It was on this night that the Enemy of Souls appeared to Ignacio in an
appalling form. He had retired to a secluded part of the camp and had
sunk upon his knees in prayerful meditation, when he looked up and
perceived the Arch-Fiend in the likeness of a monstrous bear. The Evil
One was seated on his hind legs immediately before him, with his fore
paws joined together just below his black muzzle. Wisely conceiving this
remarkable attitude to be in mockery and derision of his devotions,
the worthy muleteer was transported with fury. Seizing an arquebuse,
he instantly closed his eyes and fired. When he had recovered from
the effects of the terrific discharge, the apparition had disappeared.
Father Jose, awakened by the report, reached the spot only in time to
chide the muleteer for wasting powder and ball in a contest with one
whom a single ave would have been sufficient to utterly discomfit. What
further reliance he placed on Ignacio's story is not known; but, in
commemoration of a worthy Californian custom, the place was called La
Canada de la Tentacion del Pio Muletero, or “The Glen of the Temptation
of the Pious Muleteer,” a name which it retains to this day.
The next morning the party, issuing from a narrow gorge, came upon a
long valley, sear and burnt with the shadeless heat. Its lower extremity
was lost in a fading line of low hills, which, gathering might and
volume toward the upper end of the valley, upheaved a stupendous bulwark
against the breezy North. The peak of this awful spur was just touched
by a fleecy cloud that shifted to and fro like a banneret. Father Jose
gazed at it with mingled awe and admiration. By a singular coincidence,
the muleteer Ignacio uttered the simple ejaculation “Diablo!”
As they penetrated the valley, they soon began to miss the agreeable
life and companionable echoes of the canyon they had quitted. Huge
fissures in the parched soil seemed to gape as with thirsty mouths. A
few squirrels darted from the earth, and disappeared as mysteriously
before the jingling mules. A gray wolf trotted leisurely along just
ahead. But whichever way Father Jose turned, the mountain always
asserted itself and arrested his wandering eye. Out of the dry and arid
valley, it seemed to spring into cooler and bracing life. Deep cavernous
shadows dwelt along its base; rocky fastnesses appeared midway of its
elevation; and on either side huge black hills diverged like massy roots
from a central trunk. His lively fancy pictured these hills peopled with
a majestic and intelligent race of savages; and looking into futurity,
he already saw a monstrous cross crowning the dome-like summit. Far
different were the sensations of the muleteer, who saw in those awful
solitudes only fiery dragons, colossal bears and break-neck trails.
The converts, Concepcion and Incarnacion, trotting modestly beside the
Padre, recognized, perhaps, some manifestation of their former weird
mythology.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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