The Bells of San Juan Part 1

The Bells of San Juan.

by Jackson Gregory.

FOREWORD

THE BELLS

He who has not heard the bells of San Juan has a journey yet to make.

He who has not set foot upon the dusty road which is the one street of San Juan, at times the most silent and deserted of thoroughfares, at other times a mad and turbulent lane between sun-dried adobe walls, may yet learn something of man and his hopes, desires, fears and ruder pa.s.sions from a pin-point upon the great southwestern map.

The street runs due north and south, pointing like a compa.s.s to the flat gray desert in the one direction, and in the other to the broken hills swept up into the San Juan mountains. At the northern end, that is toward the more inviting mountains, is the old Mission. To right and left of the whitewashed corridors in a straggling garden of pear-trees and olives and yellow roses are two rude arches made of seasoned cedar. From the top cross-beam of each hang three bells.

They have their history, these bells of San Juan, and the biggest with its deep, mellow voice, the smallest with its golden chimes, seem to be chanting it when they ring. Each swinging tongue has its tale to tell, a tale of old Spain, of Spanish galleons and Spanish gentlemen adventurers, of gentle-voiced priests and sombre-eyed Indians, of conquest, revolt, intrigue, and sudden death. When a baby is born in San Juan, a rarer occurrence than a strong man's death, the littlest of the bells upon the western arch laughs while it calls to all to hearken; when a man is killed, the angry-toned bell pendant from the eastern arch shouts out the word to go billowing across the stretches of sage and greasewood and gama-gra.s.s; if one of the later-day frame buildings bursts into flame, Ignacio Chavez warns the town with a strident clamor, tugging frantically; be it wedding or discovery of gold or returns from the county elections, the bell-ringer cunningly makes the bells talk.

Out on the desert a man might stop and listen, forming his surmise as the sounds surged to meet him through the heat and silence. He might smile, if he knew San Juan, as he caught the jubilant message tapped swiftly out of the bronze bell which had come, men said, with Coronado; he might sigh at the lugubrious, slow-swelling voice of the big bell which had come hitherward long ago with the retinue of Marco de Niza, wondering what old friend or enemy, perchance, had at last closed his ears to all of Ignacio Chavez's music. Or, at a sudden fury of clanging, the man far out on the desert might hurry on, goading his burro impatiently, to know what great event had occurred in the old adobe town of San Juan.

It is three hundred and fifty years and more since the six bells of San Juan came into the new world to toll across that land of quiet mystery which is the southwest. It is a hundred years since an all-but-forgotten priest, Francisco Calderon, found them in various devastated mission churches, a.s.sembled them, and set them chiming in the old garden. There, among the pear-trees and olives and yellow roses, they still cast their shadows in sun and moonlight, in silence, and in echoing chimes.

CHAPTER I

THE BELLS RING

Ignacio Chavez, Mexican that he styled himself, Indian that the community deemed him, or "breed" of badly mixed blood that he probably was, made his loitering way along the street toward the Mission. A thin, yellowish-brown _cigarita_ dangling from his lips, his wide, dilapidated conical hat tilted to the left side of his head in a listless sort of concession to the westering sun, he was, as was customary with him, utterly at peace. Ten minutes ago he had had twenty cents; two minutes after the acquisition of his elusive wealth he had exchanged the two dimes for whiskey at the Casa Blanca; the remaining eight minutes of the ten he required to make his way, as he naively put it, "between h.e.l.l and heaven."

For from a corner of the peaceful old Mission garden at one end of the long street one might catch a glimpse of the Casa Blanca at the other end sprawling in the sun; between the two st.u.r.dy walled buildings had the town strung itself as it grew. As old a relic as the church itself was La Casa Blanca, and since San Juan could remember, in all matters antipodal to the religious calm of the padres' monument. Deep-shaded doorways let into the three-feet-thick earthen walls, waxed floors, green tables, and bar and cool looking-gla.s.ses . . . a place which invited, lured, held, and frequently enough finally d.a.m.ned.

San Juan, in the languid philosophy of Ignacio Chavez, was what you will. It epitomized the universe. You had everything here which the soul of man might covet. Never having dwelt elsewhere since his mother bore him here upon the rim of the desert and with the San Juan mountains so near that, Ignacio Chavez pridefully knew, a man standing upon the Mesa Alta might hear the ringing of his bells, he experienced a pitying contempt for all those other spots in the world which were so plainly less favored. What do you wish, senor? Fine warm days? You have them here. Nice cool nights for sound slumber? Right here in San Juan, _amigo mio_. A desert across which the eye may run without stopping until it be tired, a wonderful desert whereon at dawn and dusk G.o.d weaves all of the alluring soft mists of mystery? Shaded canons at noonday with water and birds and flowers? Behold the mountains.

Everything desirable, in short. That there might be men who desired the splash of waves, the sheen of wet beaches, the boom of surf, did not suggest itself to one who had never seen the ocean. So, then, San Juan was "what you will." A man may fix his eye upon the little Mission cross which is always pointing to heaven and G.o.d; or he may pa.s.s through the shaded doors of the Casa Blanca, which, men say, give pathway into h.e.l.l the shortest way.

Ignacio, having meditatively enjoyed his whiskey and listened smilingly to the tinkle of a mandolin in the _patio_ under a grape-vine arbor, had rolled his cigarette and turned his back square upon the devil . . . of whom he had no longer anything to ask. As he went out he stopped in the doorway long enough to rub his back against a corner of the wall and to strike a match. Then, almost inaudibly humming the mandolin air, he slouched out into the burning street.

For twenty years he had striven with the weeds in the Mission garden, and no man during that time dared say which had had the best of it, Ignacio Chavez or the interloping alfileria and purslane. In the matters of a vast leisureliness and tumbling along the easiest way they resembled each other, these two avowed enemies. For twenty years he had looked upon the bells as his own, had filled his eye with them day after day, had thought the first thing in the morning to see that they were there, regarding them as solicitously in the rare rainy weather as his old mother regarded her few mongrel chicks. Twenty full years, and yet Ignacio Chavez was not more than thirty years old, or thirty-five, perhaps. He did not know, no one cared.

He was on his way to attack with his bare brown hands some of the weeds which were spilling over into the walk which led through the garden and to the priest's house. As a matter of fact he had awakened with this purpose in mind, had gone his lazy way all day fully purposing to give it his attention, and had at last arrived upon the scene. The front gate had finally broken, the upper hinge worn out; Ignacio carefully set the ramshackly wooden affair back against the fence, thinking how one of these days he would repair it. Then he went between the bigger pear-tree and the _lluvia de oro_ which his own hands had planted here, and stood with legs well apart considering the three bells upon the easterly arch.

"_Que hay, amigos_?" he greeted them. "Do you know what I am going to do for you some fine day? I will build a little roof over you that runs down both ways to shut out the water when it rains. It will make you hoa.r.s.e, too much wet."

That was one of the few dreams of Ignacio's life; one day he was going to make a little roof over each arch. But to-day he merely regarded affectionately the Captain . . . that was the biggest of the bells . . . the Dancer, second in size, and Lolita, the smallest upon this arch. Then he sighed and turned toward the other arch across the garden to see how it was with the Little One, La Golondrina, and Ignacio Chavez. For it was only fair that at least one of the six should bear his name.

Changing his direction thus, moving directly toward the dropping sun, he s.h.i.+fted his hat well over his eyes and so was constrained to note how the weeds were a.s.serting themselves with renewed insolence. He muttered a soft "_maldito_!" at them which might have been mistaken for a caress and determined upon a merciless campaign of extermination just as soon as he could have fitted a new handle to his hoe. Then he paused in front of the Mission steps and lifted his hat, made an elegant bow, and smiled in his own inimitable, remarkably fascinating way. For, under the ragged brim, his eyes had caught a glimpse of a pretty pair of patent-leather slippers, a prettier pair of black-stockinged ankles, and the hem of a white starched skirt.

Nowhere are there eyes like the eyes of old Mexico. Deep and soft and soulful, though the man himself may have a soul like a bit of charred leather; velvety and tender, though they may belong to an out-and-out cutthroat; expressive, eloquent even, though they are the eyes of a peon with no mind to speak of; night-black, and like the night filled with mystery. Ignacio Chavez lifted such eyes to the eyes of the girl who had been watching him and spontaneously gave her the last iota of his ready admiration.

"It is a fine day, senorita," he told her, displaying two glistening rows of superb teeth friendliwise. "And the garden . . . _Ah, que hay mas bonito en todo el mundo_? You like it, no?"

It was slow music when Ignacio Chavez spoke, all liquid sounds and tender cadences. When he had cursed the weeds it was like love-making.

A _d_ in his mouth became a softened _th_; from the lips of such as the bell-ringer of San Juan the snapping Gringo oath comes metamorphosed into a gentle "Gah-tham!" The girl, to whom the speech of Chavez was something as new and strange as the face of the earth about her, regarded him with grave, curious eyes.

She was seated against the Mission wall upon the little bench which no one but Ignacio guessed was to be painted green one of these fine days, a bronze-haired, gray-eyed girl in white skirt and waist, and with a wide panama hat caught between her clasped hands and her knee. For a moment she was perhaps wondering how to take him; then with a suddenness that had been all unheralded in her former gravity, she smiled. With lips and eyes together as though she accepted his friends.h.i.+p. Ignacio's own smile broadened and he nodded his delight.

"It is truly beautiful here," she admitted, and had Ignacio possessed a t.i.the of that sympathetic comprehension which his eyes lied about he would have detected a little note of eagerness in her voice, would have guessed that she was lonely and craved human companions.h.i.+p. "I have been sitting here an hour or two. You are not going to send me away, are you?"

Ignacio looked properly horrified.

"If I saw an angel here in the garden, senorita," he exclaimed, "would I say _zape_ to it? No, no, senorita; here you shall stay a thousand years if you wish. I swear it."

He was all sincerity; Ignacio Chavez would no sooner think of being rude to a beautiful young woman than of crying "Scat!" to an angel.

But as to staying here a thousand years . . . she glanced through the tangle of the garden to the tiny graveyard and shook her head.

"You have just come to San Juan?" he asked. "To-day?"

"Yes," she told him. "On the stage at noon."

"You have friends here?"

Again she shook her head.

"Ah," said Ignacio. He straightened for a brief instant and she could see how the chest under his s.h.i.+rt inflated. "A tourist. You have heard of this garden, maybe? And the bells? So you travelled across the desert to see?"

The third time she shook her head.

"I have come to live here," she returned quietly.

"But not all alone, senorita!"

"Yes." She smiled at him again. "All alone."

"Mother of G.o.d!" he said within himself. And presently to her: "I did not see the stage come to-day; in San Juan one takes his siesta at that hour. And it is not often that the stage brings new people from the railroad."

In some subtle way he had made of his explanation an apology. While his slow brown fingers rolled a cigarette he stared away through the garden and across the desert with an expression half melancholy, half merely meditative, which made the girl wonder what his thoughts were.

When she came to know him better she would know too that at times like this he was not thinking at all.

"I believe this is the most profoundly peaceful place in the world,"

she said quietly, half listlessly setting into words the impression which had clung about her throughout the long, still day. "It is like a strange dream-town, one sees no one moving about, hears nothing. It is just a little sad, isn't it?"

He had followed her until the end, comprehending. But sad? How that?

It was just as it should be; to ears which had never been filled with the noises or rus.h.i.+ng trains and cars and all of the traffic of a city, what sadness could there be in the very natural calm of the rim of the desert? Having no satisfactory reply to make, Ignacio merely muttered, "Si, senorita," somewhat helplessly and let it go with that.

"Tell me," she continued, sitting up a little and seeming to throw off the oppressively heavy spell of her environment, "who are the important people hereabouts?"

_La gente_? Oh, Ignacio knew them well, all of them! There was Senor Engle, to begin with. The banker of whom no doubt she had heard? He owned a big _residencia_ just yonder; you could catch the gleam of its white walls through a clump of cottonwoods, withdrawn aloofly from San Juan's street. Many men worked for him; he had big cattle and sheep ranches throughout the county; he paid well and loaned out much money.

Also he had a beautiful wife and a truly marvellously beautiful daughter. And horses such as one could not look upon elsewhere. Then there was Senor Nortone, as Ignacio p.r.o.nounced him; a sincere friend of Ignacio Chavez and a man fearless and true and extravagantly to be admired, who, it appeared, was the sheriff. Not a family man; he was too young yet. But soon; oh, one could see! It would be Ignacio who would ring the bells for the wedding when Roderico Nortone married himself with the daughter of the banker.

"He is what you call a gunman, isn't he?" asked the girl, interested.

"I heard two of the men on the stage talking of him. They called him Roddy Norton; he is the one, isn't he?"