The Lonely Road to Mora
- We look in again on Bishop Latour and Father Joseph, who are riding toward a town called Mora. They've been at it for a while now and their mules are getting fatigued.
- Father Joseph suggests that they rest their mules for a while, but Latour wants them to press on.
- Eventually, the two of them come upon a horrible little house. They walk up to the door and knock, and they're answered by a hateful and ugly looking man. They're surprised to see that he's not a Mexican, but a white American.
- Once they're inside, the American snarls at a Mexican woman who seems to be his wife. She won't talk to the visitors or even look them in the eye. They immediately suspect that the American is abusive toward her.
- The American barks at his wife to clear off some chairs for the priests, then goes outside to put Latour and Vaillant's mules in his stable.
- While the priests are alone with the woman, she suddenly meets their eyes and points for them to get out. She makes a throat-cutting motion with her thumb, which tells the priests that her husband is dangerous. Then she disappears into the back of the house.
- Father Joseph checks his pistol to make sure it's loaded. Then he and Bishop Latour go outside to tell the American they're leaving. He gets upset and tries to stop them, but Father Joseph threatens him with his gun. They leave the poor Mexican woman behind and take off with their mules. They push on until midnight, which is when they reach the town of Mora.
- The next morning, a boy comes running to them. He's shouting about a crazy woman who's been found sleeping in the stables. When she's brought in, the priests recognize her as the Mexican woman who warned them the night before.
- It turns out that the woman abandoned her house the moment the two priests left. She figured that her husband was going to grab his gun and go after the priests, so she travelled all night on foot to reach Mora and warn them.
- She tells them about such terrible things that Latour knows they'll have to call local law enforcement. Meanwhile, he asks for his servants to take care of the poor Mexican woman, whose name is Magdalena.
- We learn that Magdalena married her husband (whose name is Buck Scales) because marrying a white American was considered a big step up for a Mexican woman. Since she's been married to him, she has seen him murder at least four travellers who have spent the night in his house.
- He has also killed three of the children Magdalena has given birth to since they got married.
- The people at Mora put together a search party and visit Buck Scales' house, where they find four bodies buried in the backyard. They eventually capture Scales on one of the nearby roads.
- Meanwhile, Latour wonders what they'll do with Magdalena.
- After some thinking, a guy shows up out of the crowd and offers to take Magdalena to his house. His name it Kit Carson and he knows Magdalena from her younger years. Magdalena is more than happy to go live with Carson and his wife until she gets things figured out.
- And here's a fun detail: Kit Carson is actually a real figure from American history, one of the original "cowboys" on the American frontier.
- Kit, Magdalena, and the priests all decide to make the ride to Kit's house. Kit tells Bishop Latour what he really thinks of Catholics in New Mexico. He says a bunch of the Spanish ones are total hypocrites who have children by different mothers all over the area. A guy named Father Martinez is apparently the worst of them all.
- We find out at the end of the chapter that Buck Scales is executed after a short trial. Meanwhile, Bishop Latour attends a conference in St. Louis and returns to Santa Fe with five nuns to open a convent. He immediately sends for Magdalena, who happily joins the nuns to live a peaceful life.