And every night after
the sun had set and I'd failed to show up, he'd go to bed heavy-hearted.
Suspense is hard on an old man, sir."
"On young men, too. Go on."
"Well, I'll drop off the train to-morrow afternoon about four o'clock at
a lonely little flag-station called Sespe. After the train leaves Sespe,
it runs south-west for almost twenty miles to the coast, and turns south
to El Toro. Nearly everybody enters the San Gregorio from El Toro, but,
via the short-cut trail from Sespe, I can hike it home in three hours and
arrive absolutely unannounced and unheralded.
"Now, as I pop up over the mile-high ridge back of Sespe, I'll be looking
down on the San Gregorio while the last of the sunlight still lingers
there. You see, sir, I'm only looking at an old picture I've always
loved. Tucked away down in the heart of the valley, there is an old ruin
of a mission--the Mission de la Madre Dolorosa--the Mother of Sorrows.
The light will be shining on its dirty white walls and red-tiled roof,
and I'll sit me down in the shade of a manzanita bush and wait, because
that's my valley and I know what's coming.
"Exactly at six o'clock, I shall see a figure come out on the roof of the
mission and stand in front of the old gallows-frame on which hang eight
chimes that were carried in on mules from the City of Mexico when
Junipero Serra planted the cross of Catholicism at San Diego, in 1769.
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