The conversation touched lightly on various topics, until Santa Maria ranch was mentioned, when Uncle Lance asked the padre if Don Mateo had yet built him a chapel.  The priest shrugged his shoulders deprecatingly and answered the question with another,—­when Las Palomas proposed building a place of worship.

“Well, Father, I’m glad you’ve brought the matter up again,” replied the host.  “That I should have lived here over forty years and never done anything for your church or my people who belong to your faith, is certainly saying little in my behalf.  I never had the matter brought home to me so clearly as during last summer’s drouth.  Do you remember that old maxim regarding when the devil was sick?  Well, I was good and sick.  If you had happened in then and had asked for a chapel,—­not that I have any confidence in your teaching,—­you could have got a church with a steeple on it.  I was in such sore straits that the women were kept busy making candles, and we burnt them in every jacal until the hour of deliverance.”

Helping himself from the proffered snuffbox of the padre, the host turned to his guest, and in all sincerity continued:  “Yes, Father, I ought to build you a nice place of worship.  We could quarry the rock during idle time, and burn our own lime right here on the ranch.  While you are here, give me some plans, and we’ll show you that the white element of Las Palomas are not such hopeless heretics as you suppose.  Now, if we build the chapel, I’m just going to ask one favor in return:  I expect to die and be buried on this ranch.  You’re a younger man by twenty years and will outlive me, and on the day of my burial I want you to lay aside your creed and preach my funeral in this little chapel which you and I are going to build.  I have been a witness to the self-sacrifice of you and other priests ever since I lived here.  Father, I like an honest man, and the earnestness of your cloth for the betterment of my people no one can question.  And my covenant is, that you are to preach a simple sermon, merely commemorating the fact that here lived a man named Lovelace, who died and would be seen among his fellow men no more.  These being facts, you can mention them; but beyond that, for fear our faiths might differ, the less said the better.  Won’t you have another mint julep before supper?  No?  You will, won’t you, Don Blas?”

That the old ranchero was in earnest about building a chapel on Las Palomas there was no doubt.  In fact, the credit should be given to Miss Jean, for she had been urging the matter ever since my coming to the ranch.  At headquarters and outlying ranchitas on the land, there were nearly twenty families, or over a hundred persons of all ages.  But that the old matchmaker was going to make the most out of his opportunity by erecting the building at an opportune time, there was not the shadow of a question.