Mrs. Juan had cleared away the supper dishes, and sat by a corner of the fireside. She had removed from her legs voluminous wrappings of white doeskin, symbol of her high financial rating, and sat openly and complacently admiring her silk-stockinged feet, coquettishly adorned with scarlet Turkish slippers, which she balanced on her toes. Pancho eyed the by-play with affectionate indulgence, and sent a long, slow wink in our direction at this harmless evidence of the eternal feminine. The talk had drifted to tales of wonder, to which we contributed our share as best we could, and now it was Juan’s turn. He leaned forward earnestly, his black eyes somber and intense.
“You know me for an honest man? You know people say that Juan Pancho does not lie? You know that when Juan says he will do a thing, he does it, if it ruins him?”
We nodded. The reputation of Juan Pancho was a proverb in Great Isleta.
“Good! Because now, I am going to tell you something that will test your credulity. You will need to remember all you know of my honesty to believe what I tell you now.”
We drew forward, and listened while he narrated the story of the good monk of the time of Coronado, as I have told it in condensed form.
“Well, then! You’ve been in that church where they buried the monk—six feet from the altar, and a little to one side. Most Indian churches have a dirt floor, but the church of Great Isleta has a plank floor, very heavy. Now I will tell you why.
“The Spaniards came and went, without learning of the padre who slept with the knife wound in his back, under Isleta church. Five years went by, and one day, one of our old men who took care of the church went within, and saw a bulge in the earth, near the altar. It was of the size of a man’s body. The bulge stayed there, right over the spot where they had buried the padre, and day after day it grew more noticeable. A year went by, and a crack appeared, the length of a man’s body. Two years, three years—and the crack had widened and gaped. It was no use to fill it, to stamp down the dirt—that crack would remain open. Then, twelve years maybe from the death of the padre, the Isletans come into the church one morning, and there on the floor, face up, lies the padre. There is no sign of a crack in the earth—he lies on solid ground, looking as if he had died yesterday. They feel his flesh—it is soft, and gives to the touch of the finger, like the flesh of one whose breath has just flown. They turn him over—the knife wound is fresh, with red blood clotting it. Twelve years he has been dead!
“Well, they called in the elders, and talked it over, and they bury him, and give him another chance to rest in peace. But he does not stay buried. A few years more and the crack shows again, and at the end of twelve years, as before, there he lies on the ground, his body as free from the corruption of natural decay as ever. They bury him again, and after twelve years he is up. All around him lie the bones of Isletans who have died after him. The soil he lies in is the same soil which has turned their flesh to dust and their bones to powder.
“So it goes on, until my own time. I have seen him, twice. There are old men in our village who have seen him half a dozen times, and have helped to bury him. They don’t tell of it—it is a thing to keep to oneself—but they know of it. The whole village knows of it, but they don’t talk. But the last time he came up we talked it over, and we decided we had enough. This time, if possible, we would make him stay down.
“I saw him—in 1910 or ’11 it was—and so did many others. The priest of Isleta saw him. We sent for the governor, and he came and saw. And the archbishop of Santa Fé came, and with him a cardinal who was visiting from Rome itself; they all came. What is more, they drew up a paper, and made two copies, testifying to what they had seen, and signed it. Then they took one copy and placed it with the long-dead padre in a heavy oak coffin, and nailed it down. And the other copy the visiting cardinal took back to Rome to give to the pope. My signature was on it. Then we buried the coffin, deep, and packed the earth hard about it and stamped it down. Then we took planks, two-inch planks, and laid a floor over the entire church, and nailed it down with huge nails. We were resolved that if he came up, he would at least have to work his passage.”