"Benito, the scoundrel, asleep in the sun! Actually asleep! A pretty sentinel! 'Pon my soul! I smell coffee. I've had no breakfast and am hungry as a wolf." He pushed forward. "Why, here's Morando! Glad some one was here in my place to entertain you. My wife's sister hasn't felt herself since that confounded affair over on the Mendoza grant. He should be told of the birds of prey that infest the place. Time he should set those prize native riflemen of his to killing off such pests. Caramba! but that coffee smells good. Is there any of it left?" Señora Barcelo had followed her husband into the room. "Crisostimo! Why, you have not even said good morning to the Captain! Of course breakfast will be ready for us at once." "I hope so! Hope so! Morando, I heard this morning the most wonderful sermon of my life. Something I didn't expect to be able to say in this town. Padre Osuna, of Mission San José, preached. 'Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not,' was his text. Applied it to the Indians of the province, our duties to them, and all that. I've never been so near heaven in my life as when he was speaking. Looked at my watch when he began--force of habit, you know. Looked again when he finished. 'Twas just fifty-seven minutes. I would have sworn it wasn't ten. "Come in!" he called, in response to an insistent knock at the door. It was Benito. "A messenger from Señor Berryessa is at the outer gate. He seeks Captain Morando. Renegades last night attacked some outlying corrals, killed and wounded a number of vaqueros, then set off by starlight toward the eastern passes, taking many cattle and horses." Morando hastened to the door. "Pity you can't stay and have coffee with us," said Barcelo. The Captain's spurs were already jingling on the pavement. "Adios!" he called back. "A fine fellow, that!" the Colonel remarked. "Sorry I was out when he first came. In the new order I'll have men enough to crush out the renegades once for all. The Captain won't be run so off his feet then." CHAPTER XVII O'DONNELL SETTLES WITH YOSCOLO The luminous haze of late spring lay contentedly over the Mendoza hacienda. The noon hour had come with its somnolent warmth; and all nature was dozing in the sun, except the bumblebee, victim of omnipresent unrest, and the hummingbird, which always finds the day too short for its multifarious duties. The peon workman, in from the fields, was satisfying hunger in his whitewashed cot; or, the meal over, was stretched on the earthen floor, a kerchief over his face, enjoying the midday siesta. The peona wife stepped lightly around tidying the room, and then took place by her husband's side, their children lying tumbled about. Peace rested on the Indian adobe village which flanked the hacienda house. Inside the mansion itself there reigned the stillness of night.