The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 13
AFTER vespers the Indians were merry that evening over their green corn and beef, Don Geronimo's abasement the motive of their delight. Each family group gathered around the big vessel which held their supper filled from the common kettles, in the back yards of the cabins—for the padres began early to instill the patio usage, the Spanish love of seclusion, in their wards—talked of the noble deed Juan Molinero had done. They raised him in their praise as they humiliated Don Geronimo. And now Don Geronimo was dead, they's aid. Don Juan was to be mayordomo. They should have justice; they should feel the cut of the cruel black whip no more.
There was little serious thought, then or at any time, of rising against the beneficent authority of the padres, although trouble makers who expected to profit out of the Indians' exploitation had been at work several years among the younger men. It was not against the padres that the resentment of the neophytes rose, but against the machinery which the padres employed.
There never were more than two priests at one time stationed at a single mission; spiritual supervision was the work with which they were most earnestly employed. Soldiers always had been at the various missions, or stationed within easy call, to enforce the discipline of those who directed the labors in the fields. The Indians were not willing toilers in the upbuilding of these vast mud palaces, these high-walled, stolid, frowning, gloomy churches, yet never since the remote days of the beginning at San Diego de Acalá, when they killed two of the pioneer padres, had they lifted their hands against the priests.
There was beginning to be much talk of liberty among the young men, it is true, words put into their mouths by crafty rascals who would have changed the Indians' pastoral security under mission rule to the debauched state of wage slavery which they finally accomplished, to the wreckage and almost extinction of this simple people within a generation. Tonight this talk of liberty was bolder and more outspoken than ever before. The young men gathered in the trampled little streets, talking of working as freemen among the ranchers, gaining money and horses, flocks, herds, homes of their own, instead of bending their labors to the padres' comfort and enrichment with no promise of future change.
Let the old ones, and the timid ones, remain at the mission, they said. Now that Don Geronimo was down, it was time for the young ones to go. Against this urging there were far-seeing ones who revealed the white men's purpose in alienating them from the padres' lands. Cristóbal was one of them, fiery as he was at heart, resentful of the cruelty and imposition of his condition. For a few strong ones who could withstand the temptation of the white men's brandy, liberty would be desirable, "he said. But for such as understood liberty as a state where a man was free to own a horse, ride where he liked and drink brandy when he had earned the money to buy it, the mission, even under Don Geronimo, was a better place.
But Don Geronimo was dead, the others replied; they had seen him lying in the cart, his knees stiff, blood on his beard. A worse man might come in his place. No, said the old men, Don Juan of the mill was to be mayordomo now; they had seen an understanding pass between him and Padre Ignacio. Don Juan was gentle and just; there would be no weighing of meat when he came to be mayordomo, but every man should have as much as he desired.
Excitement grew on them as they gathered before their doors in the white moonlight and talked. There seemed to be a new freedom in every movement, in every breath, now that Don Geronimo was down. The feeling that the task-master watched and listened, the restraint of his cold presence over every fiesta, every marriage, every occasion when men should laugh and fling the feet free of the thought of toil; all this restraint was dissolved, broken like bonds of glass by Don Juan's courageous blow. Laughter rose lightly on the night wind. The young men brought their fiddles and guitars; in the little square where the tall cross lifted the pale figure of Our Señor, they danced with the girls, the old ones sitting by with nods and smiles and low words, in the comfortable relaxation that comes after long watching, and hardship, and pain.
Padre Ignacio at that hour was pacing in troubled meditation the length of his vast empty room where the great hewn cedar beam crossed from east to west. The light of his candle was dim among the rafters, peaked high over his head; the shadow of the cross-beam threw half the chamber in gloom.
Padre Ignacio marched up and down the room, his sandals scuffing in a little soft sound of attrition on the dim red tiling of the floor. His hands were at his back, his head was bent. Between the north window, looking out on the Indian village beyond the church, and the cedar beam his course lay. At the beam he turned toward the east window, his shoulder close against the wood, brown as his own skin; at the east window he turned again to the north, following the triangle marked in the tiling by his tramping through many years.
Close by the north window his little table, with his few precious books upon it, stood, convenient for the light of tired eyes. This was a low window, where one must bend the back to see the hills. It was crossed by iron bars beaten at the mission forge. Under the east window, on the farthest side of the cedar beam, Padre Ignacio's narrow bed was placed. This couch, a rawhide stretched on a crude frame, stood where the first gleam of dawn would strike the sleeper's face, calling him to the endless duties of the day. Near it was a small altar, and a chair with rawhide seat. A similar chair stood beside the table with the books and inkstand. The room, spacious enough to contain a king's furnishings, held nothing more. There was not even a peg holding Padre Ignacio's extra gown. It was a question, indeed, if he commanded so much luxury.
The sound of the music and happy voices mounted in through the open window and broke upon Padre Ignacio's meditations. At first he heard with nothing more than a subconscious realization, as one is aware of the insect chorus of a summer night. Then it welled until it became insistent, clamorous on the ear for attention. Padre Ignacio paused in his tramping to lean at the window and listen.
"This is strange!" he muttered, hearing laughter rise unrestrained as the music ceased. "They are dancing, when it is neither a fiesta nor the eve of a fiesta, without permission asked or given."
Padre Ignacio was deeply troubled and disturbed by this loud evidence of independent thought and action in his neophytes. It was the first time in his mission experience of thirty years and more that such a demonstration had occurred. It was the young ones, he reflected with sorrow, the grandsons of the savages who had come at the first tolling of the bells to subject themselves to the padres' God. Reverence was dying out of them, he feared; this world revolution of liberty which had shaken America and France, had blown to the mission Indians like the seed of some evil disease. Liberty was admirable for those who could enlarge their happiness and morality under it, Padre Ignacio confessed; liberty for the mission neophytes would lead only to relapse and destruction. It would be fire in an infant's hand.
These thoughts moved Padre Ignacio to go at once and remonstrate with his foolish children, censure them sternly and send them to bed, where they should have been that moment instead of laughing and capering in the moonlight, dissipating the strength needed for tomorrow's toil. All of this grew out of Don Geronimo's haughty disdain of Juan Molinero, and the sadly unfortunate blow with the flail, Poor Juan had struck in the flash of his foolish anger, not knowing that it was the penance of a priest to bear lashes for other men.
Juan was standing in the court, looking at the moon, disconsolate, Padre Ignacio thought, as a lonesome dog. The kitchen door was closed, the ready word of Dota Magdalena lacking to cheer the night. Save for Juan, the court was empty. The jet of the fountain sparkled in the strong moonlight; the scent of rose and lemon bloom was sweet.
"Come with me, Juan, and see the result of this day's work with your four-times-unlucky flail," Padre Ignacio said.
Juan was not troubled over that day's work with his flail to any uneasy length. His one regret was that it might alienate the friendship of Doña Magdalena. For Don Geronimo he had no care, whether he lived or died.
Padre Ignacio said nothing more as they walked down the long arcade joining mission building and church. The broad trampled road to the Indian village crossed under this arcade a little way before coming to the church, at the point where the tallow cauldrons were, and the great underground vat for holding the grease rendered from the waste portions of butchered animals and those that died in the fields. The top of this tank extended above ground a few feet, like a sunken tower. It contained tons of tallow, waiting the ships from Spain that were so long in coming.
Padre Ignacio touched Juan's arm and stopped him in the shadow of a little adobe hut at the corner of the village plaza where the tall cross lifted a crude figure of a crucified man. The bleached grass and straw thatch of the crowded huts seemed frosted in the moonlight; the blocked shadows were as little squares of velvet spread before the doors. The plaza was not much larger than Padre Ignacio's room. It was packed with the village inhabitants, young and old. Those who were not taking their turn at dancing sat on the brick-hard ground, which was as clean of dust as Doña Magdalena's kitchen floor.
"You see how they mock discipline, Juan," Padre Ignacio stretched out his hand with the slow, revealing, accusing gesture of a man who unveils to another the result of his wilfulness. "They have seen authority struck down; they are following the example set before their eyes."
"They seem to be having a good time," Juan said, still not struck by any contrite pang.
"It is not authorized, they did not ask permission to play fiesta this night," Padre Ignacio said, his voice, shocked, injured, the disappointment bitter for him to bear.
"Must they ask permission to laugh and sing?" Juan inquired, unable to see where anybody had room for injury in the innocent scene before their eyes.
"This is permitted only on days of fiesta, when it is proclaimed."
"It is a hard matter to be happy by proclamation, I am afraid. They get the good out of it when it's spontaneous, when they do it because they feel like dancing and singing. I know I wouldn't like for anybody to point a pistol at my head and tell me to sing, padre."
"The sad thing is this, Juan Molinero: the hand that was over them has been removed for the hour; they poach upon that authority like thieves. Perhaps tomorrow, when it comes time to go to the fields, they will stand with idle hands. That is the sad thing, to think they may fail us, now Don Geronimo is down."
"A man's loyalty cannot be won with a whip, Padre Ignacio."
"I have been gentle with them always, even sparing the children when it seemed even the credo was beyond their grasp. I have given them grace by patience where others have used the stick. But what is it to profit me now?"
"There is Cristóbal with his guitar; speak to him and see."
"Ah, Cristóbal is a good lad, a loving boy. But there are not many like Cristóbal. Yes, they will disperse at my command, Juan; I have no fear of that. But with what reservations for tomorrow? That is like lead on my breast. They have seen authority"
"They're going to see it again, then. Look there!"
Don Geronimo stepped into the moonlight of the little plaza, his broad hat pulled low over the white bandage that circled his head and came down to his eyes. Pistols were in his belt; his black whip was on his wrist.
"Don Geronimo! He heard the revelry, he rose from his bed of pain."
Juan had a thought of warning Cristóbal, whose back, he knew, the black whip would single out for its vicious assault. Padre Ignacio restrained him as he stepped out into the moonlight to shout Cristóbal's name.
There was no need to warn Cristóbal, whose quick eyes were the first to see the mayordomo, and to realize with a falling heart that the celebration of his passing was premature. A surprised cry, low like a moan of pain, followed Cristóbal's word of warning as the people rose and cleared out of the plaza like leaves before a wind.
Don Geronimo's whip burned like a brandingiron wherever it fell, and it was as quick as a serpent in his supple hand. Child and man, mother and babe, it lashed alike in its indiscriminate fury. Don Geronimo's voice rose strong over the screams of women and children as they fled before his arm.
"Who has declared a fiesta?" he demanded. "Who has told you to sing and dance? Now, sing with pain, dance with agony, you dogs!"
Don Geronimo rushed from side to side of the plaza, his leaping whip never falling short. Women encumbered by clinging children, old men whose feet were slow, suffered for the merry-makers who sped away at the first alarm. Juan was furious at the sight of this atrocious punishment where a word would have served as well. But Padre Ignacio had firm grip of his wrist; he remained in the shadow, writhing in pain at the sound of the screams of women and the sobs of children who felt the fiery touch of Don Geronimo's lash.
"Let us return; I shall not be needed here," Padre Ignacio said.
Juan attended him, the confusion of the village, the running feet, the lamentations of the flogged, sadly disturbing the placid night. He could not feel that Padre Ignacio was not needed there, where authority had come again to dissipate the rejoicing of innocence, and tyranny to stamp under relentless feet the springing fires of manhood and liberty.
So, Don Geronimo was not down; sad revelation to those who had stolen a little breath of liberty that night.
"I did not expect such a quick recovery," Padre Ignacio said, comforted and vastly relieved, "although life came back to him within half an hour. Come with me to my chamber, Juan. There is something on my heart that I must say to you this night."