The Miser
- Bishop Latour spends almost an entire year in Rome before returning to his parish in New Mexico. When he does return, he brings four young priests to send out to different towns in his diocese.
- He sends one young priest named Father Taladrid to Taos to take over for Padre Martinez. But even though Martinez gives up official power, he continues to do all the marriages in the town. Before long, he and Taladrid are involved in a kind of turf war.
- When Latour tells Martinez to get lost, Martinez teams up with another rogue priest named Father Lucero and they go hog wild and create their own renegade churches. Most of the people in their towns decide to stick with them because they're the priests people know best.
- Father Lucero is nothing like Father Martinez. He lusts after money while Martinez lusts after young women. He lives in absolute poverty because he's insanely cheap and won't spend any money. He's even rumored to have an enormous fortune stashed away somewhere.
- Finally, Latour sends Father Vaillant officially to strip Martinez and Lucero of all their powers. They continue to lead their own rebel churches for a short while, but both of them die from sickness and old age quickly after this conflict.
- Martinez is the first to go. Lucero goes shortly after, but not before he stabs and kills a thief who breaks into his house and tries to find his hidden fortune.
- Lucero wastes away from a tumor, but he actually calls on Father Vaillant and apologizes for everything he's done before dying. Right to his last breath, he's worried about someone digging up his money, which he says is buried in a corner of his bedroom.
- After he dies, people dig up the money and find that the old man has stashed more than 20,000 dollars, which was an incredible amount in the mid-nineteenth century. Now the only problem is how to spend it all.
- What an awesome problem to have.