Captain Fly-by-Night

His great body stretched on the dirt floor in a shady corner of the barracks-room of the presidio … a fortified military settlement … his long moustache drooped, his big mouth open, Sergeant Carlos Cassara snored.

His face was purple from wine and the heat; for the air was still and stagnant this siesta hour, and empty vessels on the table nearby told of the deep drinking that had been done.

Scattered about were a corporal and a dozen soldiers, all sleeping and snoring. Against the wall, half a score of feet from the slumbering sergeant, an Indian neophyte … a new entrant … had dropped his palm-leaf and was glancing around the room from beneath eyelids that seemed about to close.

Outside was the red dust, a foot deep on the highway, and the burning sun. The fountain before the mission splashed lazily; down at the beach it seemed that the tide had not its usual energy. Neophytes slept in the shadows cast by the mission walls. Here and there a robed friar went about his business despite the heat and the hour. There was no human being traveling El Camino Real—the king’s highway—as far as a man with good eyes could see. You can hear the whole story.