"Hold fast those dogs!" Señor Mendoza said to the Indians. "They are as fierce as tigers. Good-night, Captain Morando. Remember two weeks from Thursday evening, at six. My daughter's dueña will be home from Monterey, and we'll have both to dine with us, with perhaps a few friends, just a valecito casero--a little house party. Good-night. Glad you've some men in the village. The country won't be safe till we rid it of those miscreant renegades. Good-night, Captain." The heavy door closed. The doña saw that Captain Morando rode around the courtyard to the embrasure window, halted and looked up anxiously. Walking to the edge of the roof she stood there, a beautiful picture. He waved his hand. "O, doña mia--" he began. Unfastening a rose from her hair she tossed it to him. The pulsing air caught it, and swaying, whirling, it fell. He reined in his horse, urged it forward, swung it around, keeping in the uncertain downward path of the rose, till finally its stem rested in his hand. He kissed the flower again and again; then holding it up to her, waved it in rhythmic motion as he had done before with the guitar. "O, doña mia--" he began once more, but the watchdogs bayed savagely and rushed against the adobe fence. His horse shied and sprang away. He wheeled back again. The señorita had disappeared. CHAPTER II THE LION AND THE LAMB LIE DOWN TOGETHER Most unwonted drought had laid a withering hand on fertile Santa Clara valley that year. March had come and no vast stretches of wild oats measured the way from foothill to bay; no juicy grazing for cattle and horses on the rich bottom lands. The plain-brown color-tone of autumn prevailed, not that of spring, in triumphant green and promise of rich harvest. This interchange prevailed almost everywhere except around the gushing springs at the Mission San José. Here rioted nature in her proudest fancy, for the intense warmth of day and night had brought to blossom before their time wild plant, oleander, and fruit tree. Here was green grass in luxuriant abundance, while the tall mustard flaunted its yellow top as usual, and afforded a resting place for chattering blackbird and twittering linnet. The springs on the Administrator's property several miles north of Mission San José had gradually diminished in flow until only unsightly, trampled mud remained where was a limpid lake in happier years. The geyserlike warm springs on the property of Don Fulgencio Higuera, Señor Mendoza's neighbor to the south, had suddenly run dry. In fact, not more than half a dozen sources of water-supply remained within a radius of a score of miles. The like had never been known, not even in the memory of the oldest Indian in the valley.