The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 2
BORROMEDO was not the man to refuse a cut from the fresh roast when the mayordomo and Magdalena sat down to supper, although Sergeant Olivera could not be tempted to exceed the limit of decorum and comfort. Geronimo brought a pitcher of wine from the cellar; there was laughter at the kitchen table, in which the rumble of great Borromeo's mirth bore the basso profundo like a boisterous wind.
"Savage!" said Geronimo, cutting again a thick portion of mutton ribs, which he tossed to the blacksmith's plate with his immense fork as if serving a dog. He was diverted by the blacksmith's appetite, which he encouraged both in goblet and in plate.
"If I could eat like one of these Indians I might be called a brave man at the platter," Borromeo said. "Beside even an old Indian woman with a poor appetite I am nothing but a child."
"That is almost true," Geronimo admitted, turning to the soldier with a smile. "Have you had experience in feeding Indians, Sergeant Olivera?"
"That is a singular duty I have been spared," the soldier replied. "From what I have seen of them, and that is not a little after twelve years in this country, vultures are nice creatures, abstemious animals, compared to these neophytes that our padres conserve with such solicitous hands."
"That is true, there is no filling them. Here at San Fernando we have nine hundred of them, old and young, who gobble up between them twenty beeves a day. This is on top of the corn, and the wheat bread they are beginning to relish with fearful appetite. I tell you, Sergeant Olivera, I have known a group of Indians to devour twenty-five pounds of beef to the head in one day. Here at a fiesta not long ago, sixty of them put three beeves into their paunches in a single night."
"There is a pleasure in life when a man can eat like that!" Borromeo sighed.
Sergeant Olivera shook his head, expressive of depreciation of such inhuman voracity, but his thought appeared to be on something else. He sat in abstraction beside the table, his half-empty goblet at his hand, his eyes on the open door in the manner of a man whose thoughts had drawn him away. Magdalena watched him with growing approval in her eyes. He appeared to be an abstemious man.
"So, he would have joined Alvitre?" said the sergeant presently, nodding his head gravely, speaking in a manner to himself as if his thought had slipped its leash and gone wandering.
Geronimo started, lifting his head. One would have thought somebody had called him unseasonably; there was a look of questioning perplexity in his face.
"He speaks of Cristóbal," Magdalena said, in voice deferential and low.
"Oh, Cristóbal!" The mayordomo laughed, relieved of his perplexity.
"I am curious about him," Sergeant Olivera confessed, turning to face his host. "That is a strange notion for an Indian, a strange and civilized notion, to ride highwayman up and down the land."
"He is one of the young ones," the mayordomo explained, "one who is able to read. I always have contended with the fathers that it is wrong to teach savages to read, Christian or pagan. Nothing good can come of it but insubordination against authority, wild and wicked thoughts of liberty such as this young man has. Well, when one of them such as this Cristóbal cuts a padre's throat, then they will be convinced of their own error. A little learning in the head of one of these fellows is equal to giving him a gun."
"What sort is this Cristóbal? You will forgive my curiosity, since I may have to deal with him, or others like him, who may chance to step out from the bounds of the ecclesiastical jurisdiction."
"Surely it is your right to know, as one who holds the king's law in his hands," the mayordomo returned. "Cristóbal is a young scoundrel who has been flogged all his life, first by the fathers for his impious defiance, later by me for insubordination in the fields. Now he breaks out like a wild colt from the corral and comes to this end. I considered hanging him. I would have done it if Father Ignacio had been a minute later. It is an admirable thing the way that man hears and knows all that goes forward on this estate; you will come to be astonished at his cunning, Sergeant Olivera. If ever a man could hear the grass grow, Father Ignacio is that man."
"It is a strange story," said the soldier, reflectively. "I did not know that an Indian would have the nobility of mind to contrive a thing like that, for you will admit, Don Geronimo, that the sentiment of liberty is noble, let the man who carries it be as humble as a worm."
"Rebellion against authority is another thing," Geronimo contended, sharp in his correction. His face grew stern, the color of his gaiety drained out of it, as if the speech of the soldier had displeased him almost to the point of resentment and open anger.
"True," the soldier nodded, "there must be no flouting of authority. Still, it is a strange case."
"Perhaps he has not always been understood," Magdalena said softly. "I know there is no water he would not cross for one he likes."
"I will not have the thief defended by one of my own house!" said Don Geronimo, his anger flashing suddenly. "It is enough, woman!"
Borromeo's heavy head had fallen to his arm, flung carelessly upon the table among the bones of the feast, his senses cloyed in the satisfaction of meat and wine. Now he raised his face, startled from his sleep by the mayordomo's sharp words, making a foolish grimace with long-drawn lip to stretch his sleepy eyes open.
"Woman?" he repeated, turning his head as if seeking to lay a challenge. "If there is one woman, she is for the blacksmith of San Fernando, by the sacred wood!"
Sergeant Olivera laughed, but with such a sound of good nature in it that no man could take offense.
"You have had a dream, friend Borromeo," he said.
"Dream? No, it is no dream, soldier. Don Geronimo, is it a dream, I ask you, that a ship is coming with a hundred good women on it for wives to the men of this cursed, lonely country?"
"I have not heard of any such thing," the mayordomo returned.
"Then the soldier was having his joke with me," Borromeo sighed, turning to his goblet for solace.
"What is it you have been telling him?" Don Geronimo demanded, with ill favor in his handsome, unsympathetic face.
"Surely you have heard of the governor's request to the viceroy, Don Geronimo?"
"This seems to be a matter on which I lack information," Don Geronimo replied crabbedly.
Sergeant Olivera went over his tale again, Borromeo wide awake now, such pleasure in his forge-burned face as if the simple repetition of the story had magic in it like a witch's wind that hastened the desired ship upon its way.
"It is a matter of common report, there is no secret in it," Sergeant Olivera said. "I am already under orders to march to San Pedro bay and wait the arrival of the ship. Surely you have heard that a ship is almost due?"
"I know there is a ship coming with supplies for the missions, the president of the missions has informed me of this. There are ingots of iron on board for us, your holiday for lack of something to hammer, Borromeo, will soon be at its end. But as for the women, I cannot believe that the secular governor would be so simple as to ask the viceroy to send them here, even fool that I grant the man to be. Women! what sort of women would come on such an expedition as this?"
"It is a question," said Sergeant Olivera, meditatively.
"What kind have come to the Pueblo Los Angeles? Black women, coyote women, greasy and ignorant sows such as no man of decency would have. We are better off without that kind of women."
"Not all of them," Olivera denied; "I was through the pueblo as much as three years ago, and saw many families happily on the way to prosperity there, with their little vineyards and flocks around them."
"Men and women alike, all of them in the pueblo are swine," Don Geronimo protested in high contempt. "This land belongs to the fathers, who came into a wilderness full of dumb savages and brought it to both spiritual and material fruitfulness. The secular government looks on this prosperity with jealous eyes, and thinks of colonies. But where is it to establish these colonies? There must be water for the orchards and herds, and that is to be found only in rivers. Every river has its mission, there are no rivers unoccupied. What would the government do? Rob the missions of water and starve them? Certainly, there is not room for any more pastoral and agricultural enterprises in this country; already this miserable pueblo below us is complaining that we have shut the water of the river from them behind our dam. Well, let them complain. It is our water; we had it first."
"The Pueblo de Los Angeles complains, then, that you cut off the water?"
"They have threatened to break down our dam," Don Geronimo said, resentful of their necessity. "Well, our herds must drink."
"How many cattle run on your ranges, Don Geronimo? if a soldier may ask."
"Not more than forty thousand, while San Gabriel has a hundred thousand, I am told. Our sheep are but a mouthful, eight or nine thousand. You can see that we are poor, Sergeant Olivera, and if the pueblo continues to increase we shall be poorer, our little river divided to give it water."
"And there is the stubble of grain in the big field behind the adobe wall," the sergeant said.
"That comes to maturity with the rains, it calls for no water," the mayordomo explained.
"There must have been a great amount of wheat, thousands of quintales, in that field," the soldier speculated.
"We had eleven thousand quintales above our needs this harvest," the mayordomo proudly confessed. "We sold it to the north, where their yield was poor. But it is only a mouthful when a man thinks of it, a very little, indeed."
"It appears to me," said the soldier, still in his subdued, speculative way, "that so many horned cattle, so many sheep, so much grain that God brings to ripeness with the rains of heaven, would bring prosperity and happiness to a great many people. It is only a soldier's thought."
"The country bears all the weight of population it can carry," the mayordomo declared, with heat that seemed unreasonable, considering the friendliness of the discussion. "We want no colonists in Alta California, we want no"
"Geronimo! there is a stranger in the door," Magdalena said, her hand on her husband's arm.
Don Geronimo turned quickly to the broad door that swung open to the night. A man stood just beyond the threshold, timid, hesitant, it seemed, as some creature from the mountains that pauses a moment in the camp fire light. He was a tall man, as barbarous a figure as any in the mission kitchen had beheld in many a year. His pantaloons were of deerhide with the hair on, save where it had been rubbed off by wear; his coat, tattered and in shreds, was evidently part of a military uniform, the two brass buttons which remained on it bright in the candle beam. His boots of raw deerhide, hair outward, came to his knees; his cap, cut from the skin of a mountain lion, was crude and ill-fitting, large on his head as an oriental turban. It came down low on his forehead; an eagle feather was stuck into a slit with an attempt at the jaunty and debonnaire altogether ludicrous.
For all but the pale blue of the faded coat, the man appeared all hair. His beard was a golden flare on his brown cheeks, rippled like water that runs in shallows over a sunlit bar; his hair, of a strange fairness in the eyes of those who beheld him in amazement, fell to his shoulders in curls. He carried a gun with graceful lightness, the muzzle downward, the stock under his arm.
Borromeo Cambon leaned forward, hands on his thighs, mouth open, swallowing the wonder of this unaccountable stranger; Magdalena, still with hand clutching her husband's arm fearfully, stared with big eyes, her cheeks of a cold hue, her breath a gasp in her parted lips; Sergeant Olivera put his hand to his chin, where fingers and thumb stroked as if they felt for a beard, no emotion apparent in him but that of speculation on the reason for such a wild figure that seemed to have sprung out of the night. Don Geronimo rose, deliberately as became a dignified man at his own table, and went forward to speak to the man in the door.
The stranger, seeing a woman' before him, removed his hairy head cover, hat or cap or whatever it might be, revealing his long hair in tangled ringlets over his ears.
"Look!" said Magdalena, touching the soldier's arm; "his hair is bright as an angel's. There is no harm in him."
"Who knows?" said Sergeant: Olivera, still feeling his chin like a man who, trammeled in meditation, puts his finger in his beard.
"What is this?" Don Geronimo inquired, standing well within the door, hand lifted a little as if to guard a sudden assault. "Who are you? What do you want?"
The stranger replied, with courtesy and gentleness, aS was apparent to all, but in a tongue that none of them could understand.
"What savage!" said Borromeo. "If he prays, God can't understand such a tongue."
"He makes a sign that he is hungry," said Magdalena, compassion in her soft voice. "Bring him in, Geronimo; there is no harm in his face."
"He is carrying a rifle; it is forbidden," said Don Geronimo. "But how to make such a wild animal understand?"
"Ha! he understands Spanish after all," said Borromeo. "See? he is giving Don Geronimo his gun. How admirable! what a little man with hair on him this one is!"
"He is as gentle as a dove," said Magdalena, rising to place a chair for the stranger at the great oak table, where the savory roast was cooling, the iron fork standing in it like a harpoon in the back of a whale.
"What giant!" Borromeo said, with a sound of wonderment out of his pursed lips, like a man blowing to cool his soup. "He is nearly as big as I am, he is a man to lock arms with the blacksmith of San Fernando for a fall in the sand!"
Don Geronimo stood the rifle against the doorfacing where his whip hung, far out of the stranger's reach, conveying by his act that the weapon was not to be returned immediately, at least. This did not appear to concern the hairy traveler, who stood looking about him with respectful, but keen, interest in the kitchen and all it contained, which evidently was as strange to him as he was to his surroundings.
"He has found the fathers' hams already," Borromeo whispered, loud as a wind in corn, his hand beside his mouth to make a secret of it.
"I regret, sir," said Don Geronimo, coming around the table from placing the rifle beyond its owner's reach, "that you haven't the Castilian speech on your tongue, but that is not the favor of Providence to all men. Sit, and eat; after that we shall see."
Don Geronimo, like all of his blood, was almost as interpretative with gesture as with word. The stranger readily understood the invitation, spread so broadly with sweep of the hand, with slight inclination of the supple, slender body. He bowed, not ungracefully, and seated himself in the offered chair.
Magdalena placed the trencher of meat before him; the others watched him curiously, as if they expected him to pick it up like an Indian and set his teeth into it with a growl. Strangely, the man's interest was not in the meat, but the broken great loaf of bread that lay on the bare board of the table near Magdalena's place. He reached for the loaf, which he held a moment before his eyes as a man lifts a relic which brings him recollections of a happier day, then put it down almost reverently, clasped his hands on the table edge and bowed his head.
"He thanks God for bread!" Borromeo whispered. "So, he must be a Christian, and not a gentile out of the wilderness."
"His eyes are blue, blue as the little flowers on the hills in April," Magdalena said.
"There is no strength in a man with light eyes," Borromeo declared.
"He probably is German; only the Germans have hair the color of fool's gold," Don Geronimo said.
"It is his fast day," Borromeo said, in his great gusty whisper. "See, he eats nothing but bread."
"What is your opinion of him, Sergeant Olivera?" Don Geronimo inquired.
"I think he is a Russian; that nation has country to the north of Alta California, I am told."
"Now he cuts meat, he feeds himself like a gentleman," Magdalena spoke with a certain triumph as if she had assumed the defense of the strange man against the prejudices and perils that awaited him in that peaceful place, and must bring forward and magnify each small circumstance of his good behavior.
"But he drinks no wine," Borromeo accused with severity. "He is nothing but a woman with a beard."
"They may not have wine in his country, it is likely that he doesn't know what it is," Magdalena contended. "See—I will show him that it is to drink."
She took the goblet that stood brimming at the stranger's hand just as she had filled it for him, lifted it with a smile, sipped, and offered it to him. He received it from her with his face aglow in the smile that moved his beard, bowed over it as if he stooped to kiss her hand, lifted it high, and drained it in one stiff swig.
"Ha-a-a!" Borromeo let his breath go in a sigh of admiration; "after all, he drinks like a Christian and a man!"
"He is not such a barbarian, he salutes with his goblet like any gentleman," Don Geronimo said. He sat across from the stranger, Magdalena at his side, Sergeant Olivera at the table-end, Borromeo at the other. The stranger smiled in friendly encouragement, as he might have smiled on children who had drawn near him timidly, one foot lifted to dash away at the first alarm.
"Not once has he lifted meat with his fingers," Magdalena said.
"Look at him! he eats salt!" Borromeo declared in excited wonder. "What admirable barbarian!"
"What is to be done with him?" Sergeant Olivera inquired.
"That is a question for Father Ignacio," Don Geronimo replied. "Well, my brave bear, if you have finished your supper, attend me."
The stranger was pushing back from the table, his face glowing in the satisfaction of repletion. He rose, spread his hands as if he surrendered all the gratitude of his breast for their hospitality, and bowed to the little company in turn.
"Attend me, then," Don Geronimo repeated, taking him by the arm to pilot him into the presence of Father Ignacio. "Sergeant Olivera, do me the favor to march behind, and see that your pistols are loaded."
"It is a shame!" Magdalena protested. "There is no wickedness in the man; his heart is as soft as a peach."