showing their white teeth. "You said that to the Padre at Albuquerque?
You have courage. He is a rich man, Padre Gallegos. All the same, I
respect him. I have played poker with him. He is a great gambler and
takes his losses like a man. He stops at nothing, plays like an
American."
"And I," retorted Father Joseph, "I have not much respect for a priest
who either plays cards or manages to get rich."
"Then you do not play?" asked Lujon. "I am disappointed. I had hoped we
could have a game after supper. The evenings are dull enough here. You
do not even play dominoes?"
"Ah, that is another matter!" Father Joseph declared. "A game of
dominoes, there by the fire, with coffee, or some of that excellent
grape brandy you allowed me to taste, that I would find refreshing. And
tell me, Manuelito, where do you get that brandy? It is like a French
liqueur."
"It is well seasoned. It was made at Bernalillo in my grandfather's
time. They make it there still, but it is not so good now."
The next morning, after coffee, while the children were being got ready
for baptism, the host took Father Vaillant through his corrals and
stables to show him his stock. He exhibited with peculiar pride two
cream-coloured mules, stalled side by side. With his own hand he led
them out of the stable, in order to display to advantage their handsome
coats,--not bluish white, as with white horses, but a rich, deep ivory,
that in shadow changed to fawn-colour. Their tails were clipped at the
end into the shape of bells.
"Their names," said Lujon, "are Contento and Angelica, and they are as
good as their names. It seems that God has given them intelligence. When
I talk to them, they look up at me like Christians; they are very
companionable. They are always ridden together and have a great
affection for each other."
Father Joseph took one by the halter and led it about. "Ah, but they are
rare creatures! I have never seen a mule or horse coloured like a young
fawn before." To his host's astonishment, the wiry little priest sprang
upon Contento's back with the agility of a grasshopper. The mule, too,
was astonished. He shook himself violently, bolted toward the gate of
the barnyard, and at the gate stopped suddenly. Since this did not throw
his rider, he seemed satisfied, trotted back, and stood placidly beside
Angelica.
"But you are a _caballero_, Father Vaillant!" Lujon exclaimed. "I doubt
if Father Gallegos would have kept his seat--though he is something of a
hunter."
"The saddle is to be my home in your country, Lujon. What an easy gait
this mule has, and what a narrow back! I notice that especially. For a
man with short legs, like me, it is a punishment to ride eight hours a
day on a wide horse. And this I must do day after day. From here I go to
Santa Fé, and, after a day in conference with the Bishop, I start for
Mora."
"For Mora?" exclaimed Lujon. "Yes, that is far, and the roads are very
bad. On your mare you will never do it. She will drop dead under you."
While he talked, the Father remained upon the mule's back, stroking him
with his hand.
"Well, I have no other. God grant that she does not drop somewhere far
from food and water. I can carry very little with me except my vestments
and the sacred vessels."
The Mexican had been growing more and more thoughtful, as if he were
considering something profound and not altogether cheerful. Suddenly his
brow cleared, and he turned to the priest with a radiant smile, quite
boyish in its simplicity. "Father Vaillant," he burst out in a slightly
oratorical manner, "you have made my house right with Heaven, and you
charge me very little. I will do something very nice for you; I will
give you Contento for a present, and I hope to be particularly
remembered in your prayers."
Springing to the ground, Father Vaillant threw his arms about his host.
"Manuelito!" he cried, "for this darling mule I think I could almost
pray you into Heaven!"
The Mexican laughed, too, and warmly returned the embrace. Arm-in-arm
they went in to begin the baptisms.
The next morning, when Lujon went to call Father Vaillant for breakfast,
he found him in the barnyard, leading the two mules about and smoothing
their fawn-coloured flanks, but his face was not the cheerful
countenance of yesterday.
"Manuel," he said at once, "I cannot accept your present. I have thought
upon it over night, and I see that I cannot. The Bishop works as hard as
I do, and his horse is little better than mine. You know he lost
everything on his way out here, in a shipwreck at Galveston,--among the
rest a fine wagon he had had built for travel on these plains. I could
not go about on a mule like this when my Bishop rides a common hack. It
would be inappropriate. I must ride away on my old mare."
"Yes, Padre?" Manuel looked troubled and somewhat aggrieved. Why should
the Padre spoil everything? It had all been very pleasant yesterday, and
he had felt like a prince of generosity. "I doubt if she will make La
Bajada Hill," he said slowly, shaking his head. "Look my horses over and
take the one that suits you. They are all better than yours."
"No, no," said Father Vaillant decidedly. "Having seen these mules, I
want nothing else. They are the colour of pearls, really! I will raise
the price of marriages until I can buy this pair from you. A missionary
must depend upon his mount for companionship in his lonely life. I want
a mule that can look at me like a Christian, as you said of these."
Señor Lujon sighed and looked about his barnyard as if he were trying
to find some escape from this situation.
Father Joseph turned to him with vehemence. "If I were a rich
_ranchero_, like you, Manuel, I would do a splendid thing; I would
furnish the two mounts that are to carry the word of God about this
heathen country, and then I would say to myself: _There go my Bishop and
my Vicario, on my beautiful cream-coloured mules_."
"So be it, Padre," said Lujon with a mournful smile. "But I ought to get
a good many prayers. On my whole estate there is nothing I prize like
those two. True, they might pine if they were parted for long. They have
never been separated, and they have a great affection for each other.
Mules, as you know, have strong affections. It is hard for me to give
them up."
"You will be all the happier for that, Manuelito," Father Joseph cried
heartily. "Every time you think of these mules, you will feel pride in
your good deed."
Soon after breakfast Father Vaillant departed, riding Contento, with
Angelica trotting submissively behind, and from his gate Señor Lujon
watched them disconsolately until they disappeared. He felt he had been
worried out of his mules, and yet he bore no resentment. He did not
doubt Father Joseph's devotedness, nor his singleness of purpose. After
all, a Bishop was a Bishop, and a Vicar was a Vicar, and it was not to
their discredit that they worked like a pair of common parish priests.
He believed he would be proud of the fact that they rode Contento and
Angelica. Father Vaillant had forced his hand, but he was rather glad of
it.
2
THE LONELY ROAD TO MORA
THE Bishop and his Vicar were riding through the rain in the Truchas
mountains. The heavy, lead-coloured drops were driven slantingly through
the air by an icy wind from the peak. These raindrops, Father Latour
kept thinking, were the shape of tadpoles, and they broke against his
nose and cheeks, exploding with a splash, as if they were hollow and
full of air. The priests were riding across high mountain meadows, which
in a few weeks would be green, though just now they were slate-coloured.
On every side lay ridges covered with blue-green fir trees; above them
rose the horny backbones of mountains. The sky was very low; purplish
lead-coloured clouds let down curtains of mist into the valleys between
the pine ridges. There was not a glimmer of white light in the dark
vapours working overhead--rather, they took on the cold green of the
evergreens. Even the white mules, their coats wet and matted into tufts,
had turned a slaty hue, and the faces of the two priests were purple and
spotted in that singular light.
Father Latour rode first, sitting straight upon his mule, with his chin
lowered just enough to keep the drive of rain out of his eyes. Father
Vaillant followed, unable to see much,--in weather like this his glasses
were of no use, and he had taken them off. He crouched down in the
saddle, his shoulders well over Contento's neck. Father Joseph's sister,
Philomène, who was Mother Superior of a convent in her native town in
the Puy-de-Dôm, often tried to picture her brother and Bishop Latour on
these long missionary journeys of which he wrote her; she imagined the
scene and saw the two priests moving through it in their cassocks,
bare-headed, like the pictures of St. Francis Xavier with which she was
familiar. The reality was less picturesque,--but for all that, no one
could have mistaken these two men for hunters or traders. They wore
clerical collars about their necks instead of neckerchiefs, and on the
breast of his buckskin jacket the Bishop's silver cross hung by a silver
chain.
They were on their way to Mora, the third day out, and they did not know
just how far they had still to go. Since morning they had not met a
traveller or seen a human habitation. They believed they were on the
right trail, for they had seen no other. The first night of their
journey they had spent at Santa Cruz, lying in the warm, wide valley of
the Rio Grande, where the fields and gardens were already softly
coloured with early spring. But since they had left the Española
country behind them, they had contended first with wind and sand-storms,
and now with cold. The Bishop was going to Mora to assist the Padre
there in disposing of a crowd of refugees who filled his house. A new
settlement in the Conejos valley had lately been raided by Indians; many
of the inhabitants were killed, and the survivors, who were originally
from Mora, had managed to get back there, utterly destitute.
Before the travellers had crossed the mountain meadows, the rain turned
to sleet. Their wet buckskins quickly froze, and the rattle of icy
flakes struck them and bounded off. The prospect of a night in the open
was not cheering. It was too wet to kindle a fire, their blankets would
become soaked on the ground. As they were descending the mountain on the
Mora side, the gray daylight seemed already beginning to fail, though it
was only four o'clock. Father Latour turned in his saddle and spoke over
his shoulder.
"The mules are certainly very tired, Joseph. They ought to be fed."
"Push on," said Father Vaillant. "We will come to shelter of some kind
before night sets in." The Vicar had been praying steadfastly while they
crossed the meadows, and he felt confident that St. Joseph would not
turn a deaf ear. Before the hour was done they did indeed come upon a
wretched adobe house, so poor and mean that they might not have seen it
had it not lain close beside the trail, on the edge of a steep ravine.
The stable looked more habitable than the house, and the priests thought
perhaps they could spend the night in it.
As they rode up to the door, a man came out, bare-headed, and they saw
to their surprise that he was not a Mexican, but an American, of a very
unprepossessing type. He spoke to them in some drawling dialect they
could scarcely understand and asked if they wanted to stay the night.
During the few words they exchanged with him Father Latour felt a
growing reluctance to remain even for a few hours under the roof of this
ugly, evil-looking fellow. He was tall, gaunt and ill-formed, with a
snake-like neck, terminating in a small, bony head. Under his
close-clipped hair this repellent head showed a number of thick ridges,
as if the skull joinings were overgrown by layers of superfluous bone.
With its small, rudimentary ears, this head had a positively malignant
look. The man seemed not more than half human, but he was the only
householder on the lonely road to Mora.
The priests dismounted and asked him whether he could put their mules
under shelter and give them grain feed.
"As soon as I git my coat on I will. You kin come in."
They followed him into a room where a piñon fire blazed in the corner,
and went toward it to warm their stiffened hands. Their host made an
angry, snarling sound in the direction of the partition, and a woman
came out of the next room. She was a Mexican.
Father Latour and Father Vaillant addressed her courteously in Spanish,
greeting her in the name of the Holy Mother, as was customary. She did
not open her lips, but stared at them blankly for a moment, then dropped
her eyes and cowered as if she were terribly frightened. The priests
looked at each other; it struck them both that this man had been abusing
her in some way. Suddenly he turned on her.
"Clear off them cheers fur the strangers. They won't eat ye, if they air
priests."
She began distractedly snatching rags and wet socks and dirty clothes
from the chairs. Her hands were shaking so that she dropped things. She
was not old, she might have been very young, but she was probably
half-witted. There was nothing in her face but blankness and fear.
Her husband put on his coat and boots, went to the door, and stopped
with his hand on the latch, throwing over his shoulder a crafty, hateful
glance at the bewildered woman.
"Here, you! Come right along, I'll need ye!"
She took her black shawl from a peg and followed him. Just at the door
she turned and caught the eyes of the visitors, who were looking after
her in compassion and perplexity. Instantly that stupid face became
intense, prophetic, full of awful meaning. With her finger she pointed
them away, away!--two quick thrusts into the air. Then, with a look of
horror beyond anything language could convey, she threw back her head
and drew the edge of her palm quickly across her distended throat--and
vanished. The doorway was empty; the two priests stood staring at it,
speechless. That flash of electric passion had been so swift, the
warning it communicated so vivid and definite, that they were struck
dumb.
Father Joseph was the first to find his tongue. "There is no doubt of
her meaning. Your pistol is loaded, Jean?"
"Yes, but I neglected to keep it dry. No matter."
They hurried out of the house. It was still light enough to see the
stable through the grey drive of rain, and they went toward it.
"Señor American," the Bishop called, "will you be good enough to bring
out our mules?"
The man came out of the stable. "What do you want?"
"Our mules. We have changed our mind. We will push on to Mora. And here
is a dollar for your trouble."
The man took a threatening attitude. As he looked from one to the other
his head played from side to side exactly like a snake's. "What's the
matter? My house ain't good enough for ye?"
"No explanation is necessary. Go into the barn and get the mules, Father
Joseph."
"You dare go into my stable, you----priest!"
The Bishop drew his pistol. "No profanity, Señor. We want nothing from
you but to get away from your uncivil tongue. Stand where you are."
The man was unarmed. Father Joseph came out with the mules, which had
not been unsaddled. The poor things were each munching a mouthful, but
they needed no urging to be gone; they did not like this place. The
moment they felt their riders on their backs they trotted quickly along
the road, which dropped immediately into the arroyo. While they were
descending, Father Joseph remarked that the man would certainly have a
gun in the house, and that he had no wish to be shot in the back.
"Nor I. But it is growing too dark for that, unless he should follow us
on horseback," said the Bishop. "Were there horses in the stable?"
"Only a burro." Father Vaillant was relying upon the protection of St.
Joseph, whose office he had fervently said that morning. The warning
given them by that poor woman, with such scant opportunity, seemed
evidence that some protecting power was mindful of them.
By the time they had ascended the far side of the arroyo, night had
closed down and the rain was pouring harder than ever.
"I am by no means sure that we can keep in the road," said the Bishop.
"But at least I am sure we are not being followed. We must trust to
these intelligent beasts. Poor woman! He will suspect her and abuse her,
I am afraid." He kept seeing her in the darkness as he rode on, her face
in the fire-light, and her terrible pantomime.
They reached the town of Mora a little after midnight. The Padre's house
was full of refugees, and two of them were put out of a bed in order
that the Bishop and his Vicar could get into it.
In the morning a boy came from the stable and reported that he had found
a crazy woman lying in the straw, and that she begged to see the two
Padres who owned the white mules. She was brought in, her clothing cut
to rags, her legs and face and even her hair so plastered with mud that
the priests could scarcely recognize the woman who had saved their lives
the night before.
She said she had never gone back to the house at all. When the two
priests rode away her husband had run to the house to get his gun, and
she had plunged down a wash-out behind the stable into the arroyo, and
had been on the way to Mora all night. She had supposed he would
overtake her and kill her, but he had not. She reached the settlement
before day-break, and crept into the stable to warm herself among the
animals and wait until the household was awake. Kneeling before the
Bishop she began to relate such horrible things that he stopped her and
turned to the native priest.
"This is a case for the civil authorities. Is there a magistrate here?"
There was no magistrate, but there was a retired fur trapper who acted
as notary and could take evidence. He was sent for, and in the interval
Father Latour instructed the refugee women from Conejos to bathe this
poor creature and put decent clothes on her, and to care for the cuts
and scratches on her legs.
An hour later the woman, whose name was Magdalena, calmed by food and
kindness, was ready to tell her story. The notary had brought along his
friend, St. Vrain, a Canadian trapper who understood Spanish better than
he. The woman was known to St. Vrain, moreover, who confirmed her
statement that she was born Magdalena Valdez, at Los Ranchos de Taos,
and that she was twenty-four years old. Her husband, Buck Scales, had
drifted into Taos with a party of hunters from somewhere in Wyoming. All
white men knew him for a dog and a degenerate--but to Mexican girls,
marriage with an American meant coming up in the world. She had married
him six years ago, and had been living with him ever since in that
wretched house on the Mora trail. During that time he had robbed and
murdered four travellers who had stopped there for the night. They were
all strangers, not known in the country. She had forgot their names, but
one was a German boy who spoke very little Spanish and little English;
a nice boy with blue eyes, and she had grieved for him more than for the
others. They were all buried in the sandy soil behind the stable. She
was always afraid their bodies might wash out in a storm. Their horses
Buck had ridden off by night and sold to Indians somewhere in the north.
Magdalena had borne three children since her marriage, and her husband
had killed each of them a few days after birth, by ways so horrible that
she could not relate it. After he killed the first baby, she ran away
from him, back to her parents at Ranchos. He came after her and made her
go home with him by threatening harm to the old people. She was afraid
to go anywhere for help, but twice before she had managed to warn
travellers away, when her husband happened to be out of the house. This
time she had found courage because, when she looked into the faces of
these two Padres, she knew they were good men, and she thought if she
ran after them they could save her. She could not bear any more killing.
She asked nothing better than to die herself, if only she could hide
near a church and a priest for a while, to make her soul right with God.
St. Vrain and his friend got together a search-party at once. They rode
out to Scales's place and found the remains of four men buried under the
corral behind the stable, as the woman had said. Scales himself they
captured on the road from Taos, where he had gone to look for his wife.
They brought him back to Mora, but St. Vrain rode on to Taos to fetch a
magistrate.
There was no _calabozo_ in Mora, so Scales was put into an empty stable,
under guard. This stable was soon surrounded by a crowd of people, who
loitered to hear the blood-curdling threats the prisoner shouted against
his wife. Magdalena was kept in the Padre's house, where she lay on a
mat in the corner, begging Father Latour to take her back to Santa Fé,
so that her husband could not get at her. Though Scales was bound, the
Bishop felt alarmed for her safety. He and the American notary, who had
a pistol of the new revolver model, sat in the _sala_ and kept watch
over her all night.
In the morning the magistrate and his party arrived from Taos. The
notary told him the facts of the case in the plaza, where everyone could
hear. The Bishop inquired whether there was any place for Magdalena in
Taos, as she could not stay on here in such a state of terror.
A man dressed in buckskin hunting-clothes stepped out of the crowd and
asked to see Magdalena. Father Latour conducted him into the room where
she lay on her mat. The stranger went up to her, removing his hat. He
bent down and put his hand on her shoulder. Though he was clearly an
American, he spoke Spanish in the native manner.
"Magdalena, don't you remember me?"
She looked up at him as out of a dark well; something became alive in
her deep, haunted eyes. She caught with both hands at his fringed
buckskin knees.
"Christobal!" she wailed. "Oh, Christobal!"
"I'll take you home with me, Magdalena, and you can stay with my wife.
You wouldn't be afraid in my house, would you?"
"No, no, Christobal, I would not be afraid with you. I am not a wicked
woman."
He smoothed her hair. "You're a good girl, Magdalena--always were. It
will be all right. Just leave things to me."
Then he turned to the Bishop. "Señor Vicario, she can come to me. I
live near Taos. My wife is a native woman, and she'll be good to her.
That varmint won't come about my place, even if he breaks jail. He knows
me. My name is Carson."
Father Latour had looked forward to meeting the scout. He had supposed
him to be a very large man, of powerful body and commanding presence.
This Carson was not so tall as the Bishop himself, was very slight in
frame, modest in manner, and he spoke English with a soft Southern
drawl. His face was both thoughtful and alert; anxiety had drawn a
permanent ridge between his blue eyes. Under his blond moustache his
mouth had a singular refinement. The lips were full and delicately
modelled. There was something curiously unconscious about his mouth,
reflective, a little melancholy,--and something that suggested a
capacity for tenderness. The Bishop felt a quick glow of pleasure in
looking at the man. As he stood there in his buckskin clothes one felt
in him standards, loyalties, a code which is not easily put into words
but which is instantly felt when two men who live by it come together by
chance. He took the scout's hand. "I have long wanted to meet Kit
Carson," he said, "even before I came to New Mexico. I have been hoping
you would pay me a visit at Santa Fé."
The other smiled. "I'm right shy, sir, and I'm always afraid of being
disappointed. But I guess it will be all right from now on."
This was the beginning of a long friendship.