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"Better to end the Mission than allow it to harbor a nest of thieves and cutthroats," said Don Blas.

Father Vicente started to walk up and down. Then suddenly he halted. His red tassel was hanging over one eye. "I will go and talk to them myself," he said.

"To what purpose?" the capitán asked.

"So they can flee again and kill my cattle," Don Blas replied.

"I have decided to go," Father Vicente said and left the two men striding back and forth.

"You will get yourself killed," the capitán shouted after him.

"In a good cause," said Father Vicente.

"In a cause without merit," Captain Cordova shouted. "Remember that you only make our responsibilities more dangerous."

"You have no responsibilities with these boys and girls," Father Vicente stopped to reply.

"Except to bring them to justice," said Capitán Cordova. "And it will not be done with words."

"We will use words instead of bullets," Father Vicente said. "If words do nothing then you can use your bullets and your swords."

"We have a good supply of both," said Capitán Cordova.

Chapter 24

T
HREE DAYS
after Capitán Cordova and Don Blas left the Mission Father Vicente set off for the Corrientes ranch to talk to the runaways.

He took me with him because he knew that Stone Hands liked me. I did not like to leave Karana in a place that still was strange to her, so she came along and also Mando, because the fishing was poor.

We went on foot, as was the padre's custom. He offered Karana a horse, but she refused. I rode a fast gelding because I did not like to walk that far and because I thought that we might need a horse. As things turned out, we did. To be truthful, we could have used two or three on our long journey to the Corrientes ranch.

Captain Cordova did not go, to his great disappointment.

"You ride there with your soldiers and your saber rattling," Father Vicente said, "and they will flee when you are still five miles away."

"I will go alone," said the capitán.

"But your saber will still rattle."

"I will leave the saber at home."

"Your helmet will shine."

"I will leave that at home, too."

"And your horse with the silver stirrups and saddle and breast shield?"

"That I will not leave."

"Leave yourself at the ranch," Father Vicente said. "We may need you and your soldiers."

"I will settle them for good," said the capitán.

"That is what I fear," said Father Vicente.

The trail to Box Canyon through the Corrientes ranch was long and winding. There were three very tall pine trees growing on the hill behind the closed canyon and I pointed them out to Karana. She seemed to understand that we were going in that direction.

The main trail, which mostly followed the coastline, ran in a roundabout way. From time to time Karana and her dog would disappear down some side trail and we would wonder if she had gotten lost. But she always showed up ahead of us. She moved twice as fast as we did at a trot that we could not keep up with. She must have had many hills to climb on the Island of the Blue Dolphins.

We followed the stream into the canyon to a shelf of rocks where the stream began from a large spring surrounded by ferns.

We had bent down to drink when Rontu-Aru growled and we looked up to see Stone Hands standing on the rock above us.

He could see in a glance that there were only three of us and a dog, and that we were unarmed. He made a circle around the rock and came down to where we knelt.

He bowed to Father Vicente and favored me with a nod. "You have come a long way for what?" he said.

"To talk to you and your people and to see if you wish to return to the Mission," Father Vicente replied.

"To work hard?" Stone Hands answered.

"Father Merced is gone and we no longer work as we did," the padre said.

"I will not miss him," said Stone Hands.

"Do you miss the church?" Father Vicente asked him.

A dozen or more young men had gathered on the rock above the spring and were watching us. Rontu-Aru was watching them.

"You ask if I miss the church," Stone Hands said. "Yes, I miss it. The hard work especially."

One of the boys standing on the rock asked, "How do the melons grow?"

"Come and see for yourself," the padre said. "We have planted more. You should be there to eat them."

"We will have a good crop," I said, "better than the first, better than last year and the year before and the year before that, they say."

"We will come later," Ricardo Aguilar replied.

"In the middle of the night," Stone Hands said. "When no one is looking."

"Come in the daytime," said Father Vicente, "when everyone is looking. You are welcome."

Stone Hands said, "You are sure Father Merced is in the ground?"

"I helped to put him there," Mando said.

"What of Señor Corrientes and Señor Moreno? And the hombre who owns the stringy chickens?" Stone Hands asked.

"I will repay them," the padre said. "They can come and choose from our herd and our flock what you have taken."

"They have good beef," someone on the rock said. "It was sweet and tender. You did not need a knife to cut it or teeth to chew it. It was good beef."

"But the chickens were tough," Ricardo said. "Like eating a ball of string."

"You have poor teeth," Mando said, "and not many of them."

Rontu-Aru was walking around in back of us, his hair bristling. There was something he did not like. It could have been the tone of the voices of those standing stiffly, with much arrogance, on the rock above the spring. Or it might have been that he was not used to many people moving around and talking so much.

One of the boys tossed a rock in the pond when I stooped to drink again.

"The water is not endless," the boy who had tossed the rock said. "There is less now than before."

"Enough, loco," said Stone Hands to the boy. "Have you heard of courtesy?"

I glanced around. The water was low. Bushes that should have been heavy with berries were stripped bare. I saw the bones of two cows and a horse. The faces of the boys were thin. The bark of a sycamore tree was stripped bare. And when Rosa and Anita came and stood on the rock, I could see that they were thin too. A young woman was peering at me from behind a scrub oak tree. She had a baby in her arms and I could see its ribs, thin as chicken bones.

The tribe was suffering from lack of food and water. They were even eating the bark from trees. I did not blame the boy who tossed the rock into the pool to protest my drinking. Nor Stone Hands who wanted us to think that they had ample to eat and drink. They were starving. That was why he had never sent the message he had promised me.

Chapter 25

F
ATHER
V
ICENTE
also knew that the band was starving. I know this because he was very careful not to mention it. He understood Stone Hands's pride, that he and his people would rather starve in the barren box canyon than beg for help.

"You gain nothing by staying here longer," he said. "We have settled matters with Corrientes and Moreno and Capitán Cordova. All you need do is to follow us back to the Mission."

"To work?" said Stone Hands.

"Yes, but now there is a new Mission law. You will be paid for the work you do."

"How much?"

"Not much, because we are poor. But you will be paid what we can afford. You will have a roof and food to eat." But Father Vicente was quick to add, "You do well enough here I can see."

It was the only lie I had known him to tell.

"Yet," he went on, "you make no money. You sleep on the ground. You do not know when Corrientes and his vaqueros will attack should you choose to stay here on his land. Nor Moreno and his vaqueros."

It was plain to me that Stone Hands had weighed the prospects, one against the other, and had made up his mind to follow Father Vicente. It was decided when an unfortunate thing took place.

The boy who had thrown the rock into the pool while I was drinking now tossed a pebble that struck Karana on the chest. She clutched herself and stepped back. She was more surprised than angry. But Rontu-Aru in three long leaps had the boy by the arm.

Karana's dog was the largest dog I had ever seen. And his teeth were not the teeth of an ordinary dog. They were long and curved and very white. Father Vicente had told me once that Rontu-Aru was a wolf dog, a dog related to the wolves of the north country, from where my people had come long years ago.

In three leaps, as I have said, across the pool, knocking a girl down, he had the boy by the arm and had twisted him to the ground.

"Rontu," Karana shouted. "Rontu-Aru."

Her warning shout was in time. I think the dog would next have had the boy by the throat.

Rontu came back, again leaping the pond, and sat down by his mistress. She gave him a pat on the head and something to eat, a bit of abalone, which she took out of the bag she always carried.

Stone Hands laughed. "You do not heed me," he said to the boy who now was clutching his arm. "Maybe you will heed the dog, huh, Señor Constantino. Next time he may take your arm off. Then you will have a hard time hugging your girl who is a little large to hug with one arm."

Constantino started up the hill to where a small fire was burning and a thin rabbit was turning on a spit. He was angry.

"This Constantino knows more than anybody," Stone Hands said to Father Vicente. "More than God, I think."

Night was coming on. As it was, we would have to go the last league in the dark.

"We leave now," the father said. "We are here to ask you to come home with us. If you do not like the Mission this time, then go. I will not follow you again."

He wore a long robe. He now kilted it up around his knees, which were bony but strong. He could go all day and not tire from walking. He wore his tassled hat.

Stone Hands glanced around—at the peeled bark of the sycamore tree, at the dwindling pool of water, at the small fire on the hill and the skinny rabbit that was roasting. He glanced at the girl with the baby whose bones looked like sticks. At his back and on two sides were granite cliffs. He must have seen it all, in one hopeless glance.

For a while he watched Constantino walking slowly up the hill to where the rabbit was cooking. Now and again Constantino would stop to whack at a bush with his sharp machete.

Stone Hands called an Indian call. His group came down the hill and those at the spring gathered around him.

"We will go," he said quietly to Father Vicente and started off down the stream. "But we will not pass the ranch of Señor Corrientes."

As he spoke the loud sound of metal striking metal came from the hill where the fire was burning. Constantino had struck the pot with his knife, scattering the food and the burning wood.

Everyone stopped and looked back. Five boys had stayed with Constantino and were trying to put out the fire. But very quickly it spread. It caught the dry grass and the pine needles and in an instant began to lick at the three trees nearby.

There was a hot wind blowing from the east—the kind we call a
Santana
—and it began to fan the flames. The three pine trees became three flaming torches.

"
Vámanos!
" Father Vicente shouted.

The wind was blowing down the canyon toward the Corrientes trail, along the trail that followed the stream we had come by.

Karana said nothing but beckoned to us. One after another, keeping in line and close together, we followed her and her dog.

Great flames leaped up from the three trees. They became one flame. The wind caught it and flung it into the sky and toward the coast like a banner.

Karana was moving fast at a trot, Rontu-Aru at her heels, and we also broke into a trot. Father Vicente took the baby and Stone Hands put his arms around a girl with a bandage on her leg and helped her along.

There was a lagoon that ran along the coast and cut inland in such a way that the fire could not spread to the Mission nor to the Corrientes ranch. But the land between was aflame.

The sound of the fire was louder than the surf. We went fast, for our lives, following Karana, who must have thought of ways of leaving the canyon when we had come in the morning. She must have been in fires before.

Mando said, "We could have gone along the lagoon to the shore." He was disappointed that now he had lost the chance to tell everyone that he had saved us from the fire. "That way we would have reached the sea. Fire does not burn the sea."

I pointed at the waves that the wind sent crashing against the rocks along the shore. "We would have drowned," I said. "Which would you prefer?"

Mando pulled at his ear. He did not like Karana very much because he could not understand what she said. He thought everyone should speak the language he spoke. Unless they did, he thought there was something wrong with their heads and he looked down on them. There were many at the Mission who thought the same. And when Karana learned a few words of Spanish, he and others would smile because she spoke the words in a way that sounded different to them.

He was now impatient. "Stone Hands and his people," he said, "follow the surf."

"Because he would rather risk his life with the sea than with Señor Corrientes," I replied. "And I do not blame him."

"I can do what Stone Hands does," Mando said.

"But you have no reason to prove it."

"I want him to know that I also can defy the sea. I may save someone, even him."

"You had best save yourself."

"He taunts me because I did not catch the big fish."

"That was not your fault."

"Also that I wrecked the boat."

"No one is to blame for the boat."

"Stone Hands thinks so."

"What he thinks is of no importance."

But before I could stop him, Mando was running off toward the shore where great waves were crashing and Stone Hands and his people were trying to make their way along the shore.

Chapter 26

W
E COULD SEE
the flames for a long time. They even shone far out on the sea. But we had crossed the lagoon that ran inland near the Mission. Some lay in the grass and rested and some slept. We did not reach the Mission before daylight.