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 in the fear that they might set up a babble on hearing him pass, and make it necessary for him to ride again for his life.

"It is the quiescence of a covered fire," Padre Ignacio said, reading Juan's doubtful thoughts. "Our poor Indians have thrown off all authority, except alone their spiritual allegiance. This morning they refused to go to the fields, standing under Don Geronimo's lashes sullenly. The cattle and sheep are straying tonight in the hills and vegas without herdsmen or shepherds; the fields are thirsty; the threshed grain lies unwinnowed on the ground."

"I am amazed!" said Juan, truly so. "Has there been any violence?"

"No. Brother Mateo and I have succeeded in holding them; they seem like children, indeed, so gentle, so obedient, in our hands. Only they refuse, stubbornly, with such a determination that it is almost valiant, poor little fools! to work in the fields under Don Geronimo. They say he was to blame for your betrayal to the soldiers, and your flight from San Fernando. They mourn you as a friend lost to them. I do not know how the belief took hold of them, where it started or how it spread, this thing that you were to be mayordomo in place of Don Geronimo."

"Poor devils!" said Juan, his heart strained with pity for their vain hope.

"We must call on the soldiers again, I fear," Padre Ignacio sighed, "and force them to the fields


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 with bayonets, as at the beginning. They will not yield to persuasion; they mutter and stand in groups, demanding that we send for you and Cristóbal. They have made a hero of the lad."

"It is a place no man can deny him," Juan declared warmly, quick in the defense of his friend.

"I must ask you, then, my son, to repair your necessities and depart again as quickly as you can. You can see how your presence here will only inflame them to further defiance of discipline. As it is already, I have found it expedient to prohibit Don Geronimo's appearance among them. He is determined to go to the pueblo for the soldiers in the morning if they persist in their rebellious stand."

"That will be a most unwise thing to do, Padre Ignacio. You admit they are obedient and gentle in your hands; why not try kindness instead of the lash and bayonets? Send Don Geronimo away from San Fernando, and your troubles will melt like a morning fog."

"We believe, from past experience, that it would be a bad piece of business to yield to them in the slightest point. If they find that rebellion against the hardships—as they believe them, groundlessly—of their material life will result in their alleviation, they will begin to employ the same means to escape the obligations of their spiritual life. A relapse to savagery would be the result; all our labors here among them would be defeated and brought down to nothing."

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 "It may be so," said Juan, but with doubting reservation.

"The map I prepared for you is here, and your rifle is here. I will help you collect other things necessary, to hasten your departure. You must be well on your way to the mountains again before dawn, but it will be wise to avoid San Gabriel; the soldiers may be there watching for you. Cristóbal will be able to find the pass."

"Yes, Cristóbal is familiar with the way. But Gertrudis—if I might be permitted a last word with her, to give her assurance"

"It will be better as it stands," Padre Ignacio interposed hastily, coldly, Juan thought. "She has been asleep long, or if not, in retirement for the night; it would be impossible to see her now. I will give her every assurance of your safety, I will inform her of your return and departure, well provided against the necessities of your journey home. If God wills it, Juan, you shall come back some day."

"She'll think it strange that I came and went without seeing her," Juan seemed to protest.

"It is past midnight now—too late for lovers to be alone," Padre Ignacio said, smiling a little through his cloud of gloom. He touched Juan's shoulder affectionately, turning him a little to look into his face. "She thas been brave, she exulted in your escape," he said. "To see her now, only to leave again, would be more cruel than kind. One parting is only half as hard as two."


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 "You are right, as you are always right, my kind, my gentle friend."

"Not always, Juan. I may be mistaken in my rigorous treatment of these poor Indians, your words of a moment ago turned me to thinking it might be so."

"Your wisdom and love of justice will prompt you," Juan assured him eagerly. "Only, if possible to do it, send Don Geronimo away. There are no soldiers here now, not even a guard?"

"Not one remains, Juan. They carried Captain del Valle's body away to the pueblo for burial, I would not permit him to lie in consecrated ground after his defiance of the church. Whether they will come at Don Geronimo's appeal is another thing."

"As God directs it," said Juan. "I will leave these clothes behind me, Father Ignacio, to be put on agaiti some happier day, if that day ever comes. If I do not return, give them to some wayfarer with the blessing of the man who will need them no more."

"You will find your room as you left it; as you leave it tonight, Juan, so I shall keep it until you come again. Get into your stout clothes, then, my son, and make ready for the road with haste."

"Somebody is coming," Juan said. He rose, anxiously, leaning while he hearkened to the slight whisper of soft-shod feet coming cautiously through the dark under the rafters.

"Brother Mateo," said Padre Ignacio. "It is a


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 time of unrest. Hold the candle to light him, Juan."

"Doña Magdalena!" Juan spoke her name in soft surprise as he opened the door, the candle in his hand.

"I saw by your window that you were not asleep, Padre Ignacio," Doña Magdalena said. Her great dark eyes sparkled like the eyes of a wild creature in the light; her face seemed hollow and gaunt, with shadows in her cheeks. She looked as if she had come from a troubled vigil, her unbound hair in slight disorder, a few strands of it sweeping her face. She stood in the embarrassment of unexpected discovery, having paused indecisively a moment at the door, its sudden opening revealing her in the troubled state between appeal and flight.

"What is it that brings you from your bed at this hour, my daughter?" Padre Ignacio inquired of her gently.

"Don Geronimo," she said, and paused, lifting her great eyes. She moistened her lips, as if they burned, fright, and something more than fright, a horrible questioning, it seemed to Juan, in her face as she looked at him.

"Has his wound broken, is he sick?" Padre Ignacio asked.

"He heard a commotion among the horses in the corral, it must have been two hours ago," she said. "He went out. He has not come back!"

"He is overdoing himself, I warned him," Padre Ignacio said, out of patience with the mayordomo.


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 "He has fallen in the ditch, very likely. Come, Juan, let us find him."

"I have looked for him everywhere," Magdalena panted, putting out her hands in gesture of helplessness, of expressive emptiness. "I would not have come to you, only I saw the light."

"Then he has taken a horse to ride out among the cattle," Padre Ignacio assured her, untroubled by her failure to find Don Geronimo. "He is not a man to be looked after like a little child, doña; return to your bed, we shall see what he is about."

They left Magdalena at her door, while they continued on to the corral where the vaqueros commonly kept their horses at night. This was on the river-bank, built in such manner that the beasts could go down to the stream to drink. It was an enclosure between high adobe walls; its openings barred by peeled saplings, smooth-polished from years of use.

"She looked at you as if she believed you had eaten him," Padre Ignacio said, rather sad than indignant to see such suspicion in Magdalena's face. "That is another result of your hasty blow, my son."

"What is this? The horses are all turned out, Padre."

The bars were thrown down in the disorder of haste, the corral was empty.

"Where are a woman's eyes, that she couldn't see this?" Padre Ignacio wondered. "But why the fellow has turned them out at midnight, and


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 apparently followed them to the pastures, is more than I can understand."

"The saddles are gone from the top of the wall," said Juan. "The horses have not gone away without riders."

"What is this?" said Padre Ignacio, alarmed. "Oh well," calmed by his own reasoning again at once, "it only means that the vaqueros have listened to reason and gone with Don Geronimo to gather up the scattered cattle. That is well; there is no further need for investigation, Juan."

"Who is that?" Juan challenged, seeing a shadowy figure close against the wall. He ran forward; an old Indian stepped out into the moonlight, lifting his hand in sign of peace.

"Padre Ignacio, a word!" he whispered, beckoning to the priest.

Padre Ignacio turned from a short exchange of words with the Indian, who at once disappeared around the corner of the corral wall.

"He says the young men put a rope around Don Geronimo," said Padre Ignacio, in slow, fatalistic, heartless words; "he says they have carried him away to the hills."

"It is a bad hour for Don Geronimo," said Juan.

They turned and stood looking toward the hills, rough, jagged as peaks of mountains that stood with their roots sunk into the plain, rising to the dignity of mountains, in fact, as they ranged northward in forbidding expanse. The moonlight was white on


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 scarred cliff and crumbling ledge; shadows lay penciled in bold strokes along sharp escarpments; great slides of broken granite spread fanwise on the steep slopes, grey and dark-mottled where sage and harsh laurel had taken a melancholy hold.

"I must follow them, I must stay this awful tragedy!" Padre Ignacio said.

"Nothing can be done until daybreak, Padre. I can pick up the trail at the first light of day, and follow it quickly. Before then we could only stumble and grope."

"I must go at once, there will be something to tell me the way. Your horse—fetch him, I will go at once."

"There are many canyons," Juan pointed to the hills, where the dark gashes of the canyons opened down to the plain. "And see—who is to follow them, who is to know which way they went over this trampled ground? I have had much experience in these things, Padre. I tell you earnestly you will waste time and strength by starting now."

"They will go to San Feliciano Canyon, where the horses stray," Padre Ignacio said, decisively. "I will follow."

"I'll go with you, then. That horse the outlaw owned is a wild creature, and hard to manage at times. I saw your mule in the pasture by the milldam as I passed—he will be safer and more sure. Shall I bring him?"

"Hasten with him, then, Juan."

Juan returned with Padre Ignacio's mule to find


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 CONSTRUCT PROFILES TO SHOW THE TWO CYCLE TOPOGRAPHY.A GRADIENTS OF RIRST CYCLE VALLEYS TUD MAX. DEPTHS OF SAME-GRADIENTS OF SECOND CYCLE CANYONS. SUMMIT LEVELS OF DIVIDES IN THE BASALT PLAIN COLORED CRAYON TO SHOW DISTRIBUTION OF FIRST CYCLE AND SECOND CYCLE STREAM OTHE COURSES. A HOUR TUS WWOOOW ARE TAD37-301 #35 YJNO BYHT NBRO 3419 HTROV BUSINESS PART OF TOWN IN ORD 0-W RR FROM COLFAX TO PULLMAN WHOLLY IN SECOND CYCLE CANYON. SAME. STATE COLLEGE ON THE BRINK. MANY HILLS OF FIRST CYCLE SEEM SMADLER AND MORE CLOSELY SET THAN ABOUT ROCKFORD, FAIRFIELD, TEKOA, FARMINGTON AND CARFIELD. COLFAX TO ROSALLA AUG. 4 1922 PALOUSE RIVER VALLEY BELOW JCT OF SOUTH FORK AT COLFAX IS STRIKINGLY WALLED WITH BLACK BEETLING CLIFFS AND ESCARPMENTS. VO ONE THINKS OF THE JOHN DAY VALLEY BELOW CLARNO, EXCEPT FOR PROPORTIONS. AND MAP SHOWS CONTINUATION OF THIS CANYON BEYOND WESTERN LIMITS OF PULLMAN QUAD. AT SUMMIT IN INLAND EMPIRE ELECTRIC RR WEST OF STEPTOE BUTTE, THERE ARE MANY SHORT HILLS ON THE LOWER SLOPES OF THE LONG CONCAVE PROFILES OF THE BASALT TOPOGRAPHY. THE RR. CUT'S SHOW THESE SHORT HILLS BO BE HELMER SILT LOAM TO THE VERY BOTTOM. HE HERE APPARENTLY IS EVIDENCE OF A PREVIOUSLY MUCH DEEPER LOESSIAL MANTLE, NOW BEING REMOVED BY EROSION. 20WA RAHIH MORA H LOESSIAL MANTLE GOES UP ON FLANK OF STEPTOE BUT BECOMES MINGLED WITH QTZITIC DEBRIS. MUCH AS ON TEKOA MTN. VALLEY OF PALOUSE RIVER AT COLFAX HAS CONVEX SLOPES, AS DO ALL THESE SECOND CYCLE VALLEYS. BUT A VIEW FROM THE TOP OF THE HILLS SHOWS THE SLOPES OF THE OLDER FIRST CYCLE VALLEY, SLOPES CONCAVE, DESCENDING TO THE BRINK OF THE CANYON. VERY STRIKING.A REMNANTS OF FIRST CYCLE VALLEY FLOOR RECOGNIZED ALL THE WAY BETWEEN PULLMAN AND COLFAX.AD 383HT *# 2310

AUG. 5 SATURDAY.

SOIL SOMEWHAT MORE BROWN THAN HELMER TYPE AND MORE FRIABLE. NOT MORE THAN A VENEER ON THE WEST SLOPE OF PINE CREEK VALLEY AT ROSALIA. BASALT LEDGES PLAINLY SHOWING ON THE SLOPES. BASALT HILL LAND WEST OF ROSALIA HAS ABOUT 300 FT RELIEF, MORE THAN IN TEKOA REGION. NO STEPOES. OF VALLEY NORTH OF PINE CREEK CONTAINS A CONSIDERABLE GRAVEL FILLING. THICKNESS AT LEAST 30 FT. COMPOSED OF COARSE SUBANGULAR AND ROUNDED BASALT GRAVEL, BECOMING FINER ABOUT MALDEN. A FEW GRANITES AND QUARTZITES FOUND, ONE ROUNDED GRANITE IN THE GRAVEL DE BOS IT 2 1/2 AALE FEET MAXIMUM DIAMETER. A GREAT DEAL OF BOULDERY BASALT, ANGULAR TO SUBANGULAR, APPARENTLY FROM NEARBY CLIFFS AND TRANSPORTED BUT A SHORT DISTANCE DOWN THE VALLEY. POORLY SORTED, POORLY TERRACED. MUCH OF IT LOOKS LIKE HUGE BAR DEPOSITS IN A GREAT STREAM WHICH COVERED THE ENTIRE VALLEY BOTTOM TO A DEPTH OF SOME TENS OF FEET. A ROCKY SPUR AT JCT OF NORTH PINE CREEK AND PINE CREEK, 40 FEET ABOVE THE CREEK, HAS A STEEPWALLED CHANNEL CUT ACROSS IT, IN WHICH NORTH PINE CREEKK NOW FLOWS, ALTHO THE VALLEY IS OPEN TO THE EAST.

THIS IS EXPLICABLE ONLY IF THE ENTIRE VALLEY BE FILLED BY A GREAT STREAM WHOSE MAIN CURRENT WOULD

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 the priest in grave contention with his coadjutor over the question of which of them should go on the hazardous business of rescuing Don Geronimo. Padre Mateo argued for the advantage of his years, for his secondary position, which threw the arduous tasks upon him as a matter of right, to all of which Padre Ignacio was deaf.

"It will matter very little what happens to me, Padre Ignacio," Juan heard Padre Mateo say as he came up with the mule, "but everything in San Fernando rests on you. If you should fall"

"Dismiss the thought! These poor misguided lads would not touch me with violent hand."

"Remember San Diego de Acalá!"

"That was long ago, Brother Mateo."

"But it is the same passion, the same blood."

"Now, Juan, is the girdle tight? That is well." Padre Ignacio put his foot in the stirrup, and laid hold of the saddle-horn to mount, stood so, ready to lift himself to his seat, and turned to Juan. "Go and finish your preparations for departure," he commanded, severely, it seemed to Juan, almost unfriendly and cold.

"But I am going with you," Juan insisted. "It was understood."

"Only by yourself, my son. It is generous of you young men to put your hands to my relief, but another cannot serve in my place in this. Brother Mateo, I charge you to see that Juan does not remain at San Fernando above half an hour from this moment."


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 He lifted himself to the saddle and rode away, the mule's unshod feet pluffing softly in the deep dust.

"He blames me for this outbreak," Juan said, hurt, sad, to have the old man go with no more kindness in his last word, "when Don Geronimo brought it on his own head."

"His judgment is not to be questioned," Padre Mateo censured him, with sharper word than Juan ever had heard from his lips.

Padre Mateo was waiting beside the door when Juan came down from his room under the eaves, determined, Juan thought, to see that he did not overstay his time. Juan had not been more than fifteen minutes gathering his few necessities; he believed that Padre Mateo had not stirred from his place beside the door.

Juan had his long rifle, and one four-barreled revolving pistol that Padre Ignacio had given him; a generous supply of food, with a few pieces of extra clothing, in a bag to be carried at the cantle of his saddle. He had changed his fine clothes for the rougher garb that he was accustomed to wear at his work in the mill and shops; for convenience in carrying, rather than from the present need of it, he had fastened a long cloak about his shoulders. And so he appeared before Padre Mateo, freighted, bulky with his bag of supplies, his heavy long rifle in his hand.

The moon stood half way down the western sky, not a mote, it seemed, in the clear night between it


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 and the Valley of Oaks where its effulgence made the Mission San Fernando bright. Juan stepped from the edge of shadow along the northern wall of the long white building, into this bath of light, a very figure of a pilgrim, indeed. The short-cropped little strip of beard on each cheek, dropping down from the temples, gave his face a serious cast which the shadow of his broad hat enhanced. There was a broad gay band on his low-crowned hat, the one gleam of lightness in his severe accoutrements. His long grey cloak was sombre as a cloud.

Padre Mateo lifted his hands; Juan sank to his knee to receive his benediction. When he rose, Padre Mateo embraced him, the words usually so ready on his tongue suppressed by his deeper emotions now. He pressed his face a moment to Juan's shoulder, turned him gently to face away from the mission, and dismissed him without a word.

Juan's horse stood close by, asleep on its feet, head drooping, relaxed in the confidence and security of home. At the corner of the church, before making the turn that would cut the great main building from his sight, Juan looked back. Padre Mateo stood where he had left him, even from that distance rugged and strong against the white wall at his back.

Doña Magdalena had gone into her house at Padre Ignacio's bidding; Juan knew a prayer was going out from her lips for the welfare of Don Geronimo. He wondered if any but Padre Mateo's prayer went ahead of him to ease the perils of his way, and for a moment his heart was bitter toward


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 Padre Ignacio, who had denied him the solace of a word with Gertrudis. He thought for a moment of riding back through the vineyard, and approaching Don Geronimo's house from the rear, in the hope that Gertrudis might be at her window. This rebellious thought quieted in a little while, giving place to one of humbler gratitude for the generosity of that gentle old man. One parting, after all, was only half as hard as two.


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MILE beyond the milldam Juan left the trail that ran far back into the mountains to the grazing ground of San Feliciano Canyon, the road that Padre Ignacio had taken in his belief that Don Geronimo's captors had gone that way. Here Juan turned to the eastward, striking a direct course for the place where Cristóbal waited his return.

He stopped here a little while, turning in his saddle for a last look at the mission which, he felt in the sorrow of his banishment, he should see no more. He was close by the mountains now; a little while and the canyon would swallow him. With the last sight of San Fernando, since he was not to go by way of San Gabriel now, his eyes would not rest on the dwelling-place of civilized man again in more than two thousand miles.

Juan considered all this with melancholy spirit, more in the sad depression of a man leaving home than one setting his foot forward to it. He had blown like a seed on the wind into this serene valley, where he had taken deep root in the friendly soil. Warm hearts were there behind him; perhaps it was too much to expect of human fidelity to even hope that he might find all unchanged on his return.


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 That day was far away, so dim and indefinite, so hopeless and so vague, that it could not be fixed in the imagination.

He turned from San Fernando with a sigh, to take up his unwilling road. He knew then how Boabdil felt on leaving the white city of Granada, turning from his last sight of his ancestral roof from the distant heights, never to return again. The swallow might come back to the turrets, the dove to her nest in the lemon tree, but a defeated and broken king could feel no more the quickening joy of home-coming. Sorrow with hope is to be borne; the heart breaks in the void of despair. The lash of Don Geronimo was driving him away, as it had driven happiness and contentment from the lives of the poor neophytes of San Fernando.

Juan rode on, his thoughts behind him, with so little heart in his enterprise that he was careless of his bridle reins, and almost unseated when his horse shied and bounded with sudden start away from something among the bushes. Juan only glimpsed it, a dark small something lying close beside a clump of tall purple sage, but he knew from the animal's alarm that it was something that belonged to and had been handled lately by man. He turned back to investigate, to discover a black hat lying in the trampled trail of several horses which had passed that way only a little while before.

Plain as the tracks of the horses were in the loose earth, Juan had crossed the trail without marking them, absorbed as he had been in his own affairs.


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 Don Geronimo's peril had been put into the background of his thoughts. Here he read, as plainly as from a printed page, something that brought it to the front again with sudden rush. There was no mistaking Don Geronimo's hat with its broad band of silver cloth; there was not another like it at San Fernando. While Padre Ignacio pressed northward into the wooded canyon, Don Geronimo's captors were headed to the south, striking for the mountains called Santa Monica, on the farther side of the broad valley, which rose higher as they reached toward the sea.

Yet it might be that Padre Ignacio had seen this divergence from the expected, and had followed. Juan dismounted for a closer examination of the ground in the open places where the shadows of the bushes did not interfere. There was no mule-track to be found. If Padre Ignacio had come after the horsemen, the distinctive footprint of his animal would have been seen without trouble. It was but a little way back to the road which these vengeful young men had followed from the mission; Juan back-tracked them, bent on learning beyond any doubt that Padre Ignacio had gone on to the north. If mule-tracks anywhere between there and the beaten road these riders had left proved that Padre Ignacio had picked up the trail, then Juan would have no further duty in the matter, let his misgivings be what they might.

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 white as a trickle of flour over the thirsty land, Juan found the mule's tracks. Padre Ignacio had ridden in haste; it was written there in the dust. Straight on to the north he had gone, unseeing in his fixed belief that those whom he sought continued on before him.

With this discovery, Juan dismounted. He hastily took his sack of provisions from the cantle of his saddle, wrapped his long grey cloak around it and placed it in the branches of a sturdy live-oak tree that stood beside the road. He debated with himself briefly on the question of his firearms, deciding that they must be left behind. Padre Ignacio had missed the object of his quest; he would ride far into the mountains before discovering his mistake. Juan had no doubt of his own duty in this situation; Don Geronimo's hat, dropped unseen by his captors, or carelessly passed as it flew off in his headlong ride, had appealed with tragic eloquence. Yet Don Geronimo's enemies were Juan's friends; he could not pursue them armed.

Two hours before dawn the morning fog blew in from the sea, muffling the moon like a lady's face behind her mantilla, dimming at first, speedily obscuring altogether, the light that had been Juan's guidance in following the vaqueros' trail. He groped along in the grey mistiness, leading his horse, bending low, sometimes feeling the ground for the tracks, only to lose the trail in a cluttered confusion ef hoofprints where a herd of cattle had drifted across it. He waited there, impatient of the delay,


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 his back against the trunk of a tree, while the fog came rolling in, cloud on cloud, the slight breath that carried it damp upon his face.

Juan felt, when morning came as pale and uncertain as light through muddy water, that this delay had eaten up Don Geronimo's doubtful chance of ever returning to San Fernando alive. He did not care so much on Don Geronimo's account; considered from that corner of the situation he was not moved by any sharp twitchings of sympathy. When one thought of Padre Ignacio and Doña Magdalena, it was another thing. Don Geronimo was a cold and cruel man, yet singularly devoted to the cause of the padres, honest and loyal according to his severe accounting of discipline and service in the name of Our Señor. Considered from the appraisement of his worth as a true and faithful servant, harsh only as he believed it necessary, cruel only in the age-old oppression of master over slave, not singular in that respect to hundreds of men in Juan's own Virginia and Kentucky; considered in this light, Don Geronimo probably was worth saving for himself.

If he could deliver Don Geronimo from the vengeance of the young men and see him faced again safely toward San Fernando, he could turn to his own banishment with a lighter heart, knowing that the blessing of Padre Ignacio and Doña Magdalena would follow him, multiplied by a thousand gratitudes. There was no selfish thought in his breast of winning absolution, of quieting the feud between


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 him and Don Geronimo, or gaining a revocation of the edict which sent him forth like one disowned.

The trail led across the little river which came down from San Fernando, several miles below the mission. From that point it bore toward the pass leading across into the valley of San Gabriel, but a considerable distance to the eastward of the king's road which Juan had traversed with Padre Mateo on the journey to the harbor to fetch Gertudis Sinova. It was plain going here; the mayordomo's captors were carrying him toward a mountain that flanked the pass on the east.

This mountain rose out of the valley abruptly, without the gradation of preliminary hills, almost precipitous on the side which Juan was approaching. It was an ill-shaped eminence, its sides dark with the greenery of laurel and sage and chaparral, its summit divided into two knobs, standing perhaps half a mile apart. These topmost heights were rocky and bare, although almost daily refreshed by the fogs which swathed the valley at this time of the year, drenching tree and shrub with their distillations, keeping the northern slopes of the mountains green.

Juan drew rein as he came clear of the tall, wide-spreading oaks which grew in luxuriance close against the foot of this mountain, standing in a little open space from which he had a clear view of the forbidding dark mountain's double hump. The rising sun was routing the fog out of the valley; the shrubbery around him was dripping as from a


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 shower. The summit of the mountain was sharp against the clear sky, stalks of yucca, from which the bloom had long since withered, standing like spears out of the barrens and ledges from which they grew. On the summit of the eastern peak a horse was standing; Juan could see its head lifted above the shrubs which hemmed the little rocky islet of the top. It was unmistakably plain, although it must have been more than a mile away, in a straight line.

Juan could not see anything of the animal but the head and neck, lifted in the posture of sharp attention, as if the creature had caught an alarm, or stood watching the movement of something on the opposite slope. As the trail of those whom he sought led on into a canyon that promised to offer a way to the summit, Juan had no doubt that this horse was from San Fernando, and that the others, and their riders, with the unhappy Don Geronimo, were close by.

There was no road, no trace or mark of any way frequented by man, in the canyon through which Juan followed the track of those who bore Don Geronimo to the reckoning of his cruel years. Here the riders had been forced to scatter, each finding a way for himself through the close-grown thickets of chaparral. It was slow going; more than an hour of winding and forging through the rough tangle, where harsh branch and bramble laid hold of every fold and wrinkle in a man's garment and sought to hold him back, brought Juan only fairly


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 into the shadow of the mountain, the base of which the trail of those he followed was rounding, while it mounted always on an oblique course that was making for the top.

The sun was three hours high when Juan mounted out of the canyon and stood on the western shoulder of the mountain, in a meadow now yellow with the dry stalks of wild oats, which a few months ago was a green pasture. From this point he could not see the peak toward which he was directing his efforts, although he was confirmed in his conclusion that this knob, the highest point of the mountain, had been the vaqueros' objective. Their trail continued on, angling sharply up the mountain-side, appallingly steep here, and grown over with a tangle of low shrubs which seemed almost impenetrable.

A little below the level on which he stood, ahead of him a considerable distance, a brushwood fire was burning. Juan could not see the blaze, only the tall pillar of vaporous smoke, yellowish-white with a tint of green, such as the woodsman at once knows is fed by living vegetation. A slow and languid fire, Juan thought; doubtless in the clearing of some settler, who heaped it with green boughs. He went on, uneasy to be riding on that slope, steep as a house roof, where a stumble might send horse and man rolling down among the scraggled bushes, none of which seemed strong enough to offer much of a lodgment.

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 his outlawed days was well accustomed to that kind of work. He went about it with surprising security and quickness of foot, although the labor of it was heavy. Juan was nothing extraordinary as a rider, knowing little about easing or sparing his mount in such a pressure as this, yet his sympathies were keen and his heart tender, to such a degree, in fact, that he drew up and dismounted as the passage grew steeper, with the intention of hitching the horse to a shrub and going afoot the remainder of the way.

He was astonished at this point to notice the growth of the fire, which had spread from its place of beginning in the half hour that he had been toiling up the slope, to a long front which was girding the mountain. It was still too far away to give him much concern; it must eat its way through the green brush, tall and dense below him, thicker and greener a little way ahead. But it was making a tremendous smoke, and the outrunning spread of it was mystifying.

It might be that the Indians not attached to the mission—a tribe lived there in the vicinity of the pass, he knew—were setting the fire to drive out rabbits, according to their custom at that time of the year, as Padre Mateo had told him. It seemed an unlikely place for such a sport, yet it was certain that somebody was extending the fire line. There was little wind; the smoke rose high, so dense that the view of the distant San Gabriel valley was cut off. All the world visible to Juan was that grey


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 green mountain-side between the fire and the top.

If the wind should rise, the blaze might run up the mountain to that point before he could explore the top and return, although it seemed unlikely that fire could find a foothold among the melancholy greenery of that slope. Again, he might need the horse to follow the trail, in case Don Geronimo's captors had crossed the summit and gone on. He did not believe this to be the case; they had struck for the mountain top with definite intention, perhaps associated with some tradition of sacrifice or vengeance, or celebration of victory such as they doubtless considered this to be over their persecutor, the mayordomo of San Fernando.

Leading the horse, Juan scrambled on, the beast lumbering after him in the peculiarly ungainly heaves and jumps by which a horse takes a steep. This was an uncomfortable proceeding at a man's heels, with only the length of the reins between. Juan pulled up after a little of it, considering what was to be done, blowing from the exertion, and the heat of the morning sun concentrated on the mountain-side.

And more than the heat of the sun. The fire had grown almost past belief in these few minutes. There was a pitchy blackness in the smoke close to the ground, and glimpses through it of fire that leaped like spume of breaking seas. The wind was beginning to stir, called up by the heat; it flattened the smoke against the mountain, and bent the points of flame down to catch the tops of those stolid,


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 harsh-leaved shrubs, the names of which Juan did not know, but the nature of which now became appallingly apparent. Each leaf, each somnolent, scraggly shrub, became a torch at the touch of fire. They were full of resinous substances, and strange oils, the perfume of their burning sweet as incense before the altar.

Juan looked anxiously toward the mountain top, not far away, but circled with a band of vigorous shrubs as though some ooze of water came out of the rocks to gladden their roots. The steepest part of it lay ahead of him. But it was evident that those whom he trailed had ridden up it; he could do no less.

The horse was uneasy; Juan felt it tremble as he put foot in the stirrup. Eager to be away out of the march of that panic-striking thing that crunched dry branches and roared in green boughs, the creature lunged and lurched up the steep. In a breath the smoke had become as thick as the morning fog, and hotter than the noontime sun of San Fernando. Still Juan was not anxious over his own situation. The top of the peak for which he was bound had appeared rocky and bare from a distance; the fire would fall at its edges; there he could wait until it had stripped the mountain and died out, as it must do quickly, urged on by the growing wind.

It had grown to be a gale of fire on the mountain-side before Juan reached the summit, the wind from it so hot that the skin puckered and drew, and the


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 eyeballs burned in dry sockets. All the surface moisture evaporated out of a man at the touch of that fiery hurricane, which whistled through the greasewood, sowing smoking twigs for the hasty harvest of flame.

Juan's great concern had come suddenly to center on himself. Grave peril had leaped up out of that lazy cloud of brushwood smoke, beside which Don Geronimo's was scarcely greater. Across the ridge of the mountain Juan believed he would be safe from this driving storm of fire, which he calculated would spend itself for want of fuel when it reached the top. Don Geronimo's captors would have fled to safety; there would be nobody on the mountain top for him to rescue but himself, and from the way things looked and felt at that moment, he would have quite enough to do to accomplish that.

The fire was more than half way up the mountain when Juan's horse scrambled up the last steep to the top. Looking back, Juan saw the forerunning surge of flame leaping from bush to bush, thicket to thicket, in a wild, avid, happy madness, a greedy delight of destruction, it seemed. Far below as the smoke broke for an instant and showed him the yellow-brown meadow of wild oats, he saw a man running with a brand of fire. It was only a glimpse, sharp, clear, distinct; the trailing torch dragging in the grass as the man ran, the quick-springing flame that followed.

There was no security on the summit at that


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 point. Here the long ridge of the mountain ran between the two humps, only a few yards in width, clothed over with a dense growth of sage and dwarfed laurel, the cedar-green of rank greasewood clumped here and there, every plume of it primed with its inflammable oils, waiting to vanish in a whistling roar at the first touch of flame. Juan pushed across the ridge, thinking to ride down out of that withering blast of fire, knowing that it could not run down this lee side as rapidly as it had pursued him upward on the slope at his back.

His hope was cut off by a drop almost perpendicular. Not a ledge, but a brush-grown steep, so tangled with interlacing growth that a stone scarcely could have rolled down, it appeared. Juan hastened on to the peak where he had seen the horse. The vaqueros would have gone at the first sight of fire; it was his hope that he might follow their trail to safety.

What had appeared a barren spot from the valley, here proved to be some sort of winter-growing plant that had matured and turned brown. It stood thick on the slope of the peak, kindling spread ready for the advancing fire. At the summit there was a small clear space, indeed, and here lay rocks red from the passing of old fires, which had streamed across them on such a wind as this. Here Juan paused a moment. The horse that he had seen must have been on this point; from here the trail that he must follow led away.

Juan could not discover any tracks from the


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 saddle, his eyes parched by the searing wind and smoke. He dismounted, sheltering himself in the lee of his horse. There they had passed; the hoofprints were dim in the hard earth. On again, on foot, pressing close against his horse's side, almost strangled, his windpipe a streak of fire. Over the summit he plunged down into a jungle of greasewood, which grew there taller than he ever had seen it, at least twice the height of a man.

Here the hot blast of wind was broken by the thickets, the smoke was not so stifling and dense. Juan paused to breathe a moment, gasping, spent. He moistened his finger-tip in his mouth and rubbed his burning eyes, searching again for trace of the passage the others had made through the thicket.

A horse was standing almost within arm's length of him. It was tied to a stout mountain sumac by bridle reins, and lariat around its neck, hopelessly fastened in the track of the approaching fire. On the ground beside it lay the saddle it had worn, and the sheepskin that had been used for a pad; on its back there was bound another burden, as terrible to see as ever shocked the eyes of man.


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ON GERONIMO had been beaten hideously. He lay bound to the back of his horse, his face against its neck, as he evidently had been placed to receive the punishment that had been applied by unsparing hands. Yet not altogether unsparing, for Don Geronimo still lived, although he had not been spared in mercy, but in calculative cruelty, that he might be conscious of the end most dreaded by all living things.

It seemed that a thousand blows had fallen on his back, stripped naked to the waist. He was a pulp of purple, horribly gashed flesh. Blood from his wounds had drenched the horse's sides and stained the dry earth which had drunk it greedily. His castigators had calculated nicely the load of torture the human frame could bear. When Don Geronimo had fainted from the pain, Juan gathered from the evidence at hand, they had drenched his head with water to bring him back to life. His hair was still wet; he lay bound so tightly, hands clasping the horse's neck, feet drawn under its girth, that he could move nothing but his eyes, even if the strength for greater effort had endured for him to command.


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 Juan was so shaken by the disturbing sight that he stood for a moment inactive.

"Don Geronimo, Don Geronimo!" he said, his compassion so deep that it must have assured a man even on the threshold of death.

Don Geronimo could not move his head to see who it was that spoke in pity; he could only roll his eye, even that slight exertion seeming to rend his soul with pain. He did not speak; his great agony had not left him even a groan. Juan cut his bonds and lifted him from the horse, believing him on the verge of death. Don Geronimo lay limp in Juan's arms, staring without sense or thought, it appeared, into his face. His throat constricted, his jaw sagged. Juan believed the door opened to let his soul step out into the mystery.

"I am a dead man, Juan," Don Geronimo said, his voice a husky whisper. "Save yourself from the fire—go!"

"Can you ride, Don Geronimo?"

"I can only die," Don Geronimo answered, bitter for his own weakness, it seemed. "The fire-is near—ride, Juan, ride for your life! Mine is done."

He sank to the ground, closing his eyes, the last of his strength consumed in these words. Juan threw the sheepskin on the horse, lifted Don Geronimo to it in the position he had lain before, and bound him there. The horse was restive; it braced its legs and tugged to break loose, snorting in fear of the fire.


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 The creature's sudden panic struck Juan's horse like a contagion. Until that moment it had stood where Juan had dropped the reins, confident in the wisdom of its master, unshaken in the menace of the fiery storm from which, left to its own resources, it would have fled. Juan sprang to secure it to a shrub; it reared as he reached for the dangling reins, snorted a blast of terror, dashed way in thebrush. Juan ran after it, his reason dispersed almost as completely as the horse's by this sudden calamity. The roar of the fire drowned his voice; the horse was lost to sight in the swirl of driving smoke.

Don Geronimo appeared to be unconscious, lying nerveless as the dead with closed eyes and sagging head. Juan twisted the bridle reins around his hand and plunged off in the direction his own horse had gone, the frantic creature that carried Don Geronimo struggling to pass him and tear free. It required all his strength to hold the horse, which dashed through the thick brushwood dragging him after. A branch took his hat; he had neither time nor power to stop and recover it, but he was assured by the determination of the horse to go in that direction that a way to safety lay ahead.

This was a false hope, as proved in a moment when his own horse came running wildly back. Juan called to it, tried to throw himself in front of it and stop it. The mad creature swerved, and broke past him with a crash in the tangled brushwood, and was gone.


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 Juan turned to follow it, knowing that fire must have cut off its escape. He must go back along the ridge toward the western point, looking for an opening, let it be never so steep and the chance of passing it never so desperate, that would let them down the northern side of the mountain to the security of the valley. The barring brushwood limbs tore Don Geronimo's wounds. Whether he was conscious of this added torture Juan did not know, but he was assured by the flow of blood that Don Geronimo was still alive. He tore off his jacket and struggled with the crazy horse while he fastened it over Don Geronimo's bleeding back. On again, retracing the way he had come.

A blast of hot wind struck him as he left the shelter of the greasewood thicket, staggering him, setting him back momentarily blinded and gasping. It was a breaker of fire, a surge of stifling smoke streaked with flying points of flame. Close on his heels this outrunning wave of fire caught the greasewood jungle, leaping high, rolling a sudden burst of black smoke as from a broadside of cannon-shots.

Juan bent against the hurricane that swept the mountain top, struggling blindly on, the horse singularly passive beside him. Its panic seemed to have given way to a trembling paralysis of fear, in which it realized that a greater intelligence would guide it through the wild sowing of fire. Juan felt the skin of his face tighten, the hiss of fire as it crinkled his hair. The horse was singed. Don Geronimo's


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 beard was smoking as Juan pressed against him to break the fire from his face.

Across the top the fire was farther down the slope. Here the air was clearer, although little brands were setting the brown vegetation that not long ago had been a mass of yellow bloom. Now it was to bloom in a more ardent hue, and sing with a sharp piping as the red surge laid it low in a breath.

Juan's horse came galloping back from its frantic seeking to the westward, its hide singed bare in spots, its saddle leather smoking, the stirrups thrashing its sides in wild spurring on this desperate race.

The mad creature wheeled as it faced the turmoil of fire from the burning flowers, to rush to the northern slope, where it paused, its forelegs thrust out stiffly to check its plunge over the rim. Juan made another vain effort to catch the beast, which burst away at his approach. Back and forth in the short clear space of the mountain ridge the wild thing galloped, rushing in eager seeking to the north slope again. A moment it scrambled there, forefeet over the edge, then plunged out of sight.

Had it found a way down, a desperate, perilous way? Juan hurried to the spot to see. The horse was rolling down the steep, crashing through brushwood, dashing over sharp ledges, trailing a frightful way that living man could not follow. On again, the horse that carried Don Geronimo humping its back as if it faced a wintry storm, its nose close to the ground, shrinking as near Juan as it could press, companion indeed of his miserable situation.


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 Juan felt that this mangled ending his horse had made would be happy in comparison with the thing he faced, but it could be reserved as the final choice between the two. A little way beyond where his horse ended its torture in the desperate chance that failed, a canyon scarred the southern side of the mountain. The draft of this place was like a chimney, the roar of the fire in it equal to a cataract. Glimpses that he caught beyond that point gave Juan the hope that his way to life might be found on that side of the mountain, even in the face of the fire.

The horse hung back when they came to the head of the canyon, where a cloud of fiery smoke rushed across the mountain ridge as from a bellows. Juan stripped off his outer shirt, wrapped it around Don Geronimo's head and face, held his breath, crouched low and plunged into it, dragging the horse after him. This furnace blast was not more than twenty yards across, perhaps, but it was almost a sheet of flame. Only the tremendous draft, which shot the blaze high, gave them a passage with a scorched remnant of life.

The shirt around Don Geronimo's head was blazing when they burst through to the comparative clearness beyond the canyon; his beard crumbled under Juan's hand as he tore the cloth away. The sheepskin was burning, Don Geronimo's nether clothing, all that he wore, smoked in many spots. Juan crushed the fire out in his hands, blistering fingers and palms. His own raiment was picked


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 with a score of spreading fire-spots. He rolled on the ground to smother them, the bridle reins turned securely around his arm.

He staggered up, and on a little way, pausing to drag his hands over his face, in which there was a harsh feeling of incineration. His eyebrows and lashes were gone, the beard below his temples was only hard stumps; when he touched his hair it broke like glass and vanished. But he breathed again, he stood erect, and hope unfolded at his feet.

Here the side of the mountain was mangy and almost bare. Below him the burned patch of wild oats lay black; a weak line of fire was clambering up the slope, leaping on the wind from bush to bush, clump to clump. If he could pass the thicker fringe of bushes along the ridge before the fire had sprung that high, he could continue down without more risk. It was steep going, the horse, almost blinded by the last dash, stumbled insecurely after him. Whether Don Geronimo still lived, he did not know.

How viciously those unlikely shrubs blazed! What a torch sprung out of every drab grey sage! Juan met the line of fire where yucca stalks stood among stunted gray sage not much higher than his knees, sparse and sad and drouth-cursed, but more eager to burn, it seemed, for its very insignificance. The fire sprang from these sage-clumps into his face in vicious gusts, and the horse, unable to stand the charge, turned to lumber up the mountain.

Juan stopped the beast after a doubly perilous


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 struggle on the precarious slope, and stood bending over Don Geronimo, shielding him with his body from the fire. It was only a gust; in a moment it had stripped the leaves from the miserable shrubs and roared on like a little whirlwind on a summer day. They passed through this without much damage, and went on down among the black, smoking sticks of laurel and gnarled sage and grey-green clumps of spiked yucca, which looked little worse for the passing of the quick-leaping line of fire.

Juan found the spring in the pass called Cahuenga, where they had spread their dinner the day he rode as guard to Gertrudis Sinova. There he bathed Don Geronimo's wounds, grateful to find him breathing strongly, testimony of the strength of the indomitable race to which he belonged. Juan feared the mayordomo might die without surgical attention, such as Padre Ignacio could give him, if left there by the roadside long. He considered going on with him, cruel as it would be to Don Geronimo to bind him to the horse again, his excoriated back to the sun.

Juan himself was in poor case for traveling. Although he had closed his eyes against the fire in his long dash through it on the ridge, all but a little crevice to give himself a dim guidance, his blistered forehead and cheeks were puffing out of all human semblance, threatening soon to eclipse his sight entirely, A blind man and an unconscious man would be but a poor pair of traveling companions for the


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 fifteen miles or more between there and San Fernando.

This was the king's road, a highway much frequented. Perhaps the soldiers might pass that way, or some traveler who would hurry on to San Fernando and send help. The wisest thing was to wait at the spring, where the blessing of cold water was to be enjoyed by stretching out the arm.

Don Geronimo had not suffered from the fire as much as Juan. Aside from the shortening of his beard, his face bore little mark of the flames. Juan had spread the sheepskin and his scorched jacket for Don Geronimo's bed beside the spring. He dipped water in his hands and poured it over his bruised, galled back, entreating life by his gentle ministrations to remain in the citadel that had been so sorely battered.

Juan's labor was rewarded in a little while; Don Geronimo sighed, opened his eyes, tried to speak. Juan poured water on his lips, lifted him to lean against his shoulder while he offered water in his cupped hand. Don Geronimo drank thirstily, the draught seeming to restore his wasted blood.

"So I live," he said, his voice hoarse and low. "They would have burned me, they left me with a taunt to set the fire."

"Spare yourself, Don Geronimo," Juan cautioned. "I think I hear a cart; you will need your strength for the long ride home."

Fabio Dominguez, the rancher of the San Pedro road, was on his way to San Fernando that morn-


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 ing to buy flour. He had rested the night in the Pueblo de Los Angeles, and was making a merry clatter as he came up through the pass with four stout mules to his high-wheeled cart, singing a bit of song now and then, happy that Sebastian Alvitre had quit the road for a safer method of freebooting, leaving honest men to go their way untroubled.

Dominguez was not concerned with the burning mountain, that being a sight common enough in his experience. So long as the fire did not block his road he gave it little thought, but his eyes were like peeled eggs at the sight of the two battered, disfigured men beside the spring.

"What is this, in God's name!" said Dominguez, standing on the footboard of his cart, his long whip looped in his hand.

"There is a gentleman here who has met a sad misfortune," Juan explained. "If you will carry him to San Fernando, you will be rewarded."

"I am on my way to San Fernando," said Dominguez, coming down cautiously out of the cart, as if wary of some trick. "Who is he you want me to take,—God save me! what is the matter with his back?"

"It is I, Geronimo Lozano. You will lose nothing, Dominguez, in this."

Dominguez came nearer, bending over Don Geronimo, still with the quick-set way about him of a creature ready to spring and run away. Weak as Don Geronimo's voice was, Dominguez had heard it perfectly, yet he was not convinced.


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 "Don Geronimo? It is a strange thing," he said.

"He has met a strange adventure, such as only Don Geronimo could pass through and live. Help me break some boughs to make a springy bed for him in the bottom of your cart. We will cover them with your sacks, there will be others to replace them at the mission."

"And who are you?" Dominguez asked, his best foot set to spring back into the cart at the first false start.

"It is another thing," Juan returned, coldly.

"Are you of the mission?"

"I am not of the mission."

"Well, you are a thing to make a man forget his dinner!" Dominguez declared. "Have you come through the fire on the mountain?"

"We have. At San Fernando Don Geronimo will tell you what there is for your ears to hear. Assist me; let us be quick."

While Don Geronimo's strength was little more than a shred when they lifted him to the cart and stretched him on the springy couch of boughs, he held himself braced on his elbow a moment, and took Juan's hand.

"Don Juan, you have suffered much for an unworthy man," he said. "I pray for a happier day to requite you."

"It is nothing," said Juan. "Dominguez, will you lend me a jacket? I cannot promise to return


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 it, or to pay you for it soon. Don Geronimo will be my surety."

"I have but the one, and this cloak, with me," Dominguez said, very doubtfully. "A man hesitates"

"A meal sack, then," Juan said, impatiently.

"That is very well," Dominguez agreed, relieved by the easy bargain. "Here is a big one—now, a little minute and I will make you a shirt and a coat in one."

He cut a slit for the head to pass in the bottom, slits for the arms, and handed it to Juan with a laugh.

"I will not need surety for that," he said, "but when we get to San Fernando I will expect a good one in exchange."

"All will be well with you now, Don Geronimo," Juan assured him, bending cver the mayordomo in his ridiculous smock. It was little wonder that Dominguez had not recognized him; it is a question whether Padre Ignacio himself would have done better at that moment.

"You will sit in the cart. Turn the horse loose to follow if it will," Don Geronimo said.

"I have lost my own horse; this one I shall need for the journey that lies ahead of me."

"You are not going with me to San Fernando?"

"It cannot be, Don Geronimo."

"Ah, I remember!" said Don Geronimo, his words a groan. "But that is the past; it is forgotten."


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 "That horse is only good for the wolves," Dominguez announced, after looking the creature over. "He is blind, the eyes have been burned out of him. If you have far to go, my friend, I'd advise you to get another one. See!"

Dominguez struck at the horse, close before its eyes. It stood quite unconscious of the menace of his hand.

"It is true," Juan admitted.

"Yes, and you are little better off," Dominguez declared, a rough sort of pity in his manner. "Jump in now, little man, and I'll land you in San Fernando in three hours."

Juan was reluctant to go in the cart, but there was no other way. He feared that it would appear to those at San Fernando that he was making capital out of such service as he had given Don Geronimo in his hour of peril, a thing that bent down his spirit and humbled his soul to contemplate.

"The misfortune of my situation, Don Geronimo, forces me to do a thing that my manhood revolts against," he said.

Dominguez heard this with amazement, turning on the seat of his cart to look at Juan, standing by the tail-board in such woeful plight that it would seem a blessing, rather than an indignity, to be offered a ride in a cart.

"Don Juan Mealsack, you are a strange animal," he said. "In with you, now, and arrange the canvas to break the sun from Don Geronimo."

"In God's name, Dominguez, drive fast!" Don


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 Geronimo groaned, lying face downward on his bed of boughs.

Juan was concerned gravely over his own condition. His heavy undergarment had protected his arms and chest, but his neck and face's eemed cooked, puffed in places with dropsical distensions, skinless and raw in others, a most miserable and tortuous plight. His hands were in no better case; his legs were scorched and blistered in spots where his pantaloons had burned through. These things he could have borne with no more than a passing concern, as indeed they were secondary to the injury his eyes had suffered. But the thought that he might lose his vision was a terrifying one which made his courage falter in a sweat of dreadful apprehension.

Don Geronimo did not know, Dominguez had not understood, that Juan had seen but dimly when he broke the leafy tips of branches from oak and sycamore for the mayordomo's bed; or that this obscuration grew with alarming rapidity, as an eclipse seems to rush to its climax. The inflammation was mounting in pulsating pangs that pierced his brain like exploring instruments in a cruel surgeon's hands. When they left the shadow of the oaks around the spring and entered the glaring sun on the white road, the canvas cover of Dominguez' cart seemed a poor shelter against the piercing rays.

Juan sat with hands pressed to his burning eyeballs, not even a tear left in the seared founts to mitigate the deep-striking agony. He had no spare


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 garment to wet in the spring and carry with him; his jacket, rough as it was, he had drenched at the last moment and spread over Don Geronimo's back. He could do no more than close his burned lids tightly, bow his head in the shade of Dominguez' canvas, hold back his groans and hope all was not lost of the most precious sense that comes from the mysterious Source.

Dominguez drove fast where the road would permit, and in the main it was smooth, the wheel-jolt cushioned by thick dust. If Don Geronimo's sufferings were increased by the motions of the cart, those who shared it with him were not enlightened by so much as a groan. Fast as they traveled, it was nearer four hours than three before they reached San Fernando. Juan heard the midday bell striking before they stopped at the gate.

"What is this?" said Dominguez, impatiently. "The gate is closed. A man would think the padres were afraid of an insurrection. So it is you, Padre Mateo that is warder today?"

"Drive in, Dominguez," Juan heard Padre Mateo direct.

"Here are the two most sorrowful men that I ever have seen in my days," said Dominguez, coming to the end of the cart the moment it stopped in the court. "You will need help, Padre Mateo, to get one of them to his bed."

"What is this?" Padre Mateo demanded, his head thrust in the cart-end.

"It is I, Geronimo Lozano, and the man who has


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 delivered me from death," Don Geronimo was quick to answer in voice surprisingly strong. Juan, hands pressed to his burning eyes, felt the movement as Don Geronimo struggled to lift his head.

"And who, in God's name is he?" Padre Mateo asked, shocked by the sight of so much misery as the two presented.

"It is Juan Molinero, God's blessing on his head!" Don Geronimo replied.

"Come down, Juan—come down," Padre Mateo said.

"Assist Don Geronimo, his need is greater than mine," Juan returned.

Padre Mateo called to some who stood in wondering silence near at hand, with directions for carrying Don Geronimo to his house. Doña Magdalena ran to meet them; Juan heard her sharp cry of piteous dismay.

"Now, Juan, let us see to you," Padre Mateo said, again at the tail of the cart. "Why, you shrink there like a man ashamed! Come down—here is my hand. See where Gertrudis is running to greet you, quick as the dawn."

"Padre Mateo," Juan said, uncovering his hideously distorted features. "I shall never look upon her face again. I am blind!"


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ADRE MATEO heard this melancholy declaration with a sinking heart. He stood a moment looking with horror on the disfigurement of what had been but a few hours before a handsome, frankfaced man, to turn away quickly and almost run to stop Gertrudis in her eager coming.

"I have sent her away to wait a little while, Juan," he said, returning presently. His voice was hushed, awed, as if he spoke to one dying, to whom the things of life were only trivialities. "You are no sight for a woman's eye, your body half naked. She understands; she will wait."

"I will go inside with you, then," said Juan.

Padre Ignacio had not returned from his blind dash into the mountains; the care of the two suffering men rested in Padre Mateo's hands alone, and he was uncertain in his mind which was the graver case and in the more pressing need of attention. Juan solved the doubt for him the moment Padre Mateo opened the door of the little room under the eaves which he never had expected to enter again.

"Leave me now, Padre Mateo, and attend to Don Geronimo," he requested. "If you will send me a


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 pitcher of water and a cloth to lay over my eyes, I'll be very comfortable until my turn arrives."

"I have a doubt between you, Juan," Padre Mateo hesitated.

"My injuries are not mortal, nor in any danger of turning out half that bad," Juan replied, pushing Padre Mateo's shoulder gently to hasten him on his duty. "Don Geronimo's life is wasting in a hundred streams; the blood must be stopped, the poison checked in his wounds."

"Yes, it is a grave condition," Padre Mateo admitted, "a sight that wrings the heart. But I may be an hour, or longer, over Don Geronimo."

"Take the rest of the day if you need it. Put me out of your thoughts—only for the water and the cloth."

"A little longer does not matter so greatly with a burn," Padre Mateo said, yielding against his desire. For his sympathy lay with his affection, and there was not a warm spot in his heart for Don Geronimo.

Padre Ignacio returned before his coadjutor had completed his plastering and piecing of Don Geronimo's stripes. The sound of his voice in the door was as comforting to Juan as a mother's to a fevered child. New hope came with the gentle old man, tumultuous and eager in Juan's breast as a mewed flock that hears the hand of its liberator at the gate. Still he suffered an oppression of fear that his excuse for returning to San Fernando might not suf-


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 fice, or might be taken as a plea and a justification for a desired reward.

"You see me here again, like a dog that can't be kicked from the door," Juan said, rising at the priest's kind word of greeting.

"You had no choice, with your sufferings upon you, but to come back, my poor Juan," Padre Ignacio replied. "I must open the shutters to have the light—can you bear it?"

"In a day or two I'll go on again, this time for good," Juan persisted in his effort to be understood. "If I am not able to see my way, I only ask you to let one of your young men guitle me to Cristóbal, who is waiting for me in the mountains."

Padre Ignacio turned from the little window set low in the north wall, placed his hand on Juan's shoulder and pressed him gently into his chair. "You shall not leave San Fernando again, my son, unless the vengeance of the soldiers drive you away," Padre Ignacio said. He drew Juan's head back and pressed the swollen flesh from his eyes, saying nothing until he had completed the examination. "Don Geronimo has told me all," he said, the weight of sufficiency in his tone.

"I would not have followed them, but I found Don Geronimo's hat, and saw that you had missed the trail."

"A deed of mercy needs no plea of justification in my ears. Do you feel the light?"

"It is like a spike driven into my eyes!"


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 "You must suffer like a hero, you must pay a hero's price."

"Shall I see again?"

"That is in God's hands."

Juan's hope fell away again, sinking as water vanishes in sand. Padre Ignacio was cutting away the mealsack shirt, touching his burns with exploring finger as they were revealed. He stretched Juan on his rawhide bed and washed his injuries, bringing him immeasurable relief. As he worked he talked, lightly, of his expedition into the mountains on a false trail.

"Old as I am, I am not past learning, then, it is plain," he laughed. "I rode away without reason, certain of my keen sense, forgetting to watch the roads for tracks that turned aside. It is fortunate I did not see them, for I never could have followed them in the night as you did. Even if I had found them, I could not have brought Don Geronimo through the fire. An old priest is a poor figure for an adventure. Is it not true, Juan?"

"On the other hand, if you had waited for daylight, as I advised, neither of us would have found Don Geronimo," said Juan.

"There is a complexity in the direction of our lives that we would need to be more than men to understand. If we had gone this way, and not that; if we had said one thing, and not the other. It is always so in life. We do not swim; we drift in the current of our providential destiny. It lies in the hands of God."


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 Padre Ignacio applied soothing oils to Juan's burns, and cooling lotion to his eyes, working quickly, deft in his long years of practice in healing the physical as well as the spiritual afflictions of mankind.

"Now, I have wrapped you like a mummy," he said at last, "and here you must lie, in darkness of a dungeon until the inflammation subsides out of your eyes. Until that time, we shall not know."

"I suppose the military authorities will hold me to blame for the death of Captain del Valle. They will soon know that I have returned; they will come for me."

"Yes, Juan, your peril is far greater than ever before. Would to God you had gone on—yet I should not say so, I should not say so."

"And when they come?"

"They must wait; Sergeant Olivera is a reasonable man, he will not expect to take you away in this sorrowful condition. A guard will be posted, yet there are means of passing a guard. All depends, in the last moment, on your eyes."

"Is there a hope that I may see again?"

"There is always hope."

Yet little for Juan in the hollow platitude. He lay silent a little spell, wrapped like a mummy, in truth.

"Padre Ignacio, if they station a soldier at this door?"

"No, they shall not enter here."

"They entered the church."


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 "In defiance of both civil and ecclesiastical law. Only with a warrant, properly signed by the civil governor himself, can soldiers enter upon church property and arrest a man. They had no such warrant; Sergeant Olivera would not go to such length himself, and he is now in command, as a matter of succession, there being no intermediary officers at the pueblo. It remains to be seen."

"Yes," said Juan, heartlessly. "Padre Ignacio?"

"My son."

"There is Gertrudis; I cannot hold her to her promise now. I shall be hideous in my scars, I shall be—I shall be blind. Tell her I release her, and ask her to forget me."

Padre Ignacio did not reply at once. He was silent so long, indeed, that Juan read in it the sentence of eternal blackness, the confirmation of his deepest fear. When Padre Ignacio spoke, his voice was low, and distant, it seemed to Juan, as a voice heard at eventide from the hill.

"In a few days, when the swelling of your face has fallen, she shall come with me and sit beside you, Juan," he said. "Until then, permit your words to lodge with me unrepeated."

"As you say," Juan yielded, holding his answer along time. "But spare her the sight of me, Padre Ignacio, until my face has gone back to as much of its original shape as it ever will bear again. It would be repellent to her; she never could forget. I beg you not to permit any of them, except Padre Mateo,


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 to come near me while I am in this repellent state."

"Perhaps it would be better so. A sensitive mind retains the memory of such unhappy sights—I understand your argument, Juan. I shall assume the care of you myself, permitting nobody else to enter your chamber until you are restored to your familiar features."

"Thank you, Padre Ignacio. I'm afraid I'll never carry the same face again, burns draw and pucker so where they heal."

"That is of tomorrow, which no man has yet seen. Now, I am going to shut you up in the dark like a bear in his winter hole, for one little spark of light will be agony to your eyes, as well as an agent of inflammation. Rest you easily as your sore condition will permit, and fasten your thoughts and your confidence on our dear Señor, whose sufferings for us cannot be measured by the utmost agony that man can bear."

Juan heard him moving softly about the room, placing his bandages and medicaments outside the door, making a subdued noise with sash and shutter at the window. He came back to Juan's side to stand for a moment with hand lightly laid on his bandaged eyes, saying no audible word. Then he went away.

Juan lay a long time as Padre Ignacio left him, shut in his little room, listening to the sounds that came up from the court, so distinct that he knew the father had left the folding window open, drawing only the shutters. There was a dove among the


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 olive trees by the river, singing the few sad notes that sounded like the burden of a viol above the lesser instruments too far away to be heard; and the tinkle of sheep bells where the creatures came crowding in from the distant grazing-lands to drink.

Around the mission itself there was little activity. Dominguez had loaded his cart and gone away; Juan heard Borromeo hammering intermittently at his anvil, and thought, now and then in the silence, he could catch the cool splash of the fountain where the white roses clambered over the trellis, out of reach of a maiden's hand.

It was best, indeed, that Gertrudis had not seen him in this frightful disfigurement, best that she should not see him now, wrapped and swaddled like a caterpillar in its self-spun cell. It was bitter to reflect on the future, which seemed to lie a dark pit at his feet. How he should cross it, how find his way, harassed him with sombre questioning. He felt himself at the beginning of unmitigated misery, the thread of his existence broken, a new, an appalling problem in his groping hands. The pain that centered in his eyes magnified the horror of his situation. Reason was racked until it shuddered in this conjoined suffering of body and mind.

Gertrudis might be there by the fountain, where the shade would be falling now, looking to his window, wondering how he fared; the soldiers might be at the mission gate, barring his way even to the blank, dark life beyond the mission walls. He was involved in a confusion of fevered speculations, con-


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 jectures, fancies; they eluded his reason, flying in blurring swirl that sickened him, oppressing him with such misery as falls on a man only when he stands in the very penumbra of death.

Gertrudis, Gertrudis! She was torn from him in the confusion of reeling fragments that his world had burst into; she was swept out of his reach forever, her face white as it floated by, white as foam on the outrunning tide, white as a rose on the trellis by the fountain.

Padre Ignacio returned, bringing a lull in this awful hurrying of his life's wreckage by his simple presence within the door. He spoke softly, his hand on Juan's wrist, on his bosom where the fire had not licked him raw with its avid tongue. Padre Ignacio gave him a bitter drink. There was a slackening in the sickening tide that swirled the broken bits of his life; there was a slowing to a pause. After a little the sweet tone of the vesper bell came to him, tremulous, restful, but faint as if it carried on the wind from distant places. There was a thought of the sun purple on the hills, and a surcease of the piercing agony; a sinking, as of one going down in the sea; and sleep.


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ORROMEO CAMBON came to the kitchen at evening of that notable day in the history of San Fernando, to get a mouthful of the dainties which Magdalena had been all day preparing for the feast. It was not often in the life of a man of even such importance as the king's blacksmith that he came to share the provender of a governor. True, the governor was dining in the refectory with the padres, but the nearer to the source of luxury a man can seat himself, the greater his advantage. So Borromeo, in his philosophy, consoled himself for a place and a platter at the kitchen table.

Doña Magdalena never had appeared so fair in Borromeo's eyes, her dark cheeks glowing, her soft eyes bright, all dressed in white like a bride, the broad strings of her long white apron tied daintily at her slender waist. Even the kerchief that protected her hair from the smoke of broiling meats was white; it was bound smoothly across her forehead like the wimple of a nun.

"Doña Magdalena, you are beautiful tonight as a plume of white yucca on the side of the hill," he said.


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 "Then it is the white dress that you admire; I am just the same," she returned, but pleased and smiling, for Borromeo was not a man to speak compliments or give flattery. The wonder of her attractiveness was in his round eyes. It was as if he had made a discovery.

"It is the honor of cooking for a governor that makes you glow like a little star in a white cloud, doña. A man might be jealous of a woman for that, seeing her so happy serving another fellow when she has had only growls for him to go with his soup out of the black pot."

"It is a marvel, your knowledge of women," she twitted him, yet too happy for the acrimony that she knew so well how to tip her ready tongue with, like the flint of an arrow, making the softest sounding words sometimes very hard and sharp when they were felt. "It is a pity you haven't one of your own to make you wiser."

"Maybe another ship will come some day, doña, bringing my chance. Who knows?"

"It would be better to take a ship away from this country, as Don Geronimo and I have decided to do. This is a sad land, it is full of hardships. Don Geronimo never will stand the same man that he was a few days ago. But I forget, I do not mean to laugh at you, Borromeo. You are not yet free to go."

"Two cursed years yet to hold me here, like an Indian slave! Well, a man could be in worse hands than Padre Ignacio's, and he might be where the


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 sun could not shine on him, or the light of a pretty lady's eyes. I am afraid, by my breath, that Don Geronimo will have reason to cut my throat if I am left alone with you very much—I may take you under my arm and carry you away."

"What a terror you put in my heart!" Magdalena laughed, her big earrings twinkling in the candlelight when she threw her head back, gaily as a girl at a fiesta. "Well, have you seen the governor, Borromeo?"

"No; he did not come to the shop to pay his respects, and I am not going to stand on a leg like a chicken in the rain waiting for him to show his face around the corner. And so you are feeding him veal, heh? Doña, it is as tender as the breast of a dove."

"Borromeo, San Fernando would be a disconsolate place without you," she said with great gentleness. "I have a gill of brandy here, and there is coffee for you to put it in. So you see what fine things come when the governor rides down from Monterey to visit us here in the south. Padre Ignacio has been saving this choice berry in his chest for some such notable occasion as this."

"It smells—doña it smells—what is it this coffee sets me thinking of with its smell? Ah! the market at Tepic on a Sunday morning, where I went one time with my father, long, long, ago. It is a queer thing, doña, how God has made a little place in everybody's head to put these recollections away, for dust to settle on them, it might be said, until some


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 word, or some piece of a tune, or some smell such as this coffee, brings them out again, as fresh as yesterday. Yes, yes; it is very strange."

Doña Magdalena's eyes were very tender as she placed her hand on Borromeo's shoulder, pausing amoment in her flitting between grate and the trencher that she was heaping with meat to be carried by the Indian boys to the padres' table. She said nothing; only touched his shoulder as one gives an encouraging, commending caress to a child. Borromeo bent over his plate, busy with his great hunger, a serene, a happy man.

"Do you know what the business of this fine governor is in the south?" Borromeo lifted his face presently to inquire.

"He has come to investigate the many false charges that have been lodged against the missions," Magdalena replied.

"I thought Don Geronimo would have the reason of it," Borromeo nodded. "So, they have carried their case to the governor? What is it they are crying about, our sheep?"

"The Angelenos say the padres of San Fernando are oppressors because they built a dam in the river years before the pueblo was established. That is one thing. Another cry of oppression rises from the ranchers, from Pico and the rest of them around us, but from Pico especially, who says the sheep have destroyed his grazing and he has no place left to pasture his cattle. The others join him in this—you have heard that complaint these two years."


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 "True; the ranchers have been here many times to see Padre Ignacio about it. Pico has a cloak with a green satin lining which he turns back over his shoulder. He looks like a parrot on a limb. What does Don Geronimo think the governor will do?"

"Don Geronimo is not well enough to be much interested," she replied, sadly.

"But he is mending, doña?"

"Oh, marvellously. There never was such a physician as Padre Ignacio, although Padre Mateo is a good second."

An Indian lad came for the immense dish of meat, lifted it in both hands and ran out, carrying it before him as if he could endure the weight but a little while, and soon must place it or let it drop. He was lithe and quick, but short and undersized as most of his race, his black coarse hair cut squarely midway of his neck.

"He pretends the dish is hot, playing for an excuse to put it down in the next room and cram his mouth full of meat," Borromeo said.

"There is enough," said Magdalena, undisturbed.

"You will sit down and take your refreshment now, doña?"

"I will begin, Borromeo; a woman who is cook to a man never knows when she will finish. You will excuse me when I jump up and quit you now and then without a word."

"It is certain that I know a woman's way in this, doña, if in no other, remembering my mother when she made corn cakes on the griddle for us in the


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 morning. Let me tell you, if that governor doesn't decide in our favor after filling his belly with this delicious food from your hands, I'm the man to wait by the side of the road and crack his head with a crowbar."

"There is no telling what the decision will be. I once heard Don Geronimo say—that time the soldiers were ordered away from the mission—that it was the beginning of the end. Perhaps the governor will give the mission lands away to the greedy ones who are sitting by waiting. It will be a sad day."

"A bitter day for these poor devils of Indians, who never will be able to find bugs and rabbits enough to keep them alive, they have increased in such numbers under the gentle padres' care."

"Don Geronimo says the ranchers will make slaves of the poor creatures, as was done in the Indies, in Mexico, in the days of the conquerors. Let us pray for wisdom in our governor, to help him to the right course."

"Padre Ignacio will make it clear. It is too bad our little Tula is not at table with us like a sweet white candle to light our faces."

"It is the last day of her novena for poor Juan," said Magdalena softly. "She is praying constantly."

"Nine days of prayer!" said Borromeo, full of marvellous admiration. "There are not many men worthy the great devotion, but Juan is one of the few. If I could transplant one of my eyes to his


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 head, as they say can be done with a crayfish, I'd give it with my blessing."

"I would give him both of mine, and be happy in my blindness," Magdalena said, the tears of gratitude which stood in them enhancing the endowment she would bestow with such unselfish heart.

"Well, it cannot be done, doña: poor Juan must remain a blind man to the end of his sad life. And he could strike a blow with a great hammer the equal of any man I ever saw."

"And how much greater the strength and nobility of his heart!"

"Yes, it takes a man to hold his body betweer another one and the fire. And this is the ninth day since Dominguez brought them home. Nine days of unceasing prayer! It is tremendous!"

"Great blessings call for great sacrifices, untiring devotion, Borromeo."

"Yes, it is reasonable that Our Señora cannot keep count of every man's trouble, there are so many men. She is a very busy lady, looking after the afflictions of all mankind."

"True. But it is also certain that if her attention is called to some particular case by such great acts of devotion and continual appeal, she will intercede for that person if he is worthy."

"Is Tula still determined to carry out the last great act of humility that she has set her heart on so solidly?"

"She is determined."

"And that is tonight?"


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 "Tonight."

"My prayers will go with her to sustain her in the anguish of her ordeal," said Borromeo, in his simple piety. "I thought Padre Ignacio had stopped it. He was against it from the first word."

"He has not consented, neither forbidden it. Gertrudis will not offend him; she will go about it quietly after the governor has retired and all is still. Padre Ignacio has only to keep out of the way, and you too, my good Borromeo. If her strength is equal to her faith she will carry it through, but she is so pale and worn by her vigils and grief that I am afraid."

"As for me, I do not know. I never heard of such a thing. Maybe Our Señora will be pleased by such a sacrifice, but I say I do not know."

"I have heard of it being done," Magdalena said, her voice low and reverent. "It comes from the old times, when there were miracles. Who knows?"

"At least it can do no harm, only to herself," said Borromeo, also reverent and hushed of voice as if he stood in a holy place. "Consider the pain of it, doña. I might undertake it for my own eyes, but for another's"

"You would if that other one was more to you than eyes, than your whole body,—yes even your life and your very soul."

"In that case there would be nothing left of a man, doña."

"There is nothing left of a woman when she loves a man as Gertrudis does Juan. She can go


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 eagerly to this act of devotion that would make another flinch to think of it, and shudder and turn sick."

"It can be accounted for that way, then. Would you do as much for Don Gerronimo?"

Doña Magdalena did not reply. She turned her face to look out of the open door, where the moon made it almost as bright as within. Borromeo lifted his eyes slyly, creeping up on her in a manner of espionage, it appeared, as if to study the secret of her fealty and learn how far she would venture on account of it, and so be able to weigh his findings against the protestation of her lips. No such protestation came from Doña Magdalena. Borromeo looked at the soft line of her throat, the poise of her handsome head, as she turned in that manner as from a triviality that deserved no more than silence.

"Doña, you would do it. And you would do more," he said. "A man might expect it of his mother, and if I had a wife so devoted, doña, I would preserve her in oil."

"Like a herring," Magdalena laughed, but to relieve her own embarrassment rather than to discount his protestations.

"Of course Juan does not know of this," he said.

"How should he know? shut up like a bee. No, if he knew anything about it, that would be the end. It would not do."

"Yes, Our Señora might think it was a plot, an arrangement between them, to bring his suffering to her notice."


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 "Borromeo! what a thing to say! As if she were a woman, like me."

"Very much like, very much like, indeed," Borromeo declared, so sincere, so simple in his honest admiration there was no sacrilege in the comparison. Magdalena was not offended. She touched his big thick hand where it lay spread on the bare wood of the table.

"I am only a woman," she said, humble and contrite in her manner and word.

"Padre Ignacio has kept Juan close," said he. "I wanted to go in today to see how he was mending, and give him a little cheer, but he sent me back. Of course he knows best, but it's a lonesome business for a man to stay there in the dark."

"I shall always remember his blue eyes, and the little smile that used to peep out of them. It is a pity!"

"The night he came, doña, do you remember how he looked? He was hairy as a heathen, and a heathen he was, in fact. When he sat eating, and you looked at him kindly, saying something in his favor, he lifted his glass to you. It was as much of a surprise as if I had heard a donkey speak. From the strange creature of that night he has become a Christian as good as any of us."

"He is as sincere in the faith as Padre Ignacio himself."

"Sergeant Olivera would give a leg to be in there at supper with them, hearing what is being said about his demand for our poor burned Juan. Has


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 the ban for profaning the church been lifted?"

"No. Communion is denied him, but he seems indifferent. He rode past the door yesterday, coming from the north along the king's road, smoking his cigar with defiance. Three of his thieving soldiers were with him, watching like dogs, as if they expected Juan to ride out of the gate again as he did that day with Cristóbal. I am tired of the sight of their dirty leather jackets. I hope I shall never see another one when I leave this unhappy land."

"I laugh when I think of the look in Sergeant Olivera's face when he came here demanding to put a guard over Juan. Padre Ignacio was as firm as a hill. He demanded a proper warrant, signed by the governor himself, and that, of course, Olivera didn't have, any more than Captain del Valle had the day he paid for his sacrilegious defiance."

"It is understood that Olivera sent to Monterey in special haste for such a paper."

"Well, the governor is here now; we shall see. Once I had a friendliness for that lean man Olivera, but if Padre Ignacio would give me permission I would drive him and his soldiers before me like bees the next time they come to San Fernando. Give me a bar of iron five feet long and I will account for any seven soldiers you can stand up against me. Little Cristóbal got away from them, smart as they are, anyhow."

"Padre Ignacio says he is far in the desert now, out of the reach of any man."


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 "God speed him, I say, and take him safely to the end of his journey."

"It would appear more the duty of soldiers to be out searching the mountains for the nine villains who carried Don Geronimo away, than sneaking around here waiting for Juan to heal sufficiently to be taken out and shot," Magdalena said.

"They will not be found," Borromeo declared. "They are away in the woods with the wild heathens who refuse to embrace the faith, the horses they rode have been eaten before this. And things are going poorly here, in spite of Padre Mateo's strong hand. He is a priest, not a mayordomo, let him try it as he will. Don Geronimo was a hard one, too ready with his whip at all times, but it will be a good day for this mission when he is able to ride out again and put these lazy rascals about their business."

"Don Geronimo will not serve as mayordomo again," Magdalena said.

"Until a ship comes, surely?"

"No, not any more. Another must be found to fill his place."

"That will be a long search, then, doña."

Borromeo poured brandy into the spoon of sugar that he held over his cup, sank it and lifted it, again and again, until the mixture was absorbed by the coffee. He sipped, the mellowness of contentment in his broad hairy face, his eyes dreamily on the beams dim through the smoke overhead.

"The padres' hams have thinned amazingly, doña, since the night Juan came to the kitchen door with-


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 out a Christian word in his mouth to make himself understood."

"A great many mouths with Christian words in them, and some with words that no Christian should hear, much less speak, have come to these doors since that night, Borromeo. They have eaten the hams, sometimes as many as two in a single day."

"It will be time to cure more when the rains come. Ah-h! this is a soothing drink, doña. There is nothing like a little brandy to make a man kind."

"And nothing like a great deal to make him cruel, Borromeo."

"Without a doubt. But if our little Tula had a drop of this tonight—"

"I am reminded." Magdalena rose hurriedly, concern in her face. "I must go to her and assist her to prepare for the ordeal she is to undertake for the one dearer to her heart than the blood that visits it. Borromeo, I ask you to keep inside your door tonight—this piteous sight is not for the eyes of man."

Borromeo drank the last drop of his brandy, rinsed the glass with coffee for the last clinging scent. He stood, turning his stiff mustaches up from his lip with the back of his immense hand.

"I will keep inside my door, doña," he promised, "and I will pray for strength to sustain her in the pain of her progression on this pilgrimage of love. And I tell you, doña, when a heavy man like me prays, that is a thing that counts."

"They will sit at the table an hour yet, for trust


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 Padre Ignacio to know the best time of day to approach a man to get out of him what is desired. Even the governor has no brandy equal to this in his cellar, that is certain. Padre Ignacio told me it came from Barcelona, and has been fifty years in the wood."

"He will be so mellow he'll give our good padre the seal of his office if he wants it," Borromeo said. "Didn't I tell you, doña, there was nothing like it to make a man kind?"

"Let us hope so, Borromeo. They do not send back for more meat, it must be they are satisfied. If they want more, Diego can cut it; I am going to Gertrudis now. Go, then, Borromeo, and I will shut the door."

"May you open it with a light heart tomorrow, doña."

"Thank you, Borromeo."

Borromeo stood outside the door a moment while Doña Magdalena swung it almost shut, leaving only her face in the opening.

"The moon has been dragging through the ocean again, the under part of it has melted away," he said.

"But it will grow again, as always," she returned.

"Like a lady's heart, doña."

"So it is said. Good night, Borromeo."

"Doña, until the next sight."


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EXT to the trying-vats stood the carpenter's house, which was the last one in the row facing on the arcade; beyond the vats was the tallow-tank, sunk deep into the ground, its top showing like a sunken turret, as has been said. Then there came a corner of the vineyard which grew up to the church-side and spread away to the boundary of the Indian village, where it came against the adobe wall that stood between.

The vines of this vineyard were not trained on trellises, but grew in luxuriant clumps from the stumps of the grape, cut back year after year, in the old-world fashion which came to California with the padres. Since the day that Cristóbal had found covert among these vines to strike down Captain del Valle, they had dropped their leaves, save for a tenacious cluster here and there, in the quick way of yellowing and dropping that a grape leaf has, the world over. It is as if the vines, exhausted by the labor of bringing their juicy burden of fruit to maturity, lose all their sap in a day, unfeeling of the leaves no longer needed to shield the vinous globules from the sun.


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 As the wind moved through the vineyard this night the leaves took wing like flocks of migrating birds, sometimes rising to little heights above the stems that bore them, more frequently drifting in a shower of slow-floating, listless sails, to settle with soft sighing upon their crisp-dry companions with melancholy resignation to this thankless severance after a long and faithful service.

There was more than the whisper of falling grape leaves in the vineyard; more than the low piping of the wind among bare branches, soft as the lutestrings of the night. There was the sound of many feet in soft Indian shoes, and the sound of feet unshod; and the low murmur of voices held in awe, where the people came from the village, old and young, to wait for the passing of the beautiful white lady, and uphold her suffering body on the flood of their sympathetic prayers.

For Don Juan, friend of the oppressed, was blind, and this one was pleading with the Holy Virgin to give him back his sight. She would pass that way tonight, humbly walking on her bare knees from the door of Don Geronimo's house where she lived, to the altar of the church, hoping to gain through her suffering and humility the favor of Our Blessed Señora. Four of the little girls who learned their lessons and the use of the needle under her gentle hand, were to walk beside her, clothed all in white, carrying candles to light her agonizing way. There was no secret hiding her deed or its purpose; any person who had the heart to bear her suffering,


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 as the rough tiles cut her tender flesh, was free to come. So they came and waited for her to pass, in reverence, in tender sympathy.

That was to be the crowning of her long petition, the culmination of her sacrifice, for the good Don Juan. All hoped that Our Lady would bend low and see.

This low-whispering, sympathetic gathering extended along the open part of the arcade, where the moonlight fell through its airy, rhythmic arches, reproducing them in sharp outline of shadow on the pavement tiles. Well to the front the young women waited, many of them sitting on the pavement edge, their bright garments like gay blossoms along the way.

These were of the third generation since the Indians embraced the Christian faith. In all essentials except blood they were Spanish, and some of them, indeed, were even Spanish in blood, the children of soldiers and other exiles in California who had married Indian wives. Their common language was Spanish, their thoughts were Spanish, molded from infancy by the mission fathers. Two of these girls sat a little apart, close by the pedestal of an arch, as near to Don Geronimo's door as they could draw, as if some dearer bond of sympathy, some closer understanding, gave them the right to be the first to strew their prayers and sighs and heart-deep wishes like sweet flowers in Gertrudis Sinova's path.


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 "If I could do as much for poor Cristóbal!" sighed one.

"Doña Magdalena says he is safe, far away from San Fernando and the wicked soldiers," her companion said, as if in reminder of something lately discussed.

"But he is not here, he never can return. Gertrudis has Don Juan, even blind, as I would have Cristóbal if I could, both blind and deaf. I'd only ask that he could still use his tongue to tell me he loved me."

"I would want a man who could see my pretty ribbons, Inez. I think a blind man would be very tiresome in a little while."

"It is sinful to say that, Maria. Do you believe Gertrudis thinks this of Don Juan?"

"But she would rather have him with eyes to see her pretty face."

"Any girl would, of course. But between having a blind lover and a lover whose hand you never shall touch again—that is the thing, Maria. When I am old, I must sit in the sun beside the wall alone."

"Maybe another one will come in Cristóbal's place, perhaps a man from Don Juan's country."

"Why should they come here to be killed, as the soldiers want to kill Don Juan? But if one came, he could go back again; I wouldn't look at him."

"Maybe one from Mexico, then. Who knows?"

"It would not be Cristóbal, Maria. No, I am going to wait. When the cruel soldiers are gone from California, as everybody hopes to see them