The White Mules
- When Book 2 (Missionary Journeys) begins, we join Father Joseph Vaillant, who is on the road visiting a bunch of towns in his district and making sure everything is ship shape (from a Catholic perspective). Unfortunately, he's riding around on a terrible, broken down horse.
- Father Joseph needs to perform a lot of marriages and baptisms, but he insists on doing the marriages in the evening and the baptisms the next morning. That way, the parents of the children will at least be married overnight before their children are baptized.
- Once all of the ceremonies are done, the people offer Father Joseph some stewed lamb. But he'd rather prepare his own lamb his own way, since he's the best cook around.
- Before Father Vaillant leaves for Santa Fe, one of the Mexican men notices how terrible his horse is and offers Vaillant his best mule as a present. But Vaillant says he can't possibly accept the mule, since he would then have a better animal than Bishop Latour, who is his superior. He eventually wrangles the Mexican man into giving him a second high quality mule. The Mexican man is sad about it, but he knows he can't turn Vaillant down.