One approached over a sage-brush plain that appeared to run level and unbroken to the base of the distant mountains; then without warning, one suddenly found oneself upon the brink of a precipice, of a chasm in the earth over two hundred feet deep, the sides sheer cliffs, but cliffs of earth, not rock. Drawing rein at the edge, one looked down into a sunken world of green fields and gardens, with a pink adobe town, at the bottom of this great ditch. The men and mules walking about down there, or plowing the fields, looked like the figures of a child's Noah's ark. Down the middle of the arroyo, through the sunken fields and pastures, flowed a rushing stream which came from the high mountains. Its original source was so high, indeed, that by merely laying an open wooden trough up the opposite side of the arroyo, the Mexicans conveyed the water to the plateau at the top. This sluice was laid in sections that zigzagged up the face of the cliff. Father Vaillant always stopped to watch the water rushing up the side of the precipice like a thing alive; an ever-ascending ladder of clear water, gurgling and clouding into silver as it climbed. Only once before, he used to tell the natives, in Italy, had he seen water run up hill like that. The water thus diverted was but a tiny thread of the full creek; the main stream ran down the arroyo over a white rock bottom, with green willows and deep hay grass and brilliant wild flowers on its banks. Evening primroses, the fireweed, and butterfly weed grew to a tropical size and brilliance there among the sedges. But this was the first time Father Vaillant had ever gone down into the Hondo after dark, and at the edge of the cliff he decided not to put Contento to so cruel a test. "He can do it," he said to Trinidad, "but I will not make him." He dismounted and went on foot down the steep winding trail. They reached Father Lucero's house before midnight. Half the population of the town seemed to be in attendance, and the place was lit up as if for a festival. The sick man's chamber was full of Mexican women, sitting about on the floor, wrapped in their black shawls, saying their prayers with lighted candles before them. One could scarcely step for the candles. Father Vaillant beckoned to a woman he knew well, Conçeption Gonzales, and asked her what was the meaning of this. She whispered that the dying Padre would have it so. His sight was growing dim, and he kept calling for more lights. All his life, Conçeption sighed, he had been so saving of candles, and had mostly done with a pine splinter in the evenings. In the corner, on the bed, Father Lucero was groaning and tossing, one man rubbing his feet, and another wringing cloths out of hot water and putting them on his stomach to dull the pain. Señora Gonzales whispered that the sick man had been gnawing the sheets for pain; she had brought over her best ones, and they were chewed to lacework across the top.