Sword and candle

About this book

SWORD AND CANDLE I THE Mission of San Miguel, in Sonora, was still a raw cube of unfinished adobe, although colonnades, running along the entire east face in row after row of beautifully ordered arches, showed that the padre-designer had ornamentation in mind. The niche above the great front doors (there was no bell-tower) also attested to this. The niche was empty. The statue of the archangel had not arrived from Spain. It was a great pity. More, it was felt by the fathers that something would assuredly come of it. The third of a series of signs, of unmistakable omens, this last was too important to be overlooked. First, there had been the pure wax candle which refused to burn, and it had a good wick; second, there was (for any one to see who had eyes) the little Indio baby with a mark like a tiny red hoof—cloven!—on its forehead; third, the Santa Lucia had failed to bring the statue. Something would come of it; what else could a man think? The Santa Lucia, which had brought the year's supplies, had been long and eagerly awaited; when she finally arrived it was weeks past her expected time. The padres, knowing the condition of their storehouse, had been anxious. The comandante of the presidio, who made great inroads into that store, gnawed at his knuckles; not from hunger or fear, but did he not have the expedition to the Colorado and beyond to consider and was not the leader of it, that accursed Captain Fernando Rivera y Moncado, sitting about with his tongue forever against his cheek, and looking sneeringly at whatever the comandante at San Miguel did? The comandante, Navez, was a fat man. The oil resulting from much food oozed through his pores and , anointed him for sleep, but what pleasure was there in the siesta even in the hottest hour when one could hear the chuckle of Fernando Rivera forever in one's ear? That was...