text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/115

 often, in bodies that seem too frail to stop the sun. Remember Padre Serra, and his three hundred leagues with a sore on his leg that would have crippled an ordinary man."

"It is true," Dominguez nodded, his eyes speculative, pipe in hand. "Your tall Englishman from the yankee country—he is watching the road?"

"He is watching, with the hope in his blue eyes that Alvitre will come for his horse."

"And you did not meet the soldiers at the harbor? It is a strange thing. They must have gone to the pueblo. I tell you, Sebastian Alvitre has nothing to fear from them."

"They cannot plead the excuse that he outrides them now."

"What do you intend to do with his horse, Padre Mateo?"

"It belongs to Juan Molinero."

"Alvitre valued it equal with his life, it is said. The fellow will go desperate ways to get it back again, no doubt, even to a raid on your corrals at night. It might be better to shoot the beast, good animal that it is, and leave it beside the road where Alvitre, or somebody who will carry the news to him, will see it."

"There is a friendship growing already between the creature and our Juan," Padre Mateo said, pride and affection in his voice.

"But the man is a gentile, he may turn bandit


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/116

 himself, now that he has a notable horse," Dominguez argued.

"It is an ungenerous thought, unworthily expressed, Dominguez," the priest chided him. "Where would your tranquillity, your honor, have been tonight but for him? You forget too soon."

"No, I have not forgotten," Dominguez protested, not in the least abashed by the correction. "But I am a cautious man, padre; a business man. It is not wise to harbor stray dogs; too often they kill sheep. I am only considering that here this Juan of yours is, a man who has lived among savages, a stranger to our religion, our customs. In a little while he will grow uneasy shut in the bounds of the mission; he will step out, with no disguise to cover him, no friendly padre at his side. Such a man is not to be taken easily. When the soldiers challenge him, he will kill them, and then—to the bosque. So it will be, Padre Mateo."

"I would follow such a man, then," said young Guillermo, gratitude big in his breast.

"What folly!" his father corrected him.

"He sees deeper than you, Dominguez," Padre Mateo said kindly. "It is his meaning that Juan Molinero would not strike any man down without warrant, nor take the road in any enterprise that was not just and honorable. He means that a man could follow him in honor wherever he might lead. Youth has a quick heart and a quick eye. The world is often poorer because we pass its judgments lightly, with a laugh."

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/117

 "I only spoke as reason leads a man to believe," Dominguez said, humbled a little by the priest's rebuke. "It might turn out that way, it might not, but as a man of business who has felt the edges of the world, I say it is a mistake to give him the horse."

"I prefer a mule for the road, it goes fast enough for me and has more spring in the step. Padre Ignacio would as soon think of mounting an elephant as a horse, and Don Geronimo has horses of his own. So, there is nobody at San Fernando who needs a horse so much as Juan."

"It is to be considered that the villainous Alvitre rode the horse to my door; that it was my gold he demanded, my daughter he insulted by his gross affront. As a matter of indemnity for an indignity suffered, I believe the horse should come to me."

"So, that is it, Dominguez?" Padre Mateo laughed. "The goose shows its head from beneath your coat at last. Well, it is done, the horse is given to Juan Molinero, and he will be a brave man, indeed, who takes it from him. The indemnity must be collected from Sebastian Alvitre, my good friend, I fear."

"It is another thing," said Dominguez, closing his mouth on the subject, a sternness fixing in his countenance which did not forecast peace in Sebastian Alvitre's ways.

Guillermo rose. His mother was in the door, daughter and guest dimly white behind her. The three came into the patio, where palms grew along the wall, and flowers which the hands of Doña Ana


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/118

 had brought to perfection of bloom. The scent of lemon and jasmine blossoms blent in the slow night wind, the benediction of placid domesticity.

"The land is sweet after the wild and bitter sea," said Gertrudis Sinova, standing to breathe such perfumes as chemist never blended, her arms lifted a little, her hands outspread. "There is security here; there is peace."

"If no prowling bandit comes," said Doña Ana, her voice low in dreadful caution.

"Little fear tonight, doña," Padre Mateo assured her, so calm and contented himself that his confidence spread round him like a light.

"They have been telling me of the wild robber who came last night," Gertrudis said. "It is a strange adventure to come to one's own door. I did not think there were such men in California."

"Put your fears away, then," Dominguez counseled, "and sit here near the wall. The heat of the day is in the adobe still, it will cheer you against the wind of our north country, which is not so soft as the night-winds in the land you left behind you, my dear."

"I seem to remember only storm and distress," the young woman sighed.

"It is past; here peace begins," Padre Mateo said.

"Where is the tall American with the shining hair?" she asked.

"He is standing sentinel, in the hope, I truly be-


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/119

 lieve, that Sebastian Alvitre, the bandit, will come again tonight," Padre Mateo answered.

"In the hope?" Gertrudis repeated, incredible that she had understood.

"He is dissatisfied with the fiasco we made of it when he left Alvitre in our hands for a moment," Padre Mateo replied, a little laugh at his own disgrace in his words. "Yes, if Alvitre shows his head tonight it will be a long time before he runs away again."

She would have from Padre Mateo's tongue the story of Juan Molinero, of his coming to the kitchen door at San Fernando in the night, clothed in the skins of wild beasts, bearded like a patriarch, his long hair on his shoulders. She exclaimed in resentful wonder to hear that his life was forfeit under the king's decree which closed California to foreign feet; she protested like a defender of the oppressed when told of Captain del Valle's demand for his surrender on the charge that he was a spy.

"What romance! what a figure for romantic adventure! He is like Alvarado of the Noche Triste, another gallant gentleman with golden hair."

Her ardent sympathy, expressed in voice tuneful on the ear as the scented breeze was pleasant to breathe, was sweet in the ears of Padre Mateo. As for Guillermo, his father's disappointment in this young woman was not his own. Guillermo's thoughts were with his desires, and they were not in the patio that night. There was another, perhaps thought unworthy for a son of a family, with slow


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/120

 lids over long-slitted eyes; a soldier's daughter in the pueblo, whose smile through her barred window had made his heart faint with ecstasy, his knees weak in the sickness of a so sweet malady.

"It is secure, it is safe, knowing that the American gentleman is on guard this night," said Gertrudis, so softly that the words must have been meant for her own heart alone.

"Ah!" said Padre Mateo to himself, nodding his wise head in the dark, "the judgment of youth is quick and sure, world without end."

"But if the soldiers take him, then he must die!" she said, her words quick, sharp, as if the man's peril had been revealed to her without the splendor of romance only that moment.

"That is the fear that walks with me," Padre Mateo confessed. "I led him into the danger, but I urged him to return while he could have done so in safety. He scorned the thought."

"Certainly; I would—anybody who had looked him in the eyes would—have known he wouldn't go back. And tomorrow!" her fear leaping into her words, quickening them, giving them a panting anxiety; "if the soldiers meet us tomorrow!"

"Then Juan Molinero will find a way," Padre Mateo said, as confident as he was that his own feet were on the ground.


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/121

ADRE MATEO had them on the road while the morning was still wan. A grey fog made day delinquent; it trickled in a cold sweat from every roadside shrub; it marked the ridge of wheel-tracks in the dust with little tracings of moisture, and drew its magic circle with delicate touch around each footprint of creature that had passed the dusty highway the day before.

"It is a good morning for my lima beans," Dominguez said when he parted with them at the gate, "but I would wait for the sun before taking the road. That rascal Alvitre could stand behind a bush and never be seen till you were on top of him."

The chance was as great by sun as in fog, Padre Mateo replied, and rode forth in confidence, Cristóbal in the lead, his quick ears strained for an unfriendly sound, as ready now to shoot an arrow through Sebastian Alvitre as any other thief. Alvitre was in the dust; a new hero stood in the young Indian's eyes. There was a big hope in his heart that morning to do some brave deed in the presence of the mighty man who had held Sebastian Alvitre


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/122

 as helpless as a little child and taken away his pistols and his sword.

Padre Mateo and Juan Molinero rode behind the cart in which Gertrudis Sinova sat on a pile of blankets, her possessions' about her. Which of her boxes, if any, contained the gold she was believed to have inherited, Juan did not know. Against the advice of Padre Mateo she had tucked the canvas cover of the cart aside, to give her a view of the new land that was to be her home, she said.

Juan thought she appeared very frail and oppressed by sorrow, her face as white as a summer cloud under the dark scarf drawn over her head, her large cloak making her shapeless as she swayed in the jolting cart. Her gentle eyes, too sad to seem eager, watched the narrow winding road now ahead, now through the opening at the cart's end, wonderingly, expectantly, with a great loneliness that struck his heart like a pain. Sometimes when her eyes met his, where the compassion of friendliness had nothing to hide, she smiled.

Gertrudis understood that perils might await them on their journey to the mission, although strife and outlawed men seemed out of keeping with the serenity of that gentle land. Here were no rocky crags, no down-pouring torrents, no shadowed forests, no insidious greenery of swamp and brake. A clean and friendly land it seemed, where one might advance with his fears behind him. She waited eagerly what the breaking of the fog would reveal.


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/123

 There is a wind that comes down from the desert places of southern California in the autumn of the year, sweeping over mountain and hill, bearing its mysterious way out to sea. It is a searing wind, that seems to pierce the eyeballs, to strike to the core of the brain, yet a beguiling wind, rustling the curtains of memory, not lifting them to reveal the thing that charges it with such a yearning that starts the sutures of the heart. It is of things that were, and are not; of the beginning, which has left but a rudimentary recollection; of old dreams and old songs, and long wanderings. It comes at sunrise, when fog lies over the land like a cool hand upon a pulsing wound, working a transformation in a breath. Clouds are consumed by it, fog vanishes in its fiery contact, not blown away, but eaten as if this wind were a dragon which sucked it through flaming nostrils.

Such a wind began blowing this morning before the travelers had been more than two hours on their way. It seemed that the sun was almost instantly revealed in a hazy sky, wool-fragments of fog melting away in its untempered glare. Far ahead Gertrudis could see the hills which made the nearer wall of the valley in which the Mission San Fernando lay. Low-lying they seemed, at that distance, shreds of fog-cloud resting over them, the desert haze carried by the growing wind making them dim and far away.

A sullenness had come into the day, changing the kindly aspect of the country which had been so allur-


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/124

 ing and inviting to her from the ship, from her closer acquaintance with it in the short journey the day before. It seemed to have withdrawn its—friendly welcome, to be sulking behind barriers of mystery and alien traits. The broad valley which they were journeying through was a monochrome of gray, as if every green leaf had taken a sickness, every stem an ashen leprosy, such was the effect of the atom-fine dust the desert wind bore, impalpable, mysterious, working its magic on the light of day.

As the morning advanced the temper of the sun became more ardent, a languorous, drowsy heat such as comes but a few days in the year to the seacoast country. The animals in Padre Mateo's cavalcade marched listlessly, with heads hanging, the sweat dried on their flanks by the desert blast as quickly as it oozed, their feet chugging with stocky indifference in the white dust of the road.

Quite different from their journey of the day before between the harbor and the Dominguez ranch, when the wind was from the sea, crisp as cabbage leaves, as Padre Mateo said, the sky so blue and serene that one longed to taste the breath of it, and plunge like a dolphin through its untainted depths. Then Padre Mateo had ridden without a fear, beguiled by the innocent face of the day, perhaps, into belief in a security that was no greater than that of today, his mule-bell tinkling with a comfortable pastoral sound among the bosque as they passed.

Now Padre Mateo's mule-bell was stuffed with


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/125

 leaves, dumb on its neckstrap as any common metal that never had known the vibration of a clapper or the thrilling of sweet sounds. Padre Mateo himself was oppressed by forty fears. His sandalled feet did not flare out so gallantly from his mule's sides, his shoulders drooped under the burden of the sun. He turned his eyes this way and that, in constant watching, thinking to see Sebastian Alvitre spring from the bushes, red-eyed from a long vigil by the roadside.

In that way Padre Mateo traveled with his fear, Juan Molinero on the bandit's horse beside him. There was no assurance in pistols, nor the rifle in the cart where Juan could lean and reach it. A man with twenty bullets in him could not stand to a defense of the helpless. But if it came to the point where he must do it, Padre Mateo was determined that he would show the bandit crew that, although prohibited by the king's commands from bearing arms of his own, he was under no interdiction that bound his hands from applying the weapons of another man to the defense of a helpless one in his care. There was comfort in this simmering down of his perturbation; Padre Mateo calculated the effectiveness of a barricade of the boxes in the cart.

"Tula," said he, giving her the affectionate diminutive of her name, "can you fire a pistol?"

"As well as almost any man," she replied, but with sidelong look at Juan, as if she made her exception there.

"Then I am going to ask Juan to give you one


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/126

 of his, or perhaps two. No man can use six pistols, no matter if he's quick as powder. If this fellow Alvitre should happen to appear—although I do not look for him at all, my dear, the road is quite safe—it would be well to be able to show him his place."

Juan was pleased with the suggestion. He selected one of the pistols brought from the mission, a new pattern of weapon with four revolving barrels.

"These pistols of yours, Padre Mateo, are better than Alvitre's," Juan said. "For a man of his name, he's away behind the times."

Padre Mateo kicked his mule close to the tail of the cart and put the pistol in Gertrudis' hand.

"God forbid that you ever need it!" he said. "But there is a proverb which says that the wise man does first what the fool does last. It is well to be prepared. No, my boy," speaking to Juan, ranging beside him again, more comfortable in his mind, "it is not such an easy thing to get good weapons in this country. Alvitre, I have no doubt, is nearly as badly crippled today as if you had cut off one of his hands. Guns and pistols are not as common here as they are in your country, although it will come to that in time. A man takes what he can get. These with the four barrels were made in Massachusetts, as you will see by looking at the stock. One of them equals Alvitre's four, and would shoot twice as far, I expect, although I know nothing about such matters, indeed."

There was a knowing look in Padre Mateo's grey


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/127

 eyes as he made this profession of ignorance, which Juan answered with a smile. It was worth knowing a man like Padre Mateo, thought Juan. He was as sound as a new barrel, wholesome and hearty, and unselfish as a true priest, a true man and a true friend should be.

Whether Sebastian Alvitre was indeed crippled for the want of pistols, or whether his humiliation had so debased him in the eyes of his followers that they were afraid to engage in any further enterprises under his lead, Padre Mateo, of course, did not know. But he was relieved to reach the pass in the hills at noonday without sight of the outlaw. Beside a spring near the summit of the pass they halted for refreshment under the wide-spreading oaks. Gertrudis came down out of the cart, pistol in her sash, to spread the lunch that Doña Ana had packed in a big basket for them, scorning the rough fare that Padre Mateo had brought to feed this well-bred lady from the capital.

San Fernando mission lay against the farther hills, directly across the wide valley which the travelers entered from the pass called Cahuenga, as it is known even to this day. The road seemed more secure from the pass onward to the mission, many travelers being abroad. They were now traversing the King's Road, the highway binding mission to mission from south to north, which touched the mean village of Los Angeles, and many similar small places outside the ecclesiastical jurisdiction along the way.


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/128

 "It is folly to feel safe on a well-traveled road through a country where bandits levy their taxes," Padre Mateo said, "but it is common to us all. Reason shows us that a bandit does not stand beside a road where nobody passes. The faster they come, the sooner his day's work is over, and he is back to his pleasures at the inn."

"I suppose it's because there's comfort in numbers, Padre Mateo, even if there isn't much help," Juan responded.

"You have not relaxed your watch, I see, my good Juan, although I may doze at times, especially when I hear the bells of some honest freighter plodding on to meet us with his burros. If I go too far, jog me with your foot, Juan. This sun is hotter here; it is always so in our valley."

There were no toll-gatherers by the road that day. The travelers came in peace to San Fernando when the sun was low, and the burning wind from the desert was falling to intermittent gusts. Here the king's highway divided the mission estate, the buildings lying to the right of it, a broad field enclosed by a high adobe wall on the left. In the center of this field two palm trees stood, aliens in that land, set there by the fathers who founded the mission, the little plants carried from Mexico with tender care.

Juan Molinero was to remember long that day's journey and that home-coming. To the end of his life a whiff of dust rising from the road, a glimpse of a tiled roof through the greenery of boughs,


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/129

 brought back to him in a rush the recollection of that day: Gertrudis in the cart, her cloak and scarf aside, her fair hair lifting in the wind, and now and then her smile of confidence, the only language between them that they could understand.

The thirsty mules quickened their listless pace, scenting the water of the fountain across the road from the mission's white arcade, a great brimming basin built of bricks, placed there for the refreshment of passing beasts. Gertrudis stood on her knees, looking over the driver's shoulder to see what waited her in the land that had cost her so much bereavement and sorrow to reach.

Before the mission the road was broad and white, trampled to its very edges by feet of men and beasts. The Indian neophytes were coming home from the fields, their day's work done, streaming across this wide white road with hoes and scythes, spades and rakes, and all the small tools of their occupation on their shoulders. Some of them waved their hands in greeting to Cristóbal as he approached the fountain, riding a few rods ahead of the cart. A little way beyond this procession of oncoming laborers the road bent sharply around the corner of the high adobe wall that closed the padres' garden, where there were orange trees and figs, and roses beside paths that were cool and pleasant when the sun was low.

The mules drawing the cart stretched their necks with sudden yielding to their thirst, and swerved wilfully toward the fountain, defying the driver,


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/130

 who sawed with all his might on the bits, carrying the young lady across the road from the spot where Padre Ignacio stood under the white arches to welcome her. The Indian laborers paused a moment in their homeward march to laugh at the driver's helpless anger against the mules, which he relieved a little now by lashing their dusty backs with his whip as they stood with muzzles buried to the nostrils, greedily sucking the cool water of the fountain.

"It will do," said Padre Mateo, seeing that it must do. "Drive across when they have enough. No, Gertrudis, do not get down—there is dust enough here to swallow you. One moment now."

"Here is the pistol," she said, offering it at large, it seemed, standing with it in her hand.

Padre Mateo waved Juan forward to receive it back from her, which he did with a surge of color to his face, his hat in his hand. He put the pistol in the saddle holster that carried its mate, flinging over them the brown gown that he had worn yese terday.

"Thank God for the peaceful conclusion of this day," said Padre Mateo. "Juan, keep a close eye on that horse to see that Alvitre doesn't steal him from you. The rascal will go to no end of trouble to get him back again, you may"

"Quick, Juan, quick! soldiers!"

It was Cristóbal, shouting at a pitch of excitement that cracked his voice and made it squeal like a girl's. He stood at the fountain, pointing.


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/131

 Troopers were rounding the turn in the road at the corner of the garden wall.

The neophytes cleared out of the way, some dropping their tools in their haste to give free passage to the men whose contempt and cruelty made them a daily scourge. Padre Mateo kicked his mule with frantic drumming on its ribs, reining it in front of the soldiers who came sweeping down the road like a boisterous wind, their dust heavy behind them.

"Ride! I will stand between!" he shouted to Juan.

Juan turned his horse to face the troopers, as if he had a thought of riding through their line, but no intention of showing them his back in flight ahead of them. The reins lay loose across the saddle-horn; his hands were under the brown gown where the four-barreled pistols hung. Padre Ignacio had started down from the arcade when the soldiers closed around, Captain del Valle within the circle, sabre in his hand. The officer made an imperious gesture which seemed to sweep Juan from his horse.

"Down! you are a prisoner in the king's name!"

"So, this is the trick you play? worse than liar!" Padre Mateo scorned the soldier. "You hide beyond the wall"

"It is enough!" Captain del Valle said. "Down!" he commanded again, lunging with his sword to make his meaning plain, the point of it not an inch from Juan Molinero's breast. A mo-


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/132

 ment, and the iron seemed to melt in Captain del Valle's arm. The sword-point wavered, sunk down; the blood fled out of the captain's face. Juan Molinero was levelling the four-barreled pistols at the captain's head.

"Tell him to order his men to retire," Juan requested Padre Mateo.

"There must be no violence! In the name of Our Señor I forbid him to fire! Stop him, Brother Mateo." Padre Ignacio came hurriedly among the horses as he spoke, his sandalled feet noiseless in the dust.

Juan said nothing, nor hesitated a moment, when Padre Mateo translated his superior's command. He restored the pistols to the holster instantly, and sat defenseless in the face of eight soldiers and their captain, his hand on his thighs.

"Now," said Padre Ignacio, greatly relieved and pleased, "permit him to pass, Captain del Valle."

"He is the king's prisoner, and no longer at my disposal," Captain del Valle ungraciously returned.

"Have you no more gratitude, no greater magnanimity, for the man who gives you your life?" Padre Ignacio sternly demanded.

Captain del Valle had exchanged sword for pistol, which he presented at Juan's breast. The soldiers had followed their captain's lead; Juan was the center of their concentrated aim. His obedience had cost him his hope.

"Tell him to dismount," the captain ordered Padre Mateo. Juan obeyed, confident that the


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/133

 authoritative voice, the commanding presence, of Padre Ignacio would be at once his defense and deliverance.

"Bind him," Captain del Valle commanded, designating two soldiers for that duty.

Padre Ignacio stepped to Juan's side, lifting an interdicting hand.

"Let no man touch him on pain of denial of the holy communion," he said.

Captain del Valle threw himself from the saddle as the soldiers drew back, quaking between the fear of the awful punishment threatened by the priest and the wrath of their officer.

"You cannot stand between the law and this spy," the captain said roughly, approaching as if he would fling the priest aside. "He has been at the harbor spying out a way for ten thousand of these new Americans to enter this land. You do not know, here behind your thick walls, what is going on in the world, Padre Ignacio. This man must be taken to Monterey for trial. Priest or layman will stand in the way of it at his peril. It is enough!"

"If you were an honest man you would not bend to this poor trick," Padre Mateo said, pushing his mule forward between Captain del Valle and Padre Ignacio, crowding the beast with such impertinence into the little space that its dusty neck rubbed the soldier's coat. "You could have come on the open road to arrest this inoffensive stranger, you knew where he would pass. But no; you must


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/134

 do it here, at the very door of the mission, to defy and humiliate Padre Ignacio, to work your mean spite against him in this manner, worm of a soldier that you are!"

"Bind him!" Captain del Valle commanded his men, a threat of terrible discipline in his scowl.

"Let me plead for him, brave captain," Gertrudis appealed, standing pale and wistful in the cart's end.

"It cannot be, miss, or madam," Captain del Valle replied. His pistol was pointed at Juan Molinero's heart; the soldiers, trembling, white and cold with fear, came forward with ropes to bind the prisoner's hands.

"There is no harm in him, he is gentle in word and thought," Gertrudis pleaded, "and only two nights past he grappled an armed outlaw with his bare hands when he threatened the lives of a citizen and his family. See—that is the outlaw's horse; his pistols are here, in this gallant gentleman's belt."

"It is nothing to me, lady," Captain del Valle said.

"But you—he spared you"

"Ha! God save her! She falls!" Padre Ignacio cried, leaping in vain endeavor to assist Gertrudis who, in her earnestness seeming to forget where she stood, had stepped from the cart-end and fallen to the ground.

She lay as if insensible, her cheek in the dust,


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/135

 her hair spread around, one hand thrown out as if to break her fall.

"Lift her, my son—she lies as one dead!" Padre Ignacio said, interpreting his meaning by speaking gestures.

Juan, disregarding Captain del Valle's menacing pistol, bent and lifted her in his arms.

"Into the cart with her, leave her so!" Captain del Valle ordered.

Gertrudis opened her eyes with appealing look into Juan Molinero's face.

"My knee—it is terrible, the agony!" she moaned. "Carry me within quickly, quickly!"

Juan understood only the appeal of her eyes, the suffering expression of her white face against his arm, but he knew that Captain del Valle had ordered her thrown into the cart like a sheep. That was no place for a suffering woman when the mission door stood wide.

"Across the road with you now, John Miller!" Padre Mateo shouted, kicking his mule in front of Captain del Valle as if the soldier were a bush, the pistol in his hand of no more importance than a thorn.

There was a trampling of feet, a dismounting in haste of soldiers at the captain's command, confusion and blinding dust. Padre Mateo, his feet flaring wide in the stirrups, shifted his mule in a clever dance to block Captain del Valle's aim, and Juan Molinero pushed the doubtful soldiers out of


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/136

 his way and set off with his burden across the road toward the mission door.

"Halt!" Captain del Valle shouted. "Fire! shoot him down!"

Padre Ignacio stood before the hesitant soldiers, his arms spread wide as if to gather the charges of their half-raised muskets to his own breast. Captain del Valle, desperately furious, laid hold of Padre Mateo's bridle reins, wrenching the capering mule to a sudden stand. He levelled his pistol across the animal's back, at Padre Mateo's cantle, and fired as the wrathful priest laid him a lusty blow across the mouth with the back of his open hand.

"You would kill a woman, beast!" Padre Mateo cried.

Padre Mateo's blow sent the pistol-ball high over Juan Molinero's head. For many years after that day the Indians pointed to a dark spot in the white plaster covering the mission's adobe walls, close by a little barred window that let the south sun into Padre Ignacio's chamber. Before Captain del Valle could draw another pistol, Juan had leaped up the three steps leading to the arcade and crossed to the open door.

Magdalena, waiting within to welcome the guest who was to become her special care, who had seen Juan's arrest and deliverance, was amazed when Gertrudis leaped out of Juan's arms as they crossed the threshold, as nimbly as if she never had been


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/137

 touched by as much as a falling leaf in her life. In a moment she was running back the way that Juan had carried her, to meet Padre Ignacio, who stood in amazement in the middle of the dusty road. There the girl flung herself on her knees before the priest, who spread his hands over her bowed head in the benediction that she sought.

"It is a miracle!" said Padre Mateo. He leaned back in his saddle and laughed until his brown gown shook.

"It is a trick that you shall pay for, by the holy wood!" Captain del Valle swore. There was blood on his beard as he looked up into the priest's face, his eyes luminous with the hate that inflamed him. He drew his hand across his mouth, and held it out with its stain for Padre Mateo to see, sternly, as if he laid before him proof of an offense so deep that only blood itself could balance it.

Magdalena stood in the door, a barring arm stretched before Juan, who seemed to protest that honor demanded of him to return to the soldiers from whom he had escaped by the artful pretense of this admirable girl. Magdalena understood that one word honor, for the sound of it in the Castilian tongue is similar. She placed her palm against Juan's breast and pushed him away from the door, as she might have repelled an insistent child.

"No, no!" she said, sternly. "Honor goes to honor, Juan Molinero. Remain where you are."

Padre Mateo sat a moment in his saddle, his head


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/138

 bent, his mirth gone out of his hearty face. He looked then at Captain del Valle, whose swollen lips twitched his beard.

"Captain del Valle, I did not strike you; I struck only your unworthy passion. Thank me; I saved you, perhaps, from the curse of innocent blood. It is folly to carry the thought of vengeance against a priest who has neither property to be taken away nor ambitions to be denied."

Padre Mateo rode away in dignity and left the soldier with that. Captain del Valle mounted his horse and turned toward the north, this time with no pretense in his going to report to the governor in the capital city of Monterey.


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/139

ON GERONIMO sat at supper with Sergeant Olivera in the mission kitchen, as on another night more than two months before. The long whip was hanging in its place beside the door, the hams' and bacon were dim in the slow-moving smoke among the dark beams. Magdalena sat opposite her thin-visaged, bearded husband, proud of his handsome carriage, his erect shoulders, his commanding eye. Truly, if Don Geronimo had not been born caballero he had made one of himself, and that of the first.

Magdalena was as neat and comely as it was her customary habit to be, a yellow kerchief with scarlet crescents binding back her fine dark hair. Her youthful, plump arms were bare to the elbows; in unconscious grace she leaned them on the cloth, her slender brown hands clasped restfully.

Sergeant Olivera was the same as yesterday, as ten years before, as he would be ten years after. A sun-cured man, brown and grey, enduring as oak, tireless as an eagle. His sabre and pistols hung on the post of his chair, his soft grey hat, its broad brim turned up on one side and fastened against


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/140

 the low crown with a leather cockade, lay on a corner of the table near his hand.

"It is incredible news you bring, Sergeant Olivera," Don Geronimo said, his grizzly thick eyebrows lifted until they arched high in his lofty forehead. "Sebastian Alvitre given full pardon by the governor, and to become an honest tavern-keeper in the pueblo! It passes the belief of a credulous man."

"How honest a tavern-keeper is another thing, but a tavern-keeper in all sobriety. As to the governor's motives, Don Geronimo, you will pardon my silence."

"Certainly, Sergeant Olivera. A soldier's tongue must wear a bridle. As for myself, I can see nothing in the whole business but the beginning of some new rascality."

"We shall see," said the sergeant, his leathery face as secret as a closed purse.

"Well, you have been a long time away, you missed the wine-making after all. Are the grapes of San Diego de Acalá abundant this year?"

"Small and dry. And the brandy-still? does it work, Don Geronimo?"

"Like magic. We have eight barrels already distilled, and shall make more—perhaps twenty in all. That will not be a poor beginning."

"Alvitre will be a customer," the soldier said, looking shrewdly at the mayordomo, humor in his eyes.


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/141

 "And pay for it with gold stolen from the padres on the king's highway," Don Geronimo nodded, the humor of such a situation quite beyond him. "Let the scoundrel come here, and I will flog him back to the pueblo like a dog."

"Here is Borromeo," said Magdalena, her face toward the door.

Borromeo Cambon appeared out of the night, pausing a moment in the door to make a ceremonial bow to Magdalena, who laughed and applauded the effect with clapping hands. Borromeo was arrayed as for an occasion, with gilt-braided green jacket and buff pantaloons so tight on his big thighs that the skin itself must have been crowded. These were buckled under his insteps, making it appear a question, and a disconcerting one, how the blacksmith was to sit down.

"Well, soldier!" Borromeo hailed in booming voice, coming in with a swagger to his broad shoulders, putting out a hand in greeting. "Where have you been since I drank the last cup with you at this table more than eight weeks ago?"

"I have been in the south," the sergeant replied, rising to meet the hearty fellow on equal terms. "What is this? You are dressed like a lover, there is perfume on your beard."

Borromeo's dark face grew darker for a slow mounting of blood. He lifted his shoulders, raised his eyebrows, rocked his head.

"A man is not old at thirty-seven," he said.


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/142

 "I remember; there was one lady on the ship. Did you get her, according to your oath, Borromeo?"

"A man is not an old man at thirty-seven, as I have said." Borromeo looked about him, a challenge in his bearing to any man who might have the courage to question the pertinacity of his emphasized repetition.

"Nobody denies it, Borromeo," Don Geronimo said. "Sit; there is wine in the pitcher."

"And where is the barbarian?" Sergeant Olivera inquired. "Has he put on his hairy skins and gone back to his kind?"

"He is sitting by a candle, a book under his nose, spelling out large words which he will try to pronounce to me tomorrow," Borromeo laughed. "He is a savage no longer, my brave soldier."

"No? It is a miracle," the soldier said, amusement, depreciation, in his words.

"He has been baptized," Magdalena told him, speaking with reverence.

"Like an Indian caught out of the woods," Sergeant Olivera smiled. "Do not trust him; it may be only a pretense."

"It is to be seen," said Don Geronimo, very grave, shaking his head as if in pity of the priests' credulity.

Magdalena said nothing. She reached for the pitcher and filled her husband's glass.

"Now, I will tell you, gentlemen," said Borro-


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/143

 meo, puffing after a tremendous swig at the earthen mug that held his quart of sour claret, "I believe he is as true a man and as worthy a Christian as ever put beans in his mouth. That much I will say for Juan Molinero, who has worked by my side in the forge many a good day."

Magdalena turned a look upon the blacksmith that would have given a coward courage. Perhaps for the peace of her hearth she held her own words under her tongue.

"You were not here," Borromeo addressed himself to the sergeant, "the day he escaped from Captain del Valle. You do not know the story of that day?"

"It wasn't through his own valor or shrewdness that he got away, I have been told," Sergeant Olivera replied.

"The way was opened by another, that is true, and if I had been there I would have stood ten soldiers on their heads to help him," Borromeo declared. "You would not speak lightly of his courage or his honor if you knew him, little soldier. Have you been told that he wanted to go back and deliver himself into Captain del Valle's hands that day? thinking that honor bound him because he got away by the comical trick of that smart girl. Well, that is the truth of it, as Magdalena here can tell you. How many soldiers would have been troubled by a call of honor with a wall eight feet thick between them and their enemy?"


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/144

 "That is another thing," Sergeant Olivera said testily, frowning into his cup.

"There is not much honor among soldiers," Borromeo said, with dispassionate, simple earnestness. "I have seen them lasso Indian women in the camps of those who are still gentiles, and drag them to their tents."

"There are ruffans in every company, not excepting this," Sergeant Olivera returned, very little concerned by the blacksmith's opinion, not in the least disturbed.

"Where there is one soldier there is always a ruffian," Borromeo growled.

"Your wit improves, Vulcan," Sergeant Olivera said, smiling with easy good-nature. "You must have been at the brandy barrels."

Borromeo made a grimace that involved all his facial apparatus, unmistakable in its intent of denial and, more than denial, confession of defeat in all his hopes for this extracted fire of the grape.

"It is not to be permitted, Padre Ignacio says. The guests in the front of the house may sip it like hungry bees, Don Geronimo, perhaps, will fill his bottle now and then, but the poor devils that built the still to cook it in and the barrels to hold it, they must be happy to breathe even the smell."

"Remember your penance, Borromeo," Magdalena prompted him, gently.

"Doña, I do not forget," Borromeo replied, his


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/145

 broad simple face suddenly grave, his booming voice subdued.

"You are a good man, Borromeo," she praised him; "you are becoming a better man every day."

"What of the mill, Don Geronimo, that this stranger was to build for Padre Ignacio? Does it go?" Sergeant Olivera made the inquiry in light derisiveness, as a man speaks of another's ridiculous simplicity to the one who has borne the affliction of it, certain that he has pitched his tune to a sympathetic ear.

"It goes," Don Geronimo replied without enthusiasm, grudgingly, as the flatness of his voice betrayed. "There is a devilish ingenuity in the hand of that man. What calamities his innovations shall bring to this mission I shrink to contemplate."

"Calamities?" Sergeant Olivera repeated the word curiously, as a man turns, with a puzzled face, a thing that he does not understand.

"Saving labor to these Indians is not wise," Don Geronimo answered gloomily. "They see the water doing their work in one thing; presently they will demand that the water do it in-all things. No, the millstones with the sweep were better than this arrangement; I do not care if the stranger's mill grinds ten times as much."

"And it goes?" said Sergeant Olivera, keenly curious, leaning a little in his eagerness to learn more.

"I will tell you how Don Juan and I made the


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/146

 machinery that turns this mill with such marvelous ease," Borromeo interrupted, assuming an undertaking which Don Geronimo willingly yielded to his forward tongue. "With your permission, Don Geronimo," he amended, seeing the corner of Magdalena's eye.

"Speak until you are empty, Borromeo," Don Geronimo granted.

"I am listening," Sergeant Olivera said.

"Then it was this way we accomplished it, against the belief of all men but Padre Ignacio," Borromeo began. He stretched his legs under the table, and leaned back at elegant ease, one arm hooked over the chair-post, one free to emphasize and illustrate his points. "In the beginning, Don Juan came to me to inquire if I had a furnace for melting iron. He was not surprised when I showed him the little melting-pot that I had made of clay, for running metal to cast many little things which save me long hammering at the anvil. He saw at once that I was a craftsman who knew metal from the very ore. That made it simple for him; half the work was already done.

"Then this Don Juan shapes a model of parts out of wood, his cog-wheels and his stems. We pack dry sand around them, and withdraw them with care, leaving the impression, the form. But when I pour in the metal, there is a disturbance, for the sand is not just so dry. So, this first casting is not good. Again, and again, many times we try,


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/147

 until at last it comes perfect from the mold. A bevel gear, as Don Juan calls it. Those are the English words for it: bevel gear. It is strange about this English, a very simple and easy language to speak. The word no means the very same thing that it does in Castilian."

"Simpleton!" said Magdalena laughing until her cheeks were red.

"A bevel gear," Sergeant Olivera repeated, thoughtfully. "But it is nothing new in mechanics, Don Geronimo?"

"Not at all; but new to the simple padres, applied for the first time in California. We have two buhrstones turned by the contrivance; I grant that it is a labor-saving machine, which is all this American yankee thinks of—saving human energy, the most plentiful and the cheapest thing in the world."

"That is not all that Don Juan has accomplished," Borromeo said with pride. "He has shown us how oxen are yoked in America, with the yoke resting on the necks close against the shoulders, in place of being tied to the horns, as we do it, as it has been done in Spain for ten thousand years."

"Oh, not so long, Borromeo," Magdalena asserted. "The world has not been created as long as that."

"Well, as long as it has been made, then," Borromeo insisted.

"I do not see the advantage of the method,"


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/148

 Sergeant Olivera said, considering it for its merits with an unprejudiced mind. "It may be more comfortable for the beasts, if any man is such a fool as to devise arrangements for that."

"Put yourself in the place of an ox," Borromeo proposed in entire seriousness, "and imagine me in the place of another, yoked to you horn by horn. There is a diabolical fly with a green head on my ribs; another, maybe its wife, on yours. I fling my head to knock off the beast that is sucking my blood; you do the same. Then where do we go, my friends? for the way one head goes, that way the other must go. So we suffer from these animals that eat us alive while head pulls against head and our eyes roll white as onions."

"It is for the flies that this humane Don Juan has devised the beautiful yoke, then?" Sergeant Olivera mocked.

"An ox is like a man, take him as you will," said Borromeo. "Give him comfort and he works with spirit. And that is one thing. Another thing is that one span of oxen will draw a load as heavy as three span yoked in the old way. And that is something else, heh?"

"It is something to consider," Sergeant Olivera admitted, honestly interested in what he had heard.

"And Don Juan has made a plow that throws a furrow like a wave, a great wide plow with one turning-side to it, not like the iron-shod beam that has been used in Spain for eight"


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/149

 "Hundred," Magdalena prompted.

"Too long, even at that," Borromeo complained. "We knew no better until Don Juan proved what his plow could do. It will increase the yield of our fields, it will throw the diabolical worms that eat the roots of our plants up to perish in the sun."

"I must see this plow," Sergeant Olivera said.

"I am making another one now, after the pattern of the first; I shall make many more. You are welcome to come to the forge tomorrow and learn the ways of progressive men, so that when you have the ranch you spoke of at our first meeting, you will know where to come for an implement."

"Just so," the soldier said, nodding seriously.

"Yes, Don Juan is a marvelous man, he is like a brother to me," Borromeo declared. "He knows the name of every tool in the forge, he can talk enough Castilian already for daily use, more than many of these neophytes who have had it beaten into them for twenty years."

"That is no marvel of intelligence," Don Geronimo said, cold in the heat of all this praise, which Sergeant Olivera knew very well was distasteful to him as a bitter pill. "Castilian is the natural language of man; it is the speech that God put into Adam's mouth at the beginning."

"Does he sit at this table?" the soldier inquired.

"No. Padre Ignacio has him at table, with Padre Mateo and the guests," Don Geronimo replied.


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/150

 "It is like a family; he is the same as a son to Padre Ignacio," Magdalena said.

"This is interesting," Sergeant Olivera assured them, rising to take his leave. "With your permission, Doña Magdalena, Don Geronimo, I shall go to my repose. Tomorrow I leave you again, to return to the mission no more, except only as a friend to see his friends."

"What is this?" Don Geronimo asked, his face turning pale.

"My captain has returned from Monterey with orders to establish the military forces in the Pueblo de Los Angeles, withdrawing the troopers from this mission and the Mission San Gabriel."

Don Geronimo bent his head, and stood a little while in silence, as a man stands to collect himself when he has heard heavy news.

"It is the beginning of the end," he said. "Tle pueblos will be built at the sacrifice of the missions. That is the mistaken policy of the viceroy, urged on by politicians who wait to pick our bones."

Don Geronimo went with the soldier to the door, where he stood looking into the night. Magdalena knew by the turn of his head that he was facing toward the village where the Indians lived. What thoughts, what fears, were crowding into his mind that moment she could not know, but a terrible cloud of menace and unrestrained passion rose in her own vision, making her eyes big as if she looked on unspeakable things. There was hatred and smolder-


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/151

 ing vengeance laid up against Don Geronimo in the brown huts of the clustered village, where many a back was sore that night from the bite of the long black whip that hung beside the door.


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/152

UAN MOLINERO, for one, was glad to see the I soldiers quit San Fernando, where eight of them, under command of a corporal, had been stationed since the day he returned to his sanctuary from the trip to the harbor. They were an insolent crew, fattening on the bounty of the padres, to whom they returned little service and less thanks. The Indians could be managed easier without this menace of cruel oppression forever in their eyes, according to Juan's belief. Even Padre Ignacio said the time and the necessity for a military guard at the missions was past.

Padre Mateo had told Juan a thing about these military men that did not lift them an inch in the American's respect. Spain, recently engaged in a turmoil of wars, its ships driven from the seas by the French, had lost contact with its American colonies. No Spanish ships had come to California in five years past; the viceroy of Mexico had ceased sending money to pay the soldiers in the presidios and missions of Alta California. The New Spain was becoming a stranger to the old; bold talk of separation, bold plots of uprisings to form a nation


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/153

 apart, were carried forward in the light of day.

The governor of California had appealed to the missions for gold to pay the soldiers, many of whom, stationed at the presidios, were in hardship, their wives and children in necessitous want. This appeal, out of gratitude for past protection and assistance, was gladly met. It was so generously and promptly met, in truth, that the governor and the military men were surprised. They had found the key to the treasure-boxes of the missions, upon which they had fixed their covetous eyes so long.

From the first respectful, doubtful appeal it was only a step to another, this time with growing boldness in the security of their situation. It became, in modern expression, a graft, this preying on the mission treasure. Little of the gold thus easily secured reached the soldiers in the ranks. The governor, the officers, the favored citizens of influence in the settlements around the missions, profited in easy security by the gold drawn from the padres' generosity on the plea that the soldiers had protected them in the days of their weakness and should now be remembered in the hour of their own distress. The unworthy ones smiled, and put the gold in their own pockets, growing rich on the generosity of gratitude, as many other grafters have done in this moral world, before and since.

It had been a tremendous drain on the missions' treasury, the requirements of the beneficiaries growing as their respect gave way to insolence,


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/154

 their supplication to unfeigned demand. The missions could not carry the load without falling soon into a state of exhaustion. A halt was called; the golden stream was suddenly and inexorably checked. This happened about the time of Juan Molinero's arrival at San Fernando. The withdrawal of the soldiers from the mission now was part of a plan of coercion to open the golden arteries again.

Padre Mateo talked of this as he stood with Juan Molinero in the mill the morning after Sergeant Olivera's visit to the kitchen. They had seen the soldiers ride away to the Pueblo de Los Angeles a little while before, each man with a pack-mule carrying his goods and possessions, accumulated here in this profitable lodgment which they were in no keen zest to leave.

Inside the shed that housed the simple machinery of the mill there was the pleasant smell of flint on flint as the millstones spun, warm streams of flour pouring into the bins in bountiful cascades. The miller was an old Mexican whose hair was almost as white as the flour, one who had come a young man to the mission of San Diego de Acalá, and had followed Padre Serra, founder of the missions, into the north. The marvel of this admirable mill was over him like the effect of a miracle. In the most prolific year of all the many years that he had fed the hoppers of mills driven by Indians tramping a wearisome circle at the end of a sweep, he had


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/155

 not ground as much wheat as he had turned into flour these past two months. It was beyond him, this ingenuity of the man from a strange land. As he laved his hand in the stream of flour, guarding its temperature as carefully as a physician the heat of his patient, the gratitude for such bountiful outpouring was calm in his heart like a benediction.

Cristóbal had been advanced from the drudgery of the fields under Don Geronimo's lash to the station of assistant to the miller. His duty was to attend to the hoppers, and to tally off the number of bags ground daily. Padre Ignacio had withdrawn the mill from Don Geronimo's superintendence, placing it entirely in Juan's hands. Diplomatically, nicely as the priest had made this new arrangement, it had not been accomplished without umbrage on Don Geronimo's part. That gentleman's feather-edged dignity was as difficult to avoid trampling on as a cat's tail.

"So they are gone," said Padre Mateo, looking from the door of the mill toward the lumpy-backed low mountain that marked from a distance the point where the pass led into the valley of San Gabriel and the Pueblo de Los Angeles. "I, for one, have neither fears for the future nor tears for the present. The air seems sweeter to me this morning for having those gaming, drinking, dishonest fellows out of it. Let us hope that the road will be a long one that brings the next soldier here."

"I'll be able to cross the road, at any rate, with-


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/156

 out needing a young lady to scheme some plan to get me back," said Juan. "I've been wanting to see that big field with the two palms in it for a long time."

"You have been patient under the restrictions that have set bounds for your restless feet, my son," Padre Mateo commended him. "But when you come and go, always remember Captain del Valle, and another one."

"Don Geronimo would like to see him catch me, well enough," Juan said. "Well, I'll give him a clear field one of these days, I think, Padre Mateo. Now the soldiers will not be here to spy on me every step I take, I can cut a bee-line for the mountains one of these nights."

"It is the way of an honest man to think of home with a tender yearning," Padre Mateo said gently, "but it would give me a pang like losing a brother to see you go. Is there nothing here, no promise, no vision of future times, to hold you, my Juan?"

"The Indians tell me there's a way to the south," said Juan, evading the question, "that's easy to travel in winter when the rains come. It strikes the country of the Yumas, on the Colorado."

"It is the mission trail, an old road, well known. There was a mission once among the Yumas, until they rose in their wickedness and destroyed it, and all within. That is a bad country, Juan; you couldn't pass the Yumas."


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/157

 "I'll risk it, when the rains begin," Juan returned. "What can a man do, or ever hope to do, in a country that condemns him to death for blundering into it?"

"Padre Ignacio has taken the matter up with our college of San Fernando, in Mexico. An appeal will be made to the viceroy for exemption in your case. When it comes, you may pass from one end of California to the other, the equal of any man."

"They'll find a way to deny you, Padre Mateo. There's a jealousy of our people held by the Mexicans on account of our late expansion of territory west of the Mississippi, unwarranted as we know it to be. You may be certain that Captain del Valle has given me a bad name at headquarters. No, Padre Mateo, I'm convinced that if I'm to save my neck I've got to risk the dangers that lie between here and Kentucky. They're bound to get me in time, if I stay here—I can't live on your charity forever—while I have a strong chance of escaping the Yumas, and the tribes east of them, if I'm watchful as I go along."

"It is not a question of bounty on our part, Juan, but one of the deepest gratitude for benefits conferred. You have helped us forward fifty years. What you might do, for us, for yourself, by remaining in California and becoming a citizen, is ingpiring to contemplate."

"Don Geronimo sneers at me for embracing your teligion, Padre Mateo. What"


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/158

 "Sneers? Don Geronimo sneers at you for embracing the holy faith?"

"It was a matter of expedience, rather than honest conviction, I heard him say to Sergeant Olivera. He didn't know I understood."

"He is dishonest in his heart when he utters such words!" Padre Mateo declared. "Let me hear him repeat it, and I'll scorch him in a way he'll remember!"

"So what would he say, and other men like him of the snake-cold blood, if I changed my citizenship? I never could live among them, Padre Mateo, for I'll bear no man's scorn."

"It is proclaimed in the way your body stands, in the high courage of your face, my son. When you stood between Don Geronimo and poor Cristóbal that morning the grapes were put in the press, I never beheld more dignity in a man, or more commanding power. And there is a day coming when we shall need you here, Juan, to stand between others of us who may not strike in our own defense, and the greedy ones who are making their sacks ready now to strip us and carry away all we own."

"Yes, they're working to throw all the mission property over to the state; it's an infection that seems to have gone up and down California like a plague of smallpox. I've sat at the table with travelers the past month who passed words of their plotting from mouth to mouth, traitors to the hos-


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/159

 pitality they enjoyed. I've felt like pitching them out into the road more than once."

"I have seen it grow," Padre Mateo sighed, "fed on the false postulation that the missions are holding these forty thousand Indians in slavery. Our work is accomplished, they argue; the Indians have been redeemed from the state of heathens and lodged safely in the bosom of mother church. We should now lift our hands and let the full-fledged brood fly away, and to what, Juan Molinero? To debauchery, debasement, slavery of the bitterest, indeed. That is the desire of these men who have vast l-and-grants from the crown: Indian labor to turn their furrows, guard their herds, make them rich. It would be the same here as it was in the islands of the Spanish Main of old. Our poor simpletons would become slaves, indeed."

"It looks to me like they've got a pretty easy time of it," Juan declared. "I don't see any hardships in the lives of these Indians at San Fernando, granted that the lazy ones do get a little strap-oil now and then. Eight or nine hours a day"

"Seven, Juan. None of these Indians labors more than seven hours a day. Three hours we apportion for devbtional exercises, as you know, making ten hours in all that we require their duty to us and to God. In return we give them, in simply material comforts, good lodgment, good beds for their repose; good garments to clothe their nakedness, abundance of food such as they never knew in their


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/160

 former state, and could not provide for themselves if they were given their so-called freedom today. We give them the sanctity of marriage, we insure them repose in holy earth when life departs; and above all this, we have brought them into the inestimable heritage of eternal happiness beyond the grave."

"Padre Ignacio is coming, bringing some buyers for flour," Juan announced, breaking abruptly the thread of their not-too-happy discourse.

"So!" Padre Mateo made his eyes small, looking against the sun to see. "We'll soon have more customers than flour at the rate they've been coming. The fame of your mill has gone far."

Padre Ignacio was advancing along the dusty road beside the mother-ditch that carried the water to the fields, bareheaded, as he commonly went about, striding in long steps like a soldier. Three men followed him, coming a little way behind, talking among themselves, apparently discussing the flow of water in the irrigation ditch, to which they turned now and then with gesticulating hands.

"I doubt if these men are customers, Juan," Padre Mateo said, watching them narrowly, the broad brim of his flat hat pulled low to shade his eyes. "I see Vincente Felix, comisionado of Los Angeles, in the lead. He is not a man to buy flour."

"Isn't there another one you recognize?" Juan asked, a curious expression in his frank blue eyes.

"No-o-o," Padre Mateo deliberated, "I can't


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/161

 say—yet there seems to be something familiar in the figure of another, the second, something in his bulky shoulders—what is it? do you know him, Juan?"

"Not that I know him, Padre, but we have met. If I am not greatly mistaken, it is Sebastian Alvitre."

"So it is! late brigand, now a citizen of parts, but a rascal in any guise. It is no good wind that blows such geese as these to our water."

Padre Ignacio halted a little way from the door of the mill, waiting for the lagging trio to overtake him. They came up to him red and sweating, short-winded and puffing, for it was a hot morning and they were men of weight.

"Good father, you can outwalk a horse!" Comisionado Felix declared.

"I come like a tortoise behind you!" the third man of the party laughed, wiping his mottled face with an immense silk handkerchief of infernal hues.

Sebastian Alvitre made no comment. He had come up short, like a man running against a wall in the dark, on seeing Padre Mateo and Juan beside the door. He threw up his head, his face betraying his surprise as plainly as an exclamation, and shifted a foot as if to fall back into a posture of defense. There was neither shame nor fear in the man, whatever his other emotions on coming face to face with the one who had stripped him of his weapons in the house of Fabio Dominguez, and


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/162

 thus set him on the road to reformation. He turned to look over the vineyards and fields which he had just traversed, standing as if transported by the beauty of the scene, making an excellent pretense of it for a man so blunt.

"Brother Mateo, Comisionado Felix, of the pueblo, you know," Father Ignacio said, indicating that person with graceful turning of the hand. "This is Manuel Roja, citizen of the town, and this is Mr. Alvitre, who lately established himself in an inn on the plaza there."

"Whom I have met, under circumstances not so tranquil as the present," Padre Mateo said, giving Alvitre a bold, accusing look.

"I do not recall the pleasure," the rascal protested, all interest, alert, deferential; carrying it off with the assurance that only an unconscionable rogue can assume.

"You will remember the monk who laid you on the floor of Fabio Dominguez' house some weeks ago," Padre Mateo prompted him, severe as a judge. "It was not I, but this one. You remember his eyes?"

"Your humor embarrasses a man, good padre," Alvitre returned, looking indeed as if he spoke the truth. His companions, who knew very well that his pretense could not deceive anybody, made out to be so interested in the mill, the dam, and the water that rushed down the flume under the wheel,


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/163

 that they did not even hear this by-play between the former bandit and the priest.

"And my girdle, a good hempen rope it was, of two yards' length—what did you do with that?" Padre Mateo pressed.

"Some scoundrel masquerading, as many low fellows did in my unfortunate past," Alvitre protested. "If you ever encountered a man in Dominguez' house who said he was Sebastian Alvitre, that man was an outrageous liar!"

"I have no doubt of it," Padre Mateo assured him, heartily sincere.

"Comisionado Felix has led this delegation from the pueblo to investigate our mill, Brother Mateo," Padre Ignacio explained.

"You consider building one?" Padre Mateo inquired, turning to the comisionado.

The comisionado was a man who seemed enlarged to a disgusting puffiness by the virus of some festering complaint, evident in the pustules and pits which marred jhis face. His eyelids were redrimmed, his beardless lips purple from the congestion of much wine. He spread his hands, drew his mouth in grimace expressive of complete disclaimer, at Padre Mateo's question.

"Far from it," he replied. "As it is we have scarcely enough water to drink, and keep our cattle and goats alive, to say nothing at all of our trees and little gardens of beans, which perish where they stand."


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/164

 "They claim that we are taking the water out of the river, robbing them to propel our millstones," Padre Ignacio explained, with the patience of a just man, however ill-founded he know the charge to be.

"It requires more water to drive two stones than one," said the little fat fellow called Roja, whose sharp eyes had been exploring the interior of the mill.

"That is true," Padre Ignacio replied, "and it is also true, as I told you before, that the water goes back into the river. You can see where the flume goes down, branching off there to the right."

"There is a gate, also, to shut it off," Alvitre said.

"The river-bed drinks it, the sand is so dry," Comisionado Felix complained. He shook his head gravely, as if to say he found things worse than he had expected.

"Very little comes over the spillway, it is only a dribble that a donkey could almost drink," said Roja.

"The mill is not always going, only seven hours a day," Padre Mateo explained. "We close the gate at the head of the millrace at night; you get all the water that runs in the river then."

"A great deal of water is required to irrigate these fields and vineyards, these trees, these gardens," Alvitre said, spreading his hand to include all. "And there is much water shut behind this dam; it would take the little river weeks to fill it at


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/165

 this time of the year. Consider our sufferings, then, in the pueblo. If this goes on, our beasts must die."

"Water is a thing which cannot be denied men who were Christian-born, for the benefit of lazy Indians who make a pretense of Christianity for the sake of their bellies, my good padres," Comisionado Felix said. "I was a soldier in this country many years; I have helped drive these savages to the baptismal font even here at San Fernando, and I say there is no justice in taking from men who were created in God's image to give to such as they."

Felix spoke with great earnestness, evidently sincere in his belief that the rights of the pueblo were being denied in favor of these beings whom he contemned, and placed among the inferiors of creation.

"There are two fountains wasting water constantly," Alvitre charged with severity, speaking to Padre Mateo as if he would humble him for what had gone before. "Must Indians have fountains to put their dusty toes in? Enough water is wasted in these two fountains every day to make many little gardens green."

"How many people are there in the pueblo now?" Padre Ignacio inquired, turning suddenly to Felix.

"More than five hundred, padre. They arrive on every ship."

"There is water enough in the river where the road crosses it to enter the pass, to supply three times that many people, and all their gardens, all


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/166

 their flocks and animals of every kind," Padre Ignacio maintained. "I crossed there only two days ago; there is water over the fetlocks of a horse."

"Four or five inches of it there, yes, in a little stream two yards wide," said Roja. "But it is miles away from the pueblo yet, the sand drinks it as it goes, and no more comes in along the way."

"The rains are six weeks off," Alvitre complained.

"It is not only the present, but the future," the comisionado argued.

"Would you have us tear out the dam, then?" Padre Mateo demanded, in tones of defiance.

"It is God's water," Roja contended. "No more for priests to divert away to the use of Indians than for citizens and their children."

"Peace!" Padre Ignacio commanded sternly, the wide sleeve of his gown running down his brown sinewy arm as he lifted his hand. "There is water enough. Return to the pueblo and let it be understood there will be no change made in the economy of this mission. If necessary, the pueblo can be established in another place, where there is water for all future needs. This work shall not be abandoned, our fields and vineyards left to shrivel in the sun, for the convenience or comfort of any who came to this land after us and established themselves in our shadow. Go back to the pueblo and tell them this."

"You talk of moving the pueblo as one speaks of


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/167

 lifting a box," Comisionado Felix said resentfully. "Well, Padre Ignacio, I have known you a long, long time, and I knew Padre Lasuen, who built this mission, before you, and I tell you that I never heard more unreasonable, more unwise words come out of the mouth of a priest. The day of your oppression in this place is nearly over, but the pueblo will be there when the walls of this mission are dust. Come, my friends; let us go."

The three at the mill door watched the visitors from the pueblo away, Padre Ignacio so indignant that he had no thought of attending them back to their horses at the mission door.

"So the admirable Comisionado Felix lays bare in a word the core of their complaint against us," Padre Mateo said. "Did you understand that mode of speech, Juan?"

"Only a word here and there."

"The base animal, calling us oppressors in a land that is incontestibly our own!" Padre Ignacio spoke with passionate indignation, his thin brown face reddening in the first gust of anger Juan ever had seen rise in him.

"That is the complaint of the trespasser everywhere," Padre Mateo said, "of the covetous who come to profit out of the labors of industrious men. We dominate this country, but no man can charge with justice that we oppress. We have made it; we shall hold it."


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/168

 "If God wills, if God wills," Padre Ignacio said gently, his flush of anger gone.

"This is the core of their indictment, this charge of oppression," Padre Mateo went on; "they are making their argument for the confiscation of our property on that plea. Consider our poor Indians in the hands of such villains as that gallant three!"

"It may come, but we shall not live to see it, Brother Mateo," Padre Ignacio said. "The government is not so weak as to listen to such wretches."

"What will they do about the water?" Juan inquired, surprised that they should pass so lightly the nearer question of first importance for the speculative discussion of a political agitation that might never come to a head.

"They will do as they have done; clean out their ditch, perhaps, and let a little more into it from the river, the lazy rascals!' Padre Mateo replied.

"They loiter like the first pair leaving Eden," Padre Ignacio said, looking after the three men in displeasure. "Attend them, Juan; see them outside and on their way."

Juan followed quickly, glad for the order that gave him this detail, little honor as there was in attending Comisionado Felix and his friends. He had been wondering whether Alvitre would turn thief again if he chanced to see the horse that had carried him in many a foray on the highroad, dozing in the corral. But there was another thought


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/169

 that caused him to quicken his steps far more eagerly than concern for the horse: the thought of Tula Sinova, her fair head bent over a square of snowy linen, her delicate fingers drawing out long threads, working a design of airy, exquisite beauty, while her little charges drove clumsy needles in the lesson of the day.

That was not a sight for the lewd eyes of a Comisionado Felix to behold; not a picture, framed by the broad, low door, for Sebastian Alvitre to lick his lips over like a wolf outside the lambs' corral. Tula would be in the big room adjoining the dining-hall with her class of young women and girls at that hour, fresh as a bramble-rose on the trellis by the fountain, her eyes bent down upon her work, sitting near the door that opened into the court. These men from the dusty pueblo must not profane her with their eyes.


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/170

UAN did not overtake the men from Los Angeles. They appeared to have no relish for his company; the moment they saw him following, his long legs quickly discounting the advantage of their start, they hastened on as if walking for a prize. Juan arrived in time to see Magdalena returning from the public entrance, which she had barred behind them as if she distrusted their return.

"What rascals! That Vincente Felix looks like he would steal sheep, and his companions are not much better." Magdalena wiped her hands on her apron, as if she had touched something unclean, putting her thoughts into simple words that Juan could understand.

"One of them has stolen more than sheep, Doña Magdalena," he told her.

"The one with mustaches like pin-feathers on a goose; that would be the man, Don Juan."

"Sebastian Alvitre, the robber of the road. You have good judgment of men's faces, doña."

"Alvitre! Now, I let him go without hearing him speak, notable brigand that he is!" Magdalena hastened to the door, as if to repair her over


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/171

 sight for an opportunity of picking up a cheap souvenir, as it might be said, which she could have boasted of in future times.

There was nothing in the road but the dust of the visitors' going, and an ox-cart coming from the field with white onions that looked like a load of snow.

"Brigand no more, as you have heard," Juan laughed, diverted by the ingenuous woman's outspoken disappointment. "You can stop at his tavern the first time you go to the pueblo, and hear him talk by the hour."

Magdalena gave him a look of reproof, drawing her finely traced brows in a frown.

"As if I would put my foot into a robber's den, Don Juan! Alvitre in his tavern will rob twenty men where he used to rob one on the road."

"Yes, I think a traveler would be about as safe with him in one place as another."

"You learn our speech fast, Don Juan; already it spins from your tongue like a thread from the wheel."

"It is a good place for learning many things, this mission San Fernando. Would to God, Doña Magdalena, I could stay here forever."

"You would not leave us? No, there is no ship goes to your country."

"I must leave soon, doña; across the land, the way I came."

"The poor Indians would weep to see you go,


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/172

 Juan, and Cristóbal—Cristóbal could not be held in iron."

"There would not be a river of tears, the walls of San Fernando would stand," Juan laughed, but uneasily, with a poor pretense.

Doña Magdalena studied him in silence a moment, tender sympathy in her soft dark eyes.

"A man like you should have a wife, and little-ones around his knee," she said. "What injustice in laws which condemn a kind stranger, and let Sebastian Alvitre walk free!"

"But it is that way, doña. A man does not want to be shot for being nothing worse than a stranger."

"I heard Padre Ignacio tell Don Geronimo that he had sent to the capital to get a paper for you, something that will make you a free man, Juan. Stay at the mission until it comes, then you can find a wife without looking far, and make a home. There was a grant of land to Don José Sinova, father of our little Tula, which now comes to her. She has gold in a box, too, plenty of it. When the day comes, and you have your paper, Juan, Padre Ignacio will give her to you for the asking."

"Doña Magdalena, she wouldn't have me for the taking, or at any price, no matter how cheap," said Juan, seeming to despise himself, his words were so pointed with disdain.

"That's what a man always thinks when he adores a woman," Magdalena returned, superior by


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/173

 reason of her inner knowledge. "Go now, little Juan, about your business and let me do mine. But look in at the door as you pass, and speak to her. If your eyes are in the right place, you will see a color rush up her throat and spread in her face like measles. It will be nothing worse than her heart trying to jump out where you can see it, great simpleton that you are, Don Juan."

Gertrudis Sinova, affectionately called Tula by her equals at the mission, sat where she could see the fountain through the open door. Near by stood a long table on which patterns of garments cut of cheerful blue and white cotton cloth were orderly spread. Along the sides of the table, ranged on benches, the sewing class was at work, advanced students guiding the hands of beginners, a happy chatter filling the immense room, spacious enough to have seated a class of four times the number.

As it was, there were fifty or more girls under Tula's gentle hand, from seven to twenty years of age, eager to learn the one art of civilization that seemed to have a great allurement for them, and in which they displayed astonishing aptitude. Two windows, small for the great depth of room, fended by strong hand-beaten bars, were set the height of a man in the thick adobe wall. These, with the wide open door, gave light for the labors that were going forward there. It was sufficient in those long, cloudless white days of summer and autumn, although the farther corners of the apartment were in gloom.


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/174

 The mission padres were sparing of their windows, probably owing to the scarcity of glass, perhaps due to some more remote reason of their own. Their interiors were gloomily melancholy, out of keeping with their airy arches and white-plastered outer walls. The Mission San Fernando was an over-built establishment; it never had developed up to the plans made for it by Padre Lasuen, its founder. The western end of the long building, impressive in dimensions even in comparison with the great structures of the modern city which has grown out of the old pueblo where Comisionado Felix strutted his brief day, was at this time used for the storage of grain, and other products of the fields, At an early period the women neophytes had been locked there at night to keep them from temptation: later the king's soldiers had been quartered in the vast apartment where Tula Sinova held her sewing classes; the marks of their heavy boots were in the soft red tiling of the floor.

This bright autumn morning, when the scarred hills seemed to have drawn so near that one could have called greeting to the shepherds in the little green canyons with their flocks, the old barracks room was as cheerful as sunlight and youth could make it, and there is no illumination in all the devices of men that can reach so far into the heart as these. Juan Molinero felt the gushing of a great happiness, when he stood looking in at the open door.

Tula Sinova was all in white, like an evening


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/175

 primrose. There was a little spray of fragrant jasmine blossoms in her rippling hair above her ear. Her head was bent slightly over the work upon which her hands lay idle; one sandalled foot was thrust out a little, as if it started toward the open door to follow her dreams away. She was pensive, and seemed oppressed; there was a shadow in her cheek as of a face that sorrow had held between its hands.

Juan had stopped a little way beyond the door, his feet quiet on the dusty earth that bordered the tile-paved path. He knew that Doña Magdalena was watching him, and laughing at his timid heart. Gertrudis seemed to feel his shadow in the path, as one feels a cloud before closed eyes. He removed his low-crowned hat as she turned her face, greeting him with a smile.

It might have been a Castilian gentleman from the very shadow of the Alhambra whom she beheld standing between her and the fountain, the sun glinting in his bright hair, striking in little metallic gleams as she had seen it glint and glisten in the sands of Santa Monica, wet in the racing seas. The tailor of San Fernando had done credit to his craft and justice to the frame of his customer. Padre Mateo had seen to that. Denied the pleasure of fine raiment himself, the honest padre had no small enjoyment in the example of elegance and grace that this adopted son of the mission presented.

Juan's limbs carried the garments of a strange race with gentlemanly ease that was equaled only by


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/176

 the facility with which he acquired the speech to harmonize with them. He stood before Tula in a fine suit of silver-gray velvet, lacings of gold on his short jacket, tasselings of gold on the green sash. His own skin was not tighter on his thighs than his pantaloons, cut with flaring bottoms which almost covered his boots and strapped under the instep, in the fashion that was best suited to men who lived more than half their time in the saddle. A little trickling-down of hair from the temple made a narrow band of beard, which was cut square-ended midway of his cheek, in the true Castilian way. He was a supple, sinewy, brown and comely man.

Tula laid aside the linen that she had held in her lap, and came to the door, a thimble on her finger, scissors hanging like a crucifix on a black braid about her neck.

"You would look in at my class, Don Juan?" said she.

How could Doña Magdalena ever think of so gross a comparison for the delicate tint that ran, like a shadow over a fair land, from throat to cheeks as she spoke. Measles! scorned Juan. It was the impalpable pigment of sunset above the hills; the elusive beauty of the sweetest bloom.

"I will include the class," said he, but he could not have sworn, on the word of a true man, that Tula was keeping a class that day. There was Tula in the door. A man's vision fused upon her radiance; it faltered like a dying beam at the window of her eyes.


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/177

 "Will you enter, Don Juan, and see the class at work?"

"I am only passing, Miss Gertrudis, there is a new liberty for my feet today. You have heard that the soldiers are gone?"

"I saw them ride away at sunrise, thank God!"

"So I can cross the road now, without fear of the dogs," he laughed, shifting his feet like a bashful swain, his eyes now on the path, now on her face, now on the hills, varying as the seed of an alamo blown on its feathery wings.

"Be watchful, Don Juan! How can you go with a laugh when there is so much peril? They may be waiting for you to appear, as before."

"No, there is no pretense this time; they are gone."

"Doña Magdalena says it is a plot to humble the padres. They believe the Indians will rise."

"Never against the padres."

"Against the soldiers themselves, or perhaps against the authority of Don Geronimo?"

"Who knows?" Juan returned her the Spanish answer, making an exposition of entire neutrality of mind with his outspread hands, facile as he was in that mode of expression from long use of sign language among savage neighbors and foes in the forests of Kentucky.

"But why will you cross the road this morning, Don Juan? Captain del Valle is a man who will not accept defeat; he may be waiting around the wall."


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/178

 "I want to see the field of the two palms, where the melons grow," said Juan. "Captain del Valle is in the pueblo, but I believe with you that he is waiting his day."

"Then you must not go out of the mission bounds, Don Juan."

"The mission is only a few miles square, Miss Tula; just a little place for a man who has roamed a continent."

"Your heart is eager to be away, Don Juan. Home is dearer than friends in a distant place."

Juan turned his head to see if Doña Magdalena had gone into her kitchen. She was standing where he had left her, watchful duenna that she was, for all her bantering.

"I will pass on," he said, turning his hat in his hands.

"Until the next meeting, Don Juan," she returned, gravely courteous as if that time stood far away.

"They say the rains will come in six weeks," said Juan, as if a messenger had come with the news that morning, and politeness constrained him to repeat it. But he did not advance a foot upon his way.

"We must close the door and light candles in the daytime, then," Tula sighed. "I would keep these bright days."

"There is no thunder here, I have been told."

"That will be a blessing to a coward such as I. When thunder crashes, I shrivel like a snail."


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/179

 Magdalena was standing with hands on her hips, in posture of impatience, rather severe and wholly imperious to behold, although Juan was certain that she was smiling, as an indulgent mother smiles when her small son strains and struggles to reach a fruit far over his head.

"I will pass on, Miss Tula," said Juan. But not convincingly; more in a way that seemed to plead for a detaining word.

"Until the next sight, Don Juan," she murmured, filling her breast with a quick breath that escaped again at once, a sigh. Tula was fingering the scissors on the tape; she looked up, her eyes hesitant, timid, yet governed by a curiosity that was not to be denied.

Juan was trapped; he felt hot blood in his face as he turned his glance away, withdrawing it like a hand caught pilfering. Padre Ignacio was returning from the mill; there was a sound of the cargo of onions being unloaded from the cart.

"There is a pomegranate tree in the field of two palms, and I never have seen such a tree," said Juan, sighing as if pomegranate trees bore fruit of misery. He shifted from foot to foot; his gaze was on the brick-red tiles of the garden walk, his flat hat was crumpled in his hand.

"It is a sour fruit," she said; "when it bursts in the sun it is red like garnets."

What a sad thing to bear fruit that burst red in the sun! What a misfortune for the melancholy pomegranate tree! What a tremendous sigh!


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/180

 "Now, I am going," said Juan. He put his hat on his head; he moved his foot in the path.

"Go with God, Don Juan," said she, low, like a benediction. And after that word he could not stay.

There were wonders to be seen in the field of the two palms, where the grey adobe wall ran in line as true as transit could draw it. First of all, there was the wonder of the wall itself, not less than eight feet thick at the bottom, where it stood on a foundation of round stones brought from the river bed, tapering to three feet at the top. It was nine or ten feet high, and enclosed at least two hundred acres. Juan stood at the gate admitting to this fruitful enclosure, struck with astonishment by the evidence of so much labor so unwisely spent.

It seemed as if the padres had expected the mastodons and camels to rise up out of the bismuth pits which held their bones in the valley crossed by the harbor road. Padre Mateo had pointed out the melancholy place where wild creatures of a past age had walked into this viscous lake. The people of the Pueblo de Los Angeles used the material now to make their roofs waterproof. They found the bones of these ancient monsters, immense past belief, sound as the day they had mired and wallowed down to their miserable end. It seemed, indeed, as if the padres had expected these prodigious beasts to come again to the valleys of California and invade their fields.

Hundreds of hands had toiled through many


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/181

 months to raise that wall, brick upon brick of sun-dried adobe bound with a mortar of mud; savage hearts must have rebelled at the enforced task, which must have appeared unreasonable even in their slow and groping minds; savage hearts must have been broken, savage pride fallen crushed to rise no more, driven by lash and bayonet to this labor of lifting a rampart strong enough to stop an army, against no greater enemy than domestic cattle and murmuring flocks of sheep.

Juan looked at this very Chinese wall of a fence in amazement. It was the first evidence of waste and extravagance he had seen in the building and economy of San Fernando. What a needless expenditure of human force had gone into that wall! What an unfeeling disregard for men driven to labor to this fatuous end! A wall half as high, with a foundation a fourth as broad, would have turned the wildest animal in the mission herds, and there were no others ranging that country that would have any desire to break into a field.

Borromeo had repeated to him Don Geronimo's saying that there was nothing in the world so plentiful and so cheap as human labor, which Juan's devices were all designed to conserve. It required the illustration of this thick broad wall to give him the true valuation of the mayordomo's argument, an unquestionable interpretation of his social and economic ethics. Untempered cruelty was the foundation of that belief, insatiable greed its distorted genius. The padres were blind to its monstrous


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/182

 barbarity in their zeal of building to the glory of Christ.

Many Indians, young and old, were at work in the big field where the two palms grew, some of them harvesting the onions, of which there were several acres, picturesque groups of them, their long hair about their ears, loading sheaves of grain upon carts. Others with hoes and spades were letting the water from the ditches in among the little fields of turnips, cabbages, beets and green things, the luxuriance of which proved the strength of the soil.

Close by the gate there grew a field of maize, green and flourishing this late November day as Juan ever had seen it in midsummer in his own clime. Young Indians were gathering the green ears, with a great amount of laughter and happy calling to each other from the jungle of tall stalks. An ox-cart was being heaped with the ears to be taken to the Indian village. That amount would make only one meal, and a scanty one as measured by the neophytes' desire for this delectable food.

Padre Ignacio had told Juan how the Indians had come to value maize after a patient and slow persuasion to induce them to accept it. Like all cultivated vegetables and grains, maize was strange to the California Indians when the padres brought it there. These Indians knew nothing about agriculture in their primitive state; they were roaming, homeless animals; their sustenance was gathered from the bounty of nature, the bitter acorns of the encina, or live oak, forming the principal item of


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/183

 their food. Juan remembered this as he stood viewing the fields abundant in the ripe and ripening crops. The Indians had advanced marvelously in two generations under the padres' hands.

There was a pleasant smell rising from the ground where the water spread between rows of growing cabbages and beets, as if it breathed the incense of its humble thanks for this blessing. With deft strokes of hoe and spade the Indians led little streams, which went crawling hungrily, eager in the way of water, whether it rushes in beneficence or roars in destruction. It left a little beading of foam on the ditch sides as it sank, the plants, growing on little ridges, leaning almost imperceptibly at the touch of it, as if they relaxed from the strain of waiting, famished in the ardent sun.

The greater part of the field within the strong adobe wall had been sown to grain, the stubble of which was still standing almost knee-high to a man, proof of the prodigious leavening that land contained. Juan calculated that the ripe grain must have been as high as the heads of the reapers who went to gather it with their primitive sickles andbind it into little sheaves no thicker than a man's thigh.

These sheaves were being carted to a circular enclosure over against that part of the wall nearest the mission buildings, whence there rose a confusion of dust and voices. Cattle were being driven around and around inside this fenced circle; Juan knew it was the threshing floor, where the grain was


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/184

 being trampled from the husk under the feet of oxen. He was filled with a compelling curiosity to witness this operation.

This threshing pen was about fifty feet in diameter. In the center of it sheaves of untrampled grain were thrown, from which point they were distributed under the oxen's feet as required. Two teams of oxen yoked four abreast, were being driven around the circle, prodded out of their ordinarily leisurely gait by young men who trotted beside them with goads. The cattle were dripping sweat, their tongues were lolling, apparently at the utter bound of endurance. Dust rose thick from the dry straw, and from the un-covered ground where the grain was beaten out under the tortured creatures' feet.

The Indians, not far enough advanced yet to feel compassion for a suffering beast, seemed altogether unconscious of their cruelty. Here, as elsewhere when they worked without the direct superintendence of Don Geronimo, there was singing and laughter and merry light words among the young men who had been born and bred under the mission régime. Only the older men, the true neophytes, or converts from the state of heathen, were silent as they moved slowly, apathetically, perhaps unwillingly, about their appointed tasks.

These men, some of them shrivelled of skin and grey, seemed dulled by a heavy melancholy. Maybe they were thinking of the days before the padres came, when they were unrestrained and free. In those times it was the custom, at this season of the


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/185

 year when the rains were approaching, to set the grass afire to drive the rabbits out. There was more pleasure in standing along the line of fire and whacking rabbits with a club, than toiling here to beat out this grain of the padres, superior as it was to acorns when boiled in a kettle with the cracked bones of sheep.

In this time of year the acorns were ripe. There was far more pleasure, indeed, in lying aside under a tree, watching the women beat them between stones and put them to soak in water to withdraw the evil that made the bowels knot and gripe, than to be carrying sheaves of wheat on one's shoulders, or tossing the grain in the wind to clean it of chaff and dirt. Perhaps they had thoughts such as these, the old men who went silently, with sad faces, at this labor which they never came to love.

Juan watched the threshing with a feeling over him that he had been shifted from the present into the far past. It might have been that he stood at the edge of the field where Boaz bent with his sickle, and Ruth came with timid feet far behind him, gleaning the scattered ears of grain. For surely this was not the method of modern men.

Here, on one hand, lay the grain already threshed, whether yesterday or today he did not know. It was heaped on the bare ground, filled with chaff and dirt which certain old men labored with indifferent success to remove by tossing the grain in the wind for the lighter particles to blow away. Close beside this heap of grain the trampled, broken straw


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/186

 was thrown, carelessness, uncleanliness, disorder, over the whole that made the thought of bread repellent.

As Juan looked on this clumsy, ineffective operation the thought of the pomegranate tree went out of his mind, and of its fruit that burst in the sun and is like the red of the garnet stone. He lifted a handful of straw, finding it filled with fragments of unthreshed heads; he stirred it with his foot, to see whole grains, broken grains, fall in a shower. At least a tenth of the grain appeared to be wasted in this ancient, ignorant method of threshing. In its twenty centuries of history, Spain had not thought of a better way.

For months this threshing had been in progress at the mission, Juan knew; it must continue two or three weeks longer, calculating from the amount of grain still in the shock in that field, which was the largest and the last. Juan turned back to the mission, leaving all that he had not seen of the field of the two palms to another day. The sharp cries of the young men who drove the weary oxen in their staggering round, followed him over the high adobe wall.


text:
Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/187

ELL, Juan Molinero, you have not shown me a new invention," said Padre Ignacio. "I have heard of such an instrument, used for the purpose you propose to put this to, I believe, but principally as an ancient weapon of war. Fiail, is it, in the English tongue? In Castilian it is flagelo, plainly meaning an instrument for the infliction of punishment. I am afraid, my gentle Juan, that your contrivance will be looked upon in that light by the poor Indians, who would much rather have the cattle to do this work of threshing than bend their backs and do it themselves."

Juan did not understand all this, for Padre Ignacio sometimes forgot to use simple words and speak slowly, yet he received enough to know that his proposal to introduce the flail for threshing grain in the mission fields was not welcomed very warmly. This fact did not cool his earnest determination to prove the superiority of the flail over any method then known to man for separating grain from the husk.

Juan had gone straightway from the threshing floor, if the fenced circle trampled by the oxen could be so called, to the carpenter shop, where he found