta was brief that day. In less than an hour's time all had
reappeared and were mounting for the race.

XV

The race took place in a field a mile from the house, on a straight
track. Four vaqueros in black velvet small-clothes trimmed with silver,
spotless linen, and stiff glazed black sombreros, walked up and down,
leading the impatient mustangs. Two of these horses were a beautiful
bronze-gold in colour, with silver manes and tails, a breed peculiar to
the Californias; one was black, the other as white as crystal. The
family and guests of Casa Carillo sat on their horses, in their
carretas, or stood just outside the fence surrounding the field. At one
end were the several hundred Indians employed by Don Tiburcio, and
several hundred more from the Mission. Father Osuna had also joined the
party from the Casa, and Roldan, who had seen hundreds of horse-races
and was built on a more complex plan than his contemporaries, got as
close to the priest as he dared and gave him his undivided attention.
Padre Osuna was a man of unusual height and heaviness of build. His
black eyes were set close to his fine Roman nose. The mouth was so
tightly compressed that its original curves were quite destroyed, and
the intellectual development of the brow was very marked. His hands
exerted a peculiar fascination over Roldan. They were of huge size, even
for so big a man, lean and knotted, with square-tipped fingers. The skin
on them was fine and brown; it looked as soft as a woman's. He used them
a good deal when talking, and not ungracefully; but they seemed to claw
and grasp the air, to be independent of the arms hidden in the
voluminous sleeves of the smart brown cassock. Other people watched
those hands too--they seemed to possess a magnetism of their own; and