“Like the legion of demons which Jesus sent into the swine,” said Josè. “I will tell you the story some day, chiquita,” he said, in answer to her look of inquiry.
The day passed quickly for the child, nor did she seem to cast another thought in the direction of the cloud which hung over the sorrowing town. At dusk, Mendoza and Cárdenas came to the foot of the hill with food and blankets.
“Amado Sanchez has just died,” they reported.
“What!” cried Josè. “So soon? Why––he fell sick only yesterday!”
“No, Padre, he had been ailing for many days––but it may have been the plague just the same. Perhaps it was with us before Feliz brought it. But we have not exposed ourselves to the disease and––Padre––there is not a man in Simití who will bury Amado. What shall we do?”
Josè divined the man’s thought. “Bien, amigo,” he replied. “Go you back to your homes. To-night Rosendo and I will come and bury him.”
Josè had sent Carmen and Doña Maria beyond the church, that they might not hear the grewsome tidings. When the men had returned to their homes, the little band on the hilltop ate their evening meal in silence. Then a bench was swept clean for Carmen’s bed, for she insisted on sleeping in the old church with Josè when she learned that he intended to pass the night there.
Again, as the heavy shadows were gathering, Josè and Rosendo descended into the town and bore out the body of Amado Sanchez to a resting place beside the poor lad who had died the day before. To a man of such delicate sensibilities as Josè, whose nerves were raw from continual friction with a world with which he was ever at variance, this task was one of almost unendurable horror. He returned to the old church in a state bordering on collapse.
“Rosendo,” he murmured, as they seated themselves on the hillside in the still night, “I think we shall all die of the plague. And it were well so. I am tired, utterly tired of striving to live against such odds. Bien, let it come!”
“Courage, compadre!” urged Rosendo, putting his great arm about the priest’s shoulders. “We must all go some time, and perhaps now; but while we live let us live like men!”