I crossed an immense valley covered with mesquite as high as my head. Twice horsemen passed, probably only _pacificos_, but I took no chances. Beyond that valley lay another, about seven miles long. Now there were bare mountains all around, and ahead loomed a range of fantastic white, pink, and yellow hills. After about four hours, with stiff legs and bloody feet, a backache and a spinning head, I rounded these and came in sight of the alamo trees and low adobe walls of the Hacienda del Pelayo. The peons gathered around, listening to my story. "_Que carrai-i-i-i!_" they murmured. "But it is impossible to walk from La Cadena in one day! _Pobrecito_! You must be tired! Come now and eat. And to-night there will be a bed." "My house is yours," said Don Felipe, the blacksmith. "But are you quite sure the _colorados_ are not coming this way? The last time they paid us a visit" (he pointed to the blackened walls of the Casa Grande) "they killed four _pacificos_ who refused to join them." He put his arm through mine. "Come now, _amigo_, and eat." "If there were only some place to bathe first!" At this they smiled and led me behind the hacienda, along a little stream overhung with willows, whose banks were the most vivid green. The water gushed out from under a high wall, and over that wall reared the gnarled branches of a giant alamo. We entered a little door; there they left me. The ground inside sloped sharply up, and the wall—it was faded pink—followed the contour of the land. Sunk in the middle of the enclosure was a pool of crystal water. The bottom was white sand. At one end of the pool the water fountained up from a hole in the bottom. A faint steam rose from the surface. It was hot water. There was a man already standing up to his neck in the water, a man with a circle shaved on the top of his head. "Señor," he said, "are you a Catholic?" "No." "Thank God," he returned briefly. "We Catholics are liable to be intolerant. Are you a Mexican?" "No, señor." "It is well," he said, smiling sadly. "I am a priest and a Spaniard. I have been made to understand that I am not wanted in this beautiful land, señor. God is good. But He is better in Spain than He is in Mexico...." I let myself slowly down into the pellucid, hot depths. The pain and the soreness and the weariness fled shuddering up my body. I felt like a disembodied spirit. Floating there in the warm embrace of that marvelous pool, with the crooked gray branches of the alamo above our heads, we discussed philosophy. The fierce sky cooled slowly, and the rich sunlight climbed little by little up the pink wall.