ad and write the Castillan language. It was well known
that most Americans were so stupid that they could not talk as well as
a Mexican baby of two years, and that often after years of residence
among Spanish people they were still ignorant of the language. And
would you believe it, but it was the sacred truth, this little
American, albeit a mere boy, had the strength of a man. He made that
big heathen Navajo brute Pancho, the mayordomo of Don Preciliano
Chavez, of Las Vegas, stand stark before him in his nakedness, with his
hands raised to Heaven and compelled him, under pain of instant death,
to say his Pater Noster and three Ave Marias. Others said that Don Jose
Lopez was a man of foresight and discretion and saw that the Indians
were on the warpath and very dangerous. Therefore, he prayed to his
patron saint for spiritual guidance and succor. San Miguel, in his
wisdom, sent this young American heretic, as undoubtedly it was best to
fight evil with evil. And when the devil, in the guise of a coyote, led
the Indians to the attack, then he was sorely wounded by the unerring
aim of the gringito's rifle.

Others said that Don Jose Lopez had set up a shrine for the image of
his renowned patron saint, San Miguel, in his provision wagon, which
was being driven by the American boy, and the boy took the bullet which
wounded the coyote so sorely out of the saint's mouth, who had bitten
the sign of the cross thereon. And the evil one, in the likeness of the
coyote, rolled in his agony on the grass when he was hit by the
cross-marked bullet. Of course, the grass took fire and very nearly
burned up the whole caravan.

Other people said they were not surprised to hear of miracles emanating
from the shrine of the patron saint of Don Jose. His grandfather had
whittled this famous image out of a cottonwood tree, whereon a saintly
Penitente had been crucified after the custom of the order of
Flagellants. This Penitente resembled the penitent thief who died on
the cross and entered Paradise with the Saviour in this, that he was
known to be a good horse thief, and as he had died on the cross on a
night of Good Friday, he surely went to Glory Everlasting. Don Jose's
grandfather made a pilgrimage with this image he had made to the City
of Mexico, to have the Archbishop bless it in the cathedral before
Santa Guadalupe. During the ceremony, it was said, there grew a fine
head of flaxen hair on the image and it received beautiful blue eyes.