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survived in the dark Presidio in Monterey, and whether she would remember him. His doubts evaporated the night of the fiesta, when amid the light of the torches and sound of the orchestra he saw a dazzling girl dressed and coiffed in the European mode, and instantly recognized those burnt-sugar-colored eyes. She picked him out of the crowd and without missing a beat walked toward him, stopping before him with the most serious expression in the world. The captain, his heart within an ace of shattering, intended to hold out his hand to invite her to dance. Instead, out gushed a proposal of marriage. It was not an impromptu impulse; he had been thinking about her for three years and had reached the conclusion that a stain on his impeccable lineage would be far better than living without her. He realized that he would never be able to present her to his family or to society in Spain, but he didn’t care. For her, he was ready to put down roots in California and never leave the New World. Regina accepted him; she had loved him secretly since those days when he nursed her back to life in Padre Mendoza’s wine cellar.
    And that is how the governor’s festive visit in Pueblo de los Angeles came to be crowned with the wedding of the captain and the mysterious lady-in-waiting to Eulalia de Callis. Padre Mendoza, who had let his hair grow to his shoulders to mask the horrible scar left by his severed ear, performed the ceremony, even though he tried up to the last moment to talk the captain out of marrying. He was not overly concerned that the bride was a mestiza many Spaniards married Indian girls it was the suspicion that beneath Regina’s perfect European lady’s looks lurked Toypurnia, Daughter-of-Wolf. Pedro Fages personally escorted the bride to the altar; he was convinced that she had saved his marriage, for in Eulalia’s eagerness to educate the girl, her nature had sweetened slightly, and she had stopped tormenting her husband with her fits. Considering that he also owed his wife’s life to Alejandro de la Vega, if the gossip was to be believed, he decided that this was a good occasion to be generous. With a flourish of his pen he signed over the title for a ranch and several thousand head of cattle to the brand-new couple, since it was in his power to distribute land among the colonists. He drew the perimeters on a map, following the caprice of the pencil, and later, when the real borders of the ranch were verified, it turned out that they enclosed a vast territory of pasture lands hills, forests, rivers, and beach. It took several days to ride across the property on horseback: it was the largest and best-located spread in the region. Without having solicited it, Alejandro de la Vega found himself a wealthy man. Some weeks later, when people began to call him Don Alejandro, he resigned from the king’s army in order to devote himself entirely to prospering in this new land. One year later, he was elected alcalde of Pueblo de los Angeles.
    De la Vega built a large, solid, and unpretentious home of adobe, with a red tile roof and floors of rough clay tiles. He decorated his house with heavy furniture built by a Galician carpenter in the town, with no consideration for aesthetics, only for durability. The location of the house was enviable: close to the beach and a short distance from both Pueblo de los Angeles and the mission of San Gabriel. The large Mexican hacienda-style house stood on a hill, and its orientation offered a panoramic view of coast and sea. Nearby were the sinister natural tar deposits where no one came willingly because the souls of the dead trapped in the pitch wandered there. Between the beach and the hacienda lay a labyrinth of caves, a sacred place to the Indians, as feared as the tar pits. Indians did not go there, out of respect for their ancestors, nor did the Spanish because of frequent landslides, and because it was easy to get lost in that maze.
    Alejandro de la Vega installed several Indian