CHAPTER XIX
THE RETURN OF TULA
The sentinel palms of Soledad were sending long lines of shadows toward the blue range of the Sierras, and gnarled old orange trees in the ancient mission garden drenched the air with fragrance from many petals.
There had been a sand storm the day before, followed by rain, and all the land was refreshed and sparkling. The pepper trees swung tassels of bloom and the flaming coral of the occotilla glowed like tropic birds poised on wide-reaching wands of green. Meadow larks echoed each other in the tender calls of nesting time, and from the jagged peaks on the east, to far low hills rising out of a golden haze in the west, there was a great quiet and peace brooding over the old mission grounds of the wilderness.
Doña Jocasta paced the outer corridor, watched somberly by Padre Andreas on whom the beauty of the hour was lost.
“Is your heart turned stone that you lift no hand, or speak no word for the soul of a mortal?” he demanded. “Already the terrible women of Palomitas are coming to wait for their Judas, and this is the morning of the day!”
“It is no work of mine, Padre,” she answered wearily. “I am sick,––here!––that the beast has been all these days and nights under a roof near me. I know how the women feel, though I think I would not wait, as they have waited,––for Good Friday.”
“It is murder in your heart to harbor such wickedness of thought,” he insisted. “Your soul is in jeopardy that you do not contemplate forgiveness. Even though a man be a heretic, a priest must do his office when it comes to a sentence of death. After all––he is a human.”
“I do not know that,” replied Doña Jocasta thoughtfully, and she sank into a rawhide chair in the shade of a pillar. “Listen, Padre. I am not learned in books, but I have had new thoughts with me these days. Don Pajarito is telling me of los Alemanos all over the world;––souls they have not, and serpents and toads are their mothers! Here in Mexico we have our flag from old Indian days with the eagle and the snake. Once I heard scholars in Hermosillo talk about that; they said it was from ancient times of sky worship, and the bird was a bird of stars,––also the serpent.”
Padre Andreas lifted his brows in derision at the childishness of Indian astrology.