It was three hours later that a mass of loosened earth caved suddenly, carrying Adan with it. A wild yell came back. It stopped abruptly, the tag end of it shot forth like the quick last blast from a trumpet.
"Hi, Adan!" called Roldan, excitedly, peering down into the dark. "Are you hurt?"
"I know not! I know not! It is darker than a dungeon of a Mission." The voice was quite distinct. It came from no great depth.
"Get out of the way," called Roldan. "I am coming." He waited a moment, then dropped, falling on a mass of soft earth. Adan had prudently retreated a few steps. He ran forward and helped Roldan to his feet, just as Rafael came flying down.
"Now for the other end," said Roldan. "This air is not too good. And that devil may return any moment."
They ran down the tunnel. It was wide and high, built for flying priests, should the Mission be besieged and captured by savage tribes.
The air was close and heavy, but free from noxious gases. Bats whirred past and rats scampered before them. Roldan paused after a moment and lit his lantern. Its thin ray leaped but a few feet ahead, but would frighten away any wild beast of the forest that might have wandered in.
The tunnel was straight. It also appeared to be endless.
"We have walked twenty leagues," groaned Adan, at the end of an hour.
"Two," said Roldan. "Without doubt this tunnel ends at the mountains, and they are four leagues from the Mission. But you have taken longer walks than this, my friend. Do you remember that night in the mountains?"
"I had forgotten it for one blessed week. Rafael, to what have we brought you? Your poor muscles are soft, where ours are now as hard as a deserter's from an American barque--ay, yi!"
"If they have but the chance to become soft once more after they too are hard!" muttered Rafael, who was panting and lagging. "That priest! that priest!"
"It is true," said Roldan, pausing abruptly. "You will not dare to return home at present--nor we. It is flight once more--to Los Angeles.
We will stay there--where he would not dare touch us if he came--until he repents or makes sure that we will have told if we intend to tell.
Will you come?"
"Will I? I would go to Mexico if I could. I feel that there is not room in the Californias for those hands and myself."
"I will take care of you," said Roldan, proudly, anxious to rout the memory of his recent humiliation. "But come." And Rafael, too weary and bewildered to resent the authority of his erst-while rival, trudged obediently in the rear.
"It grows colder," said Adan, significantly.
"Yes," said Roldan. "We near the mountains."
Adan stopped. "Is it the mountains again?" he asked. "If it is, then I, for one, prefer the priest."
"The mountains never scared you half as badly as the priest did," said Roldan, cruelly. "And to say nothing of the fact that we need never get lost in the mountains again, the embrace of a grizzly would be no harder and more death-sure than one in the great arms of that fiend that wears a cassock."
"True. You are always right. But promise that whatever happens you will not lead us into the Sierras."
"I promise," said Roldan, much flattered by this unconscious tribute to his leadership.
"Do you think that priest is really a devil?" asked Rafael, in an awestruck voice.
"When a man has insulted you, you do not know what you think of him," said Roldan, flushing hotly. "If he only were not a priest I'd fight him, big as he is. But at least I can outwit him. It consoles me to think of his fury when he goes to the cave and finds us gone."
"We'd better get out of this tunnel before we talk about having the best of the priest," said Adan. "Suppose he returns to kill us himself--"
"He will not return until to-morrow. Then he will have repented. He will promise to let us go free if we keep his secret. But he will not have that satisfaction, my friends. Yesterday he had a friend in Roldan Castanada; I would have done anything for him, gladly kept his secret.
But to-day he has an enemy that he will do well to fear. A Spaniard never forgets an insult."
"What shall you do?" asked Rafael, eagerly. "Expose him?"
"No, I do nothing mean. But I proclaim at Los Angeles that gold has been discovered in the Californias, and in six days the hills will swarm, and the priest in his cell will gnash his teeth."
"Ay!" exclaimed Adan. "Do you feel that?"
An icy blast swept down the tunnel, roughening skin and shortening breath. A few moments later the low rhythm as of distant water came to their ears. Roldan and Adan recognised that familiar music, and set their teeth.
"And I prayed that I might never see another redwood," muttered Adan, crossing himself.
The tunnel stopped abruptly. They stood before a mass of brushwood, piled thickly to keep out wild beasts and delude the searching eye of hostile Indians. Beyond, seen in patches, was a dazzle of white.
"Snow, of course," said Adan, with a groan.
The boys pulled the branches apart without much difficulty: the priests had studied facility of egress and had raised the barrier from within.
In a few moments the boys stood in the sunlight; and the mountains hemmed them in.
Adan stamped his foot savagely on the hard snow. "We are where we started a week ago," he said. "No more, no less."
"No," said Roldan, who also had felt demoralised for a moment. "The priests were too clever for that. They would want to get into the shelter of the mountains, no more. I believe that from the top of that point above the tunnel we can see the valley."
"Well, we can at least look," said Rafael, who was bitterly weary and hungry, but determined not to be outdone by these hardened adventurers.
