"WELL, Juan Molinero, you have not shown me a new invention," said Padre Ignacio. "I have heard of such an instrument, used for the purpose you propose to put this to, I believe, but principally as an ancient weapon of war. Fiail, is it, in the English tongue? In Castilian it is flagelo, plainly meaning an instrument for the infliction of punishment. I am afraid, my gentle Juan, that your contrivance will be looked upon in that light by the poor Indians, who would much rather have the cattle to do this work of threshing than bend their backs and do it themselves."
Juan did not understand all this, for Padre Ignacio sometimes forgot to use simple words and speak slowly, yet he received enough to know that his proposal to introduce the flail for threshing grain in the mission fields was not welcomed very warmly. This fact did not cool his earnest determination to prove the superiority of the flail over any method then known to man for separating grain from the husk.
Juan had gone straightway from the threshing floor, if the fenced circle trampled by the oxen could be so called, to the carpenter shop, where he found wood of toughness and grain suitable for the swingle and shaft of a flail. The two parts of the simple instrument he connected with a rawhide thong. Now he was on his way, the flail in his hand, Padre Ignacio at his side, to give a demonstration of the flail in the field where the threshers were at work, there being no grain in the sheaf elsewhere on the mission estates.
Cristóbal accompanied them, carrying a thick canvas to spread for a threshing floor. Juan explained that results would not be as satisfactory under these conditions as on a firm barn floor of planks, but he hoped to convince Padre Ignacio of the superior economy in this mode.
"No, it is not a new thing, Padre Ignacio," Juan admitted. "The German and English people have used the flail for threshing ever since they grew grain. But they are people who do not shun hard work when it will bring them better bread."
"Ah, we are indolent people, we Castilians, except in the conquest of worlds," Padre Ignacio returned. Gentle and just as he was, he could not suppress the pride and irony that leveled all men's achievements to dust in comparison with the race from which he sprung.
Work in the threshing pen was suspended while Juan illustrated the use of the implement he had made. In that day the use of the flail was a part of every American farmer's craft; Juan had been notable with it as a stripling, when he once took the championship away from a whiskered giant famous over three counties for his fourteen hundred weight of grain a day. The Indians pressed in silent interest to watch him, while the chaff flew in a cloud beneath his dextrous strokes.
In a little while Juan had threshed half a hundred weight of grain. He scooped a double handful and lifted it to Padre Ignacio's inspection, letting it rain down between his fingers and winnow in the wind. Padre Ignacio said nothing. He bent and ran his hand through the little heap of clean whole grain, sifting it through his fingers as if not ready to accept the evidence until he had satisfied himself there was no trick about it.
Juan scooped his hand full of the grain from the threshing floor where the oxen had trampled, and offered it in comparison.
"It is cleaner, there are not so many broken kernels," Padre Ignacio admitted. "But see how you sweat, Juan. It is a labor to thresh grain with your machine."
Juan could see in the faces of the Indians the same thought, the same objection. This was not like the mill, there was nothing marvelous in beating out grain with a jointed stick. He had not come to them with a labor-saving implement, but a man-consuming device, as the oldest and the dullest Indian alike could see.
"How much is threshed in one of these trampling-pens in a day?" Juan asked.
Padre Ignacio repeated the question to the Indian foreman.
"Who knows?" the man replied, "I keep the young men at work, I see that the oxen are changed when one falls. Maybe the men who measure the wheat can tell."
Here was a divided, a vague, opinion. One thought it might be a hundred quintales, another scoffed this, putting his estimate at fifty.
"Call it seventy-five quintales, although I don't believe it can be done," said Juan. "It must be winnowed, it must be run through sieves, even the little stones must be picked out of it by hand, before it can go to the mill. Look at this wheat I have threshed, Padre Ignacio; clean enough as it is to go into the hopper, except for this chaff, which a breath will blow away."
"I fear the method is too slow, although superior in other respects, I will admit. At the end of harvest, Juan, we have nine or ten of these threshing-places going every day; we make short work of it. But with this little stick—who can tell?"
"An ordinary man can thresh six or seven quintales in a day, Padre Ignacio. Put fifty at work"
"Don Geronimo!" Cristóbal warned, touching Juan's arm.
Don Geronimo had approached unseen until that moment by any of the interested spectators. With his arrival there was a general scurrying back to their duty among the Indians, who cringed as they ran in expectation of the bite of Don Geronimo's whip. The mayordomo reined up at the edge of the spread canvas, his face dark with displeasure.
"What is this diversion? Why are these men standing idle?" he demanded of Padre Ignacio.
"The day is long enough, Don Geronimo; we can spare them a few minutes from their tasks," Padre Ignacio replied, his manner gently corrective, gently resentful of the harsh challenge of authority in that place.
"Yes, if you priests were left to conduct the business of this mission everybody soon would starve," Don Geronimo declared, scornfully as a man ever spoke.
"It is well we have a zealous guardian of our fields, Don Geronimo," Padre Ignacio confessed, contrite as if he was the aggressor, indeed. He looked up at the mayordomo, a smile illuminating his sad old weathered face.
Juan felt a great tenderness for this gentle old man, a strong desire to stand in his defense against the arrogant overriding and assumption of authority by Don Geronimo. He understood fully that the mayordomo held his appointment from the president of all the missions, but it was also true that all authority at San Fernando was in Padre Ignacio's hands. A word from him should have been sufficient to put Don Geronimo in his place, but more and more Juan was aware of the mayordomo's trespass on this authority, his open and contemptuous stealing of the good-hearted old padre's power.
It seemed that the aggressiveness had burned out of Padre Ignacio in all the years he had been tramping the long road between San Diego and Monterey before coming to his rest at San Fernando, where the little river came down out of the hills. There was only gentleness left in his breast, and the missions were not built by gentleness, nor regard for the labors and sufferings of impressed savages, while it was plain that Padre Ignacio put this first in all his thoughts of men. He stood there, the slant sun of evening on his face, one bony brown hand closed on the wheat he had taken from Juan's threshing, the other lifted in what seemed an appeal, rather than a command, for peace. The sleeve of his coarse rough gown had fallen to the bend of his arm, which was sinewy and brown from his labor among his beloved vines.
"Juan has been giving us an exemplification of a tool, an ancient weapon applied by the men of many nations to the arts of peace. You see, Don Geronimo, the grain he has beaten out with a few deft strokes—he was not half an hour about it, I am certain. The advantages of this mode are apparent to me; I see more and more in favor of it as I reflect and consider."
"We can have no more of this change and innovation at San Fernando," Don Geronimo said. "This meddling with the old, time-established order is demoralizing; it advances nothing but discontent and laziness."
"It cannot be said of the flail, then, Don Geronimo, that it would encourage a lazy disposition in any man," Padre Ignacio returned, in smiling good humor. "Look at Juan, see how the sweat pours out of him from threshing this little heap of wheat. A man would earn his salt at a day's work with the flail, you may be certain."
"I cannot permit this interference in my fields, this distraction among my workmen," Don Geronimo said sharply.
"Don Geronimo!" Padre Ignacio chided.
Juan was standing by, his jacket thrown aside, his shirt wet on his muscular back, the flail in his hand. He was far more resentful of Don Geronimo's insolent declaration of authority than Padre Ignacio, whom the mayordomo made so bold as to push aside as a man of no consequence in the affairs and administration of the Mission San Fernando.
"Let this spy of a despicable, upstart nation keep to the mill in future. I tell you, Padre Ignacio, I will have no more of his interference and silly contrivances."
"It will be enough, Don Geronimo," Padre Ignacio said sternly, the gentleness of his face yielding to an expression of dignified command. "Where this son of San Fernando chooses to walk within our limits, there he shall walk without the interference of any man."
"A weak prejudice for him, growing in your heart for his supposed services to you, blinds your eyes to his true guise." Don Geronimo charged. He leaned toward Padre Ignacio as he spoke, his face flushed with the rising of his anger, little thinking that Juan had the intelligence to understand nearly all that he said.
"He has done us great service, Don Geronimo; simple gratitude is but poor payment for what he has given us."
"Padre Ignacio, I tell you the man is a spy, sent here by his government to learn how the soil is cultivated, how we make raisins, dry our figs, how the seasons come and go, and all the secrets necessary to the ten thousand of his kind that stand ready to flock here and overrun us like locusts."
"That is a lie in the mouth of a liar!" Juan stepped forward to hurl the charge into Don Geronimo's face like a stone.
Don Geronimo lifted himself in his stirrups, face distorted by the sweep of his sudden passion. Padre Ignacio anticipated his intention, and leaped with incredible swiftness under the fiercely flung lash. The scornful, hate-driven blow of the mayordomo's whip fell sharply across the priest's shoulders, only the lash of it stinging Juan's arm.
So the gentle old man stood between them, his arms spread to keep them apart. Cristóbal, hurt deeper than Padre Ignacio by the indignity of the blow, cried out sharply and sprang forward, as if to tear Don Geronimo from his horse. Juan Molinero swung his flail, unheeding of the priest's clutching, frantic hand upon his arm, and struck Don Geronimo from the saddle with a sweeping, terrible blow.
Cristóbal's shout of triumph rang over the dusty field, where the workmen flung down their tools as if liberty had come to them with that swift blow, and came running to witness the overthrow of the tyrant who had driven them with pitiless hand.
Don Geronimo's horse sprang away as its master fell, the stirrups flinging high as it galloped to the gate. Don Geronimo lay on his back, his black whip on its thong about his wrist, its long lash trailing across his breast. Blood ran into his beard from a great gash that opened from cheek-bone to forehead across his temple. Dust was grey on his face; beneath it a pallor that seemed the bloodless seal of death.
Padre Ignacio was on his knees beside the mayordomo, one hand on his heart, one on his lips, searching out the spark of life. Juan came and stood over the prostrate man, neither contrition nor anger in his honest brown face, but rather the look of a man who is satisfied with his day's work, and would not mend it if it lay within his power. He stooped and lifted Don Geronimo's hand, his finger seeking the beat of the artery under the thong that held the whip.
"He is not dead, by a long shot, Padre Ignacio," he said.
"Thank God!" Padre Ignacio breathed in relief. "Bring a cart, Cristóbal—that one just emptied of sheaves." He turned to Juan, his face sadder than Juan had ever seen it, yet something inexorably hard and accusing in his eyes.
"Juan Molinero, you have done a terrible deed!" he said.
"It was for the blow you took, Padre Ignacio."
"I would have borne it, Juan, in forgiveness."
"He can't strike a white man with his whip! he's no lord of creation."
"You have struck down authority before the eyes of those who must bend and subjugate themselves to it. No man can see the evil fruit of this woeful stroke, let Don Geronimo live or die. I took the blow that was intended for you, Juan, from Don Geronimo's hand, but I cannot assume the consequences that your vengeful anger must bring upon your head."
"My back is broad, Padre Ignacio; I can carry it."
The cattle were standing again in the threshingpen, the pitchforks, sieves and measures were dropped, while the Indians crowded to look at Don Geronimo, blood mingling with the dust on his beard. There was excitement in the faces of even the most stolid; eagerness gleamed in all their eyes. They pressed round the spot where Don Geronimo lay, their bare feet noiseless in the dust of the trodden field, short, ejaculatory words passing under their breath from man to man. Cristóbal came with the cart; they parted to let him pass.
"Gently with him!" Padre Ignacio cautioned, for there was neither gentleness nor pity in the hands that clutched Don Geronimo to lift him into the cart. "Here, put this unlucky instrument of, yours in the cart with him, Juan; I will take charge of it henceforward. I fear it will be many a long day before we quit the old method of threshing our grain at the Mission San Fernando. Forward, Cristóbal; hasten with him to his door."
Cristóbal took up the goad, a gleam of pleasure in his quick eyes, a look of triumph in his dark handsome face. He threw his head back, shaking his long hair from his brow, whistled to the oxen, his goad poised to strike. The mellow, vibrant note of a bell sounded over the fields, three measured strokes. All heads bent, all hands fluttered over breasts, all lips moved in the brief words of a prayer.
"Forward, then," said Padre Ignacio, as the bell began again, quick and joyous in its tolling, the evening signal calling the laborers home from the fields.
In that way Don Geronimo went home with his bleeding face, his feet at the cart's end like the feet of a dead man going to his grave. And so the neophytes followed him, their bare heads lifted in the sense of a new freedom. The sound of the evening bell went rolling over the fields, now dimming as the wind bent it seaward, now welling as there came a lull. There was a purple on the hills like the mist of wine.