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 beautiful blue eyes.  And it had the miraculous propensity to ever after wink its eye in the presence of a priest and at the approach of a Christ-hating Jew, it would spit.  This virtue saved much wealth for the family of Don Jose, as they were ever put on their guard against Jewish peddlers.

The rumor that Don Jose Lopez had carried the household saint with him in his wagon was at once contradicted and disproved by his wife, Dona Mercedes.  The lady declared that San Miguel had never left his shrine in the patio of their residence except for the avowed purpose of making rain.  In seasons of protracted drouth, when crops and live stock suffer for want of water, crowds of Mexican people, mostly farmers’ wives and their children, form processions and carry the images of saints round about the parched fields, chanting hymns and praying for rain.

On this occasion Dona Mercedes availed herself of the chance to extol the prowess and power of her family’s idolized saint, San Miguel.  She said as a rainmaker he had no equal.  He disliked and objected to have himself carried about the fields when there was not a certain sign of coming rain in the heavens.  Her little saint, she said, was too honorable and too proud to risk the disgrace of failure and bring shame on her family.  Therefore, he would not consent to be carried out in the fields until kind Nature, through unfailing signs, proclaimed a speedy downpour.  When thunder shook the expectant earth and the first drops of rain began to fall, then he started on his little business trip and never had he failed to make it rain copiously.  Friends of Don Jose Lopez, hearing all this talk, were not slow to take advantage of it.  The time for the election of county officials was near and they promptly placed Don Jose in nomination for the office of the sheriff of San Miguel County.