"Senor Bryton--eh?" and he shrugged his shoulders contentedly. "The clever Bryton who put us off the track last year and took the stock by the north! This time he will not be so clever. Still, he gives a man ideas in the head,--may he have an easy death for that! Rafael's good friend who picks the good horses for the good government!" [Music: _La Viuda._] Corre muchacho a la yglesia, Dile al sacristan mayor, Que repique las campanas, tan! tan! CHAPTER II "Men make plans, and the devil makes other plans--and the devil's plan has always the luck with it." Don Antonio had expressed himself thus to the army men, who fumed and fretted at delays incident to the funeral ceremonies of Miguel Arteaga, for whom the Mission bells clanged in the gray of a morning, and the word went out that he lay trampled into the dust of the Santa Ana ranch. A thousand head of stampeding cattle had gone over him, and the younger brother--the handsome Rafael--was now the head of the Arteaga family. And with half the horses selected for the government, the work had stopped short. There was no head to anything now until Rafael arrived. In vain the army men swore, and went farther south to secure mounts for the regiment. They had to come back to San Juan, and then it was that Keith Bryton, with his knowledge of the people and of the country, came to their aid. He heard that the debonair Rafael had landed at San Pedro the day of the death, and had quietly lost himself from the dismal ceremonies awaiting him in his own province. Miguel could not be seen; what use was it to witness the howling mob of Indian retainers? Bryton, knowing something and surmising more of the situation, held the army men with some promise to "fix things," and secretly despatched a trusted vaquero with a letter to San Pedro, allowing the new heir for his return just the time necessary for the next ship to come into the harbor, and the extra day's drive from Los Angeles. In the meantime a personal letter giving orders to Don Antonio to hand over the stock as per contract was needed badly in San Juan, if Don Rafael ever cared again for government favors. The vaquero rode back in forty-eight hours with the order. The work of rounding-up began over again, and only Keith Bryton and Don Antonio knew how it had come about. Slowly affairs began to assume their usual routine. People began to talk of other things; and only Dona Teresa, the widow of Miguel, continued to go daily to the dark old chapel back of the Mission dining-room, and kneel in prayer before the wooden saints in the niches. She sat in the patio of Juan Alvara's house, and stared listlessly from one square of tiling in the pavement to another. The priest had just left her after the perfunctory words of solace, and was refreshing himself with a glass of brandy preparatory to a game of _malilla_. The week had been one of trial; it always is so when the death is one of accident--no one is ready.