CHAPTER II
THE LION AND THE LAMB LIE DOWN TOGETHER
Most unwonted drought had laid a withering hand on fertile Santa Clara valley that year. March had come and no vast stretches of wild oats measured the way from foothill to bay; no juicy grazing for cattle and horses on the rich bottom lands. The plain-brown color-tone of autumn prevailed, not that of spring, in triumphant green and promise of rich harvest.
This interchange prevailed almost everywhere except around the gushing springs at the Mission San José. Here rioted nature in her proudest fancy, for the intense warmth of day and night had brought to blossom before their time wild plant, oleander, and fruit tree. Here was green grass in luxuriant abundance, while the tall mustard flaunted its yellow top as usual, and afforded a resting place for chattering blackbird and twittering linnet.
The springs on the Administrator's property several miles north of Mission San José had gradually diminished in flow until only unsightly, trampled mud remained where was a limpid lake in happier years.
The geyserlike warm springs on the property of Don Fulgencio Higuera, Señor Mendoza's neighbor to the south, had suddenly run dry. In fact, not more than half a dozen sources of water-supply remained within a radius of a score of miles. The like had never been known, not even in the memory of the oldest Indian in the valley.
Weird relics of Druidic worship, half forgotten under the tutelage of the Mission padres, were revived in forest and mountain. Vast columns of smoke, odoriferous of cedar and bay-leaf, reached high toward heaven in the motionless air. The ancient name of Oroysom replaced on many a tongue that of the smoothly flowing Mission San José de Guadalupe, which name the missionaries had given the region when their work of Christianizing the Indians began.
"Oroysom, Oroysom, begs thee, Great Spirit, to awake," sang the aborigine. "Let the perfume of laurel propitiate thee. Let the sweetness of the smoke of cedar be a gracious offering unto thee. On the fields of Oroysom no food for beast is found. Gaunt famine is rushing hither in wind-swift pace. Our hunters search stream and wildwood, but find no food for the child, the women, the old people. There is no maize, no field of growing wheat; and, lo! the garden is dry and empty. Oroysom calls on thee, Father of the rain, Source of the springs, and Giver of the harvest, to arouse from slumber and forget no longer the people who from old have honored thee."
Around the great fires at night the Indians swung hand in hand, swaying in willowy motion as they chanted their incantation. Their shadows danced in wildest abandon on the mammoth rocks or mountain peaks which formed the background of the strange scene.
Señor Mendoza, the leading spirit among the landholders on the eastern side of the valley, endeavored, as, indeed, did his neighbors, to maintain equanimity, but there was much anxiety among all.
Even water for family use had to be carried on horseback, the vaqueros from ranchos miles away coming to the few remaining water-supplies, and riding back with the precious water skins over the pommel of the saddle.