Legends and Tales | Page 5

heathen face.
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.
At nightfall they reached the base of the mountain. Here Father Jose
unpacked his mules, said vespers, and, formally ringing his bell, called
upon the Gentiles within hearing to come and accept the Holy Faith.
The echoes of the black frowning hills around him caught up the pious
invitation, and repeated it at intervals; but no Gentiles appeared that
night. Nor were the devotions of the muleteer again disturbed, although
he afterward asserted, that, when the Father's exhortation was ended, a
mocking peal of laughter came from the mountain. Nothing daunted by
these intimations of the near hostility of the Evil One, Father Jose
declared his intention to ascend the mountain at early dawn; and before
the sun rose the next morning he was leading the way.
The ascent was in many places difficult and dangerous. Huge fragments
of rock often lay across the trail, and after a few hours' climbing they
were forced to leave their mules in a little gully, and continue the
ascent afoot. Unaccustomed to such exertion, Father Jose often stopped
to wipe the perspiration from his thin cheeks. As the day wore on, a
strange silence oppressed them. Except the occasional pattering of a
squirrel, or a rustling in the chimisal bushes, there were no signs of life.
The half- human print of a bear's foot sometimes appeared before them,
at which Ignacio always crossed himself piously. The eye was

sometimes cheated by a dripping from the rocks, which on closer
inspection proved to be a resinous oily liquid with an abominable
sulphurous smell. When they were within a short distance of the
summit, the discreet Ignacio, selecting a sheltered nook for the camp,
slipped aside and busied himself in preparations for the evening,
leaving the Holy Father to continue the ascent alone. Never was there a
more thoughtless act of prudence, never