Title: Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927)
Author: Willa Cather
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Title: Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927)
Author: Willa Cather
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE. AT ROME
1. THE VICAR APOSTOLIC
2. MISSIONARY JOURNEYS
3. THE MASS AT ÁCOMA
4. SNAKE ROOT
5. PADRE MARTÍNEZ
6. DOÑA ISABELLA
7. THE GREAT DIOCESE
8. GOLD UNDER PIKE'S PEAK
9. DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP
"Auspice Maria!"
FATHER VAILLANT'S SIGNET-RING
PROLOGUE: AT ROME
One summer evening in the year 1848, three Cardinals and a
missionary Bishop from America were dining together in the gardens
of a villa in the Sabine hills, overlooking Rome. The villa was
famous for the fine view from its terrace. The hidden garden in
which the four men sat at table lay some twenty feet below the
south end of this terrace, and was a mere shelf of rock, overhanging
a steep declivity planted with vineyards. A flight of stone steps
connected it with the promenade above. The table stood in a sanded
square, among potted orange and oleander trees, shaded by spreading
ilex oaks that grew out of the rocks overhead. Beyond the
balustrade was the drop into the air, and far below the landscape
stretched soft and undulating; there was nothing to arrest the eye
until it reached Rome itself.
It was early when the Spanish Cardinal and his guests sat down to
dinner. The sun was still good for an hour of supreme splendour,
and across the shining folds of country the low profile of the city
barely fretted the skyline--indistinct except for the dome of St.
Peter's, bluish grey like the flattened top of a great balloon,
just a flash of copper light on its soft metallic surface. The
Cardinal had an eccentric preference for beginning his dinner at
this time in the late afternoon, when the vehemence of the sun
suggested motion. The light was full of action and had a peculiar
quality of climax--of splendid finish. It was both intense and
soft, with a ruddiness as of much-multiplied candlelight, an aura
of red in its flames. It bored into the ilex trees, illuminating
their mahogany trunks and blurring their dark foliage; it warmed
the bright green of the orange trees and the rose of the oleander
blooms to gold; sent congested spiral patterns quivering over the
damask and plate and crystal. The churchmen kept their rectangular
clerical caps on their heads to protect them from the sun. The
three Cardinals wore black cassocks with crimson pipings and
crimson buttons, the Bishop a long black coat over his violet vest.
They were talking business; had met, indeed, to discuss an
anticipated appeal from the Provincial Council at Baltimore for the
founding of an Apostolic Vicarate in New Mexico--a part of North
America recently annexed to the United States. This new territory
was vague to all of them, even to the missionary Bishop. The
Italian and French Cardinals spoke of it as Le Mexique, and the
Spanish host referred to it as "New Spain." Their interest in the
projected Vicarate was tepid, and had to be continually revived by
the missionary, Father Ferrand; Irish by birth, French by ancestry--
a man of wide wanderings and notable achievement in the New World,
an Odysseus of the Church. The language spoken was French--the
time had already gone by when Cardinals could conveniently discuss
contemporary matters in Latin.
The French and Italian Cardinals were men in vigorous middle life--
the Norman full-belted and ruddy, the Venetian spare and sallow and
hook-nosed. Their host, García María de Allande, was still a young
man. He was dark in colouring, but the long Spanish face, that
looked out from so many canvases in his ancestral portrait gallery,
was in the young Cardinal much modified through his English mother.
With his caffè oscuro eyes, he had a fresh, pleasant English mouth,
and an open manner.
During the latter years of the reign of Gregory XVI, de Allande had
been the most influential man at the Vatican; but since the death
of Gregory, two years ago, he had retired to his country estate.
He believed the reforms of the new Pontiff impractical and
dangerous, and had withdrawn from politics, confining his activities
to work for the Society for the Propagation of the Faith--that
organization which had been so fostered by Gregory. In his leisure
the Cardinal played tennis. As a boy, in England, he had been
passionately fond of this sport. Lawn tennis had not yet come into
fashion; it was a formidable game of indoor tennis the Cardinal
played. Amateurs of that violent sport came from Spain and France
to try their skill against him.
The missionary, Bishop Ferrand, looked much older than any of them,
old and rough--except for his clear, intensely blue eyes. His
diocese lay within the icy arms of the Great Lakes, and on his
long, lonely horseback rides among his missions the sharp winds had
bitten him well. The missionary was here for a purpose, and he
pressed his point. He ate more rapidly than the others and had
plenty of time to plead his cause,--finished each course with such
dispatch that the Frenchman remarked he would have been an ideal
dinner companion for Napoleon.
The Bishop laughed and threw out his brown hands in apology.
"Likely enough I have forgot my manners. I am preoccupied. Here
you can scarcely understand what it means that the United States
has annexed that enormous territory which was the cradle of the
Faith in the New World. The Vicarate of New Mexico will be in a
few years raised to an Episcopal See, with jurisdiction over a
country larger than Central and Western Europe, barring Russia.
The Bishop of that See will direct the beginning of momentous
things."
"Beginnings," murmured the Venetian, "there have been so many. But
nothing ever comes from over there but trouble and appeals for
money."
The missionary turned to him patiently. "Your Eminence, I beg you
to follow me. This country was evangelized in fifteen hundred, by
the Franciscan Fathers. It has been allowed to drift for nearly
three hundred years and is not yet dead. It still pitifully calls
itself a Catholic country, and tries to keep the forms of religion
without instruction. The old mission churches are in ruins. The
few priests are without guidance or discipline. They are lax in
religious observance, and some of them live in open concubinage.
If this Augean stable is not cleansed, now that the territory has
been taken over by a progressive government, it will prejudice the
interests of the Church in the whole of North America."
"But these missions are still under the jurisdiction of Mexico, are
they not?" inquired the Frenchman.
"In the See of the Bishop of Durango?" added María de Allande.
The missionary sighed. "Your Eminence, the Bishop of Durango is an
old man; and from his seat to Santa Fé is a distance of fifteen
hundred English miles. There are no wagon roads, no canals, no
navigable rivers. Trade is carried on by means of pack-mules, over
treacherous trails. The desert down there has a peculiar horror; I
do not mean thirst, nor Indian massacres, which are frequent. The
very floor of the world is cracked open into countless canyons and
arroyos, fissures in the earth which are sometimes ten feet deep,
sometimes a thousand. Up and down these stony chasms the traveller
and his mules clamber as best they can. It is impossible to go far
in any direction without crossing them. If the Bishop of Durango
should summon a disobedient priest by letter, who shall bring the
Padre to him? Who can prove that he ever received the summons?
The post is carried by hunters, fur trappers, gold seekers, whoever
happens to be moving on the trails."
The Norman Cardinal emptied his glass and wiped his lips.
"And the inhabitants, Father Ferrand? If these are the travellers,
who stays at home?"
"Some thirty Indian nations, Monsignor, each with its own customs
and language, many of them fiercely hostile to each other. And the
Mexicans, a naturally devout people. Untaught and unshepherded,
they cling to the faith of their fathers."
"I have a letter from the Bishop of Durango, recommending his Vicar
for this new post," remarked María de Allande.
"Your Eminence, it would be a great misfortune if a native priest
were appointed; they have never done well in that field. Besides,
this Vicar is old. The new Vicar must be a young man, of strong
constitution, full of zeal, and above all, intelligent. He will
have to deal with savagery and ignorance, with dissolute priests
and political intrigue. He must be a man to whom order is
necessary--as dear as life."
The Spaniard's coffee-coloured eyes showed a glint of yellow as he
glanced sidewise at his guest. "I suspect, from your exordium,
that you have a candidate--and that he is a French priest,
perhaps?"
"You guess rightly, Monsignor. I am glad to see that we have the
same opinion of French missionaries."
"Yes," said the Cardinal lightly, "they are the best missionaries.
Our Spanish fathers made good martyrs, but the French Jesuits
accomplish more. They are the great organizers."
"Better than the Germans?" asked the Venetian, who had Austrian
sympathies.
"Oh, the Germans classify, but the French arrange! The French
missionaries have a sense of proportion and rational adjustment.
They are always trying to discover the logical relation of things.
It is a passion with them." Here the host turned to the old Bishop
again. "But your Grace, why do you neglect this Burgundy? I had
this wine brought up from my cellar especially to warm away the
chill of your twenty Canadian winters. Surely, you do not gather
vintages like this on the shores of the Great Lake Huron?"
The missionary smiled as he took up his untouched glass. "It is
superb, your Eminence, but I fear I have lost my palate for
vintages. Out there, a little whisky, or Hudson Bay Company rum,
does better for us. I must confess I enjoyed the champagne in
Paris. We had been forty days at sea, and I am a poor sailor."
"Then we must have some for you." He made a sign to his major-
domo. "You like it very cold? And your new Vicar Apostolic, what
will he drink in the country of bison and serpents à sonnettes?
And what will he eat?"
"He will eat dried buffalo meat and frijoles with chili, and he
will be glad to drink water when he can get it. He will have no
easy life, your Eminence. That country will drink up his youth and
strength as it does the rain. He will be called upon for every
sacrifice, quite possibly for martyrdom. Only last year the Indian
pueblo of San Fernandez de Taos murdered and scalped the American
Governor and some dozen other whites. The reason they did not
scalp their Padre, was that their Padre was one of the leaders of
the rebellion and himself planned the massacre. That is how things
stand in New Mexico!"
"Where is your candidate at present, Father?"
"He is a parish priest, on the shores of Lake Ontario, in my
diocese. I have watched his work for nine years. He is but
thirty-five now. He came to us directly from the Seminary."
"And his name is?"
"Jean Marie Latour."
María de Allande, leaning back in his chair, put the tips of his
long fingers together and regarded them thoughtfully.
"Of course, Father Ferrand, the Propaganda will almost certainly
appoint to this Vicarate the man whom the Council at Baltimore
recommends."
"Ah yes, your Eminence; but a word from you to the Provincial
Council, an inquiry, a suggestion--"
"Would have some weight, I admit," replied the Cardinal smiling.
"And this Latour is intelligent, you say? What a fate you are
drawing upon him! But I suppose it is no worse than a life among
the Hurons. My knowledge of your country is chiefly drawn from the
romances of Fenimore Cooper, which I read in English with great
pleasure. But has your priest a versatile intelligence? Any
intelligence in matters of art, for example?"
"And what need would he have for that, Monsignor? Besides, he is
from Auvergne."
The three Cardinals broke into laughter and refilled their glasses.
They were all becoming restive under the monotonous persistence of
the missionary.
"Listen," said the host, "and I will relate a little story, while
the Bishop does me the compliment to drink my champagne. I have a
reason for asking this question which you have answered so finally.
In my family house in Valencia I have a number of pictures by the
great Spanish painters, collected chiefly by my great-grandfather,
who was a man of perception in these things and, for his time,
rich. His collection of El Greco is, I believe, quite the best in
Spain. When my progenitor was an old man, along came one of these
missionary priests from New Spain, begging. All missionaries from
the Americas were inveterate beggars, then as now, Bishop Ferrand.
This Franciscan had considerable success, with his tales of pious
Indian converts and struggling missions. He came to visit at my
great-grandfather's house and conducted devotions in the absence of
the Chaplain. He wheedled a good sum of money out of the old man,
as well as vestments and linen and chalices--he would take
anything--and he implored my grandfather to give him a painting
from his great collection, for the ornamentation of his mission
church among the Indians. My grandfather told him to choose from
the gallery, believing the priest would covet most what he himself
could best afford to spare. But not at all; the hairy Franciscan
pounced upon one of the best in the collection; a young St. Francis
in meditation, by El Greco, and the model for the saint was one of
the very handsome Dukes of Albuquerque. My grandfather protested;
tried to persuade the fellow that some picture of the Crucifixion,
or a martyrdom, would appeal more strongly to his redskins. What
would a St. Francis, of almost feminine beauty, mean to the scalp-
takers?
"All in vain. The missionary turned upon his host with a reply
which has become a saying in our family: 'You refuse me this
picture because it is a good picture. It is too good for God, but
it is not too good for you.'
"He carried off the painting. In my grandfather's manuscript
catalogue, under the number and title of the St. Francis, is
written: Given to Fray Teodocio, for the glory of God, to enrich
his mission church at Pueblo de Cia, among the savages of New
Spain.
"It is because of this lost treasure, Father Ferrand, that I
happened to have had some personal correspondence with the Bishop
of Durango. I once wrote the facts to him fully. He replied to me
that the mission at Cia was long ago destroyed and its furnishings
scattered. Of course the painting may have been ruined in a
pillage or massacre. On the other hand, it may still be hidden
away in some crumbling sacristy or smoky wigwam. If your French
priest had a discerning eye, now, and were sent to this Vicarate,
he might keep my El Greco in mind."
The Bishop shook his head. "No, I can't promise you--I do not
know. I have noticed that he is a man of severe and refined
tastes, but he is very reserved. Down there the Indians do not
dwell in wigwams, your Eminence," he added gently.
"No matter, Father. I see your redskins through Fenimore Cooper,
and I like them so. Now let us go to the terrace for our coffee
and watch the evening come on."
The Cardinal led his guests up the narrow stairway. The long
gravelled terrace and its balustrade were blue as a lake in the
dusky air. Both sun and shadows were gone. The folds of russet
country were now violet. Waves of rose and gold throbbed up the
sky from behind the dome of the Basilica.
As the churchmen walked up and down the promenade, watching the
stars come out, their talk touched upon many matters, but they
avoided politics, as men are apt to do in dangerous times. Not a
word was spoken of the Lombard war, in which the Pope's position
was so anomalous. They talked instead of a new opera by young
Verdi, which was being sung in Venice; of the case of a Spanish
dancing-girl who had lately become a religious and was said to be
working miracles in Andalusia. In this conversation the missionary
took no part, nor could he even follow it with much interest. He
asked himself whether he had been on the frontier so long that he
had quite lost his taste for the talk of clever men. But before
they separated for the night María de Allande spoke a word in his
ear, in English.
"You are distrait, Father Ferrand. Are you wishing to unmake your
new Bishop already? It is too late. Jean Marie Latour--am I
right?"
BOOK ONE
THE VICAR APOSTOLIC
1
THE CRUCIFORM TREE
One afternoon in the autumn of 1851 a solitary horseman, followed
by a pack-mule, was pushing through an arid stretch of country
somewhere in central New Mexico. He had lost his way, and was
trying to get back to the trail, with only his compass and his
sense of direction for guides. The difficulty was that the country
in which he found himself was so featureless--or rather, that it
was crowded with features, all exactly alike. As far as he could
see, on every side, the landscape was heaped up into monotonous red
sand-hills, not much larger than haycocks, and very much the shape
of haycocks. One could not have believed that in the number of
square miles a man is able to sweep with the eye there could be so
many uniform red hills. He had been riding among them since early
morning, and the look of the country had no more changed than if he
had stood still. He must have travelled through thirty miles of
these conical red hills, winding his way in the narrow cracks
between them, and he had begun to think that he would never see
anything else. They were so exactly like one another that he
seemed to be wandering in some geometrical nightmare; flattened
cones, they were, more the shape of Mexican ovens than haycocks--
yes, exactly the shape of Mexican ovens, red as brick-dust, and
naked of vegetation except for small juniper trees. And the
junipers, too, were the shape of Mexican ovens. Every conical hill
was spotted with smaller cones of juniper, a uniform yellowish
green, as the hills were a uniform red. The hills thrust out of
the ground so thickly that they seemed to be pushing each other,
elbowing each other aside, tipping each other over.
The blunted pyramid, repeated so many hundred times upon his retina
and crowding down upon him in the heat, had confused the traveller,
who was sensitive to the shape of things.
"Mais, c'est fantastique!" he muttered, closing his eyes to rest
them from the intrusive omnipresence of the triangle.
When he opened his eyes again, his glance immediately fell upon one
juniper which differed in shape from the others. It was not a
thick-growing cone, but a naked, twisted trunk, perhaps ten feet
high, and at the top it parted into two lateral, flat-lying
branches, with a little crest of green in the centre, just above
the cleavage. Living vegetation could not present more faithfully
the form of the Cross.
The traveller dismounted, drew from his pocket a much worn book,
and baring his head, knelt at the foot of the cruciform tree.
Under his buckskin riding-coat he wore a black vest and the cravat
and collar of a churchman. A young priest, at his devotions; and a
priest in a thousand, one knew at a glance. His bowed head was not
that of an ordinary man,--it was built for the seat of a fine
intelligence. His brow was open, generous, reflective, his
features handsome and somewhat severe. There was a singular
elegance about the hands below the fringed cuffs of the buckskin
jacket. Everything showed him to be a man of gentle birth--brave,
sensitive, courteous. His manners, even when he was alone in the
desert, were distinguished. He had a kind of courtesy toward
himself, toward his beasts, toward the juniper tree before which he
knelt, and the God whom he was addressing.
His devotions lasted perhaps half an hour, and when he rose he
looked refreshed. He began talking to his mare in halting Spanish,
asking whether she agreed with him that it would be better to push
on, weary as she was, in hope of finding the trail. He had no
water left in his canteen, and the horses had had none since
yesterday morning. They had made a dry camp in these hills last
night. The animals were almost at the end of their endurance, but
they would not recuperate until they got water, and it seemed best
to spend their last strength in searching for it.
On a long caravan trip across Texas this man had had some
experience of thirst, as the party with which he travelled was
several times put on a meagre water ration for days together. But
he had not suffered then as he did now. Since morning he had had a
feeling of illness; the taste of fever in his mouth, and alarming
seizures of vertigo. As these conical hills pressed closer and
closer upon him, he began to wonder whether his long wayfaring from
the mountains of Auvergne were possibly to end here. He reminded
himself of that cry, wrung from his Saviour on the Cross, "J'ai
soif!" Of all our Lord's physical sufferings, only one, "I
thirst," rose to His lips. Empowered by long training, the young
priest blotted himself out of his own consciousness and meditated
upon the anguish of his Lord. The Passion of Jesus became for him
the only reality; the need of his own body was but a part of that
conception.
His mare stumbled, breaking his mood of contemplation. He was
sorrier for his beasts than for himself. He, supposed to be the
intelligence of the party, had got the poor animals into this
interminable desert of ovens. He was afraid he had been absent-
minded, had been pondering his problem instead of heeding the way.
His problem was how to recover a Bishopric. He was a Vicar
Apostolic, lacking a Vicarate. He was thrust out; his flock would
have none of him.
The traveller was Jean Marie Latour, consecrated Vicar Apostolic of
New Mexico and Bishop of Agathonica in partibus at Cincinnati a
year ago--and ever since then he had been trying to reach his
Vicarate. No one in Cincinnati could tell him how to get to New
Mexico--no one had ever been there. Since young Father Latour's
arrival in America, a railroad had been built through from New York
to Cincinnati; but there it ended. New Mexico lay in the middle of
a dark continent. The Ohio merchants knew of two routes only. One
was the Santa Fé trail from St. Louis, but at that time it was very
dangerous because of Comanche Indian raids. His friends advised
Father Latour to go down the river to New Orleans, thence by boat
to Galveston, across Texas to San Antonio, and to wind up into New
Mexico along the Rio Grande valley. This he had done, but with
what misadventures!
His steamer was wrecked and sunk in the Galveston harbour, and he
had lost all his worldly possessions except his books, which he
saved at the risk of his life. He crossed Texas with a traders'
caravan, and approaching San Antonio he was hurt in jumping from an
overturning wagon, and had to lie for three months in the crowded
house of a poor Irish family, waiting for his injured leg to get
strong.
It was nearly a year after he had embarked upon the Mississippi
that the young Bishop, at about the sunset hour of a summer
afternoon, at last beheld the old settlement toward which he had
been journeying so long. The wagon train had been going all day
through a greasewood plain, when late in the afternoon the
teamsters began shouting that over yonder was the Villa. Across
the level, Father Latour could distinguish low brown shapes, like
earthworks, lying at the base of wrinkled green mountains with bare
tops,--wave-like mountains, resembling billows beaten up from a
flat sea by a heavy gale; and their green was of two colours--aspen
and evergreen, not intermingled but lying in solid areas of light
and dark.
As the wagons went forward and the sun sank lower, a sweep of red
carnelian-coloured hills lying at the foot of the mountains came
into view; they curved like two arms about a depression in the
plain; and in that depression was Santa Fé, at last! A thin,
wavering adobe town . . . a green plaza . . . at one end a church
with two earthen towers that rose high above the flatness. The
long main street began at the church, the town seemed to flow from
it like a stream from a spring. The church towers, and all the low
adobe houses, were rose colour in that light,--a little darker in
tone than the amphitheatre of red hills behind; and periodically
the plumes of poplars flashed like gracious accent marks,--
inclining and recovering themselves in the wind.
The young Bishop was not alone in the exaltation of that hour;
beside him rode Father Joseph Vaillant, his boyhood friend, who had
made this long pilgrimage with him and shared his dangers. The two
rode into Santa Fé together, claiming it for the glory of God.
* * *
How, then, had Father Latour come to be here in the sand-hills,
many miles from his seat, unattended, far out of his way and with
no knowledge of how to get back to it?
On his arrival at Santa Fé, this was what had happened: The
Mexican priests there had refused to recognize his authority. They
disclaimed any knowledge of a Vicarate Apostolic, or a Bishop of
Agathonica. They said they were under the jurisdiction of the
Bishop of Durango, and had received no instructions to the
contrary. If Father Latour was to be their Bishop, where were his
credentials? A parchment and letters, he knew, had been sent to
the Bishop of Durango, but these had evidently got no farther.
There was no postal service in this part of the world; the quickest
and surest way to communicate with the Bishop of Durango was to go
to him. So, having travelled for nearly a year to reach Santa Fé,
Father Latour left it after a few weeks, and set off alone on
horseback to ride down into Old Mexico and back, a journey of full
three thousand miles.
He had been warned that there were many trails leading off the Rio
Grande road, and that a stranger might easily mistake his way. For
the first few days he had been cautious and watchful. Then he must
have grown careless and turned into some purely local trail. When
he realized that he was astray, his canteen was already empty and
his horses seemed too exhausted to retrace their steps. He had
persevered in this sandy track, which grew ever fainter, reasoning
that it must lead somewhere.
All at once Father Latour thought he felt a change in the body of
his mare. She lifted her head for the first time in a long while,
and seemed to redistribute her weight upon her legs. The pack-mule
behaved in a similar manner, and both quickened their pace. Was it
possible they scented water?
Nearly an hour went by, and then, winding between two hills that
were like all the hundreds they had passed, the two beasts whinnied
simultaneously. Below them, in the midst of that wavy ocean of
sand, was a green thread of verdure and a running stream. This
ribbon in the desert seemed no wider than a man could throw a
stone,--and it was greener than anything Latour had ever seen, even
in his own greenest corner of the Old World. But for the quivering
of the hide on his mare's neck and shoulders, he might have thought
this a vision, a delusion of thirst.
Running water, clover fields, cottonwoods, acacias, little adobe
houses with brilliant gardens, a boy driving a flock of white goats
toward the stream,--that was what the young Bishop saw.
A few moments later, when he was struggling with his horses, trying
to keep them from overdrinking, a young girl with a black shawl
over her head came running toward him. He thought he had never
seen a kindlier face. Her greeting was that of a Christian.
"Ave María Purísima, Señor. Whence do you come?"
"Blessed child," he replied in Spanish, "I am a priest who has lost
his way. I am famished for water."
"A priest?" she cried, "that is not possible! Yet I look at you,
and it is true. Such a thing has never happened to us before; it
must be in answer to my father's prayers. Run, Pedro, and tell
father and Salvatore."
2
HIDDEN WATER
An hour later, as darkness came over the sand-hills, the young
Bishop was seated at supper in the mother-house of this Mexican
settlement--which, he learned, was appropriately called Agua
Secreta, Hidden Water. At the table with him were his host, an old
man called Benito, the oldest son, and two grandsons. The old man
was a widower, and his daughter, Josepha, the girl who had run to
meet the Bishop at the stream, was his housekeeper. Their supper
was a pot of frijoles cooked with meat, bread and goat's milk,
fresh cheese and ripe apples.
From the moment he entered this room with its thick whitewashed
adobe walls, Father Latour had felt a kind of peace about it. In
its bareness and simplicity there was something comely, as there
was about the serious girl who had placed their food before them
and who now stood in the shadows against the wall, her eager eyes
fixed upon his face. He found himself very much at home with the
four dark-headed men who sat beside him in the candlelight. Their
manners were gentle, their voices low and agreeable. When he said
grace before meat, the men had knelt on the floor beside the table.
The grandfather declared that the Blessed Virgin must have led the
Bishop from his path and brought him here to baptize the children
and to sanctify the marriages. Their settlement was little known,
he said. They had no papers for their land and were afraid the
Americans might take it away from them. There was no one in their
settlement who could read or write. Salvatore, his oldest son, had
gone all the way to Albuquerque to find a wife, and had married
there. But the priest had charged him twenty pesos, and that was
half of all he had saved to buy furniture and glass windows for his
house. His brothers and cousins, discouraged by his experience,
had taken wives without the marriage sacrament.
In answer to the Bishop's questions, they told him the simple story
of their lives. They had here all they needed to make them happy.
They spun and wove from the fleece of their flocks, raised their
own corn and wheat and tobacco, dried their plums and apricots for
winter. Once a year the boys took the grain up to Albuquerque to
have it ground, and bought such luxuries as sugar and coffee. They
had bees, and when sugar was high they sweetened with honey.
Benito did not know in what year his grandfather had settled here,
coming from Chihuahua with all his goods in ox-carts. "But it was
soon after the time when the French killed their king. My
grandfather had heard talk of that before he left home, and used to
tell us boys about it when he was an old man."
"Perhaps you have guessed that I am a Frenchman," said Father
Latour.
No, they had not, but they felt sure he was not an American. José,
the elder grandson, had been watching the visitor uncertainly. He
was a handsome boy, with a triangle of black hair hanging over his
rather sullen eyes. He now spoke for the first time.
"They say at Albuquerque that now we are all Americans, but that is
not true, Padre. I will never be an American. They are infidels."
"Not all, my son. I have lived among Americans in the north for
ten years, and I found many devout Catholics."
The young man shook his head. "They destroyed our churches when
they were fighting us, and stabled their horses in them. And now
they will take our religion away from us. We want our own ways and
our own religion."
Father Latour began to tell them about his friendly relations with
Protestants in Ohio, but they had not room in their minds for two
ideas; there was one Church, and the rest of the world was infidel.
One thing they could understand; that he had here in his saddle-
bags his vestments, the altar stone, and all the equipment for
celebrating the Mass; and that to-morrow morning, after Mass, he
would hear confessions, baptize, and sanctify marriages.
After supper Father Latour took up a candle and began to examine
the holy images on the shelf over the fireplace. The wooden
figures of the saints, found in even the poorest Mexican houses,
always interested him. He had never yet seen two alike. These
over Benito's fireplace had come in the ox-carts from Chihuahua
nearly sixty years ago. They had been carved by some devout soul,
and brightly painted, though the colours had softened with time,
and they were dressed in cloth, like dolls. They were much more to
his taste than the factory-made plaster images in his mission
churches in Ohio--more like the homely stone carvings on the front
of old parish churches in Auvergne. The wooden Virgin was a
sorrowing mother indeed,--long and stiff and severe, very long from
the neck to the waist, even longer from waist to feet, like some of
the rigid mosaics of the Eastern Church. She was dressed in black,
with a white apron, and a black reboso over her head, like a
Mexican woman of the poor. At her right was St. Joseph, and at her
left a fierce little equestrian figure, a saint wearing the costume
of a Mexican ranchero, velvet trousers richly embroidered and wide
at the ankle, velvet jacket and silk shirt, and a high-crowned,
broad-brimmed Mexican sombrero. He was attached to his fat horse
by a wooden pivot driven through the saddle.
The younger grandson saw the priest's interest in this figure.
"That," he said, "is my name saint, Santiago."
"Oh, yes; Santiago. He was a missionary, like me. In our country
we call him St. Jacques, and he carries a staff and a wallet--but
here he would need a horse, surely."
The boy looked at him in surprise. "But he is the saint of horses.
Isn't he that in your country?"
The Bishop shook his head. "No. I know nothing about that. How
is he the saint of horses?"
"He blesses the mares and makes them fruitful. Even the Indians
believe that. They know that if they neglect to pray to Santiago
for a few years, the foals do not come right."
A little later, after his devotions, the young Bishop lay down in
Benito's deep feather-bed, thinking how different was this night
from his anticipation of it. He had expected to make a dry camp in
the wilderness, and to sleep under a juniper tree, like the
Prophet, tormented by thirst. But here he lay in comfort and
safety, with love for his fellow creatures flowing like peace about
his heart. If Father Vaillant were here, he would say, "A
miracle"; that the Holy Mother, to whom he had addressed himself
before the cruciform tree, had led him hither. And it was a
miracle, Father Latour knew that. But his dear Joseph must always
have the miracle very direct and spectacular, not with Nature, but
against it. He would almost be able to tell the colour of the
mantle Our Lady wore when She took the mare by the bridle back
yonder among the junipers and led her out of the pathless sand-
hills, as the angel led the ass on the Flight into Egypt.
* * *
In the late afternoon of the following day the Bishop was walking
alone along the banks of the life-giving stream, reviewing in his
mind the events of the morning. Benito and his daughter had made
an altar before the sorrowful wooden Virgin, and placed upon it
candles and flowers. Every soul in the village, except Salvatore's
sick wife, had come to the Mass. He had performed marriages and
baptisms and heard confessions and confirmed until noon. Then came
the christening feast. José had killed a kid the night before, and
immediately after her confirmation Josepha slipped away to help her
sisters-in-law roast it. When Father Latour asked her to give him
his portion without chili, the girl inquired whether it was more
pious to eat it like that. He hastened to explain that Frenchmen,
as a rule, do not like high seasoning, lest she should hereafter
deprive herself of her favourite condiment.
After the feast the sleepy children were taken home, the men
gathered in the plaza to smoke under the great cottonwood trees.
The Bishop, feeling a need of solitude, had gone forth to walk,
firmly refusing an escort. On his way he passed the earthen
thrashing-floor, where these people beat out their grain and
winnowed it in the wind, like the Children of Israel. He heard a
frantic bleating behind him, and was overtaken by Pedro with the
great flock of goats, indignant at their day's confinement, and
wild to be in the fringe of pasture along the hills. They leaped
the stream like arrows speeding from the bow, and regarded the
Bishop as they passed him with their mocking, humanly intelligent
smile. The young bucks were light and elegant in figure, with
their pointed chins and polished tilted horns. There was great
variety in their faces, but in nearly all something supercilious
and sardonic. The angoras had long silky hair of a dazzling
whiteness. As they leaped through the sunlight they brought to
mind the chapter in the Apocalypse, about the whiteness of them
that were washed in the blood of the Lamb. The young Bishop smiled
at his mixed theology. But though the goat had always been the
symbol of pagan lewdness, he told himself that their fleece had
warmed many a good Christian, and their rich milk nourished sickly
children.
About a mile above the village he came upon the water-head, a
spring overhung by the sharp-leafed variety of cottonwood called
water willow. All about it crowded the oven-shaped hills,--nothing
to hint of water until it rose miraculously out of the parched and
thirsty sea of sand. Some subterranean stream found an outlet
here, was released from darkness. The result was grass and trees
and flowers and human life; household order and hearths from which
the smoke of burning piñon logs rose like incense to Heaven.
The Bishop sat a long time by the spring, while the declining sun
poured its beautifying light over those low, rose-tinted houses and
bright gardens. The old grandfather had shown him arrow-heads and
corroded medals, and a sword hilt, evidently Spanish, that he had
found in the earth near the water-head. This spot had been a
refuge for humanity long before these Mexicans had come upon it.
It was older than history, like those well-heads in his own country
where the Roman settlers had set up the image of a river goddess,
and later the Christian priests had planted a cross. This
settlement was his Bishopric in miniature; hundreds of square miles
of thirsty desert, then a spring, a village, old men trying to
remember their catechism to teach their grandchildren. The Faith
planted by the Spanish friars and watered with their blood was not
dead; it awaited only the toil of the husbandman. He was not
troubled about the revolt in Santa Fé, or the powerful old native
priest who led it--Father Martínez, of Taos, who had ridden over
from his parish expressly to receive the new Vicar and to drive him
away. He was rather terrifying, that old priest, with his big
head, violent Spanish face, and shoulders like a buffalo; but the
day of his tyranny was almost over.
3
THE BISHOP CHEZ LUI
It was the late afternoon of Christmas Day, and the Bishop sat at
his desk writing letters. Since his return to Santa Fé his
official correspondence had been heavy; but the closely-written
sheets over which he bent with a thoughtful smile were not to go to
Monsignori, or to Archbishops, or to the heads of religious
houses,--but to France, to Auvergne, to his own little town; to a
certain grey, winding street, paved with cobbles and shaded by tall
chestnuts on which, even to-day, some few brown leaves would be
clinging, or dropping one by one, to be caught in the cold green
ivy on the walls.
The Bishop had returned from his long horseback trip into Mexico
only nine days ago. At Durango the old Mexican prelate there had,
after some delay, delivered to him the documents that defined his
Vicarate, and Father Latour rode back the fifteen hundred miles to
Santa Fé through the sunny days of early winter. On his arrival he
found amity instead of enmity awaiting him. Father Vaillant had
already endeared himself to the people. The Mexican priest who was
in charge of the pro-cathedral had gracefully retired--gone to
visit his family in Old Mexico, and carried his effects along with
him. Father Vaillant had taken possession of the priest's house,
and with the help of carpenters and the Mexican women of the parish
had put it in order. The Yankee traders and the military
Commandant at Fort Marcy had sent generous contributions of bedding
and blankets and odd pieces of furniture.
The Episcopal residence was an old adobe house, much out of repair,
but with possibilities of comfort. Father Latour had chosen for
his study a room at one end of the wing. There he sat, as this
afternoon of Christmas Day faded into evening. It was a long room
of an agreeable shape. The thick clay walls had been finished on
the inside by the deft palms of Indian women, and had that
irregular and intimate quality of things made entirely by the human
hand. There was a reassuring solidity and depth about those walls,
rounded at door-sills and window-sills, rounded in wide wings about
the corner fireplace. The interior had been newly whitewashed in
the Bishop's absence, and the flicker of the fire threw a rosy glow
over the wavy surfaces, never quite evenly flat, never a dead
white, for the ruddy colour of the clay underneath gave a warm tone
to the lime wash. The ceiling was made of heavy cedar beams,
overlaid by aspen saplings, all of one size, lying close together
like the ribs in corduroy and clad in their ruddy inner skins. The
earth floor was covered with thick Indian blankets; two blankets,
very old, and beautiful in design and colour, were hung on the
walls like tapestries.
On either side of the fire-place plastered recesses were let into
the wall. In one, narrow and arched, stood the Bishop's crucifix.
The other was square, with a carved wooden door, like a grill, and
within it lay a few rare and beautiful books. The rest of the
Bishop's library was on open shelves at one end of the room.
The furniture of the house Father Vaillant had bought from the
departed Mexican priest. It was heavy and somewhat clumsy, but not
unsightly. All the wood used in making tables and bedsteads was
hewn from tree boles with the ax or hatchet. Even the thick planks
on which the Bishop's theological books rested were ax-dressed.
There was not at that time a turning-lathe or a saw-mill in all
northern New Mexico. The native carpenters whittled out chair
rungs and table legs, and fitted them together with wooden pins
instead of iron nails. Wooden chests were used in place of
dressers with drawers, and sometimes these were beautifully carved,
or covered with decorated leather. The desk at which the Bishop
sat writing was an importation, a walnut "secretary" of American
make (sent down by one of the officers of the Fort at Father
Vaillant's suggestion). His silver candlesticks he had brought
from France long ago. They were given to him by a beloved aunt
when he was ordained.
The young Bishop's pen flew over the paper, leaving a trail of
fine, finished French script behind, in violet ink.
"My new study, dear brother, as I write, is full of the delicious
fragrance of the piñon logs burning in my fireplace. (We use this
kind of cedar-wood altogether for fuel, and it is highly aromatic,
yet delicate. At our meanest tasks we have a perpetual odour of
incense about us.) I wish that you, and my dear sister, could look
in upon this scene of comfort and peace. We missionaries wear a
frock-coat and wide-brimmed hat all day, you know, and look like
American traders. What a pleasure to come home at night and put on
my old cassock! I feel more like a priest then--for so much of the
day I must be a 'business man'!--and, for some reason, more like a
Frenchman. All day I am an American in speech and thought--yes, in
heart, too. The kindness of the American traders, and especially
of the military officers at the Fort, commands more than a
superficial loyalty. I mean to help the officers at their task
here. I can assist them more than they realize. The Church can do
more than the Fort to make these poor Mexicans 'good Americans.'
And it is for the people's good; there is no other way in which
they can better their condition.
"But this is not the day to write you of my duties or my purposes.
To-night we are exiles, happy ones, thinking of home. Father
Joseph has sent away our Mexican woman,--he will make a good cook
of her in time, but to-night he is preparing our Christmas dinner
himself. I had thought he would be worn out to-day, for he has
been conducting a Novena of High Masses, as is the custom here
before Christmas. After the Novena, and the midnight Mass last
night, I supposed he would be willing to rest to-day; but not a bit
of it. You know his motto, 'Rest in action.' I brought him a
bottle of olive-oil on my horse all the way from Durango (I say
'olive-oil,' because here 'oil' means something to grease the
wheels of wagons!), and he is making some sort of cooked salad. We
have no green vegetables here in winter, and no one seems ever to
have heard of that blessed plant, the lettuce. Joseph finds it
hard to do without salad-oil, he always had it in Ohio, though it
was a great extravagance. He has been in the kitchen all
afternoon. There is only an open fire-place for cooking, and an
earthen roasting-oven out in the court-yard. But he has never
failed me in anything yet; and I think I can promise you that to-
night two Frenchmen will sit down to a good dinner and drink your
health."
The Bishop laid down his pen and lit his two candles with a
splinter from the fire, then stood dusting his fingers by the deep-
set window, looking out at the pale blue darkening sky. The
evening-star hung above the amber afterglow, so soft, so brilliant
that she seemed to bathe in her own silver light. Ave Maris
Stella, the song which one of his friends at the Seminary used to
intone so beautifully; humming it softly he returned to his desk
and was just dipping his pen in the ink when the door opened, and a
voice said,
"Monseigneur est servi! Alors, Jean, veux-tu apporter les
bougies?"
The Bishop carried the candles into the dining-room, where the
table was laid and Father Vaillant was changing his cook's apron
for his cassock. Crimson from standing over an open fire, his
rugged face was even homelier than usual--though one of the first
things a stranger decided upon meeting Father Joseph was that the
Lord had made few uglier men. He was short, skinny, bow-legged
from a life on horseback, and his countenance had little to
recommend it but kindliness and vivacity. He looked old, though he
was then about forty. His skin was hardened and seamed by exposure
to weather in a bitter climate, his neck scrawny and wrinkled like
an old man's. A bold, blunt-tipped nose, positive chin, a very
large mouth,--the lips thick and succulent but never loose, never
relaxed, always stiffened by effort or working with excitement.
His hair, sunburned to the shade of dry hay, had originally been
tow-coloured; "Blanchet" ("Whitey") he was always called at the
Seminary. Even his eyes were near-sighted, and of such a pale,
watery blue as to be unimpressive. There was certainly nothing in
his outer case to suggest the fierceness and fortitude and fire of
the man, and yet even the thick-blooded Mexican half-breeds knew
his quality at once. If the Bishop returned to find Santa Fé
friendly to him, it was because everybody believed in Father
Vaillant--homely, real, persistent, with the driving power of a
dozen men in his poorly-built body.
On coming into the dining-room, Bishop Latour placed his
candlesticks over the fire-place, since there were already six upon
the table, illuminating the brown soup-pot. After they had stood
for a moment in prayer, Father Joseph lifted the cover and ladled
the soup into the plates, a dark onion soup with croutons. The
Bishop tasted it critically and smiled at his companion. After the
spoon had travelled to his lips a few times, he put it down and
leaning back in his chair remarked,
"Think of it, Blanchet; in all this vast country between the
Mississippi and the Pacific Ocean, there is probably not another
human being who could make a soup like this."
"Not unless he is a Frenchman," said Father Joseph. He had tucked
a napkin over the front of his cassock and was losing no time in
reflection.
"I am not deprecating your individual talent, Joseph," the Bishop
continued, "but, when one thinks of it, a soup like this is not the
work of one man. It is the result of a constantly refined
tradition. There are nearly a thousand years of history in this
soup."
Father Joseph frowned intently at the earthen pot in the middle of
the table. His pale, near-sighted eyes had always the look of
peering into distance. "C'est ça, c'est vrai" he murmured. "But
how," he exclaimed as he filled the Bishop's plate again, "how can
a man make a proper soup without leeks, that king of vegetables?
We cannot go on eating onions for ever."
After carrying away the soupière, he brought in the roast chicken
and pommes sautées. "And salad, Jean," he continued as he began to
carve. "Are we to eat dried beans and roots for the rest of our
lives? Surely we must find time to make a garden. Ah, my garden
at Sandusky! And you could snatch me away from it! You will admit
that you never ate better lettuces in France. And my vineyard; a
natural habitat for the vine, that. I tell you, the shores of Lake
Erie will be covered with vineyards one day. I envy the man who is
drinking my wine. Ah well, that is a missionary's life; to plant
where another shall reap."
As this was Christmas Day, the two friends were speaking in their
native tongue. For years they had made it a practice to speak
English together, except upon very special occasions, and of late
they conversed in Spanish, in which they both needed to gain
fluency.
"And yet sometimes you used to chafe a little at your dear Sandusky
and its comforts," the Bishop reminded him--"to say that you would
end a home-staying parish priest, after all."
"Of course, one wants to eat one's cake and have it, as they say in
Ohio. But no farther, Jean. This is far enough. Do not drag me
any farther." Father Joseph began gently to coax the cork from a
bottle of red wine with his fingers. "This I begged for your dinner
at the hacienda where I went to baptize the baby on St. Thomas's
Day. It is not easy to separate these rich Mexicans from their
French wine. They know its worth." He poured a few drops and tried
it. "A slight taste of the cork; they do not know how to keep it
properly. However, it is quite good enough for missionaries."
"You ask me not to drag you any farther, Joseph. I wish," Bishop
Latour leaned back in his chair and locked his hands together
beneath his chin, "I wish I knew how far this is! Does anyone know
the extent of this diocese, or of this territory? The Commandant
at the Fort seems as much in the dark as I. He says I can get some
information from the scout, Kit Carson, who lives at Taos."
"Don't begin worrying about the diocese, Jean. For the present,
Santa Fé is the diocese. Establish order at home. To-morrow I
will have a reckoning with the church-wardens, who allowed that
band of drunken cowboys to come in to the midnight Mass and defile
the font. There is enough to do here. Festina lente. I have made
a resolve not to go more than three days' journey from Santa Fé for
one year."
The Bishop smiled and shook his head. "And when you were at the
Seminary, you made a resolve to lead a life of contemplation."
A light leaped into Father Joseph's homely face. "I have not yet
renounced that hope. One day you will release me, and I will
return to some religious house in France and end my days in
devotion to the Holy Mother. For the time being, it is my destiny
to serve Her in action. But this is far enough, Jean."
The Bishop again shook his head and murmured, "Who knows how far?"
The wiry little priest whose life was to be a succession of
mountain ranges, pathless deserts, yawning canyons and swollen
rivers, who was to carry the Cross into territories yet unknown and
unnamed, who would wear down mules and horses and scouts and stage-
drivers, tonight looked apprehensively at his superior and
repeated, "No more, Jean. This is far enough." Then making haste
to change the subject, he said briskly, "A bean salad was the best
I could do for you; but with onion, and just a suspicion of salt
pork, it is not so bad."
Over the compote of dried plums they fell to talking of the great
yellow ones that grew in the old Latour garden at home. Their
thoughts met in that tilted cobble street, winding down a hill,
with the uneven garden walls and tall horse-chestnuts on either
side; a lonely street after nightfall, with soft street lamps
shaped like lanterns at the darkest turnings. At the end of it was
the church where the Bishop made his first Communion, with a grove
of flat-cut plane trees in front, under which the market was held
on Tuesdays and Fridays.
While they lingered over these memories--an indulgence they seldom
permitted themselves--the two missionaries were startled by a
volley of rifle-shots and bloodcurdling yells without, and the
galloping of horses. The Bishop half rose, but Father Joseph
reassured him with a shrug.
"Do not discompose yourself. The same thing happened here on the
eve of All Souls' Day. A band of drunken cowboys, like those who
came into the church last night, go out to the pueblo and get the
Tesuque Indian boys drunk, and then they ride in to serenade the
soldiers at the Fort in this manner."
4
A BELL AND A MIRACLE
On the morning after the Bishop's return from Durango, after his
first night in his Episcopal residence, he had a pleasant awakening
from sleep. He had ridden into the court-yard after nightfall,
having changed horses at a rancho and pushed on nearly sixty miles
in order to reach home. Consequently he slept late the next
morning--did not awaken until six o'clock, when he heard the
Angelus ringing. He recovered consciousness slowly, unwilling to
let go of a pleasing delusion that he was in Rome. Still half
believing that he was lodged near St. John Lateran, he yet heard
every stroke of the Ave Maria bell, marvelling to hear it rung
correctly (nine quick strokes in all, divided into threes, with an
interval between); and from a bell with beautiful tone. Full,
clear, with something bland and suave, each note floated through
the air like a globe of silver. Before the nine strokes were done
Rome faded, and behind it he sensed something Eastern, with palm
trees,--Jerusalem, perhaps, though he had never been there.
Keeping his eyes closed, he cherished for a moment this sudden,
pervasive sense of the East. Once before he had been carried out
of the body thus to a place far away. It had happened in a street
in New Orleans. He had turned a corner and come upon an old woman
with a basket of yellow flowers; sprays of yellow sending out a
honey-sweet perfume. Mimosa--but before he could think of the name
he was overcome by a feeling of place, was dropped, cassock and
all, into a garden in the south of France where he had been sent
one winter in his childhood to recover from an illness. And now
this silvery bell note had carried him farther and faster than
sound could travel.
When he joined Father Vaillant at coffee, that impetuous man who
could never keep a secret asked him anxiously whether he had heard
anything.
"I thought I heard the Angelus, Father Joseph, but my reason tells
me that only a long sea voyage could bring me within sound of such
a bell."
"Not at all," said Father Joseph briskly. "I found that remarkable
bell here, in the basement of old San Miguel. They tell me it has
been here a hundred years or more. There is no church tower in the
place strong enough to hold it--it is very thick and must weigh
close upon eight hundred pounds. But I had a scaffolding built in
the churchyard, and with the help of oxen we raised it and got it
swung on cross-beams. I taught a Mexican boy to ring it properly
against your return."
"But how could it have come here? It is Spanish, I suppose?"
"Yes, the inscription is in Spanish, to St. Joseph, and the date is
1356. It must have been brought up from Mexico City in an ox-cart.
A heroic undertaking, certainly. Nobody knows where it was cast.
But they do tell a story about it: that it was pledged to St.
Joseph in the wars with the Moors, and that the people of some
besieged city brought all their plate and silver and gold ornaments
and threw them in with the baser metals. There is certainly a good
deal of silver in the bell, nothing else would account for its
tone."
Father Latour reflected. "And the silver of the Spaniards was
really Moorish, was it not? If not actually of Moorish make,
copied from their design. The Spaniards knew nothing about working
silver except as they learned it from the Moors."
"What are you doing, Jean? Trying to make my bell out an infidel?"
Father Joseph asked impatiently.
The Bishop smiled. "I am trying to account for the fact that when
I heard it this morning it struck me at once as something oriental.
A learned Scotch Jesuit in Montreal told me that our first bells,
and the introduction of the bell in the service all over Europe,
originally came from the East. He said the Templars brought the
Angelus back from the Crusades, and it is really an adaptation of a
Moslem custom."
Father Vaillant sniffed. "I noticed that scholars always manage to
dig out something belittling," he complained.
"Belittling? I should say the reverse. I am glad to think there
is Moorish silver in your bell. When we first came here, the one
good workman we found in Santa Fé was a silversmith. The Spaniards
handed on their skill to the Mexicans, and the Mexicans have taught
the Navajos to work silver; but it all came from the Moors."
"I am no scholar, as you know," said Father Vaillant rising. "And
this morning we have many practical affairs to occupy us. I have
promised that you will give an audience to a good old man, a native
priest from the Indian mission at Santa Clara, who is returning
from Mexico. He has just been on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our
Lady of Guadalupe and has been much edified. He would like to tell
you the story of his experience. It seems that ever since he was
ordained he has desired to visit the shrine. During your absence I
have found how particularly precious is that shrine to all
Catholics in New Mexico. They regard it as the one absolutely
authenticated appearance of the Blessed Virgin in the New World,
and a witness of Her affection for Her Church on this continent."
The Bishop went into his study, and Father Vaillant brought in
Padre Escolastico Herrera, a man of nearly seventy, who had been
forty years in the ministry, and had just accomplished the pious
desire of a lifetime. His mind was still full of the sweetness of
his late experience. He was so rapt that nothing else interested
him. He asked anxiously whether perhaps the Bishop would have more
leisure to attend to him later in the day. But Father Latour
placed a chair for him and told him to proceed.
The old man thanked him for the privilege of being seated. Leaning
forward, with his hands locked between his knees, he told the whole
story of the miraculous appearance, both because it was so dear to
his heart, and because he was sure that no "American" Bishop would
have heard of the occurrence as it was, though at Rome all the
details were well known and two Popes had sent gifts to the shrine.
On Saturday, December 9th, in the year 1531, a poor neophyte of the
monastery of St. James was hurrying down Tapeyac hill to attend
Mass in the City of Mexico. His name was Juan Diego and he was
fifty-five years old. When he was half way down the hill a light
shone in his path, and the Mother of God appeared to him as a young
woman of great beauty, clad in blue and gold. She greeted him by
name and said:
"Juan, seek out thy Bishop and bid him build a church in my honour
on the spot where I now stand. Go then, and I will bide here and
await thy return."
Brother Juan ran into the City and straight to the Bishop's palace,
where he reported the matter. The Bishop was Zumarraga, a
Spaniard. He questioned the monk severely and told him he should
have required a sign of the Lady to assure him that she was indeed
the Mother of God and not some evil spirit. He dismissed the poor
brother harshly and set an attendant to watch his actions.
Juan went forth very downcast and repaired to the house of his
uncle, Bernardino, who was sick of a fever. The two succeeding
days he spent in caring for this aged man who seemed at the point
of death. Because of the Bishop's reproof he had fallen into
doubt, and did not return to the spot where the Lady said She would
await him. On Tuesday he left the City to go back to his monastery
to fetch medicines for Bernardino, but he avoided the place where
he had seen the vision and went by another way.
Again he saw a light in his path and the Virgin appeared to him as
before, saying, "Juan, why goest thou by this way?"
Weeping, he told Her that the Bishop had distrusted his report, and
that he had been employed in caring for his uncle, who was sick
unto death. The Lady spoke to him with all comfort, telling him
that his uncle would be healed within the hour, and that he should
return to Bishop Zumarraga and bid him build a church where She had
first appeared to him. It must be called the shrine of Our Lady of
Guadalupe, after Her dear shrine of that name in Spain. When
Brother Juan replied to Her that the Bishop required a sign, She
said: "Go up on the rocks yonder, and gather roses."
Though it was December and not the season for roses, he ran up
among the rocks and found such roses as he had never seen before.
He gathered them until he had filled his tilma. The tilma was a
mantle worn only by the very poor,--a wretched garment loosely
woven of coarse vegetable fibre and sewn down the middle. When he
returned to the apparition, She bent over the flowers and took
pains to arrange them, then closed the ends of the tilma together
and said to him:
"Go now, and do not open your mantle until you open it before your
Bishop."
Juan sped into the City and gained admission to the Bishop, who was
in council with his Vicar.
"Your Grace," he said, "the Blessed Lady who appeared to me has
sent you these roses for a sign."
At this he held up one end of his tilma and let the roses fall in
profusion to the floor. To his astonishment, Bishop Zumarraga and
his Vicar instantly fell upon their knees among the flowers. On
the inside of his poor mantle was a painting of the Blessed Virgin,
in robes of blue and rose and gold, exactly as She had appeared to
him upon the hillside.
A shrine was built to contain this miraculous portrait, which since
that day has been the goal of countless pilgrimages and has
performed many miracles.
Of this picture Padre Escolastico had much to say: he affirmed that
it was of marvellous beauty, rich with gold, and the colours as
pure and delicate as the tints of early morning. Many painters had
visited the shrine and marvelled that paint could be laid at all
upon such poor and coarse material. In the ordinary way of nature,
the flimsy mantle would have fallen to pieces long ago. The Padre
modestly presented Bishop Latour and Father Joseph with little
medals he had brought from the shrine; on one side a relief of the
miraculous portrait, on the other an inscription: Non fecit
taliter omni nationi. (She hath not dealt so with any nation.)
Father Vaillant was deeply stirred by the priest's recital, and
after the old man had gone he declared to the Bishop that he meant
himself to make a pilgrimage to this shrine at the earliest
opportunity.
"What a priceless thing for the poor converts of a savage country!"
he exclaimed, wiping his glasses, which were clouded by his strong
feeling. "All these poor Catholics who have been so long without
instruction have at least the reassurance of that visitation. It
is a household word with them that their Blessed Mother revealed
Herself in their own country, to a poor convert. Doctrine is well
enough for the wise, Jean; but the miracle is something we can hold
in our hands and love."
Father Vaillant began pacing restlessly up and down as he spoke,
and the Bishop watched him, musing. It was just this in his friend
that was dear to him. "Where there is great love there are always
miracles," he said at length. "One might almost say that an
apparition is human vision corrected by divine love. I do not see
you as you really are, Joseph; I see you through my affection for
you. The Miracles of the Church seem to me to rest not so much
upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us
from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that
for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there
about us always."
BOOK TWO
MISSIONARY JOURNEYS
1
THE WHITE MULES
In mid-March, Father Vaillant was on the road, returning from a
missionary journey to Albuquerque. He was to stop at the rancho of
a rich Mexican, Manuel Lujon, to marry his men and maid servants
who were living in concubinage, and to baptize the children. There
he would spend the night. To-morrow or the day after he would go
on to Santa Fé, halting by the way at the Indian pueblo of Santo
Domingo to hold service. There was a fine old mission church at
Santo Domingo, but the Indians were of a haughty and suspicious
disposition. He had said Mass there on his way to Albuquerque,
nearly a week ago. By dint of canvassing from house to house, and
offering medals and religious colour prints to all who came to
church, he had got together a considerable congregation. It was a
large and prosperous pueblo, set among clean sand-hills, with its
rich irrigated farm lands lying just below, in the valley of the
Rio Grande. His congregation was quiet, dignified, attentive.
They sat on the earth floor, wrapped in their best blankets, repose
in every line of their strong, stubborn backs. He harangued them
in such Spanish as he could command, and they listened with
respect. But bring their children to be baptized, they would not.
The Spaniards had treated them very badly long ago, and they had
been meditating upon their grievance for many generations. Father
Vaillant had not baptized one infant there, but he meant to stop
to-morrow and try again. Then back to his Bishop, provided he
could get his horse up La Bajada Hill.
He had bought his horse from a Yankee trader and had been woefully
deceived. One week's journey of from twenty to thirty miles a day
had shown the beast up for a wind-broken wreck. Father Vaillant's
mind was full of material cares as he approached Manuel Lujon's
place beyond Bernalillo. The rancho was like a little town, with
all its stables, corrals, and stake fences. The casa grande was
long and low, with glass windows and bright blue doors, a portale
running its full length, supported by blue posts. Under this
portale the adobe wall was hung with bridles, saddles, great boots
and spurs, guns and saddle blankets, strings of red peppers, fox
skins, and the skins of two great rattlesnakes.
When Father Vaillant rode in through the gateway, children came
running from every direction, some with no clothing but a little
shirt, and women with no shawls over their black hair came running
after the children. They all disappeared when Manuel Lujon walked
out of the great house, hat in hand, smiling and hospitable. He
was a man of thirty-five, settled in figure and somewhat full under
the chin. He greeted the priest in the name of God and put out a
hand to help him alight, but Father Vaillant sprang quickly to the
ground.
"God be with you, Manuel, and with your house. But where are those
who are to be married?"
"The men are all in the field, Padre. There is no hurry. A little
wine, a little bread, coffee, repose--and then the ceremonies."
"A little wine, very willingly, and bread, too. But not until
afterward. I meant to catch you all at dinner, but I am two hours
late because my horse is bad. Have someone bring in my saddle-
bags, and I will put on my vestments. Send out to the fields for
your men, Señor Lujon. A man can stop work to be married."
The swarthy host was dazed by this dispatch. "But one moment,
Padre. There are all the children to baptize; why not begin with
them, if I cannot persuade you to wash the dust from your sainted
brow and repose a little."
"Take me to a place where I can wash and change my clothes, and I
will be ready before you can get them here. No, I tell you, Lujon,
the marriages first, the baptisms afterward; that order is but
Christian. I will baptize the children to-morrow morning, and
their parents will at least have been married over night."
Father Joseph was conducted to his chamber, and the older boys were
sent running off across the fields to fetch the men. Lujon and his
two daughters began constructing an altar at one end of the sala.
Two old women came to scrub the floor, and another brought chairs
and stools.
"My God, but he is ugly, the Padre!" whispered one of these to the
others. "He must be very holy. And did you see the great wart he
has on his chin? My grandmother could take that away for him if
she were alive, poor soul! Somebody ought to tell him about the
holy mud at Chimayo. That mud might dry it up. But there is
nobody left now who can take warts away."
"No, the times are not so good any more," the other agreed. "And I
doubt if all this marrying will make them any better. Of what use
is it to marry people after they have lived together and had
children? and the man is maybe thinking about another woman, like
Pablo. I saw him coming out of the brush with that oldest girl of
Trinidad's, only Sunday night."
The reappearance of the priest upon the scene cut short further
scandal. He knelt down before the improvised altar and began his
private devotions. The women tiptoed away. Señor Lujon himself
went out toward the servants' quarters to hurry the candidates for
the marriage sacrament. The women were giggling and snatching up
their best shawls. Some of the men had even gashed their hands.
The household crowded into the sala, and Father Vaillant married
couples with great dispatch.
"To-morrow morning, the baptisms," he announced. "And the mothers
see to it that the children are clean, and that there are sponsors
for all."
After he had resumed his travelling-clothes, Father Joseph asked
his host at what hour he dined, remarking that he had been fasting
since an early breakfast.
"We eat when it is ready--a little after sunset, usually. I have
had a young lamb killed for your Reverence."
Father Joseph kindled with interest. "Ah, and how will it be
cooked?"
Señor Lujon shrugged. "Cooked? Why, they put it in a pot with
chili, and some onions, I suppose."
"Ah, that is the point. I have had too much stewed mutton. Will
you permit me to go into the kitchen and cook my portion in my own
way?"
Lujon waved his hand. "My house is yours, Padre. Into the kitchen
I never go--too many women. But there it is, and the woman in
charge is named Rosa."
When the Father entered the kitchen he found a crowd of women
discussing the marriages. They quickly dispersed, leaving old Rosa
by her fire-place, where hung a kettle from which issued the savour
of cooking mutton fat, all too familiar to Father Joseph. He found
a half sheep hanging outside the door, covered with a bloody sack,
and asked Rosa to heat the oven for him, announcing that he meant
to roast the hind leg.
"But Padre, I baked before the marriages. The oven is almost cold.
It will take an hour to heat it, and it is only two hours till
supper."
"Very well. I can cook my roast in an hour."
"Cook a roast in an hour!" cried the old woman. "Mother of God,
Padre, the blood will not be dried in it!"
"Not if I can help it!" said Father Joseph fiercely. "Now hurry
with the fire, my good woman."
When the Padre carved his roast at the supper-table, the serving-
girls stood behind his chair and looked with horror at the delicate
stream of pink juice that followed the knife. Manuel Lujon took a
slice for politeness, but he did not eat it. Father Vaillant had
his gigot to himself.
All the men and boys sat down at the long table with the host, the
women and children would eat later. Father Joseph and Lujon, at
one end, had a bottle of white Bordeaux between them. It had been
brought from Mexico City on mule-back, Lujon said. They were
discussing the road back to Santa Fé, and when the missionary
remarked that he would stop at Santo Domingo, the host asked him
why he did not get a horse there. "I am afraid you will hardly get
back to Santa Fé on your own. The pueblo is famous for breeding
good horses. You might make a trade."
"No," said Father Vaillant. "Those Indians are of a sullen
disposition. If I were to have dealings with them, they would
suspect my motives. If we are to save their souls we must make it
clear that we want no profit for ourselves, as I told Father
Gallegos in Albuquerque."
Manuel Lujon laughed and glanced down the table at his men, who
were all 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-Dome, 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, bareheaded, 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 grey 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, bareheaded, 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 washout 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.
"Christóbal!" she wailed. "Oh, Christóbal!"
"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, Christóbal, 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.
On their ride back to Carson's ranch, Magdalena was put in Father
Vaillant's care, and the Bishop and the scout rode together.
Carson said he had become a Catholic merely as a matter of form, as
Americans usually did when they married a Mexican girl. His wife
was a good woman and very devout; but religion had seemed to him
pretty much a woman's affair until his last trip to California. He
had been sick out there, and the Fathers at one of the missions
took care of him. "I began to see things different, and thought I
might some day be a Catholic in earnest. I was brought up to think
priests were rascals, and that the nuns were bad women,--all the
stuff they talk back in Missouri. A good many of the native
priests here bear out that story. Our Padre Martínez at Taos is an
old scapegrace, if ever there was one; he's got children and
grandchildren in almost every settlement around here. And Padre
Lucero at Arroyo Hondo is a miser, takes everything a poor man's
got to give him a Christian burial."
The Bishop discussed the needs of his people at length with Carson.
He felt great confidence in his judgment. The two men were about
the same age, both a little over forty, and both had been sobered
and sharpened by wide experience. Carson had been guide in world-
renowned explorations, but he was still almost as poor as in the
days when he was a beaver trapper. He lived in a little adobe
house with his Mexican wife. The great country of desert and
mountain ranges between Santa Fé and the Pacific coast was not yet
mapped or chartered; the most reliable map of it was in Kit
Carson's brain. This Missourian, whose eye was so quick to read a
landscape or a human face, could not read a printed page. He could
at that time barely write his own name. Yet one felt in him a
quick and discriminating intelligence. That he was illiterate was
an accident; he had got ahead of books, gone where the printing-
press could not follow him. Out of the hardships of his boyhood--
from fourteen to twenty picking up a bare living as cook or mule-
driver for wagon trains, often in the service of brutal and
desperate characters--he had preserved a clean sense of honour and
a compassionate heart. In talking to the Bishop of poor Magdalena
he said sadly: "I used to see her in Taos when she was such a
pretty girl. Ain't it a pity?"
The degenerate murderer, Buck Scales, was hanged after a short
trial. Early in April the Bishop left Santa Fé on horseback and
rode to St. Louis, on his way to attend the Provincial Council at
Baltimore. When he returned in September, he brought back with him
five courageous nuns, Sisters of Loretto, to found a school for
girls in letterless Santa Fé. He sent at once for Magdalena and
took her into the service of the Sisters. She became housekeeper
and manager of the Sisters' kitchen. She was devoted to the nuns,
and so happy in the service of the Church that when the Bishop
visited the school he used to enter by the kitchen-garden in order
to see her serene and handsome face. For she became beautiful, as
Carson said she had been as a girl. After the blight of her
horrible youth was over, she seemed to bloom again in the household
of God.
BOOK THREE
THE MASS AT ÁCOMA
1
THE WOODEN PARROT
During the first year after his arrival in Santa Fé, the Bishop was
actually in his diocese only about four months. Six months of that
first year were consumed in attending the Plenary Council at
Baltimore, to which he had been summoned. He went on horseback
over the Santa Fé trail to St. Louis, nearly a thousand miles, then
by steamboat to Pittsburgh, across the mountains to Cumberland, and
on to Washington by the new railroad. The return journey was even
slower, as he had with him the five nuns who came to found the
school of Our Lady of Light. He reached Santa Fé late in
September.
So far, Bishop Latour had been mainly employed on business that
took him far away from his Vicarate. His great diocese was still
an unimaginable mystery to him. He was eager to be abroad in it,
to know his people; to escape for a little from the cares of
building and founding, and to go westward among the old isolated
Indian missions; Santo Domingo, breeder of horses; Isleta, whitened
with gypsum; Laguna, of wide pastures; and finally, cloud-set
Ácoma.
In the golden October weather the Bishop, with his blankets and
coffee-pot, attended by Jacinto, a young Indian from the Pecos
pueblo, whom he employed as guide, set off to visit the Indian
missions in the west. He spent a night and a day at Albuquerque,
with the genial and popular Padre Gallegos. After Santa Fé,
Albuquerque was the most important parish in the diocese; the
priest belonged to an influential Mexican family, and he and the
rancheros had run their church to suit themselves, making a very
gay affair of it. Though Padre Gallegos was ten years older than
the Bishop, he would still dance the fandango five nights running,
as if he could never have enough of it. He had many friends in the
American colony, with whom he played poker and went hunting, when
he was not dancing with the Mexicans. His cellar was well stocked
with wines from El Paso del Norte, whisky from Taos, and grape
brandy from Bernalillo. He was genuinely hospitable, and the
gambler down on his luck, the soldier sobering up, were always
welcome at his table. The Padre was adored by a rich Mexican
widow, who was hostess at his supper parties, engaged his servants
for him, made lace for the altar and napery for his table. Every
Sunday her carriage, the only closed one in Albuquerque, waited in
the plaza after Mass, and when the priest had put off his
vestments, he came out and was driven away to the lady's hacienda
for dinner.
The Bishop and Father Vaillant had thoroughly examined the case of
Father Gallegos, and meant to end this scandalous state of things
well before Christmas. But on this visit Father Latour exhibited
neither astonishment nor displeasure at anything, and Padre
Gallegos was cordial and most ceremoniously polite. When the
Bishop permitted himself to express some surprise that there was
not a confirmation class awaiting him, the Padre explained smoothly
that it was his custom to confirm infants at their baptism.
"It is all the same in a Christian community like ours. We know
they will receive religious instruction as they grow up, so we make
good Catholics of them in the beginning. Why not?"
The Padre was uneasy lest the Bishop should require his attendance
on this trip out among the missions. He had no liking for scanty
food and a bed on the rocks. So, though he had been dancing only a
few nights before, he received his Superior with one foot bandaged
up in an Indian moccasin, and complained of a severe attack of
gout. Asked when he had last celebrated Mass at Ácoma, he made no
direct reply. It used to be his custom, he said, to go there in
Passion Week, but the Ácoma Indians were unreclaimed heathen at
heart, and had no wish to be bothered with the Mass. The last time
he went out there, he was unable to get into the church at all.
The Indians pretended they had not the key; that the Governor had
it, and that he had gone on "Indian business" up into the Cebolleta
mountains.
The Bishop did not wish Padre Gallegos's company upon his journey,
was very glad not to have the embarrassment of refusing it, and he
rode away from Albuquerque after polite farewells. Yet, he
reflected, there was something very engaging about Gallegos as a
man. As a priest, he was impossible; he was too self-satisfied and
popular ever to change his ways, and he certainly could not change
his face. He did not look quite like a professional gambler, but
something smooth and twinkling in his countenance suggested an
underhanded mode of life. There was but one course: to suspend the
man from the exercise of all priestly functions, and bid the
smaller native priests take warning.
Father Vaillant had told the Bishop that he must by all means stop
a night at Isleta, as he would like the priest there--Padre Jesus
de Baca, an old white-haired man, almost blind, who had been at
Isleta many years and had won the confidence and affection of his
Indians.
When he approached this pueblo of Isleta, gleaming white across a
low plain of grey sand, Father Latour's spirits rose. It was
beautiful, that warm, rich whiteness of the church and the
clustered town, shaded by a few bright acacia trees, with their
intense blue-green like the colour of old paper window-blinds.
That tree always awakened pleasant memories, recalling a garden in
the south of France where he used to visit young cousins. As he
rode up to the church, the old priest came out to meet him, and
after his salutation stood looking at Father Latour, shading his
failing eyes with his hand.
"And can this be my Bishop? So young a man?" he exclaimed.
They went into the priest's house by way of a garden, walled in
behind the church. This enclosure was full of domesticated cactus
plants, of many varieties and great size (it seemed the Padre loved
them), and among these hung wicker cages made of willow twigs, full
of parrots. There were even parrots hopping about the sanded
paths--with one wing clipped to keep them at home. Father Jesus
explained that parrot feathers were much prized by his Indians as
ornaments for their ceremonial robes, and he had long ago found he
could please his parishioners by raising the birds.
The priest's house was white within and without, like all the
Isleta houses, and was almost as bare as an Indian dwelling. The
old man was poor, and too soft-hearted to press the pueblo people
for pesos. An Indian girl cooked his beans and cornmeal mush for
him, he required little else. The girl was not very skilful, he
said, but she was clean about her cooking. When the Bishop
remarked that everything in this pueblo, even the streets, seemed
clean, the Padre told him that near Isleta there was a hill of some
white mineral, which the Indians ground up and used as whitewash.
They had done this from time immemorial, and the village had always
been noted for its whiteness. A little talk with Father Jesus
revealed that he was simple almost to childishness, and very
superstitious. But there was a quality of golden goodness about
him. His right eye was overgrown by a cataract, and he kept his
head tilted as if he were trying to see around it. All his
movements were to the left, as if he were reaching or walking about
some obstacle in his path.
After coming to the house by way of a garden full of parrots,
Father Latour was amused to find that the sole ornament in the
Padre's poor, bare little sala was a wooden parrot, perched in a
hoop and hung from one of the roof-logs. While Father Jesus was
instructing his Indian girl in the kitchen, the Bishop took this
carving down from its perch to examine it. It was cut from a
single stick of wood, exactly the size of a living bird, body and
tail rigid and straight, the head a little turned. The wings and
tail and neck feathers were just indicated by the tool, and thinly
painted. He was surprised to feel how light it was; the surface
had the whiteness and velvety smoothness of very old wood. Though
scarcely carved at all, merely smoothed into shape, it was
strangely lifelike; a wooden pattern of parrots, as it were.
The Padre smiled when he found the Bishop with the bird in his
hand.
"I see you have found my treasure! That, your Grace, is probably
the oldest thing in the pueblo--older than the pueblo itself."
The parrot, Father Jesus said, had always been the bird of wonder
and desire to the pueblo Indians. In ancient times its feathers
were more valued than wampum and turquoises. Even before the
Spaniards came, the pueblos of northern New Mexico used to send
explorers along the dangerous and difficult trade routes down into
tropical Mexico to bring back upon their bodies a cargo of parrot
feathers. To purchase these the trader carried pouches full of
turquoises from the Cerrillos hills near Santa Fé. When, very
rarely, a trader succeeded in bringing back a live bird to his
people, it was paid divine honours, and its death threw the whole
village into the deepest gloom. Even the bones were piously
preserved. There was in Isleta a parrot skull of great antiquity.
His wooden bird he had bought from an old man who was much indebted
to him, and who was about to die without descendants. Father Jesus
had had his eye upon the bird for years. The Indian told him that
his ancestors, generations ago, had brought it with them from the
mother pueblo. The priest fondly believed that it was a portrait,
done from life, of one of those rare birds that in ancient times
were carried up alive, all the long trail from the tropics.
Father Jesus gave a good report of the Indians at Laguna and Ácoma.
He used to go to those pueblos to hold services when he was
younger, and had always found them friendly.
"At Ácoma," he said, "you can see something very holy. They have
there a portrait of St. Joseph, sent to them by one of the Kings of
Spain, long ago, and it has worked many miracles. If the season is
dry, the Ácoma people take the picture down to their farms at
Acomita, and it never fails to produce rain. They have rain when
none falls in all the country, and they have crops when the Laguna
Indians have none."
2
JACINTO
Taking leave of Isleta and its priest early in the morning, Father
Latour and his guide rode all day through the dry desert plain west
of Albuquerque. It was like a country of dry ashes; no juniper, no
rabbit brush, nothing but thickets of withered, dead-looking
cactus, and patches of wild pumpkin--the only vegetation that had
any vitality. It is a vine, remarkable for its tendency, not to
spread and ramble, but to mass and mount. Its long, sharp, arrow-
shaped leaves, frosted over with prickly silver, are thrust upward
and crowded together; the whole rigid, up-thrust matted clump looks
less like a plant than like a great colony of grey-green lizards,
moving and suddenly arrested by fear.
As the morning wore on they had to make their way through a sand-
storm which quite obscured the sun. Jacinto knew the country well,
having crossed it often to go to the religious dances at Laguna,
but he rode with his head low and a purple handkerchief tied over
his mouth. Coming from a pueblo among woods and water, he had a
poor opinion of this plain. At noon he alighted and collected
enough greasewood to boil the Bishop's coffee. They knelt on
either side of the fire, the sand curling about them so that the
bread became gritty as they ate it.
The sun set red in an atmosphere murky with sand. The travellers
made a dry camp and rolled themselves in their blankets. All night
a cold wind blew over them. Father Latour was so stiff that he
arose long before daybreak. The dawn came at last, fair and clear,
and they made an early start.
About the middle of that afternoon Jacinto pointed out Laguna in
the distance, lying, apparently, in the midst of bright yellow
waves of high sand dunes--yellow as ochre. As they approached,
Father Latour found these were petrified sand dunes; long waves of
soft, gritty yellow rock, shining and bare except for a few lines
of dark jumper that grew out of the weather cracks,--little trees,
and very, very old. At the foot of this sweep of rock waves was
the blue lake, a stone basin full of water, from which the pueblo
took its name.
The kindly Padre at Isleta had sent his cook's brother off on foot
to warn the Laguna people that the new High Priest was coming, and
that he was a good man and did not want money. They were prepared,
accordingly; the church was clean and the doors were open; a small
white church, painted above and about the altar with gods of wind
and rain and thunder, sun and moon, linked together in a
geometrical design of crimson and blue and dark green, so that the
end of the church seemed to be hung with tapestry. It recalled to
Father Latour the interior of a Persian chieftain's tent he had
seen in a textile exhibit at Lyons. Whether this decoration had
been done by Spanish missionaries or by Indian converts, he was
unable to find out.
The Governor told him that his people would come to Mass in the
morning, and that there were a number of children to be baptized.
He offered the Bishop the sacristy for the night, but there was a
damp, earthy smell about that chamber, and Father Latour had
already made up his mind that he would like to sleep on the rock
dunes, under the junipers.
Jacinto got firewood and good water from the Lagunas, and they made
their camp in a pleasant spot on the rocks north of the village.
As the sun dropped low, the light brought the white church and the
yellow adobe houses up into relief from the flat ledges. Behind
their camp, not far away, lay a group of great mesas. The Bishop
asked Jacinto if he knew the name of the one nearest them.
"No, I not know any name," he shook his head. "I know Indian
name," he added, as if, for once, he were thinking aloud.
"And what is the Indian name?"
"The Laguna Indians call Snow-Bird mountain." He spoke somewhat
unwillingly.
"That is very nice," said the Bishop musingly. "Yes, that is a
pretty name."
"Oh, Indians have nice names too!" Jacinto replied quickly, with a
curl of the lip. Then, as if he felt he had taken out on the
Bishop a reproach not deserved, he said in a moment: "The Laguna
people think it very funny for a big priest to be a young man. The
Governor say, how can I call him Padre when he is younger than my
sons?"
There was a note of pride in Jacinto's voice very flattering to the
Bishop. He had noticed how kind the Indian voice could be when it
was kind at all; a slight inflection made one feel that one had
received a great compliment.
"I am not very young in heart, Jacinto. How old are you, my boy?"
"Twenty-six."
"Have you a son?"
"One. Baby. Not very long born."
Jacinto usually dropped the article in speaking Spanish, just as he
did in speaking English, though the Bishop had noticed that when he
did give a noun its article, he used the right one. The customary
omission, therefore, seemed to be a matter of taste, not ignorance.
In the Indian conception of language, such attachments were
superfluous and unpleasing, perhaps.
They relapsed into the silence which was their usual form of
intercourse. The Bishop sat drinking his coffee slowly out of the
tin cup, keeping the pot near the embers. The sun had set now, the
yellow rocks were turning grey, down in the pueblo the light of the
cook fires made red patches of the glassless windows, and the smell
of piñon smoke came softly through the still air. The whole
western sky was the colour of golden ashes, with here and there a
flush of red on the lip of a little cloud. High above the horizon
the evening-star flickered like a lamp just lit, and close beside
it was another star of constant light, much smaller.
Jacinto threw away the end of his cornhusk cigarette and again
spoke without being addressed.
"The ev-en-ing-star," he said in English, slowly and somewhat
sententiously, then relapsed into Spanish. "You see the little
star beside, Padre? Indians call him the guide."
The two companions sat, each thinking his own thoughts as night
closed in about them; a blue night set with stars, the bulk of the
solitary mesas cutting into the firmament. The Bishop seldom
questioned Jacinto about his thoughts or beliefs. He didn't think
it polite, and he believed it to be useless. There was no way in
which he could transfer his own memories of European civilization
into the Indian mind, and he was quite willing to believe that
behind Jacinto there was a long tradition, a story of experience,
which no language could translate to him. A chill came with the
darkness. Father Latour put on his old fur-lined cloak, and
Jacinto, loosening the blanket tied about his loins, drew it up
over his head and shoulders.
"Many stars," he said presently. "What you think about the stars,
Padre?"
"The wise men tell us they are worlds, like ours, Jacinto."
The end of the Indian's cigarette grew bright and then dull again
before he spoke. "I think not," he said in the tone of one who has
considered a proposition fairly and rejected it. "I think they are
leaders--great spirits."
"Perhaps they are," said the Bishop with a sigh. "Whatever they
are, they are great. Let us say Our Father, and go to sleep, my
boy."
Kneeling on either side of the embers they repeated the prayer
together and then rolled up in their blankets. The Bishop went to
sleep thinking with satisfaction that he was beginning to have some
sort of human companionship with his Indian boy. One called the
young Indians "boys," perhaps because there was something youthful
and elastic in their bodies. Certainly about their behaviour there
was nothing boyish in the American sense, nor even in the European
sense. Jacinto was never, by any chance, naïf; he was never taken
by surprise. One felt that his training, whatever it had been, had
prepared him to meet any situation which might confront him. He
was as much at home in the Bishop's study as in his own pueblo--and
he was never too much at home anywhere. Father Latour felt he had
gone a good way toward gaining his guide's friendship, though he
did not know how.
The truth was, Jacinto liked the Bishop's way of meeting people;
thought he had the right tone with Padre Gallegos, the right tone
with Padre Jesus, and that he had good manners with the Indians.
In his experience, white people, when they addressed Indians,
always put on a false face. There were many kinds of false faces;
Father Vaillant's, for example, was kindly but too vehement. The
Bishop put on none at all. He stood straight and turned to the
Governor of Laguna, and his face underwent no change. Jacinto
thought this remarkable.
3
THE ROCK
After early Mass the next morning Father Latour and his guide rode
off across the low plain that lies between Laguna and Ácoma. In
all his travels the Bishop had seen no country like this. From the
flat red sea of sand rose great rock mesas, generally Gothic in
outline, resembling vast cathedrals. They were not crowded
together in disorder, but placed in wide spaces, long vistas
between. This plain might once have been an enormous city, all the
smaller quarters destroyed by time, only the public buildings
left,--piles of architecture that were like mountains. The sandy
soil of the plain had a light sprinkling of junipers, and was
splotched with masses of blooming rabbit brush,--that olive-
coloured plant that grows in high waves like a tossing sea, at this
season covered with a thatch of bloom, yellow as gorse, or orange
like marigolds.
This mesa plain had an appearance of great antiquity, and of
incompleteness; as if, with all the materials for world-making
assembled, the Creator had desisted, gone away and left everything
on the point of being brought together, on the eve of being
arranged into mountain, plain, plateau. The country was still
waiting to be made into a landscape.
Ever afterward the Bishop remembered his first ride to Ácoma as his
introduction to the mesa country. One thing which struck him at
once was that every mesa was duplicated by a cloud mesa, like a
reflection, which lay motionless above it or moved slowly up from
behind it. These cloud formations seemed to be always there,
however hot and blue the sky. Sometimes they were flat terraces,
ledges of vapour; sometimes they were dome-shaped, or fantastic,
like the tops of silvery pagodas, rising one above another, as if
an oriental city lay directly behind the rock. The great tables of
granite set down in an empty plain were inconceivable without their
attendant clouds, which were a part of them, as the smoke is part
of the censer, or the foam of the wave.
Coming along the Santa Fé trail, in the vast plains of Kansas,
Father Latour had found the sky more a desert than the land; a
hard, empty blue, very monotonous to the eyes of a Frenchman. But
west of the Pecos all that changed; here there was always activity
overhead, clouds forming and moving all day long. Whether they
were dark and full of violence, or soft and white with luxurious
idleness, they powerfully affected the world beneath them. The
desert, the mountains and mesas, were continually reformed and re-
coloured by the cloud shadows. The whole country seemed fluid to
the eye under this constant change of accent, this ever-varying
distribution of light.
Jacinto interrupted these reflections by an exclamation.
"Ácoma!" He stopped his mule.
The Bishop, following with his eye the straight, pointing Indian
hand, saw, far away, two great mesas. They were almost square in
shape, and at this distance seemed close together, though they were
really some miles apart.
"The far one"--his guide still pointed.
The Bishop's eyes were not so sharp as Jacinto's, but now, looking
down upon the top of the farther mesa from the high land on which
they halted, he saw a flat white outline on the grey surface--a
white square made up of squares. That, his guide said, was the
pueblo of Ácoma.
Riding on, they presently drew rein under the Enchanted Mesa, and
Jacinto told him that on this, too, there had once been a village,
but the stairway which had been the only access to it was broken
off by a great storm many centuries ago, and its people had
perished up there from hunger.
But how, the Bishop asked him, did men first think of living on the
top of naked rocks like these, hundreds of feet in the air, without
soil or water?
Jacinto shrugged. "A man can do whole lot when they hunt him day
and night like an animal. Navajos on the north, Apaches on the
south; the Ácoma run up a rock to be safe."
All this plain, the Bishop gathered, had once been the scene of a
periodic man-hunt; these Indians, born in fear and dying by
violence for generations, had at last taken this leap away from the
earth, and on that rock had found the hope of all suffering and
tormented creatures--safety. They came down to the plain to hunt
and to grow their crops, but there was always a place to go back
to. If a band of Navajos were on the Ácoma's trail, there was
still one hope; if he could reach his rock--Sanctuary! On the
winding stone stairway up the cliff, a handful of men could keep
off a multitude. The rock of Ácoma had never been taken by a foe
but once,--by Spaniards in armour. It was very different from a
mountain fastness; more lonely, more stark and grim, more appealing
to the imagination. The rock, when one came to think of it, was
the utmost expression of human need; even mere feeling yearned for
it; it was the highest comparison of loyalty in love and
friendship. Christ Himself had used that comparison for the
disciple to whom He gave the keys of His Church. And the Hebrews
of the Old Testament, always being carried captive into foreign
lands,--their rock was an idea of God, the only thing their
conquerors could not take from them.
Already the Bishop had observed in Indian life a strange
literalness, often shocking and disconcerting. The Ácomas, who
must share the universal human yearning for something permanent,
enduring, without shadow of change,--they had their idea in
substance. They actually lived upon their Rock; were born upon it
and died upon it. There was an element of exaggeration in anything
so simple!
As they drew near the Ácoma mesa, dark clouds began boiling up from
behind it, like ink spots spreading in a brilliant sky.
"Rain come," remarked Jacinto. "That is good. They will be well
disposed." He left the mules in a stake corral at the foot of the
mesa, took up the blankets, and hurried Father Latour into the
narrow crack in the rock where the craggy edges formed a kind of
natural stairway up the cliff. Wherever the footing was
treacherous, it was helped out by little hand-holds, ground into
the stone like smooth mittens. The mesa was absolutely naked of
vegetation, but at its foot a rank plant grew conspicuously out of
the sand; a plant with big white blossoms like Easter lilies. By
its dark blue-green leaves, large and coarse-toothed, Father Latour
recognized a species of the noxious datura. The size and
luxuriance of these nightshades astonished him. They looked like
great artificial plants, made of shining silk.
While they were ascending the rock, deafening thunder broke over
their heads, and the rain began to fall as if it were spilled from
a cloud-burst. Drawing into a deep twist of the stairway, under an
overhanging ledge, they watched the water shaken in heavy curtains
in the air before them. In a moment the seam in which they stood
was like the channel of a brook. Look