THE MASS OF MANGAS
Mission San Xavier del Bac, near Tucson, Arizona.
Years had the Mission stood alone,
Its silent chapels bat-tenanted;
On its altars the gray owl nested her young,
And the ground squirrels burrowed above the dead
By the western wall, nor stirred their sleep;
Bare lay the fields, sun-scorched and white;—
As black hawks scatter the timorous quail
Padre and soldier and neophyte
Scattered before the Apache hordes
That swept the valley with death and flame—
Now back at last like quail to their nests,
Timorous, fearing, they slowly came,
Priest and people; to wring anew
From the sullen desert a grudging chance
For scanty food and room to toil,
Or a quick-won end on a blood-stained lance.
With fragrant branches of gray mesquite,
And waxen yuccas fair and tall;
Lifting their bells like hands in prayer,
Slender and snowy and virginal;
And desert lilies as frail as hope,
They wreathed the altars, and lit once more
The long-dead altars, and set the rood
Over the arrow-bitten door.
The pale Christ leaned from the iron-wood cross
High in its niche deep-walled and gray;
And under his feet, in order set,
Censer and chalice in rough-wrought clay
Where once was silver shaped in Spain—
Now spoil of fight to the savage foe,
And bandied from careless hand to hand
Unblest uses and lips to know.
The tapers flickered and tenderly
The last words whispered and echoed up
To the painted saints in the dusk above,
As the padre lifted the earthen cup
And the blessed wine—but crash it fell,
Staining the floor with a crimson tide
Unseen of the startled worshipers—
For look! where the door unbarred swings wide!
Sombre and splendid in paint and plume,
With claws of eagle and puma skin,
Mangas, the dread Apache chief,
And a hundred braves at his back crowd in;
He swept the shards of the cup aside
And its silver mate on the altar set:
“Padre, the boy you stopped to draw
From the lion’s jaw makes good his debt.
“With Death hot-heel on your track you turned
To save a child of the enemy;
Let these, beloved of your hidden God,
Be bond of peace for mine and me;
And these in thanks for that other day.”
Censer and chalice he set them down,
And bared his arms of their turquoise beads,
And stripped the robe from his shoulders brown.
Man by man his men heaped up
The pile till it grew to the Virgin’s feet;
Skin and blanket, and beads that hung
Like jeweled buds in the pale mesquite.
Then swift as they came they went again;
But, so ’tis writ in the Mission rolls,
With wine and incense the padre straight
Said holy mass for their heathen souls,
And held them saved to the Mother Church;
For a grateful heart is a thing indeed
That weighed in the palm of the Savior’s hand
Out-values penance and prayer and creed;
And year by year when the yucca bells
Like flags of truce swung tall and white,
The name of Mangas was blessed anew
With book and taper and solemn rite.