LITMIR.BIZ

The Bells of San Juan

       Table of Contents

      A Novel

      FOREWORD

       Table of Contents

      THE BELLS

      He who has not heard the bells of San Juan has a journey yet to make. He who has not set foot upon the dusty road which is the one street of San Juan, at times the most silent and deserted of thoroughfares, at other times a mad and turbulent lane between sun-dried adobe walls, may yet learn something of man and his hopes, desires, fears and ruder passions from a pin-point upon the great southwestern map.

      The street runs due north and south, pointing like a compass to the flat gray desert in the one direction, and in the other to the broken hills swept up into the San Juan mountains. At the northern end, that is toward the more inviting mountains, is the old Mission. To right and left of the whitewashed corridors in a straggling garden of pear-trees and olives and yellow roses are two rude arches made of seasoned cedar. From the top cross-beam of each hang three bells.

      They have their history, these bells of San Juan, and the biggest with its deep, mellow voice, the smallest with its golden chimes, seem to be chanting it when they ring. Each swinging tongue has its tale to tell, a tale of old Spain, of Spanish galleons and Spanish gentlemen adventurers, of gentle-voiced priests and sombre-eyed Indians, of conquest, revolt, intrigue, and sudden death. When a baby is born in San Juan, a rarer occurrence than a strong man's death, the littlest of the bells upon the western arch laughs while it calls to all to hearken; when a man is killed, the angry-toned bell pendant from the eastern arch shouts out the word to go billowing across the stretches of sage and greasewood and gama-grass; if one of the later-day frame buildings bursts into flame, Ignacio Chavez warns the town with a strident clamor, tugging frantically; be it wedding or discovery of gold or returns from the county elections, the bell-ringer cunningly makes the bells talk.

      Out on the desert a man might stop and listen, forming his surmise as the sounds surged to meet him through the heat and silence. He might smile, if he knew San Juan, as he caught the jubilant message tapped swiftly out of the bronze bell which had come, men said, with Coronado; he might sigh at the lugubrious, slow-swelling voice of the big bell which had come hitherward long ago with the retinue of Marco de Niza, wondering what old friend or enemy, perchance, had at last closed his ears to all of Ignacio Chavez's music. Or, at a sudden fury of clanging, the man far out on the desert might hurry on, goading his burro impatiently, to know what great event had occurred in the old adobe town of San Juan.

      It is three hundred and fifty years and more since the six bells of San Juan came into the new world to toll across that land of quiet mystery which is the southwest. It is a hundred years since an all-but-forgotten priest, Francisco Calderón, found them in various devastated mission churches, assembled them, and set them chiming in the old garden. There, among the pear-trees and olives and yellow roses, they still cast their shadows in sun and moonlight, in silence, and in echoing chimes.