For a time the two rode on in silence. Then young Garvez muttered: "It is well for Portola that your soldados love you.... Else the expedition had not come thus far." The sergeant looked at his companion smolderingly, but he did not speak. He knew as well as anyone that the Governor's life was in danger; that conspiracy was in the air. And it was for this he had taken with him all the stronger malcontents. Yes, they loved him--whatever treachery might have brooded in their minds. His eyes kindled with the knowledge. He led them at a good pace forward over hill and dale, through rough and briery undergrowth, fording here and there a stream, spurring tired horses over spans of dragging sand until darkness made further progress impossible. But with the break of day he was on again after a scanty meal. Just at sunrise he led his party up to a commanding headland where he paused to rest. His winded mount and that of Garvez panted side by side upon the crest while his troopers, single file, picked their way up the narrow trail. Below them was the Bay of San Francisco guarded by the swirling narrows of the Golden Gate. And over the brown hilltops of the Contra Costa a great golden ball of sunlight battled with the lacy mists of dawn. It was a picture to impress one with its mystery and magnificence. The two men gazed upon it with an oddly blended sense of awe and exultation. And as they looked the sunlight triumphed, scattering the fog into queer floating shapes, luminous and fraught with weird suggestions of castle, dome, of turret, minaret and towering spire. One might have thought a splendid city lay before them in the barren cove of sand-dunes, a city impalpable, yet triumphant, with its hint of destiny; translucent silver and gold, shifting and amazing--gone in a flash as the sun's full radiance burst forth through the vapor-screen. "It was like a sign from Heaven!" Garvez breathed. Ortega crossed himself. The younger man went on, "Something like a voice within me seemed to say 'Here shall you find your home--you and your children and their children's children.'" Ortega looked down at the dawn-gold on the waters and the tree-ringed cove. Here and there small herds of deer drank from a stream or browsed upon the scant verdure of sandy meadows. In a distant grove a score of Indian tepees raised their cone shapes to the sky; lazy plumes of blue-white smoke curled upward. Canoes, rafts of tules, skillfully bound together, carried dark-skinned natives over wind-tossed waters, the ends of their double paddles flashing in the sun. "One may not know the ways of God." Ortega spoke a trifle bruskly. "What is plain to me is that we cannot journey farther. This estero cuts our path in two. And in three days we cannot circle it to reach the Contra Costa. We must return and make report to the commander."