The ride was unpleasant and uneasy. The horse lacked the muscle required to carry both the Apolistic Vicar, Father Latour, and his supplies. After a good night's sleep Father Latour decides that he cannot except the most generous gift of the mule. He feels that after staying with Manuel and eating his food he cannot except this gift. The mules were Manuel's prized white mules. In this moral dilemma Father Latour decides that he will return to the home of Manuel when he can purchase both the mules at a fair price. In return Manuel offers Father Latour one of his horses, which are more fit and better suited for the journey through New Mexico. .
"Taken together Latour and Vaillant stand for that fusion of action and contemplation, of doing and being, of enterprise and art- (Connolly 68). At the home of Scales, Latour meets Magdalena. Magdalena is the wife of a vicious killer named Scales. As Father Latour sits down for a meal Magdalena attempts to warn him of Scales. He gets the hint and excuses himself from the house at the end of his meal. As he leaves, he decides that he needs to ride to Mora, and get help from the law. In Mora he gains the assistance of the acting notary, a retired fur trapper. When Magdalena is found in a pile of straw near Mora, after being beaten by Scales, Latour rounds up a search party and heads .
out to find Scales. Once found Scales was taken to the Calboza in Mora where he would stay throughout the trial. To add to the evidence against Scales, Father Latour uncovered .
the bodies of four other travelers, buried behind the house, looted of all their possessions. In this act Father Latour risked his own life at the expense of saving another. With such events as that of the gift at Manuel's house and the events at the home of Scales you can see where both characters are faced with choices that could effect the life of others as well as themselves.
"The predominant mood is that of faith: the belief in a transcendent reality which gives meaning and order to human life- (McFarland 96).