Michener, James A. (22 page)

Damian, heartened by the possibility that he might be the agent for ending the raids and retaliations, returned to the western lands and persuaded his Apache to send for those who controlled the south. With delight he listened as the newcomers consented: 'We'll go and talk, and if he's like you, a man of bravery, perhaps . . .'

A party of sixteen, led by Damian and the squaw who had made the earlier trip, rode east one March morning in 1736, arriving at Bexar four days later. When the six missions were in sight, Damian and the woman rode on ahead, sounding signals that brought many men to the walls. Captain Alvaro, not at all certain that truce was possible, cautioned his men to remain alert, then nervously admitted the Apache into the presidio.

In sign language the Apache talked incessantly for two days, consuming a vast amount of food as they did, and at dusk on the second day, at a signal from their chief, they suddenly raised a war cry, slew the two guards, and ran outside to join some ninety more of their men who had crept close during the preceding days.

They were a force powerful enough to have assaulted the presidio itself had they so decided; instead, they drove off more than a hundred and twenty Bexar horses, galloping westward into the shadows, whooping and screaming and firing their French guns in the air.

Fray Damian was so distraught after this debacle, which he had unwittingly engineered, that he fell into a kind of trance, not insensible to those about him but quite unable to talk or act. He lay on his straw paillasse staring at the ceiling, indifferent to food, and from time to time calling out the word Domingo, but when attendants hurried to see what he wanted, they found him weeping and unable to speak further.

His health deteriorated rapidly, and it was only the care of Benita, sent to the mission by Alvaro, that saved him. She was a woman of thirty-two now, and as lively in spirit as when Damian had first seen her promenading around the square at Zacatecas. Her eyes still glowed mischievously and her skin remained unblemished, as if time were loath to touch something so flawless. Most surprising of all, under these deplorable circumstances, she still retained a cheerfulness that prevented her from taking troubles too seriously.

'Come now, Damian! We need you in Bexar,' she said teasingly. Disregarding mission rules, she propped open the door to his cell,

brought in flowers, and personally cooked nourishing meals for him. When he seemed to revive, with senses clarified so that he could understand what she was saying, she assured him that her husband did not blame him for the disaster with the Apache: They're savage brutes, and what could anyone expect?'

i expected peace,' Damian said.

'No one should have been so easily deceived.' she said.

'Were you?'

She reflected on this for some moments, then said the right thing: 'No, but I love you for being such a dear, good man and I prayed that you might be right.' As soon as she said this she realized that her words stressed the fact that he had been wrong, so she added quickly: 'It's always good to try, Damian. Maybe another time . . .'

As he watched her move about his cell he appreciated anew the miracle that even though he was forbidden by church law to have her for himself, she was nevertheless a part of his being, a mystical wife in another world whose conventions he could not fathom. She was the woman he had loved from that first moment when he saw her laughing with the other girls, and that she should now be so close to him, and mending his broken spirit, was a joy he could share with no one, not even with Jesus Christ in his prayers.

When Damian finally rose from his cot, a most pleasing honor awaited him: Simon Garza had finished his fourteen Stations of the Cross, but their installation had been deferred until Damian could supervise it. Actually, all he did was stand in his adobe church and tell the workmen how to hang the carvings, but when the light fell across them, showing the marvelous detail Garza had achieved with his rude chisels, tears came to his eyes and he fell to his knees and prayed. It seemed that God Himself must have bent down and guided Garza's hand, for Damian could not conceive how an illiterate mestizo carpenter could otherwise have accomplished such a work.

When the carvings were in place, Captain Alvaro, supported by friars from the other missions, told Damian: 'We must have a celebration to dedicate your Stations,' and it was arranged that a cloth covering would be draped over each carving, and that Garza would move from one location to the next, pulling aside the cloth to reveal the beauty beneath. Damian would expound the religious significance while the choir trained by Fray Domingo sang holy verses he had taught them. Fray Eusebio, still protesting that he was not worthy of such high honor, would represent the other missions.

It was the culmination of Damian's custodianship. Indian women filled the rude church with flowers, and as the veils fell away and sunlight illuminated the carvings, Damian thought that Jesus Christ Himself had come to Bexar to relive those tragic, hallowed moments when he moved painfully along the road to Golgotha.

Damian's exultation was short-lived, because when word of the episode with the Apache reached Mexico City, the viceroy cast about for a new governor of Tejas who would bring stricter order to the region. Unfortunately, he had no one available to send, but a conniving assistant who wanted to rid himself of a real incompetent whispered: 'Excellency, why not send Franquis? He's a Canary Islander and he'll know how to handle things.'

What a sad miscalculation! If one searched the archives to find an example of Spanish colonial policy at its worst, one would surely select Don Carlos Benites Franquis de Lugo, a vain, arrogant, opinionated fop who never displayed a shred of either courage or discernment but who did distinguish himself as one of the most inept and vengeful Spaniards ever to function overseas. In fact, he was too obtuse even to realize that his assignment to Tejas was a demotion, for he boasted to his friends: 'I'm to restore Spanish dignity in an area which has forgotten what discipline means.'

The character of his administration was defined when he reached San Luis Potosi, where he raged at the local garrison for not having fired enough salutes to honor a dignitary of his exalted stripe: i am, after all, Governor of Tejas!' At Saltillo he abused the entire establishment because not all the officials were lined up to meet him as he entered town, but he reserved his most ridiculous behavior for San )uan Bautista, a hard-working post with limited amenities. He was so incensed by the lack of spit-and-polish in the presidio that he dismissed everyone on the spot, and then had to hire them back when he learned that no replacements could reach the forlorn outpost in less than a year.

In Tejas he took immediate dislike to the Saldana brothers, accusing Fray Damian of being tardy in asking Zacatecas for a replacement for Fray Domingo, and of deepening the Santa Teresa ditch without written authority. But his special scorn was reserved for Captain Alvaro, whom he denigrated as follows:

Through arrant cowardice he failed to protect the ranch of Mision Santa Teresa against the Apache, causing the Blessed Fray Domingo, may God smile upon his martyrdom, to lose his life most horribly. Later, acting without reason or military competence, he allowed the very

Apache who killed Fray Domingo, may God smile upon his martyrdom

He became so indignant as he composed this report, he ended by convincing himself that Alvaro was a cowardly incompetent: 'Handcuff the recreant and throw him in jail, being sure that his legs are tightly chained.'

To demonstrate his own heroism, he organized a hastily put-together expedition to subdue the Apache—about fifty Spaniards and their poorly armed helpers against ten thousand scattered Apache—and his troops would have been annihilated had not Simon Garza and two Yuta scouts detected a concentration of warriors hiding in a mountain pass and prevailed upon the governor to beat a disorganized retreat. As it was, the Apache overtook three stragglers and tortured them viciously.

In this sad year of 1736, Tejas saw Spanish occupancy at its worst. Travel between Bexar and the distant capital at Los Adaes was interdicted by the Apache; food was scarce because the irrigation ditches, without Damian's supervision, were not functioning properly; and all else was in disarray because so many of the able administrators languished in jail with chains about their legs.

It was in this ugly setting that Fray Damian proved what a quintessential Spaniard he was; the first responsibility of any man, even before his duty to God, was to protect his own family. Lands for his son, a husband for his daughter, a job for his nephew, an appointment for his brother-in-law—these were the obligations of a Spanish man.

He was so outraged by the arrest of his brother, and so distraught by what might happen to Benita and her three sons, who were, after all, like his own, that he devised a procedure that would have delighted Machiavelli, for he used stamped paper stolen from the presidio on which to press it:

Respected Archbishop Vizarron. Congratulations on your great success as Viceroy of all Mexico. The King could have chosen no one better fitted for that exalted position, and I stand ready as a humble friar to assist you in all you do.

My brother, Captain Alvaro de Saldana of the Saldafias of Saldana, has served bravely on the frontier, and I believe there is a law which states that an officer who has seen active duty in any new territory is entitled to six leagues of Crown lands upon retirement. On behalf of my brother, now occupied with other matters, I beg you to make this award

There is, a few miles west of here in a bend of the Medina, a stretch of land called Rancho El Codo, once occupied by the ranch of this mission. It has now been abandoned because of Apache raids and is of no practical use to anyone until the Apache arc subdued. My brother and his wife, in years to come, can tame this land if you will cede it to them now in reward for the hard work they have completed on the frontier of your dominion.

In composing this seditious letter, Damian was aware of three crimes he was committing: The ranch belongs to the church, and I'm stealing it for my family. I'm drafting letters when Governor Franquis has forbidden anyone to do so. And I'm trying to slip my letters past the officials at San Juan Bautista, who have orders to prevent the entry into Mexico proper of clandestine letters. But then he thought of Benita and her children: I must take the chances.

In one of the other missions he found a Franciscan who was heading back to Zacatecas, and since this friar also hated Franquis, he volunteered to take the risk. The letter reached the archbishop, who was now viceroy,.and when he inquired about the reputation of the Saldanas he found it to be exemplary, whereupon he signed a grant awarding former Captain Saldaria more than nine thousand leagues, twenty-five thousand acres, along the Medina.

Later, when he learned of Damian's insubordination, he bore no resentment, for by this time it was evident even to Madrid that Governor Franquis was a horrendous mistake, and he was deposed after little more than a year of his reckless despotism. The unfortunate man had been correct, however, in some of his charges against Damian: he had been so preoccupied with building the mission that he had not attended to the winning of souls, and repeatedly he had left the mission without permission to go wandering through the Apacheria. When it became apparent that he was to be removed from Santa Teresa, Damian recommended that Fray Eusebio be given permanent charge of the mission, but Eusebio protested that he was far too humble to warrant such an exalted position. Instead, Zacatecas sent up the trail to Bexar two young friars to assume control at Santa Teresa, one with major orders, to replace Fray Damian, and one with minor, to take over the work done by Fray Domingo.

Damian greeted the two with the warmest brotherhood and even relief, for he knew that his effectiveness had waned. He was fifty-one now, and extremely tired, so that rest in some quiet corner of the Franciscan empire seemed highly desirable, but as the

father-principal in Zacatecas had proposed, he would stay on at Santa Teresa until the transition had been smoothly made.

The new friars were enthusiastic young men prepared to repair the situation in Bexar, as they phrased it, and their eagerness to take command provided Damian time to evaluate what he had accomplished on the frontier.

'Nothing,' he told Alvaro and Benita. 'I feel my life's been a waste.' When they asked why, he replied: 'Conversions to Jesus? I haven't brought two dozen souls to salvation.'

'That was Domingo's task,' Benita said consolingly.

'But I've done so little.' He felt old, and futile, and superseded.

'Let's look at what you and I have accomplished,' Alvaro proposed, and he recited their litany of constructive deeds: 'We brought order to a region which knew it not. And we've established regular mail connections with Saltillo.' On he went, naming those simple deeds which taken together represented the quiet triumph of civilization.

But this was not enough for Benita, because she better than either of the brothers thought she knew the cause of Damian's malaise: He sees his life running out, and without a wife or children to represent him when he's gone, he fears it might have been in vain. So she began to tick off his particular achievements: 'You built the irrigation systems, and when Mision Espada needed an aqueduct for its water supply, you showed them how to build one.' Stopping, she formed an arch with her fingers and said: 'Building an arch that will stand is something, believe me.'

She spoke of the compound walls he had erected, of the church, of the houses for the Indians. And then she mentioned the one thing of which she knew he was truly proud: 'You encouraged Simon to finish his Stations of the Cross. Yes, when we three die we shall leave in Bexar an enduring memory.'

When she uttered the word die, applying it even to herself, Damian shuddered, and in the silence that followed he acknowledged for the first time that his mournfulness stemmed from growing awareness of his own approaching death: 'Life is so brief. We should have accomplished so much and we did so little.'