BY WILLA CATHER

                         DEATH COMES
                           FOR THE
                          ARCHBISHOP

         "_Auspice Maria!_"
    Father Vaillant's signet-ring

                           NEW YORK
                    ALFRED A KNOPF--MCMXXVII

            COPYRIGHT 1926, 1927, BY WILLA CATHER

_The Works of_
WILLA CATHER

ALEXANDER'S BRIDGE

O PIONEERS!

THE SONG OF THE LARK

MY ANTONIA

ONE OF OURS

A LOST LADY

THE PROFESSOR'S HOUSE

MY MORTAL ENEMY

YOUTH AND THE BRIGHT MEDUSA

CONTENTS

Prologue. At Rome

1. The Vicar Apostolic

2. Missionary Journeys

3. The Mass at Ácoma

4. Snake Root

5. Padre Martinez

6. Doña Isabella

7. The Great Diocese

8. Gold under Pike's Peak

9. Death Comes for the Archbishop

DEATH COMES FOR THE
ARCHBISHOP

_PROLOGUE_

AT ROME

ONE summer evening in the year 1848, three Cardinals and a missionary
Bishop from America were dining together in the gardens of a villa in
the Sabine hills, overlooking Rome. The villa was famous for the fine
view from its terrace. The hidden garden in which the four men sat at
table lay some twenty feet below the south end of this terrace, and was
a mere shelf of rock, overhanging a steep declivity planted with
vineyards. A flight of stone steps connected it with the promenade
above. The table stood in a sanded square, among potted orange and
oleander trees, shaded by spreading ilex oaks that grew out of the rocks
overhead. Beyond the balustrade was the drop into the air, and far below
the landscape stretched soft and undulating; there was nothing to arrest
the eye until it reached Rome itself.

It was early when the Spanish Cardinal and his guests sat down to
dinner. The sun was still good for an hour of supreme splendour, and
across the shining folds of country the low profile of the city barely
fretted the sky-line--indistinct except for the dome of St. Peter's,
bluish grey like the flattened top of a great balloon, just a flash of
copper light on its soft metallic surface. The Cardinal had an eccentric
preference for beginning his dinner at this time in the late afternoon,
when the vehemence of the sun suggested motion. The light was full of
action and had a peculiar quality of climax--of splendid finish. It was
both intense and soft, with a ruddiness as of much-multiplied
candlelight, an aura of red in its flames. It bored into the ilex trees,
illuminating their mahogany trunks and blurring their dark foliage; it
warmed the bright green of the orange trees and the rose of the oleander
blooms to gold; sent congested spiral patterns quivering over the damask
and plate and crystal. The churchmen kept their rectangular clerical
caps on their heads to protect them from the sun. The three Cardinals
wore black cassocks with crimson pipings and crimson buttons, the Bishop
a long black coat over his violet vest.

They were talking business; had met, indeed, to discuss an anticipated
appeal from the Provincial Council at Baltimore for the founding of an
Apostolic Vicarate in New Mexico--a part of North America recently
annexed to the United States. This new territory was vague to all of
them, even to the missionary Bishop. The Italian and French Cardinals
spoke of it as _Le Mexique_, and the Spanish host referred to it as "New
Spain." Their interest in the projected Vicarate was tepid, and had to
be continually revived by the missionary, Father Ferrand; Irish by
birth, French by ancestry--a man of wide wanderings and notable
achievement in the New World, an Odysseus of the Church. The language
spoken was French--the time had already gone by when Cardinals could
conveniently discuss contemporary matters in Latin.

The French and Italian Cardinals were men in vigorous middle life--the
Norman full-belted and ruddy, the Venetian spare and sallow and
hook-nosed. Their host, Garcia Maria de Allande, was still a young man.
He was dark in colouring, but the long Spanish face, that looked out
from so many canvases in his ancestral portrait gallery, was in the
young Cardinal much modified through his English mother. With his
_caffè oscuro_ eyes, he had a fresh, pleasant English mouth, and an
open manner.

During the latter years of the reign of Gregory XVI, de Allande had been
the most influential man at the Vatican; but since the death of Gregory,
two years ago, he had retired to his country estate. He believed the
reforms of the new Pontiff impractical and dangerous, and had withdrawn
from politics, confining his activities to work for the Society for the
Propagation of the Faith--that organization which had been so fostered
by Gregory. In his leisure the Cardinal played tennis. As a boy, in
England, he had been passionately fond of this sport. Lawn tennis had
not yet come into fashion; it was a formidable game of indoor tennis the
Cardinal played. Amateurs of that violent sport came from Spain and
France to try their skill against him.

The missionary, Bishop Ferrand, looked much older than any of them, old
and rough--except for his clear, intensely blue eyes. His diocese lay
within the icy arms of the Great Lakes, and on his long, lonely
horseback rides among his missions the sharp winds had bitten him well.
The missionary was here for a purpose, and he pressed his point. He ate
more rapidly than the others and had plenty of time to plead his
cause,--finished each course with such dispatch that the Frenchman
remarked he would have been an ideal dinner companion for Napoleon.

The Bishop laughed and threw out his brown hands in apology. "Likely
enough I have forgot my manners. I am preoccupied. Here you can scarcely
understand what it means that the United States has annexed that
enormous territory which was the cradle of the Faith in the New World.
The Vicarate of New Mexico will be in a few years raised to an Episcopal
See, with jurisdiction over a country larger than Central and Western
Europe, barring Russia. The Bishop of that See will direct the beginning
of momentous things."

"Beginnings," murmured the Venetian, "there have been so many. But
nothing ever comes from over there but trouble and appeals for money."

The missionary turned to him patiently. "Your Eminence, I beg you to
follow me. This country was evangelized in fifteen hundred, by the
Franciscan Fathers. It has been allowed to drift for nearly three
hundred years and is not yet dead. It still pitifully calls itself a
Catholic country, and tries to keep the forms of religion without
instruction. The old mission churches are in ruins. The few priests are
without guidance or discipline. They are lax in religious observance,
and some of them live in open concubinage. If this Augean stable is not
cleansed, now that the territory has been taken over by a progressive
government, it will prejudice the interests of the Church in the whole
of North America."

"But these missions are still under the jurisdiction of Mexico, are they
not?" inquired the Frenchman.

"In the See of the Bishop of Durango?" added Maria de Allande.

The missionary sighed. "Your Eminence, the Bishop of Durango is an old
man; and from his seat to Santa Fé is a distance of fifteen hundred
English miles. There are no wagon roads, no canals, no navigable rivers.
Trade is carried on by means of pack-mules, over treacherous trails. The
desert down there has a peculiar horror; I do not mean thirst, nor
Indian massacres, which are frequent. The very floor of the world is
cracked open into countless canyons and arroyos, fissures in the earth
which are sometimes ten feet deep, sometimes a thousand. Up and down
these stony chasms the traveller and his mules clamber as best they can.
It is impossible to go far in any direction without crossing them. If
the Bishop of Durango should summon a disobedient priest by letter, who
shall bring the Padre to him? Who can prove that he ever received the
summons? The post is carried by hunters, fur trappers, gold seekers,
whoever happens to be moving on the trails."

The Norman Cardinal emptied his glass and wiped his lips.

"And the inhabitants, Father Ferrand? If these are the travellers, who
stays at home?"

"Some thirty Indian nations, Monsignor, each with its own customs and
language, many of them fiercely hostile to each other. And the Mexicans,
a naturally devout people. Untaught and unshepherded, they cling to the
faith of their fathers."

"I have a letter from the Bishop of Durango, recommending his Vicar for
this new post," remarked Maria de Allande.

"Your Eminence, it would be a great misfortune if a native priest were
appointed; they have never done well in that field. Besides, this Vicar
is old. The new Vicar must be a young man, of strong constitution, full
of zeal, and above all, intelligent. He will have to deal with savagery
and ignorance, with dissolute priests and political intrigue. He must be
a man to whom order is necessary--as dear as life."

The Spaniard's coffee-coloured eyes showed a glint of yellow as he
glanced sidewise at his guest. "I suspect, from your exordium, that you
have a candidate--and that he is a French priest, perhaps?"

"You guess rightly, Monsignor. I am glad to see that we have the same
opinion of French missionaries."

"Yes," said the Cardinal lightly, "they are the best missionaries. Our
Spanish fathers made good martyrs, but the French Jesuits accomplish
more. They are the great organizers."

"Better than the Germans?" asked the Venetian, who had Austrian
sympathies.

"Oh, the Germans classify, but the French arrange! The French
missionaries have a sense of proportion and rational adjustment. They
are always trying to discover the logical relation of things. It is a
passion with them." Here the host turned to the old Bishop again. "But
your Grace, why do you neglect this Burgundy? I had this wine brought up
from my cellar especially to warm away the chill of your twenty Canadian
winters. Surely, you do not gather vintages like, this on the shores of
the Great Lake Huron?"

The missionary smiled as he took up his untouched glass. "It is superb,
your Eminence, but I fear I have lost my palate for vintages. Out there,
a little whisky, or Hudson Bay Company rum, does better for us. I must
confess I enjoyed the champagne in Paris. We had been forty days at sea,
and I am a poor sailor."

"Then we must have some for you." He made a sign to his major-domo. "You
like it very cold? And your new Vicar Apostolic, what will he drink in
the country of bison and _serpents à sonnettes_? And what will he eat?"

"He will eat dried buffalo meat and frijoles with chili, and he will be
glad to drink water when he can get it. He will have no easy life, your
Eminence. That country will drink up his youth and strength as it does
the rain. He will be called upon for every sacrifice, quite possibly for
martyrdom. Only last year the Indian pueblo of San Fernandez de Taos
murdered and scalped the American Governor and some dozen other whites.
The reason they did not scalp their Padre, was that their Padre was one
of the leaders of the rebellion and himself planned the massacre. That
is how things stand in New Mexico!"

"Where is your candidate at present, Father?"

"He is a parish priest, on the shores of Lake Ontario, in my diocese. I
have watched his work for nine years. He is but thirty-five now. He came
to us directly from the Seminary."

"And his name is?"

"Jean Marie Latour."

Maria de Allande, leaning back in his chair, put the tips of his long
fingers together and regarded them thoughtfully.

"Of course, Father Ferrand, the Propaganda will almost certainly appoint
to this Vicarate the man whom the Council at Baltimore recommends."

"Ah yes, your Eminence; but a word from you to the Provincial Council,
an inquiry, a suggestion----"

"Would have some weight, I admit," replied the Cardinal smiling. "And
this Latour is intelligent, you say? What a fate you are drawing upon
him! But I suppose it is no worse than a life among the Hurons. My
knowledge of your country is chiefly drawn from the romances of Fenimore
Cooper, which I read in English with great pleasure. But has your priest
a versatile intelligence? Any intelligence in matters of art, for
example?"

"And what need would he have for that, Monsignor? Besides, he is from
Auvergne."

The three Cardinals broke into laughter and refilled their glasses. They
were all becoming restive under the monotonous persistence of the
missionary.

"Listen," said the host, "and I will relate a little story, while the
Bishop does me the compliment to drink my champagne. I have a reason for
asking this question which you have answered so finally. In my family
house in Valencia I have a number of pictures by the great Spanish
painters, collected chiefly by my great-grandfather, who was a man of
perception in these things and, for his time, rich. His collection of El
Greco is, I believe, quite the best in Spain. When my progenitor was an
old man, along came one of these missionary priests from New Spain,
begging. All missionaries from the Americas were inveterate beggars,
then as now, Bishop Ferrand. This Franciscan had considerable success,
with his tales of pious Indian converts and struggling missions. He came
to visit at my great-grandfather's house and conducted devotions in the
absence of the Chaplain. He wheedled a good sum of money out of the old
man, as well as vestments and linen and chalices--he would take
anything--and he implored my grandfather to give him a painting from his
great collection, for the ornamentation of his mission church among the
Indians. My grandfather told him to choose from the gallery, believing
the priest would covet most what he himself could best afford to spare.
But not at all; the hairy Franciscan pounced upon one of the best in the
collection; a young St. Francis in meditation, by El Greco, and the
model for the saint was one of the very handsome Dukes of Albuquerque.
My grandfather protested; tried to persuade the fellow that some picture
of the Crucifixion, or a martyrdom, would appeal more strongly to his
redskins. What would a St. Francis, of almost feminine beauty, mean to
the scalp-takers?

"All in vain. The missionary turned upon his host with a reply which has
become a saying in our family: 'You refuse me this picture because it is
a good picture. _It is too good for God, but it is not too good for
you_.'

"He carried off the painting. In my grandfather's manuscript catalogue,
under the number and title of the St. Francis, is written: _Given to
Fray Teodocio, for the glory of God, to enrich his mission church at
Pueblo de Cia, among the savages of New Spain_.

"It is because of this lost treasure, Father Ferrand, that I happen to
have had some personal correspondence with the Bishop of Durango. I once
wrote the facts to him fully. He replied to me that the mission at Cia
was long ago destroyed and its furnishings scattered. Of course the
painting may have been ruined in a pillage or massacre. On the other
hand, it may still be hidden away in some crumbling sacristy or smoky
wigwam. If your French priest had a discerning eye, now, and were sent
to this Vicarate, he might keep my El Greco in mind."

The Bishop shook his head. "No, I can't promise you--I do not know. I
have noticed that he is a man of severe and refined tastes, but he is
very reserved. Down there the Indians do not dwell in wigwams, your
Eminence," he added gently.

"No matter, Father. I see your redskins through Fenimore Cooper, and I
like them so. Now let us go to the terrace for our coffee and watch the
evening come on."

The Cardinal led his guests up the narrow stairway. The long gravelled
terrace and its balustrade were blue as a lake in the dusky air. Both
sun and shadows were gone. The folds of russet country were now violet.
Waves of rose and gold throbbed up the sky from behind the dome of the
Basilica.

As the churchmen walked up and down the promenade, watching the stars
come out, their talk touched upon many matters, but they avoided
politics, as men are apt to do in dangerous times. Not a word was spoken
of the Lombard war, in which the Pope's position was so anomalous. They
talked instead of a new opera by young Verdi, which was being sung in
Venice; of the case of a Spanish dancing-girl who had lately become a
religious and was said to be working miracles in Andalusia. In this
conversation the missionary took no part, nor could he even follow it
with much interest. He asked himself whether he had been on the frontier
so long that he had quite lost his taste for the talk of clever men. But
before they separated for the night Maria de Allande spoke a word in his
ear, in English.

"You are distrait, Father Ferrand. Are you wishing to unmake your new
Bishop already? It is too late. Jean Marie Latour--am I right?"

BOOK ONE

_THE VICAR APOSTOLIC_

1

THE CRUCIFORM TREE

ONE afternoon in the autumn of 1851 a solitary horseman, followed by a
pack-mule, was pushing through an arid stretch of country somewhere in
central New Mexico. He had lost his way, and was trying to get back to
the trail, with only his compass and his sense of direction for guides.
The difficulty was that the country in which he found himself was so
featureless--or rather, that it was crowded with features, all exactly
alike. As far as he could see, on every side, the landscape was heaped
up into monotonous red sand-hills, not much larger than haycocks, and
very much the shape of haycocks. One could not have believed that in the
number of square miles a man is able to sweep with the eye there could
be so many uniform red hills. He had been riding among them since early
morning, and the look of the country had no more changed than if he had
stood still. He must have travelled through thirty miles of these
conical red hills, winding his way in the narrow cracks between them,
and he had begun to think that he would never see anything else. They
were so exactly like one another that he seemed to be wandering in some
geometrical nightmare; flattened cones, they were, more the shape of
Mexican ovens than haycocks--yes, exactly the shape of Mexican ovens,
red as brick-dust, and naked of vegetation except for small juniper
trees. And the junipers, too, were the shape of Mexican ovens. Every
conical hill was spotted with smaller cones of juniper, a uniform
yellowish green, as the hills were a uniform red. The hills thrust out
of the ground so thickly that they seemed to be pushing each other,
elbowing each other aside, tipping each other over.

The blunted pyramid, repeated so many hundred times upon his retina and
crowding down upon him in the heat, had confused the traveller, who was
sensitive to the shape of things.

"_Mais, c'est fantastique_!" he muttered, closing his eyes to rest them
from the intrusive omnipresence of the triangle.

When he opened his eyes again, his glance immediately fell upon one
juniper which differed in shape from the others. It was not a
thick-growing cone, but a naked, twisted trunk, perhaps ten feet high,
and at the top it parted into two lateral, flat-lying branches, with a
little crest of green in the centre, just above the cleavage. Living
vegetation could not present more faithfully the form of the Cross.

The traveller dismounted, drew from his pocket a much worn book, and
baring his head, knelt at the foot of the cruciform tree.

Under his buckskin riding-coat he wore a black vest and the cravat and
collar of a churchman. A young priest, at his devotions; and a priest in
a thousand, one knew at a glance. His bowed head was not that of an
ordinary man,--it was built for the seat of a fine intelligence. His
brow was open, generous, reflective, his features handsome and somewhat
severe. There was a singular elegance about the hands below the fringed
cuffs of the buckskin jacket. Everything showed him to be a man of
gentle birth--brave, sensitive, courteous. His manners, even when he was
alone in the desert, were distinguished. He had a kind of courtesy
toward himself, toward his beasts, toward the juniper tree before which
he knelt, and the God whom he was addressing.

His devotions lasted perhaps half an hour, and when he rose he looked
refreshed. He began talking to his mare in halting Spanish, asking
whether she agreed with him that it would be better to push on, weary as
she was, in hope of finding the trail. He had no water left in his
canteen, and the horses had had none since yesterday morning. They had
made a dry camp in these hills last night. The animals were almost at
the end of their endurance, but they would not recuperate until they got
water, and it seemed best to spend their last strength in searching for
it.

On a long caravan trip across Texas this man had had some experience of
thirst, as the party with which he travelled was several times put on a
meagre water ration for days together. But he had not suffered then as
he did now. Since morning he had had a feeling of illness; the taste of
fever in his mouth, and alarming seizures of vertigo. As these conical
hills pressed closer and closer upon him, he began to wonder whether his
long wayfaring from the mountains of Auvergne were possibly to end here.
He reminded himself of that cry, wrung from his Saviour on the Cross,
"_J'ai soif_!" Of all our Lord's physical sufferings, only one, "I
thirst," rose to His lips. Empowered by long training, the young priest
blotted himself out of his own consciousness and meditated upon the
anguish of his Lord. The Passion of Jesus became for him the only
reality; the need of his own body was but a part of that conception.

His mare stumbled, breaking his mood of contemplation. He was sorrier
for his beasts than for himself. He, supposed to be the intelligence of
the party, had got the poor animals into this interminable desert of
ovens. He was afraid he had been absent-minded, had been pondering his
problem instead of heeding the way. His problem was how to recover a
Bishopric. He was a Vicar Apostolic, lacking a Vicarate. He was thrust
out; his flock would have none of him.

The traveller was Jean Marie Latour, consecrated Vicar Apostolic of New
Mexico and Bishop of Agathonica _in partibus_ at Cincinnati a year
ago--and ever since then he had been trying to reach his Vicarate. No
one in Cincinnati could tell him how to get to New Mexico--no one had
ever been there. Since young Father Latour's arrival in America, a
railroad had been built through from New York to Cincinnati; but there
it ended. New Mexico lay in the middle of a dark continent. The Ohio
merchants knew of two routes only. One was the Santa Fé trail from St.
Louis, but at that time it was very dangerous because of Comanche Indian
raids. His friends advised Father Latour to go down the river to New
Orleans, thence by boat to Galveston, across Texas to San Antonio, and
to wind up into New Mexico along the Rio Grande valley. This he had
done, but with what misadventures!

His steamer was wrecked and sunk in the Galveston harbour, and he had
lost all his worldly possessions except his books, which he saved at the
risk of his life. He crossed Texas with a traders' caravan, and
approaching San Antonio he was hurt in jumping from an overturning
wagon, and had to lie for three months in the crowded house of a poor
Irish family, waiting for his injured leg to get strong.

It was nearly a year after he had embarked upon the Mississippi that the
young Bishop, at about the sunset hour of a summer afternoon, at last
beheld the old settlement toward which he had been journeying so long:
The wagon train had been going all day through a greasewood plain, when
late in the afternoon the teamsters began shouting that over yonder was
the Villa. Across the level, Father Latour could distinguish low brown
shapes, like earthworks, lying at the base of wrinkled green mountains
with bare tops,--wave-like mountains, resembling billows beaten up from
a flat sea by a heavy gale; and their green was of two colors--aspen and
evergreen, not intermingled but lying in solid areas of light and dark.

As the wagons went forward and the sun sank lower, a sweep of red
carnelian-coloured hills lying at the foot of the mountains came into
view; they curved like two arms about a depression in the plain; and in
that depression, was Santa Fé, at last! A thin, wavering adobe town ...
a green plaza ... at one end a church with two earthen towers that rose
high above the flatness. The long main street began at the church, the
town seemed to flow from it like a stream from a spring. The church
towers, and all the low adobe houses, were rose colour in that light,--a
little darker in tone than the amphitheatre of red hills behind; and
periodically the plumes of poplars flashed like gracious accent
marks,--inclining and recovering themselves in the wind.

The young Bishop was not alone in the exaltation of that hour; beside
him rode Father Joseph Vaillant, his boyhood friend, who had made this
long pilgrimage with him and shared his dangers. The two rode into Santa
Fé together, claiming it for the glory of God.

How, then, had Father Latour come to be here in the sand-hills, many
miles from his seat, unattended, far out of his way and with no
knowledge of how to get back to it?

On his arrival at Santa Fé, this was what had happened: The Mexican
priests there had refused to recognize his authority. They disclaimed
any knowledge of a Vicarate Apostolic, or a Bishop of Agathonica. They
said they were under the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Durango, and had
received no instructions to the contrary. If Father Latour was to be
their Bishop, where were his credentials? A parchment and letters, he
knew, had been sent to the Bishop of Durango, but these had evidently
got no farther. There was no postal service in this part of the world;
the quickest and surest way to communicate with the Bishop of Durango
was to go to him. So, having travelled for nearly a year to reach Santa
Fé, Father Latour left it after a few weeks, and set off alone on
horseback to ride down into Old Mexico and back, a journey of full
three thousand miles.

He had been warned that there were many trails leading off the Rio
Grande road, and that a stranger might easily mistake his way. For the
first few days he had been cautious and watchful. Then he must have
grown careless and turned into some purely local trail. When he realized
that he was astray, his canteen was already empty and his horses seemed
too exhausted to retrace their steps. He had persevered in this sandy
track, which grew ever fainter, reasoning that it must lead somewhere.

All at once Father Latour thought he felt a change in the body of his
mare. She lifted her head for the first time in a long while, and seemed
to redistribute her weight upon her legs. The pack-mule behaved in a
similar manner, and both quickened their pace. Was it possible they
scented water?

Nearly an hour went by, and then, winding between two hills that were
like all the hundreds they had passed, the two beasts whinnied
simultaneously. Below them, in the midst of that wavy ocean of sand, was
a green thread of verdure and a running stream. This ribbon in the
desert seemed no wider than a man could throw a stone,--and it was
greener than anything Latour had ever seen, even in his own greenest
corner of the Old World. But for the quivering of the hide on his mare's
neck and shoulders, he might have thought this a vision, a delusion of
thirst.

Running water, clover fields, cottonwoods, acacias, little adobe houses
with brilliant gardens, a boy-driving a flock of white goats toward the
stream,--that was what the young Bishop saw.

A few moments later, when he was struggling with his horses, trying to
keep them from overdrinking, a young girl with a black shawl over her
head came running toward him. He thought he had never seen a kindlier
face. Her greeting was that of a Christian.

"_Ave Maria Purissima, Señor_. Whence do you come?"

"Blessed child," he replied in Spanish, "I am a priest who has lost his
way. I am famished for water."

"A priest?" she cried, "that is not possible! Yet I look at you, and it
is true. Such a thing has never happened to us before; it must be in
answer to my father's prayers. Run, Pedro, and tell father and
Salvatore."

2

HIDDEN WATER

AN hour later, as darkness came over the sand-hills, the young Bishop
was seated at supper in the motherhouse of this Mexican
settlement--which, he learned, was appropriately called _Agua Secreta_,
Hidden Water. At the table with him were his host, an old man called
Benito, the oldest son, and two grandsons. The old man was a widower,
and his daughter, Josepha, the girl who had run to meet the Bishop at
the stream, was his housekeeper. Their supper was a pot of frijoles
cooked with meat, bread and goat's milk, fresh cheese and ripe apples.

From the moment he entered this room with its thick whitewashed adobe
walls, Father Latour had felt a kind of peace about it. In its bareness
and simplicity there was something comely, as there was about the
serious girl who had placed their food before them and who now stood in
the shadows against the wall, her eager eyes fixed upon his face. He
found himself very much at home with the four dark-headed men who sat
beside him in the candlelight. Their manners were gentle, their voices
low and agreeable. When he said grace before meat, the men had knelt on
the floor beside the table. The grandfather declared that the Blessed
Virgin must have led the Bishop from his path and brought him here to
baptize the children and to sanctify the marriages. Their settlement was
little known, he said. They had no papers for their land and were afraid
the Americans might take it away from them. There was no one in their
settlement who could read or write. Salvatore, his oldest son, had gone
all the way to Albuquerque to find a wife, and had married there. But
the priest had charged him twenty pesos, and that was half of all he had
saved to buy furniture and glass windows for his house. His brothers and
cousins, discouraged by his experience, had taken wives without the
marriage sacrament.

In answer to the Bishop's questions, they told him the simple story of
their lives. They had here all they needed to make them happy. They spun
and wove from the fleece of their flocks, raised their own corn and
wheat and tobacco, dried their plums and apricots for winter. Once a
year the boys took the grain up to Albuquerque to have it ground, and
bought such luxuries as sugar and coffee. They had bees, and when sugar
was high they sweetened with honey. Benito did not know in what year his
grandfather had settled here, coming from Chihuahua with all his goods
in ox-carts. "But it was soon after the time when the French killed
their king. My grandfather had heard talk of that before he left home,
and used to tell us boys about it when he was an old man."

"Perhaps you have guessed that I am a Frenchman," said Father Latour.

No, they had not, but they felt sure he was not an American. José, the
elder grandson, had been watching the visitor uncertainly. He was a
handsome boy, with a triangle of black hair hanging over his rather
sullen eyes. He now spoke for the first time.

"They say at Albuquerque that now we are all Americans, but that is not
true, Padre. I will never be an American. They are infidels."

"Not all, my son. I have lived among Americans in the north for ten
years, and I found many devout Catholics."

The young man shook his head. "They destroyed our churches when they
were fighting us, and stabled their horses in them. And now they will
take our religion away from us. We want our own ways and our own
religion."

Father Latour began to tell them about his friendly relations with
Protestants in Ohio, but they had not room in their minds for two ideas;
there was one Church, and the rest of the world was infidel. One thing
they could understand; that he had here in his saddle-bags his
vestments, the altar stone, and all the equipment for celebrating the
Mass; and that to-morrow morning, after Mass, he would hear confessions,
baptize, and sanctify marriages.

After supper Father Latour took up a candle and began to examine the
holy images on the shelf over the fire-place. The wooden figures of the
saints, found in even the poorest Mexican houses, always interested him.
He had never yet seen two alike. These over Benito's fire-place had come
in the oxcarts from Chihuahua nearly sixty years ago. They had been
carved by some devout soul, and brightly painted, though the colours had
softened with time, and they were dressed in cloth, like dolls. They
were much more to his taste than the factory-made plaster images in his
mission churches in Ohio--more like the homely stone carvings on the
front of old parish churches in Auvergne. The wooden Virgin was a
sorrowing mother indeed,--long and stiff and severe, very long from the
neck to the waist, even longer from waist to feet, like some of the
rigid mosaics of the Eastern Church. She was dressed in black, with a
white apron, and a black reboso over her head, like a Mexican woman of
the poor. At her right was St. Joseph, and at her left a fierce little
equestrian figure, a saint wearing the costume of a Mexican _ranchero_,
velvet trousers richly embroidered and wide at the ankle, velvet jacket
and silk shirt, and a high-crowned, broad-brimmed Mexican sombrero. He
was attached to his fat horse by a wooden pivot driven through the
saddle.

The younger grandson saw the priest's interest in this figure. "That,"
he said, "is my name saint, Santiago."

"Oh, yes; Santiago. He was a missionary, like me. In our country we call
him St. Jacques, and he carries a staff and a wallet--but here he would
need a horse, surely."

The boy looked at him in surprise. "But he is the saint of horses. Isn't
he that in your country?"

The Bishop shook his head. "No. I know nothing about that. How is he the
saint of horses?"

"He blesses the mares and makes them fruitful. Even the Indians believe
that. They know that if they neglect to pray to Santiago for a few
years, the foals do not come right."

A little later, after his devotions, the young Bishop lay down in
Benito's deep feather-bed, thinking how different was this night from
his anticipation of it. He had expected to make a dry camp in the
wilderness, and to sleep under a juniper tree, like the Prophet,
tormented by thirst. But here he lay in comfort and safety, with love
for his fellow creatures flowing like peace about his heart. If Father
Vaillant were here, he would say, "A miracle"; that the Holy Mother, to
whom he had addressed himself before the cruciform tree, had led him
hither. And it was a miracle, Father Latour knew that. But his dear
Joseph must always have the miracle very direct and spectacular, not
with Nature, but against it. He would almost be able to tell the colour
of the mantle Our Lady wore when She took the mare by the bridle back
yonder among the junipers and led her out of the pathless sand-hills, as
the angel led the ass on the Flight into Egypt.

          *         *          *

In the late afternoon of the following day the Bishop was walking alone
along the banks of the life-giving stream, reviewing in his mind the
events of the morning. Benito and his daughter had made an altar before
the sorrowful wooden Virgin, and placed upon it candles and flowers.
Every soul in the village, except Salvatore's sick wife, had come to the
Mass. He had performed marriages and baptisms and heard confessions and
confirmed until noon. Then came the christening feast. José had killed
a kid the night before, and immediately after her confirmation Josepha
slipped away to help her sisters-in-law roast it. When Father Latour
asked her to give him his portion without chili, the girl inquired
whether it was more pious to eat it like that. He hastened to explain
that Frenchmen, as a rule, do not like high seasoning, lest she should
hereafter deprive herself of her favourite condiment.

After the feast the sleepy children were taken home, the men gathered in
the plaza to smoke under the great cottonwood trees. The Bishop, feeling
a need of solitude, had gone forth to walk, firmly refusing an escort.
On his way he passed the earthen thrashing-floor, where these people
beat out their grain and winnowed it in the wind, like the Children of
Israel. He heard a frantic bleating behind him, and was overtaken by
Pedro with the great flock of goats, indignant at their day's
confinement, and wild to be in the fringe of pasture along the hills.
They leaped the stream like arrows speeding from the bow, and regarded
the Bishop as they passed him with their mocking, humanly intelligent
smile. The young bucks were light and elegant in figure, with their
pointed chins and polished tilted horns. There was great variety in
their faces, but in nearly all something supercilious and sardonic. The
angoras had long silky hair of a dazzling whiteness. As they leaped
through the sunlight they brought to mind the chapter in the Apocalypse,
about the whiteness of them that were washed in the blood of the Lamb.
The young Bishop smiled at his mixed theology. But though the goat had
always been the symbol of pagan lewdness, he told himself that their
fleece had warmed many a good Christian, and their rich milk nourished
sickly children.

About a mile above the village he came upon the water-head, a spring
overhung by the sharp-leafed variety of cottonwood called water willow.
All about it crowded the oven-shaped hills,--nothing to hint of water
until it rose miraculously out of the parched and thirsty sea of sand.
Some subterranean stream found an outlet here, was released from
darkness. The result was grass and trees and flowers and human life;
household order and hearths from which the smoke of burning piñon logs
rose like incense to Heaven.

The Bishop sat a long time by the spring, while the declining sun poured
its beautifying light over those low, rose-tinted houses and bright
gardens. The old grandfather had shown him arrow-heads and corroded
medals, and a sword hilt, evidently Spanish, that he had found in the
earth near the water-head. This spot had been a refuge for humanity long
before these Mexicans had come upon it. It was older than history, like
those well-heads in his own country where the Roman settlers had set up
the image of a river goddess, and later the Christian priests had
planted a cross. This settlement was his Bishopric in miniature;
hundreds of square miles of thirsty desert, then a spring, a village,
old men trying to remember their catechism to teach their grandchildren.
The Faith planted by the Spanish friars and watered with their blood was
not dead; it awaited only the toil of the husbandman. He was not
troubled about the revolt in Santa Fé, or the powerful old native
priest who led it--Father Martinez, of Taos, who had ridden over from
his parish expressly to receive the new Vicar and to drive him away. He
was rather terrifying, that old priest, with his big head, violent
Spanish face, and shoulders like a buffalo; but the day of his tyranny
was almost over.

3

THE BISHOP _CHEZ LUI_

IT was the late afternoon of Christmas Day, and the Bishop sat at his
desk writing letters. Since his return to Santa Fé his official
correspondence had been heavy; but the closely-written sheets over which
he bent with a thoughtful smile were not to go to Monsignori, or to
Archbishops, or to the heads of religious houses,--but to France, to
Auvergne, to his own little town; to a certain grey, winding street,
paved with cobbles and shaded by tall chestnuts on which, even to-day,
some few brown leaves would be clinging, or dropping one by one, to be
caught in the cold green ivy on the walls.

The Bishop had returned from his long horseback trip into Mexico only
nine days ago. At Durango the old Mexican prelate there had, after some
delay, delivered to him the documents that defined his Vicarate, and
Father Latour rode back the fifteen hundred miles to Santa Fé through
the sunny days of early winter. On his arrival he found amity instead of
enmity awaiting him. Father Vaillant had already endeared himself to the
people. The Mexican priest who was in charge of the pro-cathedral had
gracefully retired--gone to visit his family in Old Mexico, and carried
his effects along with him. Father Vaillant had taken possession of the
priest's house, and with the help of carpenters and the Mexican women of
the parish had put it in order. The Yankee traders and the military
Commandant at Fort Marcy had sent generous contributions of bedding and
blankets and odd pieces of furniture.

The Episcopal residence was an old adobe house, much out of repair, but
with possibilities of comfort. Father Latour had chosen for his study a
room at one end of the wing. There he sat, as this afternoon of
Christmas Day faded into evening. It was a long room of an agreeable
shape. The thick clay walls had been finished on the inside by the deft
palms of Indian women, and had that irregular and intimate quality of
things made entirely by the human hand. There was a reassuring solidity
and depth about those walls, rounded at door-sills and window-sills,
rounded in wide wings about the corner fire-place. The interior had been
newly whitewashed in the Bishop's absence, and the flicker of the fire
threw a rosy glow over the wavy surfaces, never quite evenly flat, never
a dead white, for the ruddy colour of the clay underneath gave a warm
tone to the lime wash. The ceiling was made of heavy cedar beams,
overlaid by aspen saplings, all of one size, lying close together like
the ribs in corduroy and clad in their ruddy inner skins. The earth
floor was covered with thick Indian blankets; two blankets, very old,
and beautiful in design and colour, were hung on the walls like
tapestries.

On either side of the fire-place plastered recesses were let into the
wall. In one, narrow and arched, stood the Bishop's crucifix. The other
was square, with a carved wooden door, like a grill, and within it lay a
few rare and beautiful books. The rest of the Bishop's library was on
open shelves at one end of the room.

The furniture of the house Father Vaillant had bought from the departed
Mexican priest. It was heavy and somewhat clumsy, but not unsightly. All
the wood used in making tables and bedsteads was hewn from tree boles
with the ax or hatchet. Even the thick planks on which the Bishop's
theological books rested were ax-dressed. There was not at that time a
turning-lathe or a saw-mill in all northern New Mexico. The native
carpenters whittled out chair rungs and table legs, and fitted them
together with wooden pins instead of iron nails. Wooden chests were used
in place of dressers with drawers, and sometimes these were beautifully
carved, or covered with decorated leather. The desk at which the Bishop
sat writing was an importation, a walnut "secretary" of American make
(sent down by one of the officers of the Fort at Father Vaillant's
suggestion). His silver candlesticks he had brought from France long
ago. They were given to him by a beloved aunt when he was ordained.

The young Bishop's pen flew over the paper, leaving a trail of fine,
finished French script behind, in violet ink.

"My new study, dear brother, as I write, is full of the delicious
fragrance of the piñon logs burning in my fire-place. (We use this kind
of cedar-wood altogether for fuel, and it is highly aromatic, yet
delicate. At our meanest tasks we have a perpetual odour of incense
about us.) I wish that you, and my dear sister, could look in upon this
scene of comfort and peace. We missionaries wear a frock-coat and
wide-brimmed hat all day, you know, and look like American traders. What
a pleasure to come home at night and put on my old cassock! I feel more
like a priest then--for so much of the day I must be a 'business
man'!--and, for some reason, more like a Frenchman. All day I am an
American in speech and thought--yes, in heart, too. The kindness of the
American traders, and especially of the military officers at the Fort,
commands more than a superficial loyalty. I mean to help the officers at
their task here. I can assist them more than they realize. The Church
can do more than the Fort to make these poor Mexicans 'good Americans.'
And it is for the people's good; there is no other way in which they can
better their condition.

"But this is not the day to write you of my duties or my purposes.
To-night we are exiles, happy ones, thinking of home. Father Joseph has
sent away our Mexican woman,--he will make a good cook of her in time,
but to-night he is preparing our Christmas dinner himself. I had thought
he would be worn out to-day, for he has been conducting a Novena of High
Masses, as is the custom here before Christmas. After the Novena, and
the midnight Mass last night, I supposed he would be willing to rest
to-day; but not a bit of it. You know his motto, 'Rest in action.' I
brought him a bottle of olive-oil on my horse all the way from Durango
(I say 'olive-oil,' because here 'oil' means something to grease the
wheels of wagons!), and he is making some sort of cooked salad. We have
no green vegetables here in winter, and no one seems ever to have heard
of that blessed plant, the lettuce. Joseph finds it hard to do without
salad-oil, he always had it in Ohio, though it was a great extravagance.
He has been in the kitchen all afternoon. There is only an open
fire-place for cooking, and an earthen roasting-oven out in the
courtyard. But he has never failed me in anything yet; and I think I can
promise you that to-night two Frenchmen will sit down to a good dinner
and drink your health."

The Bishop laid down his pen and lit his two candles with a splinter
from the fire, then stood dusting his fingers by the deep-set window,
looking out at the pale blue darkening sky. The evening-star hung above
the amber afterglow, so soft, so brilliant that she seemed to bathe in
her own silver light. _Ave Maris Stella_, the song which one of his
friends at the Seminary used to intone so beautifully; humming it softly
he returned to his desk and was just dipping his pen in the ink when the
door opened, and a voice said,

"_Monseigneur est servi! Alors, Jean, veux-tu apporter les bougies._"

The Bishop carried the candles into the dining-room, where the table was
laid and Father Vaillant was changing his cook's apron for his cassock.
Crimson from standing over an open fire, his rugged face was even
homelier than usual--though one of the first things a stranger decided
upon meeting Father Joseph was that the Lord had made few uglier men. He
was short, skinny, bow-legged from a life on horseback, and his
countenance had little to recommend it but kindliness and vivacity. He
looked old, though he was then about forty. His skin was hardened and
seamed by exposure to weather in a bitter climate, his neck scrawny and
wrinkled like an old man's. A bold, blunt-tipped nose, positive chin, a
very large mouth,--the lips thick and succulent but never loose, never
relaxed, always stiffened by effort or working with excitement. His
hair, sunburned to the shade of dry hay, had originally been
tow-coloured; "_Blanchet_" ("Whitey") he was always called at the
Seminary. Even his eyes were near-sighted, and of such a pale, watery
blue as to be unimpressive. There was certainly nothing in his outer
case to suggest the fierceness and fortitude and fire of the man, and
yet even the thick-blooded Mexican half-breeds knew his quality at once.
If the Bishop returned to find Santa Fé friendly to him, it was because
everybody believed in Father Vaillant--homely, real, persistent, with
the driving power of a dozen men in his poorly built body.

On coming into the dining-room, Bishop Latour placed his candlesticks
over the fire-place, since there were already six upon the table,
illuminating the brown soup-pot. After they had stood for a moment in
prayer, Father Joseph lifted the cover and ladled the soup into the
plates, a dark onion soup with croutons. The Bishop tasted it critically
and smiled at his companion. After the spoon had travelled to his lips a
few times, he put it down and leaning back in his chair remarked,

"Think of it, _Blanchet_; in all this vast country between the
Mississippi and the Pacific Ocean, there is probably not another human
being who could make a soup like this."

"Not unless he is a Frenchman," said Father Joseph. He had tucked a
napkin over the front of his cassock and was losing no time in
reflection.

"I am not deprecating your individual talent, Joseph," the Bishop
continued, "but, when one thinks of it, a soup like this is not the work
of one man. It is the result of a constantly refined tradition. There
are nearly a thousand years of history in this soup."

Father Joseph frowned intently at the earthen pot in the middle of the
table. His pale, near-sighted eyes had always the look of peering into
distance. "_C'est ça, c'est vrai_," he murmured. "But how," he
exclaimed as he filled the Bishop's plate again, "how can a man make a
proper soup without leeks, that king of vegetables? We cannot go on
eating onions for ever."

After carrying away the _soupière_, he brought in the roast chicken and
_pommes sautées_. "And salad, Jean," he continued as he began to carve.
"Are we to eat dried beans and roots for the rest of our lives? Surely
we must find time to make a garden. Ah, my garden at Sandusky! And you
could snatch me away from it! You will admit that you never ate better
lettuces in France. And my vineyard; a natural habitat for the vine,
that. I tell you, the shores of Lake Erie will be covered with vineyards
one day. I envy the man who is drinking my wine. Ah well, that is a
missionary's life; to plant where another shall reap."

As this was Christmas Day, the two friends were speaking in their native
tongue. For years they had made it a practice to speak English together,
except upon very special occasions, and of late they conversed in
Spanish, in which they both needed to gain fluency.

"And yet sometimes you used to chafe a little at your dear Sandusky and
its comforts," the Bishop reminded him--"to say that you would end a
home-staying parish priest, after all."

"Of course, one wants to eat one's cake and have it, as they say in
Ohio. But no farther, Jean. This is far enough. Do not drag me any
farther." Father Joseph began gently to coax the cork from a bottle of
red wine with his fingers. "This I begged for your dinner at the
hacienda where I went to baptize the baby on St. Thomas's Day. It is not
easy to separate these rich Mexicans from their French wine. They know
its worth." He poured a few drops and tried it. "A slight taste of the
cork; they do not know how to keep it properly. However, it is quite
good enough for missionaries."

"You ask me not to drag you any farther, Joseph. I wish," Bishop Latour
leaned back in his chair and locked his hands together beneath his chin,
"I wish I knew how far this is! Does anyone know the extent of this
diocese, or of this territory? The Commandant at the Fort seems as much
in the dark as I. He says I can get some information from the scout, Kit
Carson, who lives at Taos."

"Don't begin worrying about the diocese, Jean. For the present, Santa
Fé is the diocese. Establish order at home. To-morrow I will have a
reckoning with the churchwardens, who allowed that band of drunken
cowboys to come in to the midnight Mass and defile the font. There is
enough to do here. _Festina lente_. I have made a resolve not to go more
than three days' journey from Santa Fé for one year."

The Bishop smiled and shook his head. "And when you were at the
Seminary, you made a resolve to lead a life of contemplation."

A light leaped into Father Joseph's homely face. "I have not yet
renounced that hope. One day you will release me, and I will return to
some religious house in France and end my days in devotion to the Holy
Mother. For the time being, it is my destiny to serve Her in action. But
this is far enough, Jean."

The Bishop again shook his head and murmured, "Who knows how far?"

The vary little priest whose life was to be a succession of mountain
ranges, pathless deserts, yawning canyons and swollen rivers, who was to
carry the Cross into territories yet unknown and unnamed, who would wear
down mules and horses and scouts and stage-drivers, to-night looked
apprehensively at his superior and repeated, "No more, Jean. This is far
enough." Then making haste to change the subject, he said briskly, "A
bean salad was the best I could do for you; but with onion, and just a
suspicion of salt pork, it is not so bad."

Over the compote of dried plums they fell to talking of the great yellow
ones that grew in the old Latour garden at home. Their thoughts met in
that tilted cobble street, winding down a hill, with the uneven garden
walls and tall horse-chestnuts on either side; a lonely street after
nightfall, with soft street lamps shaped like lanterns at the darkest
turnings. At the end of it was the church where the Bishop made his
first Communion, with a grove of flat-cut plane trees in front, under
which the market was held on Tuesdays and Fridays.

While they lingered over these memories--an indulgence they seldom
permitted themselves--the two missionaries were startled by a volley of
rifle-shots and blood-curdling yells without, and the galloping of
horses. The Bishop half rose, but Father Joseph reassured him with a
shrug.

"Do not discompose yourself. The same thing happened here on the eve of
All Souls' Day. A band of drunken cowboys, like those who came into the
church last night, go out to the pueblo and get the Tesuque Indian boys
drunk, and then they ride in to serenade the soldiers at the Fort in
this manner."

4

A BELL AND A MIRACLE

ON the morning after the Bishop's return from Durango, after his first
night in his Episcopal residence, he had a pleasant awakening from
sleep. He had ridden into the courtyard after nightfall, having changed
horses at a _rancho_ and pushed on nearly sixty miles in order to reach
home. Consequently he slept late the next morning--did not awaken until
six o'clock, when he heard the Angelus ringing. He recovered
consciousness slowly, unwilling to let go of a pleasing delusion that he
was in Rome. Still half believing that he was lodged near St. John
Lateran, he yet heard every stroke of the Ave Maria bell, marvelling to
hear it rung correctly (nine quick strokes in all, divided into threes,
with an interval between); and from a bell with beautiful tone. Full,
clear, with something bland and suave, each note floated through the air
like a globe of silver. Before the nine strokes were done Rome faded,
and behind it he sensed something Eastern, with palm trees,--Jerusalem,
perhaps, though he had never been there. Keeping his eyes closed, he
cherished for a moment this sudden, pervasive sense of the East. Once
before he had been carried out of the body thus to a place far away. It
had happened in a street in New Orleans. He had turned a corner and come
upon an old woman with a basket of yellow flowers; sprays of yellow
sending out a honey-sweet perfume. Mimosa--but before he could think of
the name he was overcome by a feeling of place, was dropped, cassock and
all, into a garden in the south of France where he had been sent one
winter in his childhood to recover from an illness. And now this silvery
bell note had carried him farther and faster than sound could travel.

When he joined Father Vaillant at coffee, that impetuous man who could
never keep a secret asked him anxiously whether he had heard anything.

"I thought I heard the Angelus, Father Joseph, but my reason tells me
that only a long sea voyage could bring me within sound of such a bell."

"Not at all," said Father Joseph briskly. "I found that remarkable bell
here, in the basement of old San Miguel. They tell me it has been here a
hundred years or more. There is no church tower in the place strong
enough to hold it--it is very thick and must weigh close upon eight
hundred pounds. But I had a scaffolding built in the churchyard, and
with the help of oxen we raised it and got it swung on crossbeams. I
taught a Mexican boy to ring it properly against your return."

"But how could it have come here? It is Spanish, I suppose?"

"Yes, the inscription is in Spanish, to St. Joseph, and the date is
1356. It must have been brought up from Mexico City in an ox-cart. A
heroic undertaking, certainly. Nobody knows where it was cast. But they
do tell a story about it: that it was pledged to St. Joseph in the wars
with the Moors, and that the people of some besieged city brought all
their plate and silver and gold ornaments and threw them in with the
baser metals. There is certainly a good deal of silver in the bell,
nothing else would account for its tone."

Father Latour reflected. "And the silver of the Spaniards was really
Moorish, was it not? If not actually of Moorish make, copied from their
design. The Spaniards knew nothing about working silver except as they
learned it from the Moors."

"What are you doing, Jean? Trying to make my bell out an infidel?"
Father Joseph asked impatiently.

The Bishop smiled. "I am trying to account for the fact that when I
heard it this morning it struck me at once as something oriental. A
learned Scotch Jesuit in Montreal told me that our first bells, and the
introduction of the bell in the service all over Europe, originally came
from the East. He said the Templars brought the Angelus back from the
Crusades, and it is really an adaptation of a Moslem custom."

Father Vaillant sniffed. "I notice that scholars always manage to dig
out something belittling," he complained.

"Belittling? I should say the reverse. I am glad to think there is
Moorish silver in your bell. When we first came here, the one good
workman we found in Santa Fé was a silversmith. The Spaniards handed on
their skill to the Mexicans, and the Mexicans have taught the Navajos to
work silver; but it all came from the Moors."

"I am no scholar, as you know," said Father Vaillant rising. "And this
morning we have many practical affairs to occupy us. I have promised
that you will give an audience to a good old man, a native priest from
the Indian mission at Santa Clara, who is returning from Mexico. He has
just been on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe and
has been much edified. He would like to tell you the story of his
experience. It seems that ever since he was ordained he has desired to
visit the shrine. During your absence I have found how particularly
precious is that shrine to all Catholics in New Mexico. They regard it
as the one absolutely authenticated appearance of the Blessed Virgin in
the New World, and a witness of Her affection for Her Church on this
continent."

The Bishop went into his study, and Father Vaillant brought in Padre
Escolastico Herrera, a man of nearly seventy, who had been forty years
in the ministry, and had just accomplished the pious desire of a
lifetime. His mind was still full of the sweetness of his late
experience. He was so rapt that nothing else interested him. He asked
anxiously whether perhaps the Bishop would have more leisure to attend
to him later in the day. But Father Latour placed a chair for him and
told him to proceed.

The old man thanked him for the privilege of being seated. Leaning
forward, with his hands locked between his knees, he told the whole
story of the miraculous appearance, both because it was so dear to his
heart, and because he was sure that no "American" Bishop would have
heard of the occurrence as it was, though at Rome all the details were
well known and two Popes had sent gifts to the shrine.

On Saturday, December 9th, in the year 1531, a poor neophyte of the
monastery of St. James was hurrying down Tapeyac hill to attend Mass in
the City of Mexico. His name was Juan Diego and he was fifty-five years
old. When he was half way down the hill a light shone in his path, and
the Mother of God appeared to him as a young woman of great beauty, clad
in blue and gold. She greeted him by name and said:

"Juan, seek out thy Bishop and bid him build a church in my honour on
the spot where I now stand. Go then, and I will bide here and await thy
return."

Brother Juan ran into the City and straight to the Bishop's palace,
where he reported the matter. The Bishop was Zumarraga, a Spaniard. He
questioned the monk severely and told him he should have required a sign
of the Lady to assure him that she was indeed the Mother of God and not
some evil spirit. He dismissed the poor brother harshly and set an
attendant to watch his actions.

Juan went forth very downcast and repaired to the house of his uncle,
Bernardino, who was sick of a fever. The two succeeding days he spent in
caring for this aged man who seemed at the point of death. Because of
the Bishop's reproof he had fallen into doubt, and did not return to the
spot where the Lady said She would await him. On Tuesday he left the
City to go back to his monastery to fetch medicines for Bernardino, but
he avoided the place where he had seen the vision and went by another
way.

Again he saw a light in his path and the Virgin appeared to him as
before, saying, "Juan, why goest thou by this way?"

Weeping, he told Her that the Bishop had distrusted his report, and that
he had been employed in caring for his uncle, who was sick unto death.
The Lady spoke to him with all comfort, telling him that his uncle would
be healed within the hour, and that he should return to Bishop Zumarraga
and bid him build a church where She had first appeared to him. It must
be called the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, after Her dear shrine of
that name in Spain. When Brother Juan replied to Her that the Bishop
required a sign, She said: "Go up on the rocks yonder, and gather
roses."

Though it was December and not the season for roses, he ran up among the
rocks and found such roses as he had never seen before. He gathered them
until he had filled his _tilma_. The _tilma_ was a mantle worn only by
the very poor,--a wretched garment loosely woven of coarse vegetable
fibre and sewn down the middle. When he returned to the apparition, She
bent over the flowers and took pains to arrange them, then closed the
ends of the _tilma_ together and said to him:

"Go now, and do not open your mantle until you open it before your
Bishop."

Juan sped into the City and gained admission to the Bishop, who was in
council with his Vicar.

"Your Grace," he said, "the Blessed Lady who appeared to me has sent you
these roses for a sign."

At this he held up one end of his _tilma_ and let the roses fall in
profusion to the floor. To his astonishment, Bishop Zumarraga and his
Vicar instantly fell upon their knees among the flowers. On the inside
of his poor mantle was a painting of the Blessed Virgin, in robes of
blue and rose and gold, exactly as She had appeared to him upon the
hill-side.

A shrine was built to contain this miraculous portrait, which since that
day has been the goal of countless pilgrimages and has performed many
miracles.

Of this picture Padre Escolastico had much to say: he affirmed that it
was of marvellous beauty, rich with gold, and the colours as pure and
delicate as the tints of early morning. Many painters had visited the
shrine and marvelled that paint could be laid at all upon such poor and
coarse material. In the ordinary way of nature, the flimsy mantle would
have fallen to pieces long ago. The Padre modestly presented Bishop
Latour and Father Joseph with little medals he had brought from the
shrine; on one side a relief of the miraculous portrait, on the other an
inscription: _Non fecit taliter omni nationi_. (_She hath not dealt so
with any nation_.)

Father Vaillant was deeply stirred by the priest's recital, and after
the old man had gone he declared to the Bishop that he meant himself to
make a pilgrimage to this shrine at the earliest opportunity.

"What a priceless thing for the poor converts of a savage country!" he
exclaimed, wiping his glasses, which were clouded by his strong feeling.
"All these poor Catholics who have been so long without instruction have
at least the reassurance of that visitation. It is a household word with
them that their Blessed Mother revealed Herself in their own country, to
a poor convert. Doctrine is well enough for the wise, Jean; but the
miracle is something we can hold in our hands and love."

Father Vaillant began pacing restlessly up and down as he spoke, and the
Bishop watched him, musing. It was just this in his friend that was dear
to him. "Where there is great love there are always miracles," he said
at length. "One might almost say that an apparition is human vision
corrected by divine love. I do not see you as you really are, Joseph; I
see you through my affection for you. The Miracles of the Church seem to
me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming
suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made
finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what
is there about us always."

BOOK TWO

_MISSIONARY JOURNEYS_

1

THE WHITE MULES

IN mid-March, Father Vaillant was on the road, returning from a
missionary journey to Albuquerque. He was to stop at the _rancho_ of a
rich Mexican, Manuel Lujon, to marry his men and maid servants who were
living in concubinage, and to baptize the children. There he would spend
the night. To-morrow or the day after he would go on to Santa Fé,
halting by the way at the Indian pueblo of Santo Domingo to hold
service. There was a fine old mission church at Santo Domingo, but the
Indians were of a haughty and suspicious disposition. He had said Mass
there on his way to Albuquerque, nearly a week ago. By dint of
canvassing from house to house, and offering medals and religious colour
prints to all who came to church, he had got together a considerable
congregation. It was a large and prosperous pueblo, set among clean
sand-hills, with its rich irrigated farm lands lying just below, in the
valley of the Rio Grande. His congregation was quiet, dignified,
attentive. They sat on the earth floor, wrapped in their best blankets,
repose in every line of their strong, stubborn backs. He harangued them
in such Spanish as he could command, and they listened with respect. But
bring their children to be baptized, they would not. The Spaniards had
treated them very badly long ago, and they had been meditating upon
their grievance for many generations. Father Vaillant had not baptized
one infant there, but he meant to stop to-morrow and try again. Then
back to his Bishop, provided he could get his horse up La Bajada Hill.

He had bought his horse from a Yankee trader and had been woefully
deceived. One week's journey of from twenty to thirty miles a day had
shown the beast up for a wind-broken wreck. Father Vaillant's mind was
full of material cares as he approached Manuel Lujon's place beyond
Bernalillo. The _rancho_ was like a little town, with all its stables,
corrals, and stake fences. The _casa grande_ was long and low, with
glass windows and bright blue doors, a _portale_ running its full
length, supported by blue posts. Under this _portale_ the adobe wall was
hung with bridles, saddles, great boots and spurs, guns and saddle
blankets, strings of red peppers, fox skins, and the skins of two great
rattlesnakes.

When Father Vaillant rode in through the gateway, children came running
from every direction, some with no clothing but a little shirt, and
women with no shawls over their black hair came running after the
children. They all disappeared when Manuel Lujon walked out of the great
house, hat in hand, smiling and hospitable. He was a man of thirty-five,
settled in figure and somewhat full under the chin. He greeted the
priest in the name of God and put out a hand to help him alight, but
Father Vaillant sprang quickly to the ground.

"God be with you, Manuel, and with your house. But where are those who
are to be married?"

"The men are all in the field, Padre. There is no hurry. A little wine,
a little bread, coffee, repose--and then the ceremonies."

"A little wine, very willingly, and bread, too. But not until afterward.
I meant to catch you all at dinner, but I am two hours late because my
horse is bad. Have someone bring in my saddle-bags, and I will put on my
vestments. Send out to the fields for your men, Señor Lujon. A man can
stop work to be married."

The swarthy host was dazed by this dispatch. "But one moment, Padre.
There are all the children to baptize; why not begin with them, if I
cannot persuade you to wash the dust from your sainted brow and repose a
little."

"Take me to a place where I can wash and change my clothes, and I will
be ready before you can get them here. No, I tell you, Lujon, the
marriages first, the baptisms afterward; that order is but Christian. I
will baptize the children to-morrow morning, and their parents will at
least have been married over night."

Father Joseph was conducted to his chamber, and the older boys were sent
running off across the fields to fetch the men. Lujon and his two
daughters began constructing an altar at one end of the _sala_. Two old
women came to scrub the floor, and another brought chairs and stools.

"My God, but he is ugly, the Padre!" whispered one of these to the
others. "He must be very holy. And did you see the great wart he has on
his chin? My grandmother could take that away for him if she were alive,
poor soul! Somebody ought to tell him about the holy mud at Chimayo.
That mud might dry it up. But there is nobody left now who can take
warts away."

"No, the times are not so good any more," the other agreed. "And I doubt
if all this marrying will make them any better. Of what use is it to
marry people after they have lived together and had children? and the
man is maybe thinking about another woman, like Pablo. I saw him coming
out of the brush with that oldest girl of Trinidad's, only Sunday
night."

The reappearance of the priest upon the scene cut short further scandal.
He knelt down before the improvised altar and began his private
devotions. The women tiptoed away. Señor Lujon himself went out toward
the servants' quarters to hurry the candidates for the marriage
sacrament. The women were giggling and snatching up their best shawls.
Some of the men had even washed their hands. The household crowded into
the _sala_, and Father Vaillant married couples with great dispatch.

"To-morrow morning, the baptisms," he announced. "And the mothers see to
it that the children are clean, and that there are sponsors for all."

After he had resumed his travelling-clothes, Father Joseph asked his
host at what hour he dined, remarking that he had been fasting since an
early breakfast.

"We eat when it is ready--a little after sunset, usually. I have had a
young lamb killed for your Reverence."

Father Joseph kindled with interest. "Ah, and how will it be cooked?"

Señor Lujon shrugged. "Cooked? Why, they put it in a pot with chili,
and some onions, I suppose."

"Ah, that is the point. I have had too much stewed mutton. Will you
permit me to go into the kitchen and cook my portion in my own way?"

Lujon waved his hand. "My house is yours, Padre. Into the kitchen I
never go--too many women. But there it is, and the woman in charge is
named Rosa."

When the Father entered the kitchen he found a crowd of women discussing
the marriages. They quickly dispersed, leaving old Rosa by her
fire-place, where hung a kettle from which issued the savour of cooking
mutton fat, all too familiar to Father Joseph. He found a half sheep
hanging outside the door, covered with a bloody sack, and asked Rosa to
heat the oven for him, announcing that he meant to roast the hind leg.

"But Padre, I baked before the marriages. The oven is almost cold. It
will take an hour to heat it, and it is only two hours till supper."

"Very well. I can cook my roast in an hour."

"Cook a roast in an hour!" cried the old woman. "Mother of God, Padre,
the blood will not be dried in it!"

"Not if I can help it!" said Father Joseph fiercely. "Now hurry with the
fire, my good woman."

When the Padre carved his roast at the supper-table, the serving-girls
stood behind his chair and looked with horror at the delicate stream of
pink juice that followed the knife. Manuel Lujon took a slice for
politeness, but he did not eat it. Father Vaillant had his _gigot_ to
himself.

All the men and boys sat down at the long table with the host, the women
and children would eat later. Father Joseph and Lujon, at one end, had a
bottle of white Bordeaux between them. It had been brought from Mexico
City on mule-back, Lujon said. They were discussing the road back to
Santa Fé, and when the missionary remarked that he would stop at Santo
Domingo, the host asked him why he did not get a horse there. "I am
afraid you will hardly get back to Santa Fé on your own. The pueblo is
famous for breeding good horses. You might make a trade."

"No," said Father Vaillant. "Those Indians are of a sullen disposition.
If I were to have dealings with them, they would suspect my motives. If
we are to save their souls, we must make it clear that we want no profit
for ourselves, as I told Father Gallegos in Albuquerque."

Manuel Lujon laughed and glanced down the table at his men, who were all
showing their white teeth. "You said that to the Padre at Albuquerque?
You have courage. He is a rich man, Padre Gallegos. All the same, I
respect him. I have played poker with him. He is a great gambler and
takes his losses like a man. He stops at nothing, plays like an
American."

"And I," retorted Father Joseph, "I have not much respect for a priest
who either plays cards or manages to get rich."

"Then you do not play?" asked Lujon. "I am disappointed. I had hoped we
could have a game after supper. The evenings are dull enough here. You
do not even play dominoes?"

"Ah, that is another matter!" Father Joseph declared. "A game of
dominoes, there by the fire, with coffee, or some of that excellent
grape brandy you allowed me to taste, that I would find refreshing. And
tell me, Manuelito, where do you get that brandy? It is like a French
liqueur."

"It is well seasoned. It was made at Bernalillo in my grandfather's
time. They make it there still, but it is not so good now."

The next morning, after coffee, while the children were being got ready
for baptism, the host took Father Vaillant through his corrals and
stables to show him his stock. He exhibited with peculiar pride two
cream-coloured mules, stalled side by side. With his own hand he led
them out of the stable, in order to display to advantage their handsome
coats,--not bluish white, as with white horses, but a rich, deep ivory,
that in shadow changed to fawn-colour. Their tails were clipped at the
end into the shape of bells.

"Their names," said Lujon, "are Contento and Angelica, and they are as
good as their names. It seems that God has given them intelligence. When
I talk to them, they look up at me like Christians; they are very
companionable. They are always ridden together and have a great
affection for each other."

Father Joseph took one by the halter and led it about. "Ah, but they are
rare creatures! I have never seen a mule or horse coloured like a young
fawn before." To his host's astonishment, the wiry little priest sprang
upon Contento's back with the agility of a grasshopper. The mule, too,
was astonished. He shook himself violently, bolted toward the gate of
the barnyard, and at the gate stopped suddenly. Since this did not throw
his rider, he seemed satisfied, trotted back, and stood placidly beside
Angelica.

"But you are a _caballero_, Father Vaillant!" Lujon exclaimed. "I doubt
if Father Gallegos would have kept his seat--though he is something of a
hunter."

"The saddle is to be my home in your country, Lujon. What an easy gait
this mule has, and what a narrow back! I notice that especially. For a
man with short legs, like me, it is a punishment to ride eight hours a
day on a wide horse. And this I must do day after day. From here I go to
Santa Fé, and, after a day in conference with the Bishop, I start for
Mora."

"For Mora?" exclaimed Lujon. "Yes, that is far, and the roads are very
bad. On your mare you will never do it. She will drop dead under you."
While he talked, the Father remained upon the mule's back, stroking him
with his hand.

"Well, I have no other. God grant that she does not drop somewhere far
from food and water. I can carry very little with me except my vestments
and the sacred vessels."

The Mexican had been growing more and more thoughtful, as if he were
considering something profound and not altogether cheerful. Suddenly his
brow cleared, and he turned to the priest with a radiant smile, quite
boyish in its simplicity. "Father Vaillant," he burst out in a slightly
oratorical manner, "you have made my house right with Heaven, and you
charge me very little. I will do something very nice for you; I will
give you Contento for a present, and I hope to be particularly
remembered in your prayers."

Springing to the ground, Father Vaillant threw his arms about his host.
"Manuelito!" he cried, "for this darling mule I think I could almost
pray you into Heaven!"

The Mexican laughed, too, and warmly returned the embrace. Arm-in-arm
they went in to begin the baptisms.

The next morning, when Lujon went to call Father Vaillant for breakfast,
he found him in the barnyard, leading the two mules about and smoothing
their fawn-coloured flanks, but his face was not the cheerful
countenance of yesterday.

"Manuel," he said at once, "I cannot accept your present. I have thought
upon it over night, and I see that I cannot. The Bishop works as hard as
I do, and his horse is little better than mine. You know he lost
everything on his way out here, in a shipwreck at Galveston,--among the
rest a fine wagon he had had built for travel on these plains. I could
not go about on a mule like this when my Bishop rides a common hack. It
would be inappropriate. I must ride away on my old mare."

"Yes, Padre?" Manuel looked troubled and somewhat aggrieved. Why should
the Padre spoil everything? It had all been very pleasant yesterday, and
he had felt like a prince of generosity. "I doubt if she will make La
Bajada Hill," he said slowly, shaking his head. "Look my horses over and
take the one that suits you. They are all better than yours."

"No, no," said Father Vaillant decidedly. "Having seen these mules, I
want nothing else. They are the colour of pearls, really! I will raise
the price of marriages until I can buy this pair from you. A missionary
must depend upon his mount for companionship in his lonely life. I want
a mule that can look at me like a Christian, as you said of these."

Señor Lujon sighed and looked about his barnyard as if he were trying
to find some escape from this situation.

Father Joseph turned to him with vehemence. "If I were a rich
_ranchero_, like you, Manuel, I would do a splendid thing; I would
furnish the two mounts that are to carry the word of God about this
heathen country, and then I would say to myself: _There go my Bishop and
my Vicario, on my beautiful cream-coloured mules_."

"So be it, Padre," said Lujon with a mournful smile. "But I ought to get
a good many prayers. On my whole estate there is nothing I prize like
those two. True, they might pine if they were parted for long. They have
never been separated, and they have a great affection for each other.
Mules, as you know, have strong affections. It is hard for me to give
them up."

"You will be all the happier for that, Manuelito," Father Joseph cried
heartily. "Every time you think of these mules, you will feel pride in
your good deed."

Soon after breakfast Father Vaillant departed, riding Contento, with
Angelica trotting submissively behind, and from his gate Señor Lujon
watched them disconsolately until they disappeared. He felt he had been
worried out of his mules, and yet he bore no resentment. He did not
doubt Father Joseph's devotedness, nor his singleness of purpose. After
all, a Bishop was a Bishop, and a Vicar was a Vicar, and it was not to
their discredit that they worked like a pair of common parish priests.
He believed he would be proud of the fact that they rode Contento and
Angelica. Father Vaillant had forced his hand, but he was rather glad of
it.

2

THE LONELY ROAD TO MORA

THE Bishop and his Vicar were riding through the rain in the Truchas
mountains. The heavy, lead-coloured drops were driven slantingly through
the air by an icy wind from the peak. These raindrops, Father Latour
kept thinking, were the shape of tadpoles, and they broke against his
nose and cheeks, exploding with a splash, as if they were hollow and
full of air. The priests were riding across high mountain meadows, which
in a few weeks would be green, though just now they were slate-coloured.
On every side lay ridges covered with blue-green fir trees; above them
rose the horny backbones of mountains. The sky was very low; purplish
lead-coloured clouds let down curtains of mist into the valleys between
the pine ridges. There was not a glimmer of white light in the dark
vapours working overhead--rather, they took on the cold green of the
evergreens. Even the white mules, their coats wet and matted into tufts,
had turned a slaty hue, and the faces of the two priests were purple and
spotted in that singular light.

Father Latour rode first, sitting straight upon his mule, with his chin
lowered just enough to keep the drive of rain out of his eyes. Father
Vaillant followed, unable to see much,--in weather like this his glasses
were of no use, and he had taken them off. He crouched down in the
saddle, his shoulders well over Contento's neck. Father Joseph's sister,
Philomène, who was Mother Superior of a convent in her native town in
the Puy-de-Dôm, often tried to picture her brother and Bishop Latour on
these long missionary journeys of which he wrote her; she imagined the
scene and saw the two priests moving through it in their cassocks,
bare-headed, like the pictures of St. Francis Xavier with which she was
familiar. The reality was less picturesque,--but for all that, no one
could have mistaken these two men for hunters or traders. They wore
clerical collars about their necks instead of neckerchiefs, and on the
breast of his buckskin jacket the Bishop's silver cross hung by a silver
chain.

They were on their way to Mora, the third day out, and they did not know
just how far they had still to go. Since morning they had not met a
traveller or seen a human habitation. They believed they were on the
right trail, for they had seen no other. The first night of their
journey they had spent at Santa Cruz, lying in the warm, wide valley of
the Rio Grande, where the fields and gardens were already softly
coloured with early spring. But since they had left the Española
country behind them, they had contended first with wind and sand-storms,
and now with cold. The Bishop was going to Mora to assist the Padre
there in disposing of a crowd of refugees who filled his house. A new
settlement in the Conejos valley had lately been raided by Indians; many
of the inhabitants were killed, and the survivors, who were originally
from Mora, had managed to get back there, utterly destitute.

Before the travellers had crossed the mountain meadows, the rain turned
to sleet. Their wet buckskins quickly froze, and the rattle of icy
flakes struck them and bounded off. The prospect of a night in the open
was not cheering. It was too wet to kindle a fire, their blankets would
become soaked on the ground. As they were descending the mountain on the
Mora side, the gray daylight seemed already beginning to fail, though it
was only four o'clock. Father Latour turned in his saddle and spoke over
his shoulder.

"The mules are certainly very tired, Joseph. They ought to be fed."

"Push on," said Father Vaillant. "We will come to shelter of some kind
before night sets in." The Vicar had been praying steadfastly while they
crossed the meadows, and he felt confident that St. Joseph would not
turn a deaf ear. Before the hour was done they did indeed come upon a
wretched adobe house, so poor and mean that they might not have seen it
had it not lain close beside the trail, on the edge of a steep ravine.
The stable looked more habitable than the house, and the priests thought
perhaps they could spend the night in it.

As they rode up to the door, a man came out, bare-headed, and they saw
to their surprise that he was not a Mexican, but an American, of a very
unprepossessing type. He spoke to them in some drawling dialect they
could scarcely understand and asked if they wanted to stay the night.
During the few words they exchanged with him Father Latour felt a
growing reluctance to remain even for a few hours under the roof of this
ugly, evil-looking fellow. He was tall, gaunt and ill-formed, with a
snake-like neck, terminating in a small, bony head. Under his
close-clipped hair this repellent head showed a number of thick ridges,
as if the skull joinings were overgrown by layers of superfluous bone.
With its small, rudimentary ears, this head had a positively malignant
look. The man seemed not more than half human, but he was the only
householder on the lonely road to Mora.

The priests dismounted and asked him whether he could put their mules
under shelter and give them grain feed.

"As soon as I git my coat on I will. You kin come in."

They followed him into a room where a piñon fire blazed in the corner,
and went toward it to warm their stiffened hands. Their host made an
angry, snarling sound in the direction of the partition, and a woman
came out of the next room. She was a Mexican.

Father Latour and Father Vaillant addressed her courteously in Spanish,
greeting her in the name of the Holy Mother, as was customary. She did
not open her lips, but stared at them blankly for a moment, then dropped
her eyes and cowered as if she were terribly frightened. The priests
looked at each other; it struck them both that this man had been abusing
her in some way. Suddenly he turned on her.

"Clear off them cheers fur the strangers. They won't eat ye, if they air
priests."

She began distractedly snatching rags and wet socks and dirty clothes
from the chairs. Her hands were shaking so that she dropped things. She
was not old, she might have been very young, but she was probably
half-witted. There was nothing in her face but blankness and fear.

Her husband put on his coat and boots, went to the door, and stopped
with his hand on the latch, throwing over his shoulder a crafty, hateful
glance at the bewildered woman.

"Here, you! Come right along, I'll need ye!"

She took her black shawl from a peg and followed him. Just at the door
she turned and caught the eyes of the visitors, who were looking after
her in compassion and perplexity. Instantly that stupid face became
intense, prophetic, full of awful meaning. With her finger she pointed
them away, away!--two quick thrusts into the air. Then, with a look of
horror beyond anything language could convey, she threw back her head
and drew the edge of her palm quickly across her distended throat--and
vanished. The doorway was empty; the two priests stood staring at it,
speechless. That flash of electric passion had been so swift, the
warning it communicated so vivid and definite, that they were struck
dumb.

Father Joseph was the first to find his tongue. "There is no doubt of
her meaning. Your pistol is loaded, Jean?"

"Yes, but I neglected to keep it dry. No matter."

They hurried out of the house. It was still light enough to see the
stable through the grey drive of rain, and they went toward it.

"Señor American," the Bishop called, "will you be good enough to bring
out our mules?"

The man came out of the stable. "What do you want?"

"Our mules. We have changed our mind. We will push on to Mora. And here
is a dollar for your trouble."

The man took a threatening attitude. As he looked from one to the other
his head played from side to side exactly like a snake's. "What's the
matter? My house ain't good enough for ye?"

"No explanation is necessary. Go into the barn and get the mules, Father
Joseph."

"You dare go into my stable, you----priest!"

The Bishop drew his pistol. "No profanity, Señor. We want nothing from
you but to get away from your uncivil tongue. Stand where you are."

The man was unarmed. Father Joseph came out with the mules, which had
not been unsaddled. The poor things were each munching a mouthful, but
they needed no urging to be gone; they did not like this place. The
moment they felt their riders on their backs they trotted quickly along
the road, which dropped immediately into the arroyo. While they were
descending, Father Joseph remarked that the man would certainly have a
gun in the house, and that he had no wish to be shot in the back.

"Nor I. But it is growing too dark for that, unless he should follow us
on horseback," said the Bishop. "Were there horses in the stable?"

"Only a burro." Father Vaillant was relying upon the protection of St.
Joseph, whose office he had fervently said that morning. The warning
given them by that poor woman, with such scant opportunity, seemed
evidence that some protecting power was mindful of them.

By the time they had ascended the far side of the arroyo, night had
closed down and the rain was pouring harder than ever.

"I am by no means sure that we can keep in the road," said the Bishop.
"But at least I am sure we are not being followed. We must trust to
these intelligent beasts. Poor woman! He will suspect her and abuse her,
I am afraid." He kept seeing her in the darkness as he rode on, her face
in the fire-light, and her terrible pantomime.

They reached the town of Mora a little after midnight. The Padre's house
was full of refugees, and two of them were put out of a bed in order
that the Bishop and his Vicar could get into it.

In the morning a boy came from the stable and reported that he had found
a crazy woman lying in the straw, and that she begged to see the two
Padres who owned the white mules. She was brought in, her clothing cut
to rags, her legs and face and even her hair so plastered with mud that
the priests could scarcely recognize the woman who had saved their lives
the night before.

She said she had never gone back to the house at all. When the two
priests rode away her husband had run to the house to get his gun, and
she had plunged down a wash-out behind the stable into the arroyo, and
had been on the way to Mora all night. She had supposed he would
overtake her and kill her, but he had not. She reached the settlement
before day-break, and crept into the stable to warm herself among the
animals and wait until the household was awake. Kneeling before the
Bishop she began to relate such horrible things that he stopped her and
turned to the native priest.

"This is a case for the civil authorities. Is there a magistrate here?"

There was no magistrate, but there was a retired fur trapper who acted
as notary and could take evidence. He was sent for, and in the interval
Father Latour instructed the refugee women from Conejos to bathe this
poor creature and put decent clothes on her, and to care for the cuts
and scratches on her legs.

An hour later the woman, whose name was Magdalena, calmed by food and
kindness, was ready to tell her story. The notary had brought along his
friend, St. Vrain, a Canadian trapper who understood Spanish better than
he. The woman was known to St. Vrain, moreover, who confirmed her
statement that she was born Magdalena Valdez, at Los Ranchos de Taos,
and that she was twenty-four years old. Her husband, Buck Scales, had
drifted into Taos with a party of hunters from somewhere in Wyoming. All
white men knew him for a dog and a degenerate--but to Mexican girls,
marriage with an American meant coming up in the world. She had married
him six years ago, and had been living with him ever since in that
wretched house on the Mora trail. During that time he had robbed and
murdered four travellers who had stopped there for the night. They were
all strangers, not known in the country. She had forgot their names, but
one was a German boy who spoke very little Spanish and little English;
a nice boy with blue eyes, and she had grieved for him more than for the
others. They were all buried in the sandy soil behind the stable. She
was always afraid their bodies might wash out in a storm. Their horses
Buck had ridden off by night and sold to Indians somewhere in the north.
Magdalena had borne three children since her marriage, and her husband
had killed each of them a few days after birth, by ways so horrible that
she could not relate it. After he killed the first baby, she ran away
from him, back to her parents at Ranchos. He came after her and made her
go home with him by threatening harm to the old people. She was afraid
to go anywhere for help, but twice before she had managed to warn
travellers away, when her husband happened to be out of the house. This
time she had found courage because, when she looked into the faces of
these two Padres, she knew they were good men, and she thought if she
ran after them they could save her. She could not bear any more killing.
She asked nothing better than to die herself, if only she could hide
near a church and a priest for a while, to make her soul right with God.

St. Vrain and his friend got together a search-party at once. They rode
out to Scales's place and found the remains of four men buried under the
corral behind the stable, as the woman had said. Scales himself they
captured on the road from Taos, where he had gone to look for his wife.
They brought him back to Mora, but St. Vrain rode on to Taos to fetch a
magistrate.

There was no _calabozo_ in Mora, so Scales was put into an empty stable,
under guard. This stable was soon surrounded by a crowd of people, who
loitered to hear the blood-curdling threats the prisoner shouted against
his wife. Magdalena was kept in the Padre's house, where she lay on a
mat in the corner, begging Father Latour to take her back to Santa Fé,
so that her husband could not get at her. Though Scales was bound, the
Bishop felt alarmed for her safety. He and the American notary, who had
a pistol of the new revolver model, sat in the _sala_ and kept watch
over her all night.

In the morning the magistrate and his party arrived from Taos. The
notary told him the facts of the case in the plaza, where everyone could
hear. The Bishop inquired whether there was any place for Magdalena in
Taos, as she could not stay on here in such a state of terror.

A man dressed in buckskin hunting-clothes stepped out of the crowd and
asked to see Magdalena. Father Latour conducted him into the room where
she lay on her mat. The stranger went up to her, removing his hat. He
bent down and put his hand on her shoulder. Though he was clearly an
American, he spoke Spanish in the native manner.

"Magdalena, don't you remember me?"

She looked up at him as out of a dark well; something became alive in
her deep, haunted eyes. She caught with both hands at his fringed
buckskin knees.

"Christobal!" she wailed. "Oh, Christobal!"

"I'll take you home with me, Magdalena, and you can stay with my wife.
You wouldn't be afraid in my house, would you?"

"No, no, Christobal, I would not be afraid with you. I am not a wicked
woman."

He smoothed her hair. "You're a good girl, Magdalena--always were. It
will be all right. Just leave things to me."

Then he turned to the Bishop. "Señor Vicario, she can come to me. I
live near Taos. My wife is a native woman, and she'll be good to her.
That varmint won't come about my place, even if he breaks jail. He knows
me. My name is Carson."

Father Latour had looked forward to meeting the scout. He had supposed
him to be a very large man, of powerful body and commanding presence.
This Carson was not so tall as the Bishop himself, was very slight in
frame, modest in manner, and he spoke English with a soft Southern
drawl. His face was both thoughtful and alert; anxiety had drawn a
permanent ridge between his blue eyes. Under his blond moustache his
mouth had a singular refinement. The lips were full and delicately
modelled. There was something curiously unconscious about his mouth,
reflective, a little melancholy,--and something that suggested a
capacity for tenderness. The Bishop felt a quick glow of pleasure in
looking at the man. As he stood there in his buckskin clothes one felt
in him standards, loyalties, a code which is not easily put into words
but which is instantly felt when two men who live by it come together by
chance. He took the scout's hand. "I have long wanted to meet Kit
Carson," he said, "even before I came to New Mexico. I have been hoping
you would pay me a visit at Santa Fé."

The other smiled. "I'm right shy, sir, and I'm always afraid of being
disappointed. But I guess it will be all right from now on."

This was the beginning of a long friendship.

On their ride back to Carson's ranch, Magdalena was put in Father
Vaillant's care, and the Bishop and the scout rode together. Carson said
he had become a Catholic merely as a matter of form, as Americans
usually did when they married a Mexican girl. His wife was a good woman
and very devout; but religion had seemed to him pretty much a woman's
affair until his last trip to California. He had been sick out there,
and the Fathers at one of the missions took care of him. "I began to see
things different, and thought I might some day be a Catholic in earnest.
I was brought up to think priests were rascals, and that the nuns were
bad women,--all the stuff they talk back in Missouri. A good many of the
native priests here bear out that story. Our Padre Martinez at Taos is
an old scapegrace, if ever there was one; he's got children and
grandchildren in almost every settlement around here. And Padre Lucero
at Arroyo Hondo is a miser, takes everything a poor man's got to give
him a Christian burial."

The Bishop discussed the needs of his people at length with Carson. He
felt great confidence in his judgment. The two men were about the same
age, both a little over forty, and both had been sobered and sharpened
by wide experience. Carson had been guide in world-renowned
explorations, but he was still almost as poor as in the days when he was
a beaver trapper. He lived in a little adobe house with his Mexican
wife. The great country of desert and mountain ranges between Santa Fé
and the Pacific coast was not yet mapped or charted; the most reliable
map of it was in Kit Carson's brain. This Missourian, whose eye was so
quick to read a landscape or a human face, could not read a printed
page. He could at that time barely write his own name. Yet one felt in
him a quick and discriminating intelligence. That he was illiterate was
an accident; he had got ahead of books, gone where the printing-press
could not follow him. Out of the hardships of his boyhood--from fourteen
to twenty picking up a bare living as cook or mule-driver for wagon
trains, often in the service of brutal and desperate characters--he had
preserved a clean sense of honour and a compassionate heart. In talking
to the Bishop of poor Magdalena he said sadly: "I used to see her in
Taos when she was such a pretty girl. Ain't it a pity?"

The degenerate murderer, Buck Scales, was hanged after a short trial.
Early in April the Bishop left Santa Fé on horseback and rode to St.
Louis, on his way to attend the Provincial Council at Baltimore. When he
returned in September, he brought back with him five courageous nuns,
Sisters of Loretto, to found a school for girls in letterless Santa Fé.
He sent at once for Magdalena and took her into the service of the
Sisters. She became housekeeper and manager of the Sisters' kitchen. She
was devoted to the nuns, and so happy in the service of the Church that
when the Bishop visited the school he used to enter by the
kitchen-garden in order to see her serene and handsome face. For she
became beautiful, as Carson said she had been as a girl. After the
blight of her horrible youth was over, she seemed to bloom again in the
household of God.

BOOK THREE

_THE MASS AT ÁCOMA_

1

THE WOODEN PARROT

DURING the first year after his arrival in Santa Fé, the Bishop was
actually in his diocese only about four months. Six months of that first
year were consumed in attending the Plenary Council at Baltimore, to
which he had been summoned. He went on horseback over the Santa Fé
trail to St. Louis, nearly a thousand miles, then by steamboat to
Pittsburgh, across the mountains to Cumberland, and on to Washington by
the new railroad. The return journey was even slower, as he had with him
the five nuns who came to found the school of Our Lady of Light. He
reached Santa Fé late in September.

So far, Bishop Latour had been mainly employed on business that took him
far away from his Vicarate. His great diocese was still an unimaginable
mystery to him. He was eager to be abroad in it, to know his people; to
escape for a little from the cares of building and founding, and to go
westward among the old isolated Indian missions; Santo Domingo, breeder
of horses; Isleta, whitened with gypsum; Laguna, of wide pastures; and
finally, cloud-set Ácoma.

In the golden October weather the Bishop, with his blankets and
coffee-pot, attended by Jacinto, a young Indian from the Pecos pueblo,
whom he employed as guide, set off to visit the Indian missions in the
west. He spent a night and a day at Albuquerque, with the genial and
popular Padre Gallegos. After Santa Fé, Albuquerque was the most
important parish in the diocese; the priest belonged to an influential
Mexican family, and he and the _rancheros_ had run their church to suit
themselves, making a very gay affair of it. Though Padre Gallegos was
ten years older than the Bishop, he would still dance the fandango five
nights running, as if he could never have enough of it. He had many
friends in the American colony, with whom he played poker and went
hunting, when he was not dancing with the Mexicans. His cellar was well
stocked with wines from El Paso del Norte, whisky from Taos, and grape
brandy from Bernalillo. He was genuinely hospitable, and the gambler
down on his luck, the soldier sobering up, were always welcome at his
table. The Padre was adored by a rich Mexican widow, who was hostess at
his supper parties, engaged his servants for him, made lace for the
altar and napery for his table. Every Sunday her carriage, the only
closed one in Albuquerque, waited in the plaza after Mass, and when the
priest had put off his vestments, he came out and was driven away to the
lady's hacienda for dinner.

The Bishop and Father Vaillant had thoroughly examined the case of
Father Gallegos, and meant to end this scandalous state of things well
before Christmas. But on this visit Father Latour exhibited neither
astonishment nor displeasure at anything, and Padre Gallegos was cordial
and most ceremoniously polite. When the Bishop permitted himself to
express some surprise that there was not a confirmation class awaiting
him, the Padre explained smoothly that it was his custom to confirm
infants at their baptism.

"It is all the same in a Christian community like ours. We know they
will receive religious instruction as they grow up, so we make good
Catholics of them in the beginning. Why not?"

The Padre was uneasy lest the Bishop should require his attendance on
this trip out among the missions. He had no liking for scanty food and a
bed on the rocks. So, though he had been dancing only a few nights
before, he received his Superior with one foot bandaged up in an Indian
moccasin, and complained of a severe attack of gout. Asked when he had
last celebrated Mass at Ácoma, he made no direct reply. It used to be
his custom, he said, to go there in Passion Week, but the Ácoma Indians
were unreclaimed heathen at heart, and had no wish to be bothered with
the Mass. The last time he went out there, he was unable to get into the
church at all. The Indians pretended they had not the key; that the
Governor had it, and that he had gone on "Indian business" up into the
Cebolleta mountains.

The Bishop did not wish Padre Gallegos's company upon his journey, was
very glad not to have the embarrassment of refusing it, and he rode away
from Albuquerque after polite farewells. Yet, he reflected, there was
something very engaging about Gallegos as a man. As a priest, he was
impossible; he was too self-satisfied and popular ever to change his
ways, and he certainly could not change his face. He did not look quite
like a professional gambler, but something smooth and twinkling in his
countenance suggested an underhanded mode of life. There was but one
course: to suspend the man from the exercise of all priestly functions,
and bid the smaller native priests take warning.

Father Vaillant had told the Bishop that he must by all means stop a
night at Isleta, as he would like the priest there--Padre Jesus de Baca,
an old white-haired man, almost blind, who had been at Isleta many years
and had won the confidence and affection of his Indians.

When he approached this pueblo of Isleta, gleaming white across a low
plain of grey sand, Father Latour's spirits rose. It was beautiful, that
warm, rich whiteness of the church and the clustered town, shaded by a
few bright acacia trees, with their intense blue-green like the colour
of old paper window-blinds. That tree always awakened pleasant memories,
recalling a garden in the south of France where he used to visit young
cousins. As he rode up to the church, the old priest came out to meet
him, and after his salutation stood looking at Father Latour, shading
his failing eyes with his hand.

"And can this be my Bishop? So young a man?" he exclaimed.

They went into the priest's house by way of a garden, walled in behind
the church. This enclosure was full of domesticated cactus plants, of
many varieties and great size (it seemed the Padre loved them), and
among these hung wicker cages made of willow twigs, full of parrots.
There were even parrots hopping about the sanded paths,--with one wing
clipped to keep them at home. Father Jesus explained that parrot
feathers were much prized by his Indians as ornaments for their
ceremonial robes, and he had long ago found he could please his
parishioners by raising the birds.

The priest's house was white within and without, like all the Isleta
houses, and was almost as bare as an Indian dwelling. The old man was
poor, and too soft-hearted to press the pueblo people for pesos. An
Indian girl cooked his beans and cornmeal mush for him, he required
little else. The girl was not very skilful, he said, but she was clean
about her cooking. When the Bishop remarked that everything in this
pueblo, even the streets, seemed clean, the Padre told him that near
Isleta there was a hill of some white mineral, which the Indians ground
up and used as whitewash. They had done this from time immemorial, and
the village had always been noted for its whiteness. A little talk with
Father Jesus revealed that he was simple almost to childishness, and
very superstitious. But there was a quality of golden goodness about
him. His right eye was overgrown by a cataract, and he kept his head
tilted as if he were trying to see around it. All his movements were to
the left, as if he were reaching or walking about some obstacle in his
path.

After coming to the house by way of a garden full of parrots, Father
Latour was amused to find that the sole ornament in the Padre's poor,
bare little _sala_ was a wooden parrot, perched in a hoop and hung from
one of the roof-logs. While Father Jesus was instructing his Indian girl
in the kitchen, the Bishop took this carving down from its perch to
examine it. It was cut from a single stick of wood, exactly the size of
a living bird, body and tail rigid and straight, the head a little
turned. The wings and tail and neck feathers were just indicated by the
tool, and thinly painted. He was surprised to feel how light it was; the
surface had the whiteness and velvety smoothness of very old wood.
Though scarcely carved at all, merely smoothed into shape, it was
strangely lifelike; a wooden pattern of parrots, as it were.

The Padre smiled when he found the Bishop with the bird in his hand.

"I see you have found my treasure! That, your Grace, is probably the
oldest thing in the pueblo--older than the pueblo itself."

The parrot, Father Jesus said, had always been the bird of wonder and
desire to the pueblo Indians. In ancient times its feathers were more
valued than wampum and turquoises. Even before the Spaniards came, the
pueblos of northern New Mexico used to send explorers along the
dangerous and difficult trade routes down into tropical Mexico to bring
back upon their bodies a cargo of parrot feathers. To purchase these the
trader carried pouches full of turquoises from the Cerrillos hills near
Santa Fé. When, very rarely, a trader succeeded in bringing back a live
bird to his people, it was paid divine honours, and its death threw the
whole village into the deepest gloom. Even the bones were piously
preserved. There was in Isleta a parrot skull of great antiquity. His
wooden bird he had bought from an old man who was much indebted to him,
and who was about to die without descendants. Father Jesus had had his
eye upon the bird for years. The Indian told him that his ancestors,
generations ago, had brought it with them from the mother pueblo. The
priest fondly believed that it was a portrait, done from life, of one of
those rare birds that in ancient times were carried up alive, all the
long trail from the tropics.

Father Jesus gave a good report of the Indians at Laguna and Ácoma. He
used to go to those pueblos to hold services when he was younger, and
had always found them friendly.

"At Ácoma," he said, "you can see something very holy. They have there
a portrait of St. Joseph, sent to them by one of the Kings of Spain,
long ago, and it has worked many miracles. If the season is dry, the
Ácoma people take the picture down to their farms at Acomita, and it
never fails to produce rain. They have rain when none falls in all the
country, and they have crops when the Laguna Indians have none."

2

JACINTO

TAKING leave of Isleta and its priest early in the morning, Father
Latour and his guide rode all day through the dry desert plain west of
Albuquerque. It was like a country of dry ashes; no juniper, no rabbit
brush, nothing but thickets of withered, dead-looking cactus, and
patches of wild pumpkin--the only vegetation that had any vitality. It
is a vine, remarkable for its tendency, not to spread and ramble, but to
mass and mount. Its long, sharp, arrow-shaped leaves, frosted over with
prickly silver, are thrust upward and crowded together; the whole rigid,
up-thrust matted clump looks less like a plant than like a great colony
of grey-green lizards, moving and suddenly arrested by fear.

As the morning wore on they had to make their way through a sand-storm
which quite obscured the sun. Jacinto knew the country well, having
crossed it often to go to the religious dances at Laguna, but he rode
with his head low and a purple handkerchief tied over his mouth. Coming
from a pueblo among woods and water, he had a poor opinion of this
plain. At noon he alighted and collected enough greasewood to boil the
Bishop's coffee. They knelt on either side of the fire, the sand curling
about them so that the bread became gritty as they ate it.

The sun set red in an atmosphere murky with sand. The travellers made a
dry camp and rolled themselves in their blankets. All night a cold wind
blew over them. Father Latour was so stiff that he arose long before
day-break. The dawn came at last, fair and clear, and they made an early
start.

About the middle of that afternoon Jacinto pointed out Laguna in the
distance, lying, apparently, in the midst of bright yellow waves of high
sand dunes--yellow as ochre. As they approached, Father Latour found
these were petrified sand dunes; long waves of soft, gritty yellow rock,
shining and bare except for a few lines of dark juniper that grew out of
the weather cracks,--little trees, and very, very old. At the foot of
this sweep of rock waves was the blue lake, a stone basin full of water,
from which the pueblo took its name.

The kindly Padre at Isleta had sent his cook's brother off on foot to
warn the Laguna people that the new High Priest was coming, and that he
was a good man and did not want money. They were prepared, accordingly;
the church was clean and the doors were open; a small white church,
painted above and about the altar with gods of wind and rain and
thunder, sun and moon, linked together in a geometrical design of
crimson and blue and dark green, so that the end of the church seemed to
be hung with tapestry. It recalled to Father Latour the interior of a
Persian chieftain's tent he had seen in a textile exhibit at Lyons.
Whether this decoration had been done by Spanish missionaries or by
Indian converts, he was unable to find out.

The Governor told him that his people would come to Mass in the morning,
and that there were a number of children to be baptized. He offered the
Bishop the sacristy for the night, but there was a damp, earthy smell
about that chamber, and Father Latour had already made up his mind that
he would like to sleep on the rock dunes, under the junipers.

Jacinto got firewood and good water from the Lagunas, and they made
their camp in a pleasant spot on the rocks north of the village. As the
sun dropped low, the light brought the white church and the yellow adobe
houses up into relief from the flat ledges. Behind their camp, not far
away, lay a group of great mesas. The Bishop asked Jacinto if he knew
the name of the one nearest them.

"No, I not know any name," he shook his head. "I know Indian name," he
added, as if, for once, he were thinking aloud.

"And what is the Indian name?"

"The Laguna Indians call Snow-Bird mountain." He spoke somewhat
unwillingly.

"That is very nice," said the Bishop musingly. "Yes, that is a pretty
name."

"Oh, Indians have nice names too!" Jacinto replied quickly, with a curl
of the lip. Then, as if he felt he had taken out on the Bishop a
reproach not deserved, he said in a moment: "The Laguna people think it
very funny for a big priest to be a young man. The Governor say, how can
I call him Padre when he is younger than my sons?"

There was a note of pride in Jacinto's voice very flattering to the
Bishop. He had noticed how kind the Indian voice could be when it was
kind at all; a slight inflection made one feel that one had received a
great compliment.

"I am not very young in heart, Jacinto. How old are you, my boy?"

"Twenty-six."

"Have you a son?"

"One. Baby. Not very long born."

Jacinto usually dropped the article in speaking Spanish, just as he did
in speaking English, though the Bishop had noticed that when he did give
a noun its article, he used the right one. The customary omission,
therefore, seemed to be a matter of taste, not ignorance. In the Indian
conception of language, such attachments were superfluous and
unpleasing, perhaps.

They relapsed into the silence which was their usual form of
intercourse. The Bishop sat drinking his coffee slowly out of the tin
cup, keeping the pot near the embers. The sun had set now, the yellow
rocks were turning grey, down in the pueblo the light of the cook fires
made red patches of the glassless windows, and the smell of piñon smoke
came softly through the still air. The whole western sky was the colour
of golden ashes, with here and there a flush of red on the lip of a
little cloud. High above the horizon the evening-star flickered like a
lamp just lit, and close beside it was another star of constant light,
much smaller.

Jacinto threw away the end of his cornhusk cigarette and again spoke
without being addressed.

"The ev-en-ing-star," he said in English, slowly and somewhat
sententiously, then relapsed into Spanish. "You see the little star
beside, Padre? Indians call him the guide."

The two companions sat, each thinking his own thoughts as night closed
in about them; a blue night set with stars, the bulk of the solitary
mesas cutting into the firmament. The Bishop seldom questioned Jacinto
about his thoughts or beliefs. He didn't think it polite, and he
believed it to be useless. There was no way in which he could transfer
his own memories of European civilization into the Indian mind, and he
was quite willing to believe that behind Jacinto there was a long
tradition, a story of experience, which no language could translate to
him. A chill came with the darkness. Father Latour put on his old
fur-lined cloak, and Jacinto, loosening the blanket tied about his
loins, drew it up over his head and shoulders.

"Many stars," he said presently. "What you think about the stars,
Padre?"

"The wise men tell us they are worlds, like ours, Jacinto."

The end of the Indian's cigarette grew bright and then dull again before
he spoke. "I think not," he said in the tone of one who has considered a
proposition fairly and rejected it. "I think they are leaders--great
spirits."

"Perhaps they are," said the Bishop with a sigh. "Whatever they are,
they are great. Let us say _Our Father_, and go to sleep, my boy."

Kneeling on either side of the embers they repeated the prayer together
and then rolled up in their blankets. The Bishop went to sleep thinking
with satisfaction that he was beginning to have some sort of human
companionship with his Indian boy. One called the young Indians "boys,"
perhaps because there was something youthful and elastic in their
bodies. Certainly about their behaviour there was nothing boyish in the
American sense, nor even in the European sense. Jacinto was never, by
any chance, naïf; he was never taken by surprise. One felt that his
training, whatever it had been, had prepared him to meet any situation
which might confront him. He was as much at home in the Bishop's study
as in his own pueblo--and he was never too much at home anywhere. Father
Latour felt he had gone a good way toward gaining his guide's friendship,
though he did not know how.

The truth was, Jacinto liked the Bishop's way of meeting people; thought
he had the right tone with Padre Gallegos, the right tone with Padre
Jesus, and that he had good manners with the Indians. In his experience,
white people, when they addressed Indians, always put on a false face.
There were many kinds of false faces; Father Vaillant's, for example,
was kindly but too vehement. The Bishop put on none at all. He stood
straight and turned to the Governor of Laguna, and his face underwent no
change. Jacinto thought this remarkable.

3

THE ROCK

AFTER early Mass the next morning Father Latour and his guide rode off
across the low plain that lies between Laguna and Ácoma. In all his
travels the Bishop had seen no country like this. From the flat red sea
of sand rose great rock mesas, generally Gothic in outline, resembling
vast cathedrals. They were not crowded together in disorder, but placed
in wide spaces, long vistas between. This plain might once have been an
enormous city, all the smaller quarters destroyed by time, only the
public buildings left,--piles of architecture that were like mountains.
The sandy soil of the plain had a light sprinkling of junipers, and was
splotched with masses of blooming rabbit brush,--that olive-coloured
plant that grows in high waves like a tossing sea, at this season
covered with a thatch of bloom, yellow as gorse, or orange like
marigolds.

This mesa plain had an appearance of great antiquity, and of
incompleteness; as if, with all the materials for world-making
assembled, the Creator had desisted, gone away and left everything on
the point of being brought together, on the eve of being arranged into
mountain, plain, plateau. The country was still waiting to be made into
a landscape.

Ever afterward the Bishop remembered his first ride to Ácoma as his
introduction to the mesa country. One thing which struck him at once was
that every mesa was duplicated by a cloud mesa, like a reflection, which
lay motionless above it or moved slowly up from behind it. These cloud
formations seemed to be always there, however hot and blue the sky.
Sometimes they were flat terraces, ledges of vapour; sometimes they were
dome-shaped, or fantastic, like the tops of silvery pagodas, rising one
above another, as if an oriental city lay directly behind the rock. The
great tables of granite set down in an empty plain were inconceivable
without their attendant clouds, which were a part of them, as the smoke
is part of the censer, or the foam of the wave.

Coming along the Santa Fé trail, in the vast plains of Kansas, Father
Latour had found the sky more a desert than the land; a hard, empty
blue, very monotonous to the eyes of a Frenchman. But west of the Pecos
all that changed; here there was always activity overhead, clouds
forming and moving all day long. Whether they were dark and full of
violence, or soft and white with luxurious idleness, they powerfully
affected the world beneath them. The desert, the mountains and mesas,
were continually re-formed and re-coloured by the cloud shadows. The
whole country seemed fluid to the eye under this constant change of
accent, this ever-varying distribution of light.

Jacinto interrupted these reflections by an exclamation.

"Ácoma!" He stopped his mule.

The Bishop, following with his eye the straight, pointing Indian hand,
saw, far away, two great mesas. They were almost square in shape, and at
this distance seemed close together, though they were really some miles
apart.

"The far one"--his guide still pointed.

The Bishop's eyes were not so sharp as Jacinto's, but now, looking down
upon the top of the farther mesa from the high land on which they
halted, he saw a flat white outline on the grey surface--a white square
made up of squares. That, his guide said, was the pueblo of Ácoma.

Riding on, they presently drew rein under the Enchanted Mesa, and
Jacinto told him that on this, too, there had once been a village, but
the stairway which had been the only access to it was broken off by a
great storm many centuries ago, and its people had perished up there
from hunger.

But how, the Bishop asked him, did men first think of living on the top
of naked rocks like these, hundreds of feet in the air, without soil or
water?

Jacinto shrugged. "A man can do whole lot when they hunt him day and
night like an animal. Navajos on the north, Apaches on the south; the
Ácoma run up a rock to be safe."

All this plain, the Bishop gathered, had once been the scene of a
periodic man-hunt; these Indians, born in fear and dying by violence for
generations, had at last taken this leap away from the earth, and on
that rock had found the hope of all suffering and tormented
creatures--safety. They came down to the plain to hunt and to grow their
crops, but there was always a place to go back to. If a band of Navajos
were on the Ácoma's trail, there was still one hope; if he could reach
his rock--Sanctuary! On the winding stone stairway up the cliff, a
handful of men could keep off a multitude. The rock of Ácoma had never
been taken by a foe but once,--by Spaniards in armour. It was very
different from a mountain fastness; more lonely, more stark and grim,
more appealing to the imagination. The rock, when one came to think of
it, was the utmost expression of human need; even mere feeling yearned
for it; it was the highest comparison of loyalty in love and friendship.
Christ Himself had used that comparison for the disciple to whom He gave
the keys of His Church. And the Hebrews of the Old Testament, always
being carried captive into foreign lands,--their rock was an idea of
God, the only thing their conquerors could not take from them.

Already the Bishop had observed in Indian life a strange literalness,
often shocking and disconcerting. The Ácomas, who must share the
universal human yearning for something permanent, enduring, without
shadow of change,--they had their idea in substance. They actually lived
upon their Rock; were born upon it and died upon it. There was an
element of exaggeration in anything so simple!

As they drew near the Ácoma mesa, dark clouds began boiling up from
behind it, like ink spots spreading in a brilliant sky.

"Rain come," remarked Jacinto. "That is good. They will be well
disposed." He left the mules in a stake corral at the foot of the mesa,
took up the blankets, and hurried Father Latour into the narrow crack in
the rock where the craggy edges formed a kind of natural stairway up the
cliff. Wherever the footing was treacherous, it was helped out by little
handholds, ground into the stone like smooth mittens. The mesa was
absolutely naked of vegetation, but at its foot a rank plant grew
conspicuously out of the sand; a plant with big white blossoms like
Easter lilies. By its dark blue-green leaves, large and coarse-toothed,
Father Latour recognized a species of the noxious datura. The size and
luxuriance of these nightshades astonished him. They looked like great
artificial plants, made of shining silk.

While they were ascending the rock, deafening thunder broke over their
heads, and the rain began to fall as if it were spilled from a
cloud-burst. Drawing into a deep twist of the stairway, under an
overhanging ledge, they watched the water shaken in heavy curtains in
the air before them. In a moment the seam in which they stood was like
the channel of a brook. Looking out over the great plain spotted with
mesas and glittering with rain sheets, the Bishop saw the distant
mountains bright with sunlight. Again he thought that the first Creation
morning might have looked like this, when the dry land was first drawn
up out of the deep, and all was confusion.

The storm was over in half an hour. By the time the Bishop and his guide
reached the last turn in the trail, and rose through the crack, stepping
out on the flat top of the rock, the noontide sun was blazing down upon
Ácoma with almost insupportable brightness. The bare stone floor of the
town and its deepworn paths were washed white and clean, and those
depressions in the surface which the Ácomas call their cisterns, were
full of fresh rain water. Already the women were bringing out their
clothes, to begin washing. The drinking water was carried up the
stairway in earthen jars on the heads of the women, from a secret spring
below; but for all other purposes the people depended on the rainfall
held in these cisterns.

The top of the mesa was about ten acres in extent, the Bishop judged,
and there was not a tree or a blade of green upon it; not a handful of
soil, except the churchyard, held in by an adobe wall, where the earth
for burial had been carried up in baskets from the plain below. The
white dwellings, two and three storeyed, were not scattered, but huddled
together in a close cluster, with no protecting slope of ground or
shoulder of rock, lying flat against the flat, bright against the
bright,--both the rock and the plastered houses threw off the sun glare
blindingly.

At the very edge of the mesa, overhanging the abyss so that its
retaining wall was like a part of the cliff itself, was the old warlike
church of Ácoma, with its two stone towers. Gaunt, grim, grey, its nave
rising some seventy feet to a sagging, half-ruined roof, it was more
like a fortress than a place of worship. That spacious interior
depressed the Bishop as no other mission church had done. He held a
service there before midday, and he had never found it so hard to go