that it might alienate the friendship of Doña Magdalena. For Don Geronimo he had no care, whether he lived or died.
Padre Ignacio said nothing more as they walked down the long arcade joining mission building and church. The broad trampled road to the Indian village crossed under this arcade a little way before coming to the church, at the point where the tallow cauldrons were, and the great underground vat for holding the grease rendered from the waste portions of butchered animals and those that died in the fields. The top of this tank extended above ground a few feet, like a sunken tower. It contained tons of tallow, waiting the ships from Spain that were so long in coming.
Padre Ignacio touched Juan's arm and stopped him in the shadow of a little adobe hut at the corner of the village plaza where the tall cross lifted a crude figure of a crucified man. The bleached grass and straw thatch of the crowded huts seemed frosted in the moonlight; the blocked shadows were as little squares of velvet spread before the doors. The plaza was not much larger than Padre Ignacio's room. It was packed with the village inhabitants, young and old. Those who were not taking their turn at dancing sat on the brick-hard ground, which was as clean of dust as Doña Magdalena's kitchen floor.
"You see how they mock discipline, Juan," Padre Ignacio stretched out his hand with the slow, revealing, accusing gesture of a man who unveils to
