The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 17
"IT gladdens my heart to see your face again, my Juan, but I would have been better pleased if you had not returned. You have come to look upon insubordination and rebellion, such a state of affairs as never disgraced San Fernando before, and which may pass with what pain and sorrow to us all God alone can tell."
Padre Ignacio spoke in deep sadness, his lean brown face seamed with shadows in the candle light. It was then long past the hour of retirement at San Fernando; Juan had been guided to Padre Ignacio's room by the light of his north window as he rode cautiously down past the dam, keeping his horse to the furrowed ground. No soldier had challenged his entry to the mission close; the unbarred door had admitted him. He had gone at once to Padre Ignacio's door, his Indian shoes noiseless on the floor tiles.
Juan looked sharply at Padre Ignacio when he made this startling declaration of the disorder at San Fernando. There was no evidence of insubordination and rebellion in the quiet night; as he passed the Indians' huts Juan had noted their silence, glad that all seemed to be asleep, disturbed in the fear that they might set up a babble on hearing him pass, and make it necessary for him to ride again for his life.
"It is the quiescence of a covered fire," Padre Ignacio said, reading Juan's doubtful thoughts. "Our poor Indians have thrown off all authority, except alone their spiritual allegiance. This morning they refused to go to the fields, standing under Don Geronimo's lashes sullenly. The cattle and sheep are straying tonight in the hills and vegas without herdsmen or shepherds; the fields are thirsty; the threshed grain lies unwinnowed on the ground."
"I am amazed!" said Juan, truly so. "Has there been any violence?"
"No. Brother Mateo and I have succeeded in holding them; they seem like children, indeed, so gentle, so obedient, in our hands. Only they refuse, stubbornly, with such a determination that it is almost valiant, poor little fools! to work in the fields under Don Geronimo. They say he was to blame for your betrayal to the soldiers, and your flight from San Fernando. They mourn you as a friend lost to them. I do not know how the belief took hold of them, where it started or how it spread, this thing that you were to be mayordomo in place of Don Geronimo."
"Poor devils!" said Juan, his heart strained with pity for their vain hope.
"We must call on the soldiers again, I fear," Padre Ignacio sighed, "and force them to the fields with bayonets, as at the beginning. They will not yield to persuasion; they mutter and stand in groups, demanding that we send for you and Cristóbal. They have made a hero of the lad."
"It is a place no man can deny him," Juan declared warmly, quick in the defense of his friend.
"I must ask you, then, my son, to repair your necessities and depart again as quickly as you can. You can see how your presence here will only inflame them to further defiance of discipline. As it is already, I have found it expedient to prohibit Don Geronimo's appearance among them. He is determined to go to the pueblo for the soldiers in the morning if they persist in their rebellious stand."
"That will be a most unwise thing to do, Padre Ignacio. You admit they are obedient and gentle in your hands; why not try kindness instead of the lash and bayonets? Send Don Geronimo away from San Fernando, and your troubles will melt like a morning fog."
"We believe, from past experience, that it would be a bad piece of business to yield to them in the slightest point. If they find that rebellion against the hardships—as they believe them, groundlessly—of their material life will result in their alleviation, they will begin to employ the same means to escape the obligations of their spiritual life. A relapse to savagery would be the result; all our labors here among them would be defeated and brought down to nothing."
"It may be so," said Juan, but with doubting reservation.
"The map I prepared for you is here, and your rifle is here. I will help you collect other things necessary, to hasten your departure. You must be well on your way to the mountains again before dawn, but it will be wise to avoid San Gabriel; the soldiers may be there watching for you. Cristóbal will be able to find the pass."
"Yes, Cristóbal is familiar with the way. But Gertrudis—if I might be permitted a last word with her, to give her assurance"
"It will be better as it stands," Padre Ignacio interposed hastily, coldly, Juan thought. "She has been asleep long, or if not, in retirement for the night; it would be impossible to see her now. I will give her every assurance of your safety, I will inform her of your return and departure, well provided against the necessities of your journey home. If God wills it, Juan, you shall come back some day."
"She'll think it strange that I came and went without seeing her," Juan seemed to protest.
"It is past midnight now—too late for lovers to be alone," Padre Ignacio said, smiling a little through his cloud of gloom. He touched Juan's shoulder affectionately, turning him a little to look into his face. "She thas been brave, she exulted in your escape," he said. "To see her now, only to leave again, would be more cruel than kind. One parting is only half as hard as two."
"You are right, as you are always right, my kind, my gentle friend."
"Not always, Juan. I may be mistaken in my rigorous treatment of these poor Indians, your words of a moment ago turned me to thinking it might be so."
"Your wisdom and love of justice will prompt you," Juan assured him eagerly. "Only, if possible to do it, send Don Geronimo away. There are no soldiers here now, not even a guard?"
"Not one remains, Juan. They carried Captain del Valle's body away to the pueblo for burial, I would not permit him to lie in consecrated ground after his defiance of the church. Whether they will come at Don Geronimo's appeal is another thing."
"As God directs it," said Juan. "I will leave these clothes behind me, Father Ignacio, to be put on agaiti some happier day, if that day ever comes. If I do not return, give them to some wayfarer with the blessing of the man who will need them no more."
"You will find your room as you left it; as you leave it tonight, Juan, so I shall keep it until you come again. Get into your stout clothes, then, my son, and make ready for the road with haste."
"Somebody is coming," Juan said. He rose, anxiously, leaning while he hearkened to the slight whisper of soft-shod feet coming cautiously through the dark under the rafters.
"Brother Mateo," said Padre Ignacio. "It is a time of unrest. Hold the candle to light him, Juan."
"Doña Magdalena!" Juan spoke her name in soft surprise as he opened the door, the candle in his hand.
"I saw by your window that you were not asleep, Padre Ignacio," Doña Magdalena said. Her great dark eyes sparkled like the eyes of a wild creature in the light; her face seemed hollow and gaunt, with shadows in her cheeks. She looked as if she had come from a troubled vigil, her unbound hair in slight disorder, a few strands of it sweeping her face. She stood in the embarrassment of unexpected discovery, having paused indecisively a moment at the door, its sudden opening revealing her in the troubled state between appeal and flight.
"What is it that brings you from your bed at this hour, my daughter?" Padre Ignacio inquired of her gently.
"Don Geronimo," she said, and paused, lifting her great eyes. She moistened her lips, as if they burned, fright, and something more than fright, a horrible questioning, it seemed to Juan, in her face as she looked at him.
"Has his wound broken, is he sick?" Padre Ignacio asked.
"He heard a commotion among the horses in the corral, it must have been two hours ago," she said. "He went out. He has not come back!"
"He is overdoing himself, I warned him," Padre Ignacio said, out of patience with the mayordomo. "He has fallen in the ditch, very likely. Come, Juan, let us find him."
"I have looked for him everywhere," Magdalena panted, putting out her hands in gesture of helplessness, of expressive emptiness. "I would not have come to you, only I saw the light."
"Then he has taken a horse to ride out among the cattle," Padre Ignacio assured her, untroubled by her failure to find Don Geronimo. "He is not a man to be looked after like a little child, doña; return to your bed, we shall see what he is about."
They left Magdalena at her door, while they continued on to the corral where the vaqueros commonly kept their horses at night. This was on the river-bank, built in such manner that the beasts could go down to the stream to drink. It was an enclosure between high adobe walls; its openings barred by peeled saplings, smooth-polished from years of use.
"She looked at you as if she believed you had eaten him," Padre Ignacio said, rather sad than indignant to see such suspicion in Magdalena's face. "That is another result of your hasty blow, my son."
"What is this? The horses are all turned out, Padre."
The bars were thrown down in the disorder of haste, the corral was empty.
"Where are a woman's eyes, that she couldn't see this?" Padre Ignacio wondered. "But why the fellow has turned them out at midnight, and apparently followed them to the pastures, is more than I can understand."
"The saddles are gone from the top of the wall," said Juan. "The horses have not gone away without riders."
"What is this?" said Padre Ignacio, alarmed. "Oh well," calmed by his own reasoning again at once, "it only means that the vaqueros have listened to reason and gone with Don Geronimo to gather up the scattered cattle. That is well; there is no further need for investigation, Juan."
"Who is that?" Juan challenged, seeing a shadowy figure close against the wall. He ran forward; an old Indian stepped out into the moonlight, lifting his hand in sign of peace.
"Padre Ignacio, a word!" he whispered, beckoning to the priest.
Padre Ignacio turned from a short exchange of words with the Indian, who at once disappeared around the corner of the corral wall.
"He says the young men put a rope around Don Geronimo," said Padre Ignacio, in slow, fatalistic, heartless words; "he says they have carried him away to the hills."
"It is a bad hour for Don Geronimo," said Juan.
They turned and stood looking toward the hills, rough, jagged as peaks of mountains that stood with their roots sunk into the plain, rising to the dignity of mountains, in fact, as they ranged northward in forbidding expanse. The moonlight was white on scarred cliff and crumbling ledge; shadows lay penciled in bold strokes along sharp escarpments; great slides of broken granite spread fanwise on the steep slopes, grey and dark-mottled where sage and harsh laurel had taken a melancholy hold.
"I must follow them, I must stay this awful tragedy!" Padre Ignacio said.
"Nothing can be done until daybreak, Padre. I can pick up the trail at the first light of day, and follow it quickly. Before then we could only stumble and grope."
"I must go at once, there will be something to tell me the way. Your horse—fetch him, I will go at once."
"There are many canyons," Juan pointed to the hills, where the dark gashes of the canyons opened down to the plain. "And see—who is to follow them, who is to know which way they went over this trampled ground? I have had much experience in these things, Padre. I tell you earnestly you will waste time and strength by starting now."
"They will go to San Feliciano Canyon, where the horses stray," Padre Ignacio said, decisively. "I will follow."
"I'll go with you, then. That horse the outlaw owned is a wild creature, and hard to manage at times. I saw your mule in the pasture by the milldam as I passed—he will be safer and more sure. Shall I bring him?"
"Hasten with him, then, Juan."
Juan returned with Padre Ignacio's mule to find the priest in grave contention with his coadjutor over the question of which of them should go on the hazardous business of rescuing Don Geronimo. Padre Mateo argued for the advantage of his years, for his secondary position, which threw the arduous tasks upon him as a matter of right, to all of which Padre Ignacio was deaf.
"It will matter very little what happens to me, Padre Ignacio," Juan heard Padre Mateo say as he came up with the mule, "but everything in San Fernando rests on you. If you should fall"
"Dismiss the thought! These poor misguided lads would not touch me with violent hand."
"Remember San Diego de Acalá!"
"That was long ago, Brother Mateo."
"But it is the same passion, the same blood."
"Now, Juan, is the girdle tight? That is well." Padre Ignacio put his foot in the stirrup, and laid hold of the saddle-horn to mount, stood so, ready to lift himself to his seat, and turned to Juan. "Go and finish your preparations for departure," he commanded, severely, it seemed to Juan, almost unfriendly and cold.
"But I am going with you," Juan insisted. "It was understood."
"Only by yourself, my son. It is generous of you young men to put your hands to my relief, but another cannot serve in my place in this. Brother Mateo, I charge you to see that Juan does not remain at San Fernando above half an hour from this moment."
He lifted himself to the saddle and rode away, the mule's unshod feet pluffing softly in the deep dust.
"He blames me for this outbreak," Juan said, hurt, sad, to have the old man go with no more kindness in his last word, "when Don Geronimo brought it on his own head."
"His judgment is not to be questioned," Padre Mateo censured him, with sharper word than Juan ever had heard from his lips.
Padre Mateo was waiting beside the door when Juan came down from his room under the eaves, determined, Juan thought, to see that he did not overstay his time. Juan had not been more than fifteen minutes gathering his few necessities; he believed that Padre Mateo had not stirred from his place beside the door.
Juan had his long rifle, and one four-barreled revolving pistol that Padre Ignacio had given him; a generous supply of food, with a few pieces of extra clothing, in a bag to be carried at the cantle of his saddle. He had changed his fine clothes for the rougher garb that he was accustomed to wear at his work in the mill and shops; for convenience in carrying, rather than from the present need of it, he had fastened a long cloak about his shoulders. And so he appeared before Padre Mateo, freighted, bulky with his bag of supplies, his heavy long rifle in his hand.
The moon stood half way down the western sky, not a mote, it seemed, in the clear night between it and the Valley of Oaks where its effulgence made the Mission San Fernando bright. Juan stepped from the edge of shadow along the northern wall of the long white building, into this bath of light, a very figure of a pilgrim, indeed. The short-cropped little strip of beard on each cheek, dropping down from the temples, gave his face a serious cast which the shadow of his broad hat enhanced. There was a broad gay band on his low-crowned hat, the one gleam of lightness in his severe accoutrements. His long grey cloak was sombre as a cloud.
Padre Mateo lifted his hands; Juan sank to his knee to receive his benediction. When he rose, Padre Mateo embraced him, the words usually so ready on his tongue suppressed by his deeper emotions now. He pressed his face a moment to Juan's shoulder, turned him gently to face away from the mission, and dismissed him without a word.
Juan's horse stood close by, asleep on its feet, head drooping, relaxed in the confidence and security of home. At the corner of the church, before making the turn that would cut the great main building from his sight, Juan looked back. Padre Mateo stood where he had left him, even from that distance rugged and strong against the white wall at his back.
Doña Magdalena had gone into her house at Padre Ignacio's bidding; Juan knew a prayer was going out from her lips for the welfare of Don Geronimo. He wondered if any but Padre Mateo's prayer went ahead of him to ease the perils of his way, and for a moment his heart was bitter toward Padre Ignacio, who had denied him the solace of a word with Gertrudis. He thought for a moment of riding back through the vineyard, and approaching Don Geronimo's house from the rear, in the hope that Gertrudis might be at her window. This rebellious thought quieted in a little while, giving place to one of humbler gratitude for the generosity of that gentle old man. One parting, after all, was only half as hard as two.