THE STORY-TELLER. The Padre of Tres Degollados.

Evening Post, Volume LX, Issue 18, 21 July 1900, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE STORY-TELLER. The Padre of Tres Degollados.

The priest of the village was called by his parishioners Padre Tomaso. And the village was called by the very few who knew of its existence upon the face of the desert, Tres Degokados ; which name had come from its having grown upon the spot where had been found the headless trunks of three prospectors, cut short in their search for gold by a raiding party of Victorio's band in the late 'seventies. The bodies had been given decent burial, and the village of the cheerful name had, if not sprung up, at least come into existence after the leisurely fashion of things Mexican. There had been no padre just at first. Then there had come one, a Mexican who had filled his place and conducted his services in the little mud church to the satisfaction of all until his death. After that had come Padre Tomaso. That had been five months before. • The padre was ,not . popular. Though his Spanish was' all that could be desired; lie was a foreigner ; for such the American is in the eyes of the Mexican who lives beneath the very small patch of shadow that the Stars and Stripes throw over the bad-lands of the South-West. But in reality Padre Tomaso was not American at all. He was English. And he was a man with a history. The Mexicans did not understand that. They understood nothing, save vaguely and instinctively that the padre hated them. It showed at times ia his stern gray eye — an eye which could never throw the light of hope upon the path of the repentant sinner. There was power in Padre Tomaso — a strange power, which made them do even his unspoken will ; and there was learning, for had he not many books in his house, and did he not speak as one having authority? But there was no love. Yet once there had been love — and that was the history. The padre remembered it now, as he stood in his low doorway and looked out over the desolation, always the same, save that at sunrise the shadows of the brush and cacti fell to the west, and at sunset they fell to the east, and at noon there were none whatever, unless, perhaps, the quick darting one of some hawk or buzzard above in the brazen sky. And the sweet pungency of the sage brush made his heart sick, his brain mad. But he was English, and though there was only a burro and her foal by the mesquite yonder to see, his face was of stone, and his eyes, as they pierced the shimmering western sky, were of steel. A woman came up the one street toward him. He knew it was Virginia. It was eternally Virginia, with her tragic face, her big, beautiful mouth, her big, straight nose, and her big, fine eyes. She was all but insane, and he knew it was not with religious zeal, but with love of him. Hi turned back into his adobe and shut the rude door and barred it. Presently, he heard Virginia stop before it, too timid to knock. He was bent over a life of Torquemada— a profane work, but who should know that? And he called to her, "estoy oeupado." There was no answer, but her bare feet pattered away. Then he • sat looking down at the book. But h« was not reading. He was thinking, there alone in the quick-falling dusk, of the other woman to whom he had once said those same words, but in a tongue less soft and mellow. It had not been ' Hera in this waste place of earth, in this hell, with its lost souls, as patient, as hopeless as the souls of the Tuscan's inferno — if souls they wore and not mere beasts of fruitless, aimless toil, And it had not been to a woman of the savage Virginia's type that he had spoken, but to one of those for whom men prefer 1 to lose their all. She had been soft and pliable, and utterly without conception of the passion which would have made the humble Mexican endure all things, even disdain, to the end. It was dark now in the bare, little whitewashed room, and his eyes, looking into tho blackness, could see that other room, so very different. His ears, in the silence, could hear the voice of the momentarily repentant one at the door, imploring. But if the repentance had been more than momentary, if it had been real . He scratched and clawed at the leaves of the book. It had not, been real ; would he never be able to make himself believe that? No, he would not ; not more than he could make himself believe the gibberish he repeated to these bovine savages, his spiritual charges. The pleadings from outside the closed doors had sounded sincere — they had been choked with, sobs. But the gift of tears was one of her many powers. So he had called then, as just now he had called to the Mexican girl, "I am busy." • And she had gone out of the house, out into the night streets and back to the man whose door was not closed against her. The padre lit his candle and read on at the life of the great inquisitor. # # » • * "He is a heretic; and heretics should be put to death. He is a thief. He has stolen your land. He has taken the water from your acequias, turned it into his own corrales, that his cattle may drink, while your little gardens die and you starve, because you have no food. He is a liar, for he told you he would pay you in money for the water which no money can buy, and he has given you not one peso, not one centavo. He is a man of evil life, for the woman who is with him is not his wife. I who know, I who have married you all without pay, [ that your souls and your children should not be lost — I tell you it is true. He is a murderer, for he killed your friends Manuel and Ignacio. And he has killed ! the woman he has called his wife. Only this moment there has come to me a ! vaquero from the ranch, to tell me that the woman is dying — shot through the heart. She is a Catholic, like ourselves, but until the vaquero told her this day, she had not known that there was a priest who could speak to her in her own tongue, so near. The heretic man would have let her die unshriven." Padre Tomaso was speaking to h'w parishioners. He had called them by the ringing of a bell into the church, aud he had gone into the rude pulpit to address them. He was preaching murder to murderous-minded men. He had hinted it before within the last month, since he had learned who the man was in the small cattle ranch ten miles aAvay across the plain, but, for the first time, now he was saying it openly. The rancher was hatea by the hotblooded fanatics there in tho body of the church. They had endured from him some real and many fancied wrongs. BuC he was not all the devil that the padre, working his own ends, chose to paint him. He was a heretic perhaps — in the days jyhen he had been the padre's boon companion it had mattered not at

all— he was certainly a liar, he was possibly a thief. All that was true. And it was true, too, that the woman was not his wife. Bub it was not true that he had murdered the cut-throat», Manuel and Ignacio. Ho had fought them fairly and had killed them, to the betterment of the whole territory. Nor had he don© the villagers any great harm. Water on the desert is existence. He had struggled for it, and had won. It was an Anglo-Saxon conquest perhaps, more just than merciful, but it was all in the law of survival, and of the land. As for the dying woman, she had shot herself— and Padre Tomaso knew it. But he could not stop now for a lie more or less in the house of God. He had told too many already, and he doubted the God he preached. His voice went on, rolling through the little space, ringing with "the inspiration of revenge, -through the twilight of tone shadows. He was holding raw meat to the very jaws of the tigers, lashing them into frenzy. He had no fear of consequences— not in this world. As for the next — he would chance that. And at last he ended with one final exhortation : "There is no punishment for the American in his own land. He may murder you, steal from you, lie to you, cheat you. You have no redress but — to kill. And I say to you, kill ! Go now to the heretic's rancho and kill him. It is the will of heaven that you should. I will bo there to give him to you. I will absolve you from your sins forover. The door of heaven will be open to you, for it is right that he should die. Kill him !" He stepped down from the pulpit and went out of the church. He was certain of his effect. His power was three-fold — of the man, of tha dominant race, of the priest. And they were children of poverty, and superstition, and inhuman ignorance. . . As he mounted his broncho and rode off toward the ranch they followed him, snarling with low howls, and Virginia led him, clinging to his cassock, under the very hoofs of his horse, her face distorted with love and rage. He left them well behind, but surely following, more than a hundred strong, and lashing themselves after the manner of mobs. .The woman had gasped her confession and died. The padre had been alone with her, and she had fixed her dim, unseeing eyes on his face, and had told him all her sin. It was a common enough story. But she had tasted of Dead Sea fruit, and had found no happiness through all the years. And so shS had end<ed it. Was there forgiveness for such as she? The padre hesitated. "Do you love this— man?" he asked. She told him that she had never loved but one man,, the one she had most wronged. She had known it only too soon, "But he would not forgive, and she had been weak and very young. Padre Tomaso remitted her sins. And when the quivering lips were quite stillhe kissed them, and closed tho wistful eves. Then ha out of the room and into the one where the other man sat waiting, and barred the door behind him. "May I go to her?" asked the man. "She is deadly He sat lookitfg at th» prie,st stupidly, but with no siiow of grief. There came the sound of far-away shouts and cries approaching. The padre knew that his time was short ; but, after, all, there was little to say. "Do you know me?" he asked. The man did not answer, but when the padre repeated the question, he shook hia head. "I." said Padre Tomaso, "aw the husband of the woman who He 9 dead in there." The man's oyei graw wide and his jaw foil, but ha sat still, staring at the big, black-gowned flguro looming in the candle-light against the white wall. "It is Pate, or Providence, or Chancft —whatever you choose to call it— that has brought me here," said the padre, calmly. "I was sent to this God-for-saken spot through no wish of mine. It may have been because I spoke Spanish. I spoke it as a child, you may remember. However, you go where you are sent. They told me a Gringo*— whom they all hated, by the bye — had this ranch, but 1 did not recognise your changed name. A month ago I saw you both. And then I decided that sooner or later you should pay for these ten years and my ruined life. You are going to pay now. Listen !" The shouts had grown very near, very menacing. They were almost at the windows, and there was a pistol-shot, another, and another. The last bullet snapped through the window and plowed along the table at which the rancher sat. He was roused now. He jumped to his feet and his hand reached for his revolver. But it was all in the luck which had led the padre through the years that, for the first time in months perhaps, there was no revolver there. Then came the sound of shivered windows and a broken door. The man rushed forward, but the priest was ready. He held him off with one inflexible arm and drew from the folds of his robe a little six-shooter. • "I don't want you to kill you myself. It would be too quick," his low voice penetrated above the uproar, "but I will if I must." The 'rancher fought desperately. —"El Gringo, el hereje, adonde esta, muera, muera!" the howls were at the very door. "Aqui esta," rang the voice of the padre : "he is here !" The door crashed m. Padre Tomaso stood aside and watched until the work was finished. Then he slipped out into that other room, and standing beside the woman, with his eyes on the sad, still face, he put the, revolver to bis forehead and fired. And so his parishioners came upon him, fallen with, his arms outstretched across the bed ; and, with one accord, they dropped on their knees, and crossing themeselves, prayed for the repose of his soul. — Gwendolen Overton, in San Francisco Argonaut.