Mayhap it was as well for Carlos that the sports were now ended, and the fiesta about to close.
In a few minutes the company began to move off. The mules, oxen, and asses, were yoked to the carretas—the rancheros and rancheras climbed inside the deep boxes; and then, what with the cracking of quirts, the shouts of drivers, and the hideous screaming of the ungreased axles, a concert of sounds arose that would have astonished any human being, except a born native of the soil.
In half-an-hour the ground was clear, and the lean coyote might be seen skulking over the spot in search of a morsel for his hungry maw.
Chapter Nine.
Though the field-sports were over, the fiesta of San Juan was not yet ended. There were still many sights to be seen before the crowd scattered to their homes. There was to be another turn at the church—another sale of “indultos,” beads, and relics,—another sprinkling of sacred water, in order that the coffers of the padrés might be replenished toward a fresh bout at the monté table. Then there was an evening procession of the Saint of the day (John), whose image, set upon a platform, was carried about the town, until the five or six fellows who bore the load were seen to perspire freely under its weight.
The Saint himself was a curiosity. A large wax and plaster doll, dressed in faded silk that had once been yellow, and stuck all over with feathers and tinsel. A Catholic image Indianised, for the Mexican divinities were as much Indian as Roman. He appeared bored of the business, as, the joinings between head and neck having partially given way, the former drooped over and nodded to the crowd as the image was moved along. This nodding, however, which would have been laughed at as supremely ridiculous in any other than a priest-ridden country, was here regarded in a different light. The padrés did not fail to put their interpretation upon it, pointing it out to their devout followers as a mark of condescension on the part of the Saint, who, in thus bowing to the crowd, was expressing his approbation of their proceedings. It was, in fact, a regular miracle. So alleged both padrés and cura, and who was there to contradict them? It would have been a dangerous matter to have said nay. In San Ildefonso no man dared to disbelieve the word of the Church. The miracle worked well. The religious enthusiasm boiled up; and when Saint John was returned to his niche, and the little “cofre” placed in front of him, many a “peseta,” “real,” and “cuartillo,” were dropped in, which would otherwise have been deposited that night in the monté bank. Nodding Saints and “winking Madonnas” are by no means a novel contrivance of the Holy Church. The padrés of its Mexican branch have had their wonderful saints too; and even in the almost terra ignota of New Mexico can be found a few of them that have performed as smart miracles as any recorded in the whole jugglery of the race.
A pyrotechnic display followed—and no mean exhibition of the sort neither—for in this “art” the New Mexicans are adepts. A fondness for “fireworks” is a singular but sure characteristic of a declining nation.
Give me the statistics of pyrotechnic powder burnt by a people, and I shall tell you the standard measure of their souls and bodies. If the figure be a maximum, then the physical and moral measure will be the minimum, for the ratio is inverse.