Father Roman expressed in a few words his thankfulness at hearing of the
Senor Administrador's safety.
The hour of oration had gone by in the silvery ringing of a bell in the
little belfry. The belt of forest closing the entrance of the valley
stood like a screen between the low sun and the street of the village.
At the other end of the rocky gorge, between the walls of basalt and
granite, a forest-clad mountain, hiding all the range from the San Tome
dwellers, rose steeply, lighted up and leafy to the very top. Three
small rosy clouds hung motionless overhead in the great depth of blue.
Knots of people sat in the street between the wattled huts. Before the
casa of the alcalde, the foremen of the night-shift, already assembled
to lead their men, squatted on the ground in a circle of leather
skull-caps, and, bowing their bronze backs, were passing round the gourd
of mate. The mozo from the town, having fastened his horse to a wooden
post before the door, was telling them the news of Sulaco as the
blackened gourd of the decoction passed from hand to hand. The grave
alcalde himself, in a white waistcloth and a flowered chintz gown with
sleeves, open wide upon his naked stout person with an effect of a gaudy
bathing robe, stood by, wearing a rough beaver hat at the back of his
head, and grasping a tall staff with a silver knob in his hand.
These insignia of his dignity had been conferred upon him by the
Administration of the mine, the fountain of honour, of prosperity, and
peace. He had been one of the first immigrants into this valley; his
sons and sons-in-law worked within the mountain which seemed with its
treasures to pour down the thundering ore shoots of the upper mesa, the
gifts of well-being, security, and justice upon the toilers. He listened
to the news from the town with curiosity and indifference, as if
concerning another world than his own. And it was true that they
appeared to him so. In a very few years the sense of belonging to a
powerful organization had been developed in these harassed, half-wild
Indians. They were proud of, and attached to, the mine. It had secured
their confidence and belief. They invested it with a protecting and
invincible virtue as though it were a fetish made by their own hands,
for they were ignorant, and in other respects did not differ appreciably
from the rest of mankind which puts infinite trust in its own creations.
It never entered the alcalde's head that the mine could fail in its
protection and force. Politics were good enough for the people of the
town and the Campo. His yellow, round face, with wide nostrils, and
motionless in expression, resembled a fierce full moon. He listened to
the excited vapourings of the mozo without misgivings, without surprise,
without any active sentiment whatever.
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