Don Enrico Cordoba and some vaqueros rode madly through the corral and into the place of the huge bonfire and the still kneeling Indians. Now that their white heat of passion was over, they remembered only the beating they would get, and crouched doggedly where the padre had bidden them; the younger ones wept with fear when Juanita told her father the story. "Holy God!" he shouted in a rage, breaking in on her recital. "In my house to trample on my family and drag a woman to the fire! Tomas, count every head and remember every name. In three days every one shall be tied to a tree and whipped; if one runs away, she shall be caught and whipped twice,--once here on the ranch, and once on the Mission plaza of San Juan, on a Sunday after mass. You cattle, you dogs, you devils, begone from my sight!" He struck right and left with the green-hide reata, spurring his horse after those who stumbled along too slowly to suit him, striking old and young alike as they ran wailing with terror at the promises he had made them, and which they knew would be kept. The Mexican master was quite as prone as the Indian servants to find acute methods of torture or punishment. When all were despatched he rode back, puffing and laughing, to his daughters and guest, with whom he shook hands heartily. "Holy saints! but we did ride when we saw the smoke; it looked like the house on fire. It winds a man, a ride like that at my age," and he shook his fat sides with laughter. "Come inside and have a glass of whiskey, Senor Bryton. We met at the alcalde's last year when the army officers were in San Juan? Yes, I thought so. I am glad you have come to my house, and--who knows--you maybe saved my wife and my daughters as well as the old woman. When these savages get the taste of blood, they are crazy wolves, never fighters in the open, brave only when there is a mob like that. Come in, come in! Juanita, go tell your mother we have a guest who has saved you all. What was it you said of a padre? where is he?" "With Dona Raquel, father." "She is worse?" "We do not know, but thanks to the Virgin, she no longer laughs or cries. Ana is there. If she live or die, we all feel the padre has come if the husband do not." "Humph! Oh, yes, yes, always the priests!" he grunted. "Women can't keep house without the padres. I think I build a chapel for my women; then they can pray all the time to be sure they save my soul," and he laughed skeptically; then he tossed aside his sombrero, and brought bottles and glasses to a little table of marble on the veranda. "Will you have whiskey, or the bottle of wine?" "I prefer your own wine of the ranch, Don Enrico," and Bryton poured out the white moselle, of which the Cordoba family was justly proud; "I think the padre was also off a journey, senor; perhaps a swallow of this fine wine--"