Father Vaillant and Father Latour are on the third day out toward Mora. Rain and cold make the journey difficult, and they hope to find shelter for the night before going on to Mora, where they will help refugees from an Indian massacre.
They find a house that is in poorly kept condition. They ask to spend the night, and the owner of the house@ — a repulsive and evil appearing American man@ — consents. His Mexican wife seems half-witted, but before she follows her husband to the stable, she pantomimes that the priests will be murdered if they stay. The priests have to demand their mules at gunpoint, but they travel on to reach Mora by midnight.
The following morning, a boy reports that a crazy woman in the town stable wishes to see the two priests with the white mules. It is Magdalena, the wife of the evil American Buck Scales. She has run away to tell her story to the two priests. Latour sends for a notary and requests that the townswomen help Magdalena. Cleaned and refreshed, she recounts how she married Scales six years before. He has murdered four travelers and the three children she has born him. After he killed their first child, she ran home to her parents, but he threatened to harm them and she returned, too afraid to leave him. She wants only to save her soul and die. A friend of the notary confirms that she is Magdalena Valdez.
