Late that night, when most of the guests were asleep, a vaquero rode up to the gate. The gate was closed and he beat upon it until my father roused himself. I had stopped on my way to bed for a drink of water from our springhouse. I followed Don Saturnino and watched while he opened the big gate and let the vaquero in.
The vaquero was out of breath. "I come from Rancho El Cajón at the foot of the pass. Do you know Don Francisco, the patron?"
"Certainly, I know him," my father said, with impatience at being disturbed in the middle of the night. "Continue. This is not a social hour."
"Two days ago, at dusk, as the sun set," the vaquero said, "a band of Indians, perhaps from the Mojave tribe, came through the pass."
"Why would the Mojaves use the pass?" my father inquired. "Mojaves always come from the desert, through San Gorgonio."
"They could be one or the other," the vaquero said. "Piutes or the Mojaves."
"But Indians," my father said. "You are sure of that?"
"Indians," said the vaquero. "They came without women."
"Definitely Indians?"
"Yes, seguro que si."
"Without their women?"
"Without."
"Riding?"
"Riding. Two of the horses carried your brand."
My father turned to me. "Bring the young man a bowl of chocolate and a buñuelo."
"Two of the latter," said the vaquero.
But when I returned with the food and drink, he had gone. Thudding hoofs on the trail grew faint and disappeared.
"He has ridden away to spread the word," Don Saturnino said. "But I think he spreads a rumor. I think the Indians have come to trade."
"The last time the Piutes came, they came to steal. They stole twenty-one of our good horses, including my best gelding, Chubasco."
"That is why I think that now they come to trade. And that they are not Mojaves, as the excited young man suggests, but Piutes."
"Do they come to return Chubasco, my black gelding?" I asked.
Piutes or Mojaves, unlike our California Indians, were a serious problem, so in the morning the men got together in the big sala. When they came out it had been decided that we, the de Zubaráns, would gather the vaqueros and accompany our guests to the western boundaries of the ranch, to the King's Highway, where they would be safe.
We had only four good muskets at Dos Hermanos, but the vaqueros fastened their long lances to the saddles.