ears, when Pilarica, who was still gazing after it, began to dance with
excitement.
“O Rafael! Rafael!” she cried. “Come and see! Come quick! These are the
wonderfullest people yet.”
She had caught sight of a band of pilgrims on their way to Santiago, to
the shrine of St. James, whose festival falls on July twenty-fourth and
still attracts devotees from all over the Peninsula, especially the
northern provinces and Portugal, and even from beyond the Pyrenees. It
was a picturesque group that came footing it bravely up that hot, rocky
road. The bright sunshine brought out the crude colors of their homespun
petticoats, broidered jackets, blouses, sashes, hose. The women’s heads
were wrapped in white kerchiefs, but over these they wore, like the men,
broad hats whose rims were caught up on one side by scallop shells.
Notwithstanding the mid-afternoon heat, most of them kept on their
short, round capes, spangled all over with these pilgrim shells, sacred
to St. James. Their staffs, wound with gaudy ribbons, had little gourds
fastened to the upper end. Some carried leather water-bottles at their
belts, but they had no need of knapsacks, for food was given them freely
all along the route and, if charitable lodging failed, the pine groves
made fragrant chambers.
The pilgrims paused to drink at the cascade, and the children, while
careful not to intrude, ventured, hand in hand, a little nearer. One man
came limping toward them and seated himself on a stone. He was making
the pilgrimage barefoot, as an act of devotion, and a thorn had run
itself into his heel.
[Illustration: PILGRIMS ON THE WAY TO SANTIAGO.]
“May I try, sir?” asked Rafael, as the stranger’s lean fingers fumbled
rather helplessly at the foot, and instantly, with a twist and a squeeze
and an “Out, if you please,” the boy had drawn the thorn. To prevent the
embarrassment of thanks, Rafael turned to his sister.
“Sing the riddle, Pilarica,” he directed, and the little girl,
Grandfather’s ready pupil, piped obediently:
“It was this very morning,
When I was out at play,
I found it without seeking it,
I sought it without finding it,
And because I did not find it,
I carried it away.”
The dreamy-eyed pilgrim paid no heed to the rhyme, but dropped to his
knees, bowed his head to the ground and kissed Pilarica’s little worn
sandal.
“For the sake of Our Lady of the Pillar, whose blessed name you bear,”
he said, detaching from his cape--which, in addition to the scallop
shells, was studded over with amulets of all sorts--a tiny ivory image
of the _Virgen del Pilar_ and pressing it into Pilarica’s hand. “Even
so she keeps her state in her own cathedral at Saragossa. Ah, that you
might behold her as she stands high on her jasper column, her head
encircled by a halo of pure gold so thickly set with sparkling gems that
the dazzle of their glory hides her face in light!”
A jovial old peasant, whose costume might have been cut out of the
rainbow, pushed him rudely to one side.
“Well do I know Our Lady of the Pillar,” he boasted, “and her jewelled
shrine in Saragossa, for I am of Aragon, the bravest province in Spain.”
“My father used to live in Saragossa,” volunteered Rafael, with the shy
pride that always marked his mentions of his father. “He has told us of
Our Lady of the Pillar and of the leaning tower.”
“Ah, that swallow is flown. The tower fell a matter of eight years back.
My old wife and I can give you a song about that, for this little
honey-throat is not the only musician in Spain. Ay, you shall hear what
we old birds can do. The children sing this song, you understand, in
dancing rows, one row answering the other, but that wife of mine is
equal to a baker’s dozen of children. Look at her! Is she not devoted to
the good Apostle to trudge all this way on foot? A long, rough way it
is, but many amens reach to heaven. Come forth, my Zephyr! Waft! Waft!”
And he began to troll as merrily as if he had not a sin in the world,
cutting a new caper with every line:
“In Saragossa
--Oh, what a pity!--
Has fallen the tower,
Pride of the city.”
Out of the applauding cluster of pilgrims a very stout but very robust
old woman, her skirt well slashed so as to display her carmine
petticoat, came mincing to meet him, taking up the song:
“Fell it by tempest,
Fairies or witches,
The students will raise it
For students have riches.”
An ironic laugh broke from the listeners, while the husband, flourishing
legs and arms in still more amazing antics, caught up the response:
“Call on the students!
Call louder and louder!
They’ve only two coppers
To buy them a chowder.”
The old dame flirted her canary-colored skirts and skipped as nimbly as
he, replying in her rough but rich contralto:
“Chowder of students
Is sweeter than honey,
But the gay Andalusians
Have plenty of money.”
At this the children looked so surprised and self-conscious that the
shrewd peasants guessed at once from what province they came.
“The gay Andalusians
Have fiddle and ballad,
But only two coppers
To buy them a salad,”
roared the man with special gusto, and frisked up to Pilarica, who
dodged away in quick displeasure from those open arms.
But Rafael, to his utter horror, was captured by the monstrous matron,
who grasped the boy in a pair of marvellously strong hands and swung
him, blushing and struggling, up to her shoulder, while, gamboling
still, she led the chorus of pilgrims in the final stanza:
“In Saragossa
--Oh, what a pity!--
Has fallen the tower,
Pride of the city.”
Thereupon she enfolded Rafael in a smothering hug, smacked him heartily
on each glowing cheek, and then let him drop as suddenly as the tower.
Before he could fairly catch his breath, that astonishing old couple had
started on with the rest of the Apostle’s devotees, leaving Rafael still
crimson with shame and wrath at this outrage on his boyish dignity.
“But pilgrims behave no better than gypsies,” he declared hotly to Uncle
Manuel, who had come up to protect the children in case the fun should
go too far.
“For him who does not like soup, a double portion,” laughed Uncle
Manuel. “You may not always find a kiss so hard to bear. She meant no
harm, boy. These jolly peasants will make their offerings and do their
penances piously enough at Santiago, even though they frolic on the
trip. It is their holiday. There were wild doings along these roads in
the old times, I’ll be bound,” went on the master-carrier, who grew more
talkative and more genial with every day that brought him nearer home.
“Then pilgrims from all over the world, in swarms and multitudes,
sinners and saints all jumbled together, wearied their feet upon our
stony ways. They say there were popes and kings among them. Be that as
it may. There were scamps and fools by the plenty, I’ve no doubt. These
mountains were infested with bandits then, who lay in wait to rob the
pilgrims of the treasure they were bringing to help build the great
church of St. James. Stealing a kiss is the worst that happens now. That
is bad enough, eh? Well, well! What shall we do to cheer him up,
Pilarica? Shall I let the two of you ride Coronela up this next steep
bit? I like to feel Galicia under my feet. Coronela will count you no
more than two feathers, while those little asses of yours, who are not
used to these long mountain pulls, will gladly be rid of their riders.”
And this is how it happened that, some twenty minutes later, Rafael and
Pilarica found themselves proudly leading the train, which they had
already left so far behind that, at the second turn of the road, it was
out of sight. Before them, however, stretched the straggling line of the
pilgrims.
Rafael squared his chin.
“I’ll not risk passing that awful old woman; that I won’t,” he avowed,
boldly turning Coronela out of the highway and urging her up the sheer
side of the mountain. “Hold on to me tight, Pilarica, for Coronela will
have to scrabble here.”
The spirited mule, invigorated by her hour of grazing, took the pathless
slope lightly and steadily, but a tumult of calls and laughter showed
that the children were recognized and the purpose of their daring detour
surmised. Rafael, half expecting to see the rotund figure of the lively
old dame leaping after him from crag to crag, recklessly pushed Coronela
on. When at last she slipped and slid, struck a level ledge, regained
her footing by a gallant effort and stood trembling, they were far up
the mountainside, quite shut away from all view of the road by masses of
ribbed and jagged rock. Such a wild, lonely place as it was! These
rocks, all notched and needled and bristling, had a savage look. There
was an angry rock with horns that threatened them, and an ugly rock with
teeth that grinned at them. And out from behind the most wicked-looking
rock of all peered a man, a red-eyed, haggard, desperate fellow, who had
broken jail a week before and, hunted like a wolf, was skulking in the
hills, waiting his chance to escape from Galicia and then from Spain.
Those bloodshot eyes of his stared greedily at the superb mule and his
hand shot out to clutch the bridle.
XVIII
RAFAEL’S ADVENTURE
By a quick, sharp tug, Rafael swerved Coronela out of reach. To his own
surprise, he was not frightened. His mind was filled with one idea, and
his will braced to one purpose. He must save his little sister and Uncle
Manuel’s choice mule from the peril into which his foolhardy performance
had brought them. Coronela could not make speed down that rocky descent.
She would have to pick her way and the robber could soon catch her. All
this flashed through Rafael’s thought as he jerked the mule aside. The
next instant he had leapt to the ground and dealt her a stinging slap.
“Hold on tight, Pilarica! _Arré_, Coronela!”
The mule, Pilarica clinging to her neck, sprang away and the man sprang
after, with the boy in pursuit. Rafael remembered his popgun,--a frail
weapon, but it served. It was already charged with Uncle Manuel’s
pointed pewter button, and as mule and man turned at right angles from
their first course, which had brought them to the brink of a precipice,
Rafael dodged in front and delivered his bullet full in the convict’s
forehead. It struck with enough force to draw blood that trickled down
into the man’s eyes, blinding and confusing him. Before he fully
realized what had happened, Coronela had made good her escape, for he
dared not give her chase after she had come into view from the road.
With a curse he lunged toward the boy, who, intent only on drawing the
enemy away from Coronela and her precious burden, fled back up the
mountain as fast as his legs could spin. As he ran, his watch was jolted
from its pocket under his belt and, glinting in the sun, bobbed at the
end of its chain. He ran well, for all that trudging across Castile had
developed good muscle in those stocky little legs, but the criminal who,
weak from years of confinement, ran clumsily, was nevertheless almost
upon him, when Rafael bolted into a cleft in a giant rock,--a cleft too
narrow for a man’s shoulders to enter. Turning to face the opening while
turn he could, Rafael wriggled and wormed his way until even a small
boy could get no further. Then he stood at bay, not precisely with his
back to the wall, but to a granite crack, breathing hard from his
scamper, but conscious only of a thrilling excitement.
“Come out of there,” called the convict fiercely, “or I’ll shoot you.”
“Shoot away,” returned Rafael, wondering if the man really had a gun.
He hadn’t, not even a popgun. He picked up a stone to cast at the child,
but memory plucked at his arm and held it back,--the memory of his own
blithe, adventurous boyhood. For the sake of the lad he used to be,
before high spirit had led him on to a rash enterprise that blundered
suddenly into crime, the convict’s scarred, unhappy heart softened
toward the courageous youngster trapped in that fissured rock.
“Hand out your watch,” he called again, “and I’ll let you go.”
Rafael’s watch! His father’s good-bye gift! The gift that meant his
father’s faith in him! No, that father should not have cause again to
say that his son was a heedless boy who could not guard his own pockets.
“I will not,” he shouted defiantly.
“Hand it out this minute, before the snakes get at you.”
Snakes! Rafael’s legs jumped, but not his heart.
“I will not.”
“Oh, very good! I’ll leave you for a few days to think it over,”
returned the convict, proceeding to wedge a big rock into the narrow
opening. Adding smaller stones, he roughly walled up the entrance, so
shutting Rafael into a straiter cell than his own too extensive
experience of prisons had ever encountered. He meant to lurk again among
the crags until the search for the boy should be over and then come back
under the starlight for the watch, since a bit of silver in hand might
make all the difference to a fugitive between escape and capture. At the
least, he could trade it for food and a knife. But the officers had him
before nightfall and, in all the dreary years that came after, no
thought of his misdeeds tortured the prisoner so much as the remembrance
of a little boy he had left to perish in a lonely rock.
Rafael’s chief uneasiness, at first, was about those threatened snakes.
What if the crack behind him should be full of them,--clammy serpent
coils swaying for the spring! Would they begin at his ankles? He stood
first on one foot and then on the other, while he squirmed and twisted
out of his extreme retreat. Then he flung himself with all his force
against the rock that had been wedged into the opening. It did not stir.
He set his shoulder to it; he shoved with a strength that seemed greater
than his own; he battered his body against it in desperate endeavor; but
it held fast. The boy’s hands were bleeding when he dropped exhausted to
the ground, a little huddle of despair. But despair would never do. He
was up again and, this time, working with all the skill and patience he
could command to dislodge the smaller stones. After an eternity of
effort, the highest of these was jolted from its place and fell on the
outside, leaving a peep-hole through which the blessed light looked
strangely in, as if wondering to find its friend Rafael shut in a den
like this. The hole was so far up that it showed him only a violet
glimpse of sky, but even that comforted and calmed the boy, who sat down
quietly and knit his brows in thought. What would his father tell him to
do? His duty, of course. But what was one’s duty in a pinch like this?
To get out if he could, and if he couldn’t to behave himself manfully
where he was. Nothing could be plainer than that. Rafael decided to call
for help, even at the risk of bringing back his enemy, but his shouts,
though he did his best, seemed shut into that granite cleft with him. He
attacked the great rock again, and the stones, but without any other
result than to tire himself out. At last the creeping fear, against
which he had been half unconsciously fighting all the time, was getting
the better of his fortitude. For one horrible instant he fancied that
the narrow walls were closing in to crush him. Again he struggled to his
feet. He must do anything, anything, rather than sit still and be
afraid. He clambered, often slipping back, up to the little peephole and
listened, listened, listened until he heard, or thought he heard, the
thudding tramp of the mule-train far down the road and the click-clack,
ding-dong, tinkle-tinkle of its assorted bells. Oh, surely Coronela
would have gone safely down; surely Pilarica would send Uncle Manuel and
Pedrillo to his relief. He must let them know where he was. He must rig
some kind of a signal. There was something yet that he could
do,--something to save him from the terror.
Nature has her own kindnesses in store for us all, and when Rafael,
having rigged his signal, lost his slight footing and tumbled, bumping
his head, in falling, on a projecting stone, she promptly put him to
sleep, so that he lay untroubled and unafraid on the rocky floor of his
prison. He did not hear the excited barking of dogs, as a tall, grave
shepherd, his sheepskin garments fragrant with thyme, met a rescue party
of mingled muleteers and pilgrims searching the mountainside and guided
them to the neighborhood of the cleft rock.
“It was about here, sir,” the shepherd was saying to Uncle Manuel. “I
was on that summit yonder and started down as soon as I saw that the
young master was in danger. Hey, Melampo! Hey, Cubilon! Find the trail,
Lobina!”
“What nice names!” observed Pilarica, fearlessly patting one of the
gaunt beasts. Uncle Manuel frowned. This was no place, no errand, for a
girl. He had left her behind with Tia Marta. But that grumpy Bastiano,
who could refuse the child nothing, had set her on Shags and--it served
him right--had had that reluctant donkey to drag up the rough ascent.
“Ay, my little lady,” the shepherd was saying to Pilarica. “All our dogs
have these names, for such were the names of the sheepdogs of Bethlehem
who went with their masters to see the Holy Child in the stable.”
Pilarica smiled up into the wind-worn face of the speaker with happy
confidence. She had noticed him from the road as he stood upon the
summit, a majestic figure against the sky, and had thought in her
childishness that he looked like God, keeping watch over the world.
“And when the shepherds met the other wise men at the door,” she asked,
“did the dogs bark at the camels?”
“Has the girl no heart,” thought Uncle Manuel, “to be talking of such
far-off things, when her brother may be--”
But not even in his silent thought could Uncle Manuel finish the
sentence. Lobina was sniffing at a fresh red stain upon a stone.
Pilarica saw her uncle’s distress and wondered at it. She did not
understand distress. Her soul was still pure sunshine that marvelled at
the shadow. But she slipped, for love and pity, her slender hand into
his hard grip. In a moment he pushed her, not ungently, from him.
“Take the child back,” he ordered Bastiano. “You should not have brought
her.”
“She thought she could help,” growled the muleteer.
“Help! Of what possible help could a girl be here? This is man’s work.”
And Uncle Manuel’s eyes anxiously questioned Pedrillo, who had been on
his knees examining the blood-stain.
“Why! I can tell you where Rafael is,” cried Pilarica. “He’s in there.”
And the small brown finger pointed to a tatter of red, that waved, on
the end of what seemed to be an alder reed, from a rock near by. “That’s
Rafael’s magic cap,--all that’s left of it. He always carries it in his
blouse. He has tied it to his popgun. He’s hiding in the rock.”
It did not take the muleteers a moment to tear away the stones that
closed the entrance, but when Uncle Manuel stooped into the cleft and
lifted out the inert little body, a dreadful silence fell upon the
group,--a silence soon broken by Pilarica’s cheerful pipe:
“Rafael! Wake up! It isn’t bed-time yet.”
At that sweet, familiar voice the lids fluttered, and the black eyes,
bewildered, brave, looked up into Uncle Manuel’s face.
The Pilgrim of the Thorn, as Pilarica called him, instantly had his
water-gourd at the white lips, and Rafael revived so rapidly that he was
soon sitting upon his uncle’s knee. He even glanced at his watch, with
his usual air of careless magnificence in performing this action, and
was amazed to find that only one hour had passed since they left the
rivulet. Every man of them wanted to carry him down to the road. The boy
hesitated to make a choice, but when the vigorous old peasant-woman, who
had puffed up the mountainside after the rest, put in her claim, he
decided at once.
“I’ll ride Shags,” he said.
XIX
THE END OF THE ROAD
There was still a big lump under Rafael’s hat when, a few afternoons
later, our travellers, after a brief siesta, started out on the last
stage of their long journey. The muleteers were in the wildest spirits,
tossing _coplas_ from one to another and often roaring out in chorus:
“Galicia is the fairest land
By God to mortals granted,
Galicia, our Galicia,
Galicia the enchanted.”
`p/
Even Tia Marta could not deny the charm of
the landscape,--ranges of wooded mountains,
reaches of green meadow and of farmlands
waving with wheat, cozy farm-houses with
broad, overshadowing roofs and a wealth of
vines creeping up the white-washed walls, but
she waxed ever more indignant at sight of the
sturdy peasant-women working in the fields,
driving the ploughs, wielding old-fashioned
hoes and spades, loading bullock-carts with produce,
and carrying boxes, barrels, bales, all
manner of heavy and unwieldy burdens, on
their heads.
“So that is what a woman’s head is good for
in Galicia,” she remarked tartly. “And I’ll
warrant that the husbands of these women are
spending, out of every four and twenty hours,
five and twenty at the tavern.”
Uncle Manuel, who had insisted on having
the whole Andalusian party ride at the head of
the train with him, that he might point out to
them the first view of the pilgrim city, shook his
head over this arithmetic, and Pedrillo, festive
in a fringed fire-red scarf, ventured to remonstrate:
“Not so, Doña Marta. The husbands emigrate
to South America, that they may grow
rich there. Some of them die of the Galician
homesickness, but others come back with their
wallets full of gold. And there are many fishermen,
who are oft casting their lines and
nets.”
Grandfather caught only the last word, for
Carbonera was in a laggard mood, but one
word was bait enough to land a riddle:
“I sat at peace in my palace,
Till I entered a stranger’s hut;
Then my house ran out at his windows,
And his door on me was shut.”
“We have lost the first day of the feast, but we shall be in early
enough for the fireworks, I hope,” said Uncle Manuel. His eyes were
shining with an eagerness that made quite another man of him. “Look well
to that rogue of a Blanco,” he added to Bastiano, who had come up with a
peach for Pilarica. “We must not have any mishaps to detain us this
afternoon.”
“Never fear!” growled Bastiano. “If we fall in with a wild boar, we have
Don Juan Bolondron and his popgun to defend us.”
Rafael, who had been praised and petted (and forgiven) for his exploit
on the mountainside until he was in no small danger of self-conceit,
detected something that he did not like in this allusion and looked up
sharply.
“Who is Don Juan Bolondron?” he inquired.
“Ask Pedrillo. He’s the story-teller,” replied Bastiano. “I’m taking
his place at the rear, and I know why, too.
“‘Lovers have such a simple mind
They think the rest of the world is blind.’”
“Once there was a poor shoemaker named Bolondron,” began Pedrillo in a
great hurry. “All day he would sit cobbling at his bench and as he
cobbled he would sing _coplas_ about his craft, as this:
“‘A shoemaker went to mass,
But he didn’t know how to pray;
He walked down the altars, asking the saints:
_Any shoes to be mended to-day?_’”
“Or this,” struck in Grandfather.
“‘To the jasper threshold of heaven
His bench the cobbler brings:
_Shoes for these little angels
Who have nothing to wear but wings_.’”
“One day when he was sitting on his bench, taking a bowl of porridge,”
continued Pedrillo, “it happened that a few drops were spilled, and
flies swarmed upon them, and he slapped at the flies and killed seven.
Then he began to shout: ‘I am a great warrior and from this time on I
will be called Don Juan Bolondron Slay-Seven-at-a-Blow.’ Now there was
in the region about the city a forest, and in the forest a wild boar
that liked the people so well he would eat several of them every week.
The king had sent many hunters out to take him, but always they ran away
or he devoured them, for he was the fiercest of the fierce. One day it
came to the king’s ears that he had in his city a man called Don Juan
Bolondron Slay-Seven-at-a-Blow.
“‘This must be a terrible fighter,’ he said. ‘Bring him hither to me.’
“So Juan was brought into the royal presence. He wore his best shoes,
but he trembled in them, though the king only looked at him out of two
eyes, quite like anybody else, and said:
“‘They tell me, my man, that you are mighty in battle. Is it true that
you slay seven at a blow?’
“‘It is true, your Sacred Royal Majesty,’ answered the cobbler, who
could only guess how people talk at court.