"To-day at morning meal were some Indians from the San Blas just in at Monterey. At once I dispatched thither the peon, Pedro Carrasca, the best rider in the valley. Six hours' journey it is to Monterey, six hours' rest, and six returning, makes eighteen. Pedro Carrasca rests not if among the ship's goods is numbered Jesuit bark, but he presses homeward with the medicine. For each hour less than twelve that he consumes in rounding Monterey from here I have promised him five and twenty pesos."
"You have done well. My illness possesses me, Juan Antonio. Not that I resist suffering. Did not my great master, Saint Francis of Assisi, bear the sacred stigmata on side and hands and feet?"
The Indian reverently made the sign of the cross.
The padre went on:
"Antonio, you speak of the Novena. How many days have we been back?"
"Eight days."
"It has seemed longer, much longer."
"That was a hard ride for you from the river country, Señor Padre."
"Yes, it was."
"Swinging over mountain and scaling precipice, as did we, is doubly difficult for one scarcely able to sit in the saddle."