about
them presently. It's polite to answer questions first. You was asking
me a while back how I come here. I come over those mountains, young
man, and I don't put in the adjectives I applied to them in the process
outer respect to your youth. But they'd make a man swear if he'd spent
his life psalm singin' before."

"We know," said Roldan, grimly. "We've been in them. What did you eat?
And did you get lost?"

"I ate red ants mor' 'n once, and I usually was lost. When I arrived at
that Mission down yonder the amount of flesh I had between my bones and
my skin wouldn't have filled a thimble. But that priest--he's a great
man if ever there was one--soon fixed me up. I lived like a prince for
a month, and I could be there yet if I liked, but I'd kinder got used
to livin' alone and I liked it, so I come here. Besides, I found so
much prayin' and bell ringin' wearin' on the nerves, to say nothin' of
too many Indians. I ain't got no earthly use for Indians. Why priests
or anybody else run after Indians beats me. Where I was brought up 't
was the other way. They're after us with a scalpin' knife, and if we're
after them at all it's with all the lead we kin git. If the murderin'
dirty beasts is willin' to stay where they belong, well, I for one
believe in lettin' 'em."

"Do you--ah--like the priest, Don Jim?"

"What? Well, that's better than 'Don Himy,' as they call me down there.
You bet I like the priest. He's a gentleman, and as square as they make
'em, that is, with a poor devil like me; I guess he's one too much for
your dons when he feels that way. But he's a man every inch of him,
afraid of nothin' under God's heaven, and as kind and generous as a--as
some women. What he rots in this God-forsaken place for I can't make
out."

"What did you come to California for?"

"Well, that ain't bad. I come here, my son, because I was lookin' for a
cold climate. My own was warm, accordin' to my taste, and somehow
Californy seemed as if it ought to be fur enough away to be cool and
nice."

"It's very hot in the valleys."

"So it is. So it is. But as you see, I prefer the mountains."

"Do you often go to the Mission?"

"Every month or so I go down and have a chin with Padre Osuna. It keeps
my Spanish in, and I shouldn't like to lose sight of him. I got word
from him the other day that he wanted to see me mighty particular, and
I'm wonderin' what's in the wind. Maybe you heard him say."

"No," said Roldan; but he guesse