"It is folly to feel safe on a well-traveled road through a country where bandits levy their taxes," Padre Mateo said, "but it is common to us all. Reason shows us that a bandit does not stand beside a road where nobody passes. The faster they come, the sooner his day's work is over, and he is back to his pleasures at the inn."
"I suppose it's because there's comfort in numbers, Padre Mateo, even if there isn't much help," Juan responded.
"You have not relaxed your watch, I see, my good Juan, although I may doze at times, especially when I hear the bells of some honest freighter plodding on to meet us with his burros. If I go too far, jog me with your foot, Juan. This sun is hotter here; it is always so in our valley."
There were no toll-gatherers by the road that day. The travelers came in peace to San Fernando when the sun was low, and the burning wind from the desert was falling to intermittent gusts. Here the king's highway divided the mission estate, the buildings lying to the right of it, a broad field enclosed by a high adobe wall on the left. In the center of this field two palm trees stood, aliens in that land, set there by the fathers who founded the mission, the little plants carried from Mexico with tender care.
Juan Molinero was to remember long that day's journey and that home-coming. To the end of his life a whiff of dust rising from the road, a glimpse of a tiled roof through the greenery of boughs,
