snow melted, he would recover the saddles and bridles. They floundered
on foot some eight miles to a squatter's cabin, rented horses, and
completed their journey by starlight. When they reached Father Vaillant,
he was sitting up in a bed of buffalo skins, his fever broken, already
on the way to recovery. Another good friend had reached him before the
Bishop. Kit Carson, on a deer hunt in the mountains with two Taos
Indians, had heard that this village was stricken and that the Vicario
was there. He hurried to the rescue, and got into the pueblo with a pack
of venison meat just before the storm broke. As soon as Father Vaillant
could sit in the saddle, Carson and the Bishop took him back to Santa
Fé, breaking the journey into four days because of his enfeebled state.
The Bishop kept his word, and never spoke of Jacinto's cave to anyone,
but he did not cease from wondering about it. It flashed into his mind
from time to time, and always with a shudder of repugnance quite
unjustified by anything he had experienced there. It had been a
hospitable shelter to him in his extremity. Yet afterward he remembered
the storm itself, even his exhaustion, with a tingling sense of
pleasure. But the cave, which had probably saved his life, he remembered
with horror. No tales of wonder, he told himself, would ever tempt him
into a cavern hereafter.
At home again, in his own house, he still felt a certain curiosity about
this ceremonial cave, and Jacinto's puzzling behaviour. It seemed almost
to lend a colour of probability to some of those unpleasant stories
about the Pecos religion. He was already convinced that neither the
white men nor the Mexicans in Santa Fé understood anything about Indian
beliefs or the workings of the Indian mind.
Kit Carson had told him that the proprietor of the trading post between
Glorieta Pass and the Pecos pueblo had grown up a neighbour to these
Indians, and knew as much about them as anybody. His parents had kept
the trading post before him, and his mother was the first white woman in
that neighborhood. The trader's name was Zeb Orchard; he lived alone in
the mountains, selling salt and sugar and whisky and tobacco to red men
and white. Carson said that he was honest and truthful, a good friend to
the Indians, and had at one time wanted to marry a Pecos girl, but his
old mother, who was very proud of being "white," would not hear to it,
and so he had remained a single man and a recluse.
Father Latour made a point of stopping for the night with this trader on
one of his missionary journeys, in order to question him about the Pecos
customs and ceremonies.
Orchard said that the legend about the undying fire was unquestionably
true; but it was kept burning, not in the mountain, but in their own
pueblo. It was a smothered fire in a clay oven, and had been burning in
one of the kivas ever since the pueblo was founded, centuries ago. About
the snake stories, he was not certain. He had seen rattlesnakes around
the pueblo, to be sure, but there were rattlers everywhere. A Pecos boy
had been bitten on the ankle some years ago, and had come to him-for
whisky; he swelled up and was very sick, like any other boy.
The Bishop asked Orchard if he thought it probable that the Indians kept
a great serpent in concealment somewhere, as was commonly reported.
"They do keep some sort of varmint out in the mountain, that they bring
in for their religious ceremonies," the trader said. "But I don't know
if it's a snake or not. No white man knows anything about Indian
religion, Padre."
As they talked further, Orchard admitted that when he was a boy he had
been very curious about these snake stories himself, and once, at their
festival time, he had spied on the Pecos men, though that was not a very
safe thing to do. He had lain in ambush for two nights on the mountain,
and he saw a party of Indians bringing in a chest by torchlight. It was
about the size of a woman's trunk, and it was heavy enough to bend the
young aspen poles on which it was hung. "If I'd seen white men bringing
in a chest after dark," he observed, "I could have made a guess at what
was in it; money, or whisky, or fire-arms. But seeing it was Indians, I
can't say. It might have been only queer-shaped rocks their ancestors
had taken a notion to. The things they value most are worth nothing to
us. They've got their own superstitions, and their minds will go round
and round in the same old ruts till Judgment Day."
Father Latour remarked that their veneration for old customs was a
quality he liked in the Indians, and that it played a great part in his
own religion.
The trader told him he might make good Catholics among the Indians, but
he would never separate them from their own beliefs. "Their priests have
their own kind of mysteries. I don't know how much of it is real and how
much is made up. I remember something that happened when I was a little
fellow. One night a Pecos girl, with her baby in her arms, ran into the
kitchen here and begged my mother to hide her until after the festival,
for she'd seen signs between the _caciques_, and was sure they were
going to feed--her baby to the snake. Whether it was true or not, she
certainly believed it, poor thing, and Mother let her stay. It made a
great impression on me at the time."
BOOK FIVE
_PADRE MARTINEZ_
1
THE OLD ORDER
BISHOP LATOUR, with Jacinto, was riding through the mountains on his
first official visit to Taos--after Albuquerque, the largest and richest
parish in his diocese. Both the priest and people there were hostile to
Americans and jealous of interference. Any European, except a Spaniard,
was regarded as a gringo. The Bishop had let the parish alone, giving
their animosity plenty of time to cool. With Carson's help he had
informed himself fully about conditions there, and about the powerful
old priest, Antonio José Martinez, who was ruler in temporal as well as
in spiritual affairs. Indeed, before Father Latour's entrance upon the
scene, Martinez had been dictator to all the parishes in northern New
Mexico, and the native priests at Santa Fé were all of them under his
thumb.
It was common talk that Padre Martinez had instigated the revolt of the
Taos Indians five years ago, when Bent, the American Governor, and a
dozen other white men were murdered and scalped. Seven of the Taos
Indians had been tried before a military court and hanged for the
murder, but no attempt had been made to call the plotting priest to
account. Indeed, Padre Martinez had managed to profit considerably by
the affair.
The Indians who were sentenced to death had sent for their Padre and
begged him to get them out of the trouble he had got them into. Martinez
promised to save their lives if they would deed him their lands, near
the pueblo. This they did, and after the conveyance was properly
executed the Padre troubled himself no more about the matter, but went
to pay a visit at his native town of Abiquiu. In his absence the seven
Indians were hanged on the appointed day. Martinez now cultivated their
fertile farms, which made him quite the richest man in the parish.
Father Latour had had polite correspondence with Martinez, but had met
him only once, on that memorable occasion when the Padre had ridden up
from Taos to strengthen the Santa Fé clergy in their refusal to
recognize the new Bishop. But he could see him as if that were only
yesterday,--the priest of Taos was not a man one would easily forget.
One could not have passed him on the street without feeling his great
physical force and his imperious will. Not much taller than the Bishop
in reality, he gave the impression of being an enormous man. His broad
high shoulders were like a bull buffalo's, his big head was set
defiantly on a thick neck, and the full-cheeked, richly coloured,
egg-shaped Spanish face--how vividly the Bishop remembered that face! It
was so unusual that he would be glad to see it again; a high, narrow
forehead, brilliant yellow eyes set deep in strong arches, and full,
florid cheeks,--not blank areas of smooth flesh, as in Anglo-Saxon
faces, but full of muscular activity, as quick to change with feeling as
any of his features. His mouth was the very assertion of violent,
uncurbed passions and tyrannical self-will; the full lips thrust out and
taut, like the flesh of animals distended by fear or desire.
Father Latour judged that the day of lawless personal power was almost
over, even on the frontier, and this figure was to him already like
something picturesque and impressive, but really impotent, left over
from the past.
The Bishop and Jacinto left the mountains behind them, the trail dropped
to a plain covered by clumps of very old sage-brush, with trunks as
thick as a man's leg. Jacinto pointed out a cloud of dust moving rapidly
toward them,--a cavalcade of a hundred men or more, Indians and
Mexicans, come out to welcome their Bishop with shouting and musketry.
As the horsemen approached, Padre Martinez himself was easily
distinguishable--in buckskin breeches, high boots and silver spurs, a
wide Mexican hat on his head, and a great black cape wound about his
shoulders like a shepherd's plaid. He rode up to the Bishop and reining
in his black gelding, uncovered his head in a broad salutation, while
his escort surrounded the churchmen and fired their muskets into the
air.
The two priests rode side by side into Los Ranchos de Taos, a little
town of yellow walls and winding streets and green orchards. The
inhabitants were all gathered in the square before the church. When the
Bishop dismounted to enter the church, the women threw their shawls on
the dusty pathway for him to walk upon, and as he passed through the
kneeling congregation, men and women snatched for his hand to kiss the
Episcopal ring. In his own country all this would have been highly
distasteful to Jean Marie Latour. Here, these demonstrations seemed a
part of the high colour that was in landscape and gardens, in the
flaming cactus and the gaudily decorated altars,--in the agonized
Christs and dolorous Virgins and the very human figures of the saints.
He had already learned that with this people religion was necessarily
theatrical.
From Los Ranchos the party rode quickly across the grey plain into Taos
itself, to the priest's house, opposite the church, where a great throng
had collected. As the people sank on their knees, one boy, a gawky lad
of ten or twelve, remained standing, his mouth open and his hat on his
head. Padre Martinez reached over the heads of several kneeling women,
snatched off the boy's cap, and cuffed him soundly about the ears. When
Father Latour murmured in protest, the native priest said boldly:
"He is my own son, Bishop, and it is time I taught him manners."
So this was to be the tune, the Bishop reflected. His well-schooled
countenance did not change a shadow as he received this challenge, and
he passed on into the Padre's house. They went at once into Martinez's
study, where they found a young man lying on the floor, fast asleep. He
was a very large young man, very stout, lying on his back with his head
pillowed on a book, and as he breathed his bulk rose and fell amazingly.
He wore a Franciscan's brown gown, and his hair was clipped short. At
sight of the sleeper, Padre Martinez broke into a laugh and gave him a
no very gentle kick in the ribs. The fellow got to his feet in great
confusion, escaping through a door into the _patio_.
"You there," the Padre called after him, "only young men who work hard
at night want to sleep in the day! You must have been studying by
candlelight. I'll give you an examination in theology!" This was greeted
by a titter of feminine laughter from the windows across the court,
where the fugitive took refuge behind a washing hung out to dry. He bent
his tall, full figure and disappeared between a pair of wet sheets.
"That was my student, Trinidad," said Martinez, "a nephew of my old
friend Father Lucero, at Arroyo Hondo. He's a monk, but we want him to
take orders. We sent him to the Seminary in Durango, but he was either
too homesick or too stupid to learn anything, so I'm teaching him here.
We shall make a priest of him one day."
Father Latour was told to consider the house his own, but he had no wish
to. The disorder was almost more than his fastidious taste could bear.
The Padre's study table was sprinkled with snuff, and piled so high with
books that they almost hid the crucifix hanging behind it. Books were
heaped on chairs and tables all over the house,--and the books and the
floors were deep in the dust of spring sand-storms. Father Martinez's
boots and hats lay about in corners, his coats and cassocks were hung on
pegs and draped over pieces of furniture. Yet the place seemed overrun
by serving-women, young and old,--and by large yellow cats with full
soft fur, of a special breed, apparently. They slept in the
window-sills, lay on the well-curb in the _patio_; the boldest came,
directly, to the supper-table, where their master fed them carelessly
from his plate.
When they sat down to supper, the host introduced to the Bishop the
tall, stout young man with the protruding front, who had been asleep on
the floor. He said again that Trinidad Lucero was studying with him, and
was supposed to be his secretary,--adding that he spent most of his time
hanging about the kitchen and hindering the girls at their work.
These remarks were made in the young man's presence, but did not
embarrass him at all. His whole attention was fixed upon the mutton
stew, which he began to devour with undue haste as soon as his plate was
put before him. The Bishop observed later that Trinidad was treated very
much like a poor relation or a servant. He was sent on errands, was told
without ceremony to fetch the Padre's boots, to bring wood for the fire,
to saddle his horse. Father Latour disliked his personality so much that
he could scarcely look at him. His fat face was irritatingly stupid, and
had the grey, oily look of soft cheeses. The corners of his mouth were
deep folds in plumpness, like the creases in a baby's legs, and the
steel rim of his spectacles, where it crossed his nose, was embedded in
soft flesh. He said not one word during supper, but ate as if he were
afraid of never seeing food again. When his attention left his plate for
a moment, it was fixed in the same greedy way upon the girl who served
the table--and who seemed to regard him with careless contempt. The
student gave the impression of being always stupefied by one form of
sensual disturbance or another.
Padre Martinez, with a napkin tied round his neck to protect his
cassock, ate and drank generously. The Bishop found the food poor
enough, despite the many cooks, though the wine, which came from El Paso
del Norte, was very fair.
During supper, his host asked the Bishop flatly if he considered
celibacy an essential condition of the priest's vocation.
Father Latour replied merely that this question had been thrashed out
many centuries ago and decided once for all.
"Nothing is decided once for all," Martinez declared fiercely. "Celibacy
may be all very well for the French clergy, but not for ours. St.
Augustine himself says it is better not to go against nature. I find
every evidence that in his old age he regretted having practised
continence."
The Bishop said he would be interested to see the passages from which he
drew such conclusions, observing that he knew the writings of St.
Augustine fairly well.
"I have the telling passages all written down somewhere. I will find
them before you go. You have probably read them with a sealed mind.
Celibate priests lose their perceptions. No priest can experience
repentance and forgiveness of sin unless he himself falls into sin.
Since concupiscence is the most common form of temptation, it is better
for him to know something about it. The soul cannot be humbled by fasts
and prayer; it must be broken by mortal sin to experience forgiveness of
sin and rise to a state of grace. Otherwise, religion is nothing but
dead logic."
"This is a subject upon which we must confer later, and at some length,"
said the Bishop quietly. "I shall reform these practices throughout my
diocese as rapidly as possible. I hope it will be but a short time until
there is not a priest left who does not keep all the vows he took when
he bound himself to the service of the altar."
The swarthy Padre laughed, and threw off the big cat which had mounted
to his shoulder. "It will keep you busy, Bishop. Nature has got the
start of you here. But for all that, our native priests are more devout
than your French Jesuits. We have a living Church here, not a dead arm
of the European Church. Our religion grew out of the soil, and has its
own roots. We pay a filial respect to the person of the Holy Father, but
Rome has no authority here. We do not require aid from the Propaganda,
and we resent its interference. The Church the Franciscan Fathers
planted here was cut off; this is the second growth, and is indigenous.
Our people are the most devout left in the world. If you blast their
faith by European formalities, they will become infidels and
profligates."
To this eloquence the Bishop returned blandly that he had not come to
deprive the people of their religion, but that he would be compelled to
deprive some of the priests of their parishes if they did not change
their way of life.
Father Martinez filled his glass and replied with perfect good humour.
"You cannot deprive me of mine, Bishop. Try it! I will organize my own
church. You can have your French priest of Taos, and I will have the
people!"
With this the Padre left the table and stood warming his back at the
fire, his cassock pulled up about his waist to expose his trousers to
the blaze. "You are a young man, my Bishop," he went on, rolling his big
head back and looking up at the well-smoked roof poles. "And you know
nothing about Indians or Mexicans. If you try to introduce European
civilization here and change our old ways, to interfere with the secret
dances of the Indians, let us say, or abolish the bloody rites of the
Penitentes, I foretell an early death for you. I advise you to study our
native traditions before you begin your reforms. You are among barbarous
people, my Frenchman, between two savage races. The dark things
forbidden by your Church are a part of Indian religion. You cannot
introduce French fashions here."
At this moment the student, Trinidad, got up quietly, and after an
obsequious bow to the Bishop, went with soft, escaping tread toward the
kitchen. When his brown skirt had disappeared through the door, Father
Latour turned sharply to his host.
"Martinez, I consider it very unseemly to talk in this loose fashion
before young men, especially a young man who is studying for the
priesthood. Furthermore, I cannot see why a young man of this calibre
should be encouraged to take orders. He will never hold a parish in my
diocese."
Padre Martinez laughed and showed his long, yellow teeth. Laughing did
not become him; his teeth were too large--distinctly vulgar. "Oh,
Trinidad will go to Arroyo Hondo as curate to his uncle, who is growing
old. He's a very devout fellow, Trinidad. You ought to see him in
Passion Week. He goes up to Abiquiu and becomes another man; carries the
heaviest crosses to the highest mountains, and takes more scourging than
anyone. He comes back here with his back so full of cactus spines that
the girls have to pick him like a chicken."
Father Latour was tired, and went to his room soon after supper. The
bed, upon examination, seemed clean and comfortable, but he felt
uncertain of its surroundings. He did not like the air of this house.
After he retired, the clatter of dish-washing and the giggling of women
across the _patio_ kept him awake a long while; and when that ceased,
Father Martinez began snoring in some chamber near by. He must have left
his door open into the _patio_, for the adobe partitions were thick
enough to smother sound otherwise. The Padre snored like an enraged
bull, until the Bishop decided to go forth and find his door and close
it. He arose, lit his candle, and opened his own door in half-hearted
resolution. As the night wind blew into the room, a little dark shadow
fluttered from the wall across the floor; a mouse, perhaps. But no, it
was a bunch of woman's hair that had been indolently tossed into a
corner when some slovenly female toilet was made in this room. This
discovery annoyed the Bishop exceedingly.
High Mass was at eleven the next morning, the parish priest officiating
and the Bishop in the Episcopal chair. He was well pleased with the
church of Taos. The building was clean and in good repair, the
congregation large and devout. The delicate lace, snowy linen, and
burnished brass on the altar told of a devoted Altar Guild. The boys who
served at the altar wore rich smocks of hand-made lace over their
scarlet surplices. The Bishop had never heard the Mass more impressively
sung than by Father Martinez. The man had a beautiful baritone voice,
and he drew from some deep well of emotional power. Nothing in the
service was slighted, every phrase and gesture had its full value. At
the moment of the Elevation the dark priest seemed to give his whole
force, his swarthy body and all its blood, to that lifting-up. Rightly
guided, the Bishop reflected, this Mexican might have been a great man.
He had an altogether compelling personality, a disturbing, mysterious
magnetic power.
After the confirmation service, Father Martinez had horses brought round
and took the Bishop out to see his farms and live-stock. He took him all
over his ranches down in the rich bottom lands between Taos and the
Indian pueblo which, as Father Latour knew, had come into his possession
from the seven Indians who were hanged. Martinez referred carelessly to
the Bent massacre as they rode along. He boasted that there had never
been trouble afoot in New Mexico that wasn't started in Taos.
They stopped just west of the pueblo a little before sunset,--a pueblo
very different from all the others the Bishop had visited; two large
communal houses, shaped like pyramids, gold-coloured in the afternoon
light, with the purple mountain lying just behind them. Gold-coloured
men in white burnouses came out on the stairlike flights of roofs, and
stood still as statues, apparently watching the changing light on the
mountain. There was a religious silence over the place; no sound at all
but the bleating of goats coming home through clouds of golden dust.
These two houses, the Padre told him, had been continuously occupied by
this tribe for more than a thousand years. Coronado's men found them
there, and described them as a superior kind of Indian, handsome and
dignified in bearing, dressed in deerskin coats and trousers like those
of Europeans.
Though the mountain was timbered, its lines were so sharp that it had
the sculptured look of naked mountains like the Sandias. The general
growth on its sides was evergreen, but the canyons and ravines were
wooded with aspens, so that the shape of every depression was painted on
the mountain-side, light green against the dark, like symbols;
serpentine, crescent, half-circles. This mountain and its ravines had
been the seat of old religious ceremonies, honey-combed with noiseless
Indian life, the repository of Indian secrets, for many centuries, the
Padre remarked.
"And some place in there, you may be sure, they keep Popé's estufa, but
no white man will ever see it. I mean the estufa where Popé sealed
himself up for four years and never saw the light of day, when he was
planning the revolt of 1680. I suppose you know all about that outbreak,
Bishop Latour?"
"Something, of course, from the Martyrology. But I did not know that it
originated in Taos."
"Haven't I just told you that all the trouble there ever was in New
Mexico originated in Taos?" boasted the Padre. "Popé was born a San
Juan Indian, but so was Napoleon a Corsican. He operated from Taos."
Padre Martinez knew his country, a country which had no written
histories. He gave the Bishop much the best account he had heard of the
great Indian revolt of 1680, which added such a long chapter to the
Martyrology of the New World, when all the Spaniards were killed or
driven out, and there was not one European left alive north of El Paso
del Norte.
That night after supper, as his host sat taking snuff, Father Latour
questioned him closely and learned something about the story of his
life.
Martinez was born directly under that solitary blue mountain on the
sky-line west of Taos, shaped like a pyramid with the apex sliced off,
in Abiquiu. It was one of the oldest Mexican settlements in the
territory, surrounded by canyons so deep and ranges so rugged that it
was practically cut off from intercourse with the outside world. Being
so solitary, its people were sombre in temperament, fierce and fanatical
in religion, celebrated the Passion Week by cross-bearings and bloody
scourgings.