The race took place in a field a mile from the house, on a straight track. Four vaqueros in black velvet small-clothes trimmed with silver, spotless linen, and stiff glazed black sombreros, walked up and down, leading the impatient mustangs. Two of these horses were a beautiful bronze-gold in colour, with silver manes and tails, a breed peculiar to the Californias; one was black, the other as white as crystal. The family and guests of Casa Carillo sat on their horses, in their carretas, or stood just outside the fence surrounding the field. At one end were the several hundred Indians employed by Don Tiburcio, and several hundred more from the Mission. Father Osuna had also joined the party from the Casa, and Roldan, who had seen hundreds of horse-races and was built on a more complex plan than his contemporaries, got as close to the priest as he dared and gave him his undivided attention. Padre Osuna was a man of unusual height and heaviness of build. His black eyes were set close to his fine Roman nose. The mouth was so tightly compressed that its original curves were quite destroyed, and the intellectual development of the brow was very marked. His hands exerted a peculiar fascination over Roldan. They were of huge size, even for so big a man, lean and knotted, with square-tipped fingers. The skin on them was fine and brown; it looked as soft as a woman's. He used them a good deal when talking, and not ungracefully; but they seemed to claw and grasp the air, to be independent of the arms hidden in the voluminous sleeves of the smart brown cassock. Other people watched those hands too--they seemed to possess a magnetism of their own; and every one showed this priest great deference: he was one of the most successful disciplinarians in the Department of California, a brilliant speaker, an able adviser in matters of state, and a man of many social graces.
"More agreeable to meet in the sala of the Mission than in a cave at midnight," thought Roldan. "Still--" His scent for danger, particularly if it involved a matching of wits, was very keen.
The word was given. The race began. The dons shouted, the lovely faces between the bright folds of the rebosos flushed expectantly. From the black mass of Indians opposite came a mighty gurgle, which gradually broke into a roar,--
"The black! Fifty hides on the black!"
"The little bronze! She is a length ahead! Madre de dios! Six doubloons of Mexico on the little bronze!"
The priest pushed his way to the speaker, a wealthy ranchero who had been more than once to Mexico.
"The white against the bronze, senor," he said. "Twenty otter skins to the six doubloons of Mexico."
"Done, your reverence. I am honoured that you bet with me. But the white--have you thought well, my father?"
"She breathes well, and her legs are very clean."
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