pain of instant death, to say his Pater Noster and three Ave Marias.
Others said that Don Jose Lopez was a man of foresight and discretion
and saw that the Indians were on the warpath and very dangerous.
Therefore, he prayed to his patron saint for spiritual guidance and
succor. San Miguel, in his wisdom, sent this young American heretic,
as undoubtedly it was best to fight evil with evil. And when the
devil, in the guise of a coyote, led the Indians to the attack, then
he was sorely wounded by the unerring aim of the gringito's rifle.

Others said that Don Jose Lopez had set up a shrine for the image of
his renowned patron saint, San Miguel, in his provision wagon, which
was being driven by the American boy, and the boy took the bullet
which wounded the coyote so sorely out of the saint's mouth, who had
bitten the sign of the cross thereon. And the evil one, in the
likeness of the coyote, rolled in his agony on the grass when he was
hit by the cross-marked bullet. Of course, the grass took fire and
very nearly burned up the whole caravan.

Other people said they were not surprised to hear of miracles
emanating from the shrine of the patron saint of Don Jose. His
grandfather had whittled this famous image out of a cottonwood tree,
whereon a saintly Penitente had been crucified after the custom of
the order of Flagellants. This Penitente resembled the penitent thief
who died on the cross and entered Paradise with the Saviour in this,
that he was known to be a good horse thief, and as he had died on the
cross on a night of Good Friday, he surely went to Glory Everlasting.
Don Jose's grandfather made a pilgrimage with this image he had made
to the City of Mexico, to have the Archbishop bless it in the
cathedral before Santa Guadalupe. During the ceremony, it was said,
there grew a fine head of flaxen hair on the image and it received