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- Author: Harrington Strong
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Down this trail, presently, he observed approaching two mounted men, and between their horses walked a third man, and Don Diego could see that ropes ran from this man’s waist to the saddles of the horsemen.
“What, in the name of the saints, have we here?” he exclaimed, getting up from the bench and going closer to the window.
“Ha!” said the landlord at his shoulder. “That will be the prisoner coming now.”
“Prisoner?” said Don Diego, looking at him with a question in his glance.
“A native brought the news a short tune ago, caballero. Once more a fray is in the toils.” “Explain, fat one!”
“The man is to go before the magistrado immediately for his trial. They say that he swindled a dealer in hides, and now must pay the penalty. He wished his trial at San Gabriel, but that was not allowed, since all there are in favor of the missions and the frailes.”
“Who is the man?” Don Diego asked. “He is called Fray Felipe, caballero.”
“What is this? Fray Felipe is an old man, and my good friend. I spent night before the last with him at the hacienda he manages.”
“No doubt he has imposed upon you, caballero, as upon others,” the landlord said.
Don Diego showed some slight interest now. He walked briskly from the tavern and went to the office of the magistrado in a little adobe building on the opposite side of the plaza. The horsemen were just arriving with their prisoner. They were two soldiers who had been stationed at San Gabriel, the frailes having been forced to give them bed and board in the governor’s name.
It was Fray Felipe. He had been forced to walk the entire distance fastened to the saddles of his guards, and there were indications that the horsemen had galloped now and then to test the fray’s powers of endurance.
Fray Felipe’s gown was almost in rags, and was covered with dust and perspiration. Those who crowded around him now gave him jeers and coarse jests, but the fray held his head proudly and pretended not to see or hear them.
The soldiers dismounted and forced him into the magistrado’s office, and the loiterers and natives crowded forward and through the door. Don Diego hesitated a moment, and then stepped toward the door. “One side, scum!” he cried; and the natives gave way before him.
He entered and pressed through the throng. The magistrado saw him and beckoned him to a front seat. But Don Diego did not care to sit at that time.
“What is this we have here?” he demanded. “This is Fray Felipe, a godly man and my friend.”
“He is a swindler,” one of the soldiers retorted.
“If he is, then we can put our trust in no man,” Don Diego observed.
“All this is quite irregular, caballero,” the magistrado insisted, stepping forward. “The charges have been preferred, and the man is here to be tried.” Then Don Diego sat down, and court was convened. The man who made the complaint was an evil-looking fellow who explained that he was a dealer in tallow and hides, and had a warehouse in San Gabriel.
“I went to the hacienda this fray manages and purchased ten hides of him,” he testified. “After giving him the coins in payment and taking them to my storehouse, I found that the hides had not been cured properly. In fact they were ruined. I returned to the hacienda and told the fray as much, demanding that he return the money, which he refused to do.”
“The hides were good,” Fray Felipe put in. “I told him I would return the money when he returned the hides.”
“They were spoiled,” the dealer declared. “My assistant here will testify as much. They caused a stench, and I had them burned immediately.” The assistant testified as much.
“Have you anything to say, fray?” the magistrado asked.
“It will avail me nothing,” Fray Felipe said. “I already am found guilty and sentenced. Were I a follower of a licentious governor instead of a robed Franciscan, the hides would have been good.”
“You speak treason?” the magistrado cried.
“I speak truth.”
The magistrado puckered his lips and frowned. “There has been entirely too much of this swindling,” he said finally. “Because a man wears a robe he cannot rob with impunity. In this case, I deem it proper to make an example, that frailes will see they cannot take advantage of their calling. The fray must repay the man the price of the hides. And for the swindle he shall receive across his bare back ten lashes. And for the words of treason he has spoken, he shall receive five lashes additional. It is a sentence.”
THE NATIVES JEERED AND APPLAUDED. Don Diego’s face went white, and for an instant his eyes met those of Fray Felipe, and in the face of the latter he saw resignation.
The office was cleared, and the soldiers led the fray to the place of execution in the middle of the plaza. Don Diego observed that the magistrado was grinning, and he realized what a farce the trial had been.
“These turbulent times!” he said to a gentleman of his acquaintance who stood near.
They tore Felipe’s robe from his back and started to lash him to the post. But the fray had been a man of great strength in his day, and some of it remained to him in his advanced years; and it Came to him now what ignominy he was to suffer.
Suddenly he whirled the soldiers aside and stooped to grasp the whip from the ground.
“You have removed my robe!” he cried. “I am man now, not fray! One side, dogs!”
He lashed out with the whip. He cut a soldier across the face. He struck at two natives who sprang toward him. And then the throng was upon him, beating him down, kicking and striking at him, disregarding even the soldiers’ orders.
Don Diego Vega felt moved to action. He could not see his friend treated in this manner despite his docile disposition. He rushed into the midst of the throng, calling upon the natives to clear the way. But he felt a hand grasp his arm, and turned to look into the eyes of the magistrado.
“These are no actions for a caballero,” the judge said in a low tone. “The man has been sentenced properly.-When you raise hand to give him aid, you raise hand against his excellency. Have you stopped to think of that, Don Diego Vega?”
Apparently Don Diego had not. And he realized, too, that he could do no good to his friend by interfering now. He nodded his head to the magistrado and turned away.
But he did not go far. The soldiers had subdued Fray Felipe by now and had lashed him to the whipping-post. This was added insult, for the post was used for none except insubordinate natives. The lash was swung through the air, and Don Diego saw blood spurt from Fray Felipe’s bare back.
He turned his face away then, for he could not bear to look. But he could count the lashes by the singing of the whip through the air, and he knew that proud old Fray Felipe was making not the slightest sound of pain and would die without doing so.
He heard the natives laughing and turned back again to find that the whipping was at an end.
“The money must be repaid within two days, or you shall have fifteen lashes more,” the magistrado was saying.
Fray Felipe was untied and dropped to the ground at the foot of the post. The crowd began to melt away. Two frailes who had followed from San Gabriel aided their brother to his feet and led him aside while the natives hooted. Don Diego Vega returned to his house.
“Send me Bernardo,” he ordered his despensero.
The butler bit his lip to keep from grinning as he went to do as he was bidden. Bernardo was a deaf-and-dumb native servant for whom Don Diego had a peculiar use. Within the minute he entered the great living-room and bowed before his master.
“Bernardo, you are a gem,” Don Diego said: “You cannot speak or hear, cannot write or read, and have not sense enough to make your wants known by the sign language. You are the one man in the world to whom I can speak without having my ears talked off in reply. —You do not ‘Ha!’ me at every turn.”
Bernardo bobbed his head as if he understood. He always bobbed his head in that fashion when Don Diego’s lips ceased to move.
“These are turbulent times, Bernardo,” Don Diego continued. “A man can find no place where he can meditate. Even at Fray Felipe’s night before last there came a big sergeant pounding at the door. A man with nerves is in a sorry state. And this whipping of old Fray Felipe— Bernardo, let us hope that this Senor Zorro, who punishes those who work injustice, hears of the affair and acts accordingly.”
Bernardo bobbed his head again.
“As for myself, I am in a pretty pickle,” Don Diego went on. “My father has ordered that I get me a wife, and the senorita I selected will have none of me. I shall have my father taking me by the ear in short order.
“Bernardo, it is time for me to leave this pueblo for a few days. I shall go to the hacienda of my father, to tell him I have got no woman to wed me yet, and ask his indulgence. And there, on the wide hills behind his house, may I hope to find some spot where I may rest and consult the poets for one entire day without highwaymen and sergeants and unjust magistrados bothering me. And you, Bernardo, shall accompany me, of course. I can talk to you without your taking the words out of my mouth.”
Bernardo bobbed his head again. He guessed what was to come. It was a habit of Don Diego’s to talk to him thus for a long time, and always there was a journey afterward. Bernardo liked that, because he worshiped Don Diego, and because he liked to visit the hacienda of Don Diego’s father, where he always was treated with kindness.
The despensero had been listening in the other room and had heard what was said, and now he gave orders for Don Diego’s horse to be made ready and prepared a bottle of wine and water for the master to take with him.
Within a short time Don Diego set out, Bernardo riding mule a short distance behind him. They hurried along the highroad and presently caught up with a small carreta, beside which walked two robed Franciscans, and in which was Fray Felipe, trying to keep back moans of pain. Don Diego dismounted beside the carreta as it stopped. He went over to it and clasped Fray Felipe’s hands in his own.
“My poor friend,” he said.
“It is but another instance of injustice,” Fray Felipe said. “For twenty years we of the missions have been subjected to it, and it grows. The sainted Junipero Serra invaded this land when other men feared, and at San Diego de Alcala he built the first mission of what became a chain, thus giving an empire to the world. Our mistake was that we prospered. We did the work, and others reap the advantages.”
Don Diego nodded, and the other went on:
“They began taking our mission lands from us, lands we had cultivated, which had formed a wilderness and which my brothers had turned into gardens and orchards. They robbed us of worldly goods. And not content with that they now are persecuting us.
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