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Antonio Olivares's funeral was the most solemn and magnificent ever seen in Santa Fé, but Father Vaillant was not there. He was off on a long missionary journey to the south, and did not reach home until Madame Olivares had been a widow for some weeks. He had scarcely got off his riding-boots when he was called into Father Latour's study to see her lawyer.
Olivares had entrusted the management of his affairs to a young Irish Catholic, Boyd O'Reilly, who had come out from Boston to practise law in the new Territory. There were no steel safes in Santa Fé at that time, but O'Reilly had kept Olivares's will in his strong-box. The document was brief and clear: Antonio's estate amounted to about two hundred thousand dollars in American money (a considerable fortune in those days). The income therefrom was to be enjoyed by "my wife, Isabella Olivares, and her daughter, Inez Olivares," during their lives, and after their decease his property was to go to the Church, to the Society for the Propagation of the Faith. The codicil, in favour of the Cathedral fund, had, unfortunately, never been added to the will.