Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/71

 Molinero as he must be called henceforward, was a stranger. He was so filled with admiration for the vast work that spread before him, revealed so unexpectedly in a land he had thought to find almost untouched by civilization, that the best he could do was stand there on the dam and gaze, and draw his breath in deep gusts of wonderment.

The fields were lively with bright colors where the Indians were at work, some with hoes among cabbage and turnips and potatoes, some with spades mending the embankments of ditches where the lifegiving water sparkled as it ran. Some were threshing grain by throwing it under the feet of numerous cattle yoked up four abreast and driven at a trot around a circular corral. Near them others were rendering tallow, so Padre Mateo said, in vats built of bricks and lined with plaster. In a vineyard enclosed by a high adobe wall, women and children were heaping ox-drawn carts with grapes.

"There is none of the corruption of idleness here," Padre Mateo said, pride and satisfaction in his voice.

"It's a beautiful place! There's room for a thousand farms in this valley—ten thousand, I expect," Juan Molinero replied.

"Not at this time," Padre Mateo denied. "We want no more encroachment on the mission lands. They are hemming us already, they are beginning to grumble that the mission cattle and sheep are eating up the grass. No, we do not want any more farms or towns, Juan. That is a mistake of the