The Valley of Adventure/Chapter 8
PADRE MATEO had them on the road while the morning was still wan. A grey fog made day delinquent; it trickled in a cold sweat from every roadside shrub; it marked the ridge of wheel-tracks in the dust with little tracings of moisture, and drew its magic circle with delicate touch around each footprint of creature that had passed the dusty highway the day before.
"It is a good morning for my lima beans," Dominguez said when he parted with them at the gate, "but I would wait for the sun before taking the road. That rascal Alvitre could stand behind a bush and never be seen till you were on top of him."
The chance was as great by sun as in fog, Padre Mateo replied, and rode forth in confidence, Cristóbal in the lead, his quick ears strained for an unfriendly sound, as ready now to shoot an arrow through Sebastian Alvitre as any other thief. Alvitre was in the dust; a new hero stood in the young Indian's eyes. There was a big hope in his heart that morning to do some brave deed in the presence of the mighty man who had held Sebastian Alvitre as helpless as a little child and taken away his pistols and his sword.
Padre Mateo and Juan Molinero rode behind the cart in which Gertrudis Sinova sat on a pile of blankets, her possessions' about her. Which of her boxes, if any, contained the gold she was believed to have inherited, Juan did not know. Against the advice of Padre Mateo she had tucked the canvas cover of the cart aside, to give her a view of the new land that was to be her home, she said.
Juan thought she appeared very frail and oppressed by sorrow, her face as white as a summer cloud under the dark scarf drawn over her head, her large cloak making her shapeless as she swayed in the jolting cart. Her gentle eyes, too sad to seem eager, watched the narrow winding road now ahead, now through the opening at the cart's end, wonderingly, expectantly, with a great loneliness that struck his heart like a pain. Sometimes when her eyes met his, where the compassion of friendliness had nothing to hide, she smiled.
Gertrudis understood that perils might await them on their journey to the mission, although strife and outlawed men seemed out of keeping with the serenity of that gentle land. Here were no rocky crags, no down-pouring torrents, no shadowed forests, no insidious greenery of swamp and brake. A clean and friendly land it seemed, where one might advance with his fears behind him. She waited eagerly what the breaking of the fog would reveal.
There is a wind that comes down from the desert places of southern California in the autumn of the year, sweeping over mountain and hill, bearing its mysterious way out to sea. It is a searing wind, that seems to pierce the eyeballs, to strike to the core of the brain, yet a beguiling wind, rustling the curtains of memory, not lifting them to reveal the thing that charges it with such a yearning that starts the sutures of the heart. It is of things that were, and are not; of the beginning, which has left but a rudimentary recollection; of old dreams and old songs, and long wanderings. It comes at sunrise, when fog lies over the land like a cool hand upon a pulsing wound, working a transformation in a breath. Clouds are consumed by it, fog vanishes in its fiery contact, not blown away, but eaten as if this wind were a dragon which sucked it through flaming nostrils.
Such a wind began blowing this morning before the travelers had been more than two hours on their way. It seemed that the sun was almost instantly revealed in a hazy sky, wool-fragments of fog melting away in its untempered glare. Far ahead Gertrudis could see the hills which made the nearer wall of the valley in which the Mission San Fernando lay. Low-lying they seemed, at that distance, shreds of fog-cloud resting over them, the desert haze carried by the growing wind making them dim and far away.
A sullenness had come into the day, changing the kindly aspect of the country which had been so alluring and inviting to her from the ship, from her closer acquaintance with it in the short journey the day before. It seemed to have withdrawn its—friendly welcome, to be sulking behind barriers of mystery and alien traits. The broad valley which they were journeying through was a monochrome of gray, as if every green leaf had taken a sickness, every stem an ashen leprosy, such was the effect of the atom-fine dust the desert wind bore, impalpable, mysterious, working its magic on the light of day.
As the morning advanced the temper of the sun became more ardent, a languorous, drowsy heat such as comes but a few days in the year to the seacoast country. The animals in Padre Mateo's cavalcade marched listlessly, with heads hanging, the sweat dried on their flanks by the desert blast as quickly as it oozed, their feet chugging with stocky indifference in the white dust of the road.
Quite different from their journey of the day before between the harbor and the Dominguez ranch, when the wind was from the sea, crisp as cabbage leaves, as Padre Mateo said, the sky so blue and serene that one longed to taste the breath of it, and plunge like a dolphin through its untainted depths. Then Padre Mateo had ridden without a fear, beguiled by the innocent face of the day, perhaps, into belief in a security that was no greater than that of today, his mule-bell tinkling with a comfortable pastoral sound among the bosque as they passed.
Now Padre Mateo's mule-bell was stuffed with leaves, dumb on its neckstrap as any common metal that never had known the vibration of a clapper or the thrilling of sweet sounds. Padre Mateo himself was oppressed by forty fears. His sandalled feet did not flare out so gallantly from his mule's sides, his shoulders drooped under the burden of the sun. He turned his eyes this way and that, in constant watching, thinking to see Sebastian Alvitre spring from the bushes, red-eyed from a long vigil by the roadside.
In that way Padre Mateo traveled with his fear, Juan Molinero on the bandit's horse beside him. There was no assurance in pistols, nor the rifle in the cart where Juan could lean and reach it. A man with twenty bullets in him could not stand to a defense of the helpless. But if it came to the point where he must do it, Padre Mateo was determined that he would show the bandit crew that, although prohibited by the king's commands from bearing arms of his own, he was under no interdiction that bound his hands from applying the weapons of another man to the defense of a helpless one in his care. There was comfort in this simmering down of his perturbation; Padre Mateo calculated the effectiveness of a barricade of the boxes in the cart.
"Tula," said he, giving her the affectionate diminutive of her name, "can you fire a pistol?"
"As well as almost any man," she replied, but with sidelong look at Juan, as if she made her exception there.
"Then I am going to ask Juan to give you one of his, or perhaps two. No man can use six pistols, no matter if he's quick as powder. If this fellow Alvitre should happen to appear—although I do not look for him at all, my dear, the road is quite safe—it would be well to be able to show him his place."
Juan was pleased with the suggestion. He selected one of the pistols brought from the mission, a new pattern of weapon with four revolving barrels.
"These pistols of yours, Padre Mateo, are better than Alvitre's," Juan said. "For a man of his name, he's away behind the times."
Padre Mateo kicked his mule close to the tail of the cart and put the pistol in Gertrudis' hand.
"God forbid that you ever need it!" he said. "But there is a proverb which says that the wise man does first what the fool does last. It is well to be prepared. No, my boy," speaking to Juan, ranging beside him again, more comfortable in his mind, "it is not such an easy thing to get good weapons in this country. Alvitre, I have no doubt, is nearly as badly crippled today as if you had cut off one of his hands. Guns and pistols are not as common here as they are in your country, although it will come to that in time. A man takes what he can get. These with the four barrels were made in Massachusetts, as you will see by looking at the stock. One of them equals Alvitre's four, and would shoot twice as far, I expect, although I know nothing about such matters, indeed."
There was a knowing look in Padre Mateo's grey eyes as he made this profession of ignorance, which Juan answered with a smile. It was worth knowing a man like Padre Mateo, thought Juan. He was as sound as a new barrel, wholesome and hearty, and unselfish as a true priest, a true man and a true friend should be.
Whether Sebastian Alvitre was indeed crippled for the want of pistols, or whether his humiliation had so debased him in the eyes of his followers that they were afraid to engage in any further enterprises under his lead, Padre Mateo, of course, did not know. But he was relieved to reach the pass in the hills at noonday without sight of the outlaw. Beside a spring near the summit of the pass they halted for refreshment under the wide-spreading oaks. Gertrudis came down out of the cart, pistol in her sash, to spread the lunch that Doña Ana had packed in a big basket for them, scorning the rough fare that Padre Mateo had brought to feed this well-bred lady from the capital.
San Fernando mission lay against the farther hills, directly across the wide valley which the travelers entered from the pass called Cahuenga, as it is known even to this day. The road seemed more secure from the pass onward to the mission, many travelers being abroad. They were now traversing the King's Road, the highway binding mission to mission from south to north, which touched the mean village of Los Angeles, and many similar small places outside the ecclesiastical jurisdiction along the way.
"It is folly to feel safe on a well-traveled road through a country where bandits levy their taxes," Padre Mateo said, "but it is common to us all. Reason shows us that a bandit does not stand beside a road where nobody passes. The faster they come, the sooner his day's work is over, and he is back to his pleasures at the inn."
"I suppose it's because there's comfort in numbers, Padre Mateo, even if there isn't much help," Juan responded.
"You have not relaxed your watch, I see, my good Juan, although I may doze at times, especially when I hear the bells of some honest freighter plodding on to meet us with his burros. If I go too far, jog me with your foot, Juan. This sun is hotter here; it is always so in our valley."
There were no toll-gatherers by the road that day. The travelers came in peace to San Fernando when the sun was low, and the burning wind from the desert was falling to intermittent gusts. Here the king's highway divided the mission estate, the buildings lying to the right of it, a broad field enclosed by a high adobe wall on the left. In the center of this field two palm trees stood, aliens in that land, set there by the fathers who founded the mission, the little plants carried from Mexico with tender care.
Juan Molinero was to remember long that day's journey and that home-coming. To the end of his life a whiff of dust rising from the road, a glimpse of a tiled roof through the greenery of boughs, brought back to him in a rush the recollection of that day: Gertrudis in the cart, her cloak and scarf aside, her fair hair lifting in the wind, and now and then her smile of confidence, the only language between them that they could understand.
The thirsty mules quickened their listless pace, scenting the water of the fountain across the road from the mission's white arcade, a great brimming basin built of bricks, placed there for the refreshment of passing beasts. Gertrudis stood on her knees, looking over the driver's shoulder to see what waited her in the land that had cost her so much bereavement and sorrow to reach.
Before the mission the road was broad and white, trampled to its very edges by feet of men and beasts. The Indian neophytes were coming home from the fields, their day's work done, streaming across this wide white road with hoes and scythes, spades and rakes, and all the small tools of their occupation on their shoulders. Some of them waved their hands in greeting to Cristóbal as he approached the fountain, riding a few rods ahead of the cart. A little way beyond this procession of oncoming laborers the road bent sharply around the corner of the high adobe wall that closed the padres' garden, where there were orange trees and figs, and roses beside paths that were cool and pleasant when the sun was low.
The mules drawing the cart stretched their necks with sudden yielding to their thirst, and swerved wilfully toward the fountain, defying the driver, who sawed with all his might on the bits, carrying the young lady across the road from the spot where Padre Ignacio stood under the white arches to welcome her. The Indian laborers paused a moment in their homeward march to laugh at the driver's helpless anger against the mules, which he relieved a little now by lashing their dusty backs with his whip as they stood with muzzles buried to the nostrils, greedily sucking the cool water of the fountain.
"It will do," said Padre Mateo, seeing that it must do. "Drive across when they have enough. No, Gertrudis, do not get down—there is dust enough here to swallow you. One moment now."
"Here is the pistol," she said, offering it at large, it seemed, standing with it in her hand.
Padre Mateo waved Juan forward to receive it back from her, which he did with a surge of color to his face, his hat in his hand. He put the pistol in the saddle holster that carried its mate, flinging over them the brown gown that he had worn yese terday.
"Thank God for the peaceful conclusion of this day," said Padre Mateo. "Juan, keep a close eye on that horse to see that Alvitre doesn't steal him from you. The rascal will go to no end of trouble to get him back again, you may"
"Quick, Juan, quick! soldiers!"
It was Cristóbal, shouting at a pitch of excitement that cracked his voice and made it squeal like a girl's. He stood at the fountain, pointing. Troopers were rounding the turn in the road at the corner of the garden wall.
The neophytes cleared out of the way, some dropping their tools in their haste to give free passage to the men whose contempt and cruelty made them a daily scourge. Padre Mateo kicked his mule with frantic drumming on its ribs, reining it in front of the soldiers who came sweeping down the road like a boisterous wind, their dust heavy behind them.
"Ride! I will stand between!" he shouted to Juan.
Juan turned his horse to face the troopers, as if he had a thought of riding through their line, but no intention of showing them his back in flight ahead of them. The reins lay loose across the saddle-horn; his hands were under the brown gown where the four-barreled pistols hung. Padre Ignacio had started down from the arcade when the soldiers closed around, Captain del Valle within the circle, sabre in his hand. The officer made an imperious gesture which seemed to sweep Juan from his horse.
"Down! you are a prisoner in the king's name!"
"So, this is the trick you play? worse than liar!" Padre Mateo scorned the soldier. "You hide beyond the wall"
"It is enough!" Captain del Valle said. "Down!" he commanded again, lunging with his sword to make his meaning plain, the point of it not an inch from Juan Molinero's breast. A moment, and the iron seemed to melt in Captain del Valle's arm. The sword-point wavered, sunk down; the blood fled out of the captain's face. Juan Molinero was levelling the four-barreled pistols at the captain's head.
"Tell him to order his men to retire," Juan requested Padre Mateo.
"There must be no violence! In the name of Our Señor I forbid him to fire! Stop him, Brother Mateo." Padre Ignacio came hurriedly among the horses as he spoke, his sandalled feet noiseless in the dust.
Juan said nothing, nor hesitated a moment, when Padre Mateo translated his superior's command. He restored the pistols to the holster instantly, and sat defenseless in the face of eight soldiers and their captain, his hand on his thighs.
"Now," said Padre Ignacio, greatly relieved and pleased, "permit him to pass, Captain del Valle."
"He is the king's prisoner, and no longer at my disposal," Captain del Valle ungraciously returned.
"Have you no more gratitude, no greater magnanimity, for the man who gives you your life?" Padre Ignacio sternly demanded.
Captain del Valle had exchanged sword for pistol, which he presented at Juan's breast. The soldiers had followed their captain's lead; Juan was the center of their concentrated aim. His obedience had cost him his hope.
"Tell him to dismount," the captain ordered Padre Mateo. Juan obeyed, confident that the authoritative voice, the commanding presence, of Padre Ignacio would be at once his defense and deliverance.
"Bind him," Captain del Valle commanded, designating two soldiers for that duty.
Padre Ignacio stepped to Juan's side, lifting an interdicting hand.
"Let no man touch him on pain of denial of the holy communion," he said.
Captain del Valle threw himself from the saddle as the soldiers drew back, quaking between the fear of the awful punishment threatened by the priest and the wrath of their officer.
"You cannot stand between the law and this spy," the captain said roughly, approaching as if he would fling the priest aside. "He has been at the harbor spying out a way for ten thousand of these new Americans to enter this land. You do not know, here behind your thick walls, what is going on in the world, Padre Ignacio. This man must be taken to Monterey for trial. Priest or layman will stand in the way of it at his peril. It is enough!"
"If you were an honest man you would not bend to this poor trick," Padre Mateo said, pushing his mule forward between Captain del Valle and Padre Ignacio, crowding the beast with such impertinence into the little space that its dusty neck rubbed the soldier's coat. "You could have come on the open road to arrest this inoffensive stranger, you knew where he would pass. But no; you must do it here, at the very door of the mission, to defy and humiliate Padre Ignacio, to work your mean spite against him in this manner, worm of a soldier that you are!"
"Bind him!" Captain del Valle commanded his men, a threat of terrible discipline in his scowl.
"Let me plead for him, brave captain," Gertrudis appealed, standing pale and wistful in the cart's end.
"It cannot be, miss, or madam," Captain del Valle replied. His pistol was pointed at Juan Molinero's heart; the soldiers, trembling, white and cold with fear, came forward with ropes to bind the prisoner's hands.
"There is no harm in him, he is gentle in word and thought," Gertrudis pleaded, "and only two nights past he grappled an armed outlaw with his bare hands when he threatened the lives of a citizen and his family. See—that is the outlaw's horse; his pistols are here, in this gallant gentleman's belt."
"It is nothing to me, lady," Captain del Valle said.
"But you—he spared you"
"Ha! God save her! She falls!" Padre Ignacio cried, leaping in vain endeavor to assist Gertrudis who, in her earnestness seeming to forget where she stood, had stepped from the cart-end and fallen to the ground.
She lay as if insensible, her cheek in the dust, her hair spread around, one hand thrown out as if to break her fall.
"Lift her, my son—she lies as one dead!" Padre Ignacio said, interpreting his meaning by speaking gestures.
Juan, disregarding Captain del Valle's menacing pistol, bent and lifted her in his arms.
"Into the cart with her, leave her so!" Captain del Valle ordered.
Gertrudis opened her eyes with appealing look into Juan Molinero's face.
"My knee—it is terrible, the agony!" she moaned. "Carry me within quickly, quickly!"
Juan understood only the appeal of her eyes, the suffering expression of her white face against his arm, but he knew that Captain del Valle had ordered her thrown into the cart like a sheep. That was no place for a suffering woman when the mission door stood wide.
"Across the road with you now, John Miller!" Padre Mateo shouted, kicking his mule in front of Captain del Valle as if the soldier were a bush, the pistol in his hand of no more importance than a thorn.
There was a trampling of feet, a dismounting in haste of soldiers at the captain's command, confusion and blinding dust. Padre Mateo, his feet flaring wide in the stirrups, shifted his mule in a clever dance to block Captain del Valle's aim, and Juan Molinero pushed the doubtful soldiers out of his way and set off with his burden across the road toward the mission door.
"Halt!" Captain del Valle shouted. "Fire! shoot him down!"
Padre Ignacio stood before the hesitant soldiers, his arms spread wide as if to gather the charges of their half-raised muskets to his own breast. Captain del Valle, desperately furious, laid hold of Padre Mateo's bridle reins, wrenching the capering mule to a sudden stand. He levelled his pistol across the animal's back, at Padre Mateo's cantle, and fired as the wrathful priest laid him a lusty blow across the mouth with the back of his open hand.
"You would kill a woman, beast!" Padre Mateo cried.
Padre Mateo's blow sent the pistol-ball high over Juan Molinero's head. For many years after that day the Indians pointed to a dark spot in the white plaster covering the mission's adobe walls, close by a little barred window that let the south sun into Padre Ignacio's chamber. Before Captain del Valle could draw another pistol, Juan had leaped up the three steps leading to the arcade and crossed to the open door.
Magdalena, waiting within to welcome the guest who was to become her special care, who had seen Juan's arrest and deliverance, was amazed when Gertrudis leaped out of Juan's arms as they crossed the threshold, as nimbly as if she never had been touched by as much as a falling leaf in her life. In a moment she was running back the way that Juan had carried her, to meet Padre Ignacio, who stood in amazement in the middle of the dusty road. There the girl flung herself on her knees before the priest, who spread his hands over her bowed head in the benediction that she sought.
"It is a miracle!" said Padre Mateo. He leaned back in his saddle and laughed until his brown gown shook.
"It is a trick that you shall pay for, by the holy wood!" Captain del Valle swore. There was blood on his beard as he looked up into the priest's face, his eyes luminous with the hate that inflamed him. He drew his hand across his mouth, and held it out with its stain for Padre Mateo to see, sternly, as if he laid before him proof of an offense so deep that only blood itself could balance it.
Magdalena stood in the door, a barring arm stretched before Juan, who seemed to protest that honor demanded of him to return to the soldiers from whom he had escaped by the artful pretense of this admirable girl. Magdalena understood that one word honor, for the sound of it in the Castilian tongue is similar. She placed her palm against Juan's breast and pushed him away from the door, as she might have repelled an insistent child.
"No, no!" she said, sternly. "Honor goes to honor, Juan Molinero. Remain where you are."
Padre Mateo sat a moment in his saddle, his head bent, his mirth gone out of his hearty face. He looked then at Captain del Valle, whose swollen lips twitched his beard.
"Captain del Valle, I did not strike you; I struck only your unworthy passion. Thank me; I saved you, perhaps, from the curse of innocent blood. It is folly to carry the thought of vengeance against a priest who has neither property to be taken away nor ambitions to be denied."
Padre Mateo rode away in dignity and left the soldier with that. Captain del Valle mounted his horse and turned toward the north, this time with no pretense in his going to report to the governor in the capital city of Monterey.