by Bret Harte
A KNIGHT-ERRANT OF THE FOOTHILLS.
I.
As Father Felipe slowly toiled up the dusty road towards the Rancho ofthe Blessed Innocents, he more than once stopped under the shadow of asycamore to rest his somewhat lazy mule and to compose his ownperplexed thoughts by a few snatches from his breviary. For the goodpadre had some reason to be troubled. The invasion of GentileAmericans that followed the gold discovery of three years before hadnot confined itself to the plains of the Sacramento, but stragglers hadalready found their way to the Santa Cruz Valley, and the seclusion ofeven the mission itself was threatened. It was true that they had notbrought their heathen engines to disembowel the earth in search ofgold, but it was rumored that they had already speculated upon theagricultural productiveness of the land, and had espied "the fatnessthereof." As he reached the higher plateau he could see the afternoonsea-fog--presently to obliterate the fair prospect--already pullingthrough the gaps in the Coast Range, and on a nearer slope--no lessominously--the smoke of a recent but more permanently destructiveYankee saw-mill was slowly drifting towards the valley.
"Get up, beast!" said the father, digging his heels into thecomfortable flanks of his mule with some human impatience, "or artTHOU, too, a lazy renegade? Thinkest thou, besotted one, that theheretic will spare thee more work than the Holy Church."
The mule, thus apostrophized in ear and flesh, shook its headobstinately as if the question was by no means clear to its mind, butnevertheless started into a little trot, which presently brought it tothe low adobe wall of the courtyard of "The Innocents," and entered thegate. A few lounging peons in the shadow of an archway took off theirbroad-brimmed hats and made way for the padre, and a half dozen equallylistless vaqueros helped him to alight. Accustomed as he was to theindolence and superfluity of his host's retainers, to-day itnevertheless seemed to strike some note of irritation in his breast.
A stout, middle-aged woman of ungirt waist and beshawled head andshoulders appeared at the gateway as if awaiting him. After a formalsalutation she drew him aside into an inner passage.
"He is away again, your Reverence," she said.
"Ah--always the same?"
"Yes, your Reverence--and this time to 'a meeting' of the heretics attheir pueblo, at Jonesville--where they will ask him of his land for aroad."
"At a MEETING?" echoed the priest uneasily.
"Ah yes! a meeting--where Tiburcio says they shout and spit on theground, your Reverence, and only one has a chair and him they call a'chairman' because of it, and yet he sits not but shouts and spits evenas the others and keeps up a tapping with a hammer like a very pico.And there it is they are ever 'resolving' that which is not, andconsider it even as done."
"Then he is still the same," said the priest gloomily, as the womanpaused for breath.
"Only more so, your Reverence, for he reads nought but the newspaper ofthe Americanos that is brought in the ship, the 'New York 'errald'--andrecites to himself the orations of their legislators. Ah! it was anevil day when the shipwrecked American sailor taught him his uncouthtongue, which, as your Reverence knows, is only fit for beasts andheathen incantation."
"Pray Heaven THAT were all he learned of him," said the priest hastily,"for I have great fear that this sailor was little better than anatheist and an emissary from Satan. But where are these newspapers andthe fantasies of publicita that fill his mind? I would see them, mydaughter."
"You shall, your Reverence, and more too," she replied eagerly, leadingthe way along the passage to a grated door which opened upon a smallcell-like apartment, whose scant light and less air came through thedeeply embayed windows in the outer wall. "Here is his estudio."
In spite of this open invitation, the padre entered with that air offurtive and minute inspection common to his order. His glance fellupon a rude surveyor's plan of the adjacent embryo town of Jonesvillehanging on the wall, which he contemplated with a cold disfavor thateven included the highly colored vignette of the projected JonesvilleHotel in the left-hand corner. He then passed to a supervisor's noticehanging near it, which he examined with a suspicion heightened by thatuneasiness common to mere worldly humanity when opposed to an unknownand unfamiliar language. But an exclamation broke from his lips whenhe confronted an election placard immediately below it. It was printedin Spanish and English, and Father Felipe had no difficulty in readingthe announcement that "Don Jose Sepulvida would preside at a meeting ofthe Board of Education in Jonesville as one of the trustees."
"This is madness," said the padre.
Observing that Dona Maria was at the moment preoccupied in examiningthe pictorial pages of an illustrated American weekly which hadhitherto escaped his eyes, he took it gently from her hand.
"Pardon, your Reverence," she said with slightly acidulous deprecation,"but thanks to the Blessed Virgin and your Reverence's teaching, thetext is but gibberish to me and I did but glance at the pictures."
"Much evil may come in with the eye," said the priest sententiously,"as I will presently show thee. We have here," he continued, pointingto an illustration of certain college athletic sports, "a number ofyouthful cavaliers posturing and capering in a partly nude conditionbefore a number of shameless women, who emulate the saturnalia ofheathen Rome by waving their handkerchiefs. We have here a companionpicture," he said, indicating an illustration of gymnastic exercises bythe students of a female academy at "Commencement," "in which, as thouseest, even the aged of both sexes unblushingly assist as spectatorswith every expression of immodest satisfaction."
"Have they no bull-fights or other seemly recreation that they mustindulge in such wantonness?" asked Dona Maria indignantly, gazing,however, somewhat curiously at the baleful representations.
"Of all that, my daughter, has their pampered civilization long sincewearied," returned the good padre, "for see, this is what they considera moral and even a religious ceremony." He turned to an illustrationof a woman's rights convention; "observe with what rapt attention theaudience of that heathen temple watch the inspired ravings of thatelderly priestess on the dais. It is even this kind of sacrilegiousperformance that I am told thy nephew Don Jose expounds and defends."
"May the blessed saints preserve us; where will it lead to?" murmuredthe horrified Dona Maria.
"I will show thee," said Father Felipe, briskly turning the pages withthe same lofty ignoring of the text until he came to a representationof a labor procession. "There is one of their periodic revolutionsunhappily not unknown even in Mexico. Thou perceivest those complacentartisans marching with implements of their craft, accompanied by themilitary, in the presence of their own stricken masters. Here we seeonly another instance of the instability of all communities that arenot founded on the principles of the Holy Church."
"And what is to be done with my nephew?"
The good father's brow darkened with the gloomy religious zeal of twocenturies ago. "We must have a council of the family, the alcalde, andthe archbishop, at ONCE," he said ominously. To the mere hereticalobserver the conclusion might have seemed lame and impotent, but it wasas near the Holy inquisition as the year of grace 1852 could offer.
A few days after this colloquy the unsuspecting subject of it, Don JoseSepulvida, was sitting alone in the same apartment. The fading glow ofthe western sky, through the deep embrasured windows, lit up his raptand meditative face. He was a young man of apparently twenty-five,with a colorless satin complexion, dark eyes alternating betweenmelancholy and restless energy, a narrow high forehead, long straighthair, and a lightly penciled moustache. He was said to resemble thewell-known portrait of the Marquis of Monterey in the mission church, aface that was alleged to leave a deep and lasting impression upon theobservers. It was undoubtedly owing to this quality during a briefvisit of the famous viceroy to a remote and married ancestress of DonJose at Leon that the singular resemblance may be attributed.
A heavy and hesitating step along the passage stopped before thegrating. Looking up, Don Jose beheld to his astonish
ment the slightlyinflamed face of Roberto, a vagabond American whom he had lately takeninto his employment.
Roberto, a polite translation of "Bob the Bucker," cleaned out at amonte-bank in Santa Cruz, penniless and profligate, had sold hismustang to Don Jose and recklessly thrown himself in with the bargain.Touched by the rascal's extravagance, the quality of the mare, andobserving that Bob's habits had not yet affected his seat in thesaddle, but rather lent a demoniac vigor to his chase of wild cattle,Don Jose had retained rider and horse in his service as vaquero.
Bucking Bob, observing that his employer was alone, coolly opened thedoor without ceremony, shut it softly behind him, and then closed thewooden shutter of