Page:History of California, Volume 3 (Bancroft).djvu/581

Rh Alvarado as having promised to give up the command and as having broken his pledge; but he made no such promise in writing, and there is no reason to believe that he did so verbally. If he failed to carry out the treaty of April 23d faithfully in any respect, it must have been in not promptly disbanding his forces, and there is no evidence against him on this point.

The northern army now retraced its march by way of San Gabriel to San Fernando, taking along the captured cannon, which were soon sent to Monterey on Steele's vessel, and escorting the two rival governors, who were now on the best of terms. True, Don Cárlos suggested en route that his position seemed more like that of a prisoner under guard than of a ruler attended by an escort. Don Juan replied, "If you are a prisoner, so am I, as we are marching side by side." At San Fernando in the early days of May their respective claims to the governorship were discussed. Carrillo could only show his original appointment and urge his rival's duty to submit to the supreme government. Alvarado could no longer deny that the document was in a certain sense genuine; indeed, he had probably never had any real doubt on the subject, but he still insisted that the appointment should bear the president's signature, and he made the new point that he had no official knowledge of Peña y Peña's signature, or indeed of his appointment as minister of state. He also, in addition to the old arguments with which the reader is familiar, attached much weight to the fact that Don Cárlos,