text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/64

 the sky, as if the world ended there, as if nothing lay beyond.

"Look!" Don Felipe repeated, pointing to the hills. "And here again, look!" Don Felipe pointed to the east. "Mountains stand behind these hills, growing up into the clouds. And in the east here, there is a desert when a man goes over the mountains. There is no water there but the dew of night, no blade of grass for it to fall upon. Hundreds of miles, this desert, and when a man is done with that, mountains again, more terrible than any in all the world. But no man lives to pass that desert. Man dies there, he swells big, he bursts like a gun. No, there is no way to leave this land, only by the sea. There is death in many ways for the man who runs before the law in this country. Quick goes the word, a thousand hands are ready when he passes. Oh, yes. A man who runs before the law in this country is shot down like a wolf."

"I suppose that might happen to him," Henderson admitted, cooled considerably, his naturally diplomatic disposition and good sense asserting. "I wouldn't try it; I'm not going to run before the law. Well, a man would have to have something to run for, in the first place."

"If a man steals sheep," said Don Felipe, his eyes still on the hills, "or kills a man, or owes his patron money, a man sometimes runs away."

"If I stole sheep or killed a man, I might run away," Henderson granted, soberly enough. "But

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/64


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/65

 not because I owed my patron money. That would be a scoundrelly sort of trick."

"How much more sensible for a man who owes his patron money to stay in the reach of his arm," said Don Felipe, with unctuous, persuasive argument. "Only a fool runs away."

"That's what I think about it," Henderson agreed.

He had come around, in the past few minutes, to a decision on a more diplomatic course. He saw at once the obstacles that would present in the way of an escaping debtor; he realized that Don Felipe was not boasting when he said the word went abroad quickly, that a thousand hands would be ready to pull him down. How much more eager these hands would be to snatch at a foreigner, one of a nation for which there was already much jealousy, suspicion and hate.

"Still, you considered running away only a little minute ago," Don Felipe charged.

"It was only because I forgot for the moment how much I really owe the good patron," Henderson replied contritely, by way of confession. "He saved my life the day I deserted ship, the captain would have shot me if he hadn't stepped in front of his pistol and made him put it away. If I owed him money only, Don Felipe, I would run away. But when a man owes another his life he does not run away and forget—if he is a man."

Don Felipe was caballero, gentleman, in spite of

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/65


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/66

 his subordinate position in Don Abrahan's service. His fortunes were in eclipse, his father having been ruined by his loyalty to Spain during the Mexican revolt for freedom, and banished the country, his vast possessions confiscated. Don Felipe, his only son, a stripling then, had taken up the cause of freedom, but had not been well received on account of his hidalgo extraction. Yet he was free to remain in California, the land of his birth, and lay the foundation of a new fortune if he might.

So Don Felipe swelled a bit on hearing this expression of loyalty to his employer. He offered his hand with an impetuosity that surprised Henderson; his face glowed with pleasure; a glistening as of tears was in his eyes.

"A man that sees the way of honor is my friend!" Don Felipe declared. "What is the misfortune of a day that it should debase one man below another? Nothing! I, also, have had my day of misfortune, Don Gabriel. We are both gentlemen; we can forget our differences in our present situation—for this hour."

It seemed an approach with reservations, an unbending with one hand behind the back. Yet Henderson was vastly surprised by it. It was the first word without a taint of oppression and contempt that Don Felipe had spoken to him since his coming to the ranch. He took the proffered hand, clasped it warmly, not without a feeling of friendship and gratitude for the little man who stood

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/66


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/67

 upon feet smaller than most women's, and was proud of them.

"It will be my pleasure to inform Don Abrahan of your deep sense of gratitude, of your wise decision to remain here. A man with capability may rise to great heights here in Don Abrahan's employment; like an eagle he may sail over the heads of little men."

Don Felipe looked skyward, describing the evolutions of his figurative eagle by a circling sweep of the arm. Those who crossed the courtyard, going slowly through the dusk about the interminable tasks of that place, looked with wonder on Don Felipe fraternizing on terms of equality with the yanqui, for whom there was little liking on the ranch.

"A man needs the comfort of a woman in his youth," Don Felipe said. "There is old Cecilia's Liseta, ready for marriage now. Don Abrahan, the good patron, will give her to you, with the house by the pepper tree where Francisco, the what—you-call-him—zapatero—make-shoe, used to live. A little straw to the roof of it, a new goatskin in the window, and there is happiness for any man with a young wife on his knee."

"It's a comfortable picture you make of it, Don Felipe," Henderson said, as gratefully and as cheerfully as he could bring himself to speak. "But a man who is working out a debt isn't in much of a situation to marry."

"His capital doubles when he marries," Don

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/67


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/68

 Felipe declared, warm in his eagerness to bring about the establishment of another family to serve his patron in the working out of never-ending debt. "With a wife to help him, a man soon stands on his feet."

Henderson thought of Liseta, the proposed partner of his sacrificial years. She was about seventeen, a result of that peculiar cross-breeding of Spaniard, Mexican peon and native Indian, to the abasement of all involved. Her dark face was heavy and sullen; there was little promise in her but that of the capability to plentifully reproduce her kind. Liseta herded goats upon the scrabbled hills for her mighty patron, working out the debt that had been her inheritance, that would increase with her years and bind her in slavery all her life. Her mother, old Cecilia, was old indeed at little more than forty, sad in her peonage, a vessel worn out by the burdens of men.

"I will speak the word to Don Abrahan if you wish," Don Felipe offered.

"I think I can serve my patron better without a wife," Henderson replied, laughing the matter aside as if he considered it but a jest.

"Perhaps there is another in the land you left?" Don Felipe ventured.

He sighed, as if to let it be understood that he was a man who had known his romance, whatever tricks time might have played him since.

"Who knows?" Henderson returned, with as much sentimentality, softness, and longing as he

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/68


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/69

 could compress into his words on such short preparation for an excuse so splendid.

"I will say no more," said Don Felipe. "Do you go to your repose?"

"I'm going to the stable to see the black stallion; he cut his shoulder on a stake in the corral today. I must put sulphur on the wound to keep the gangrene down."

Don Felipe went into his office, where his dim candle seemed always burning, yet never burned out. It was never a full candle, never less than half, yet it was going at twilight, glimmering at dawn. How Don Felipe managed it, Henderson could not guess. It seemed to him that the fragmentary candle was emblematic of the little man in some mystical relation, a thing burning palely, not illuminating much of the world, yet doing more, perhaps, in its unremitting effort than many a greater light. It was as if Don Abrahan's dignity and consequence were borne upon the shoulders of this small, subservient man, who had known his own day of misfortune.

Simon, the teamster, lived close by the stable, his adobe hut being somewhat larger, altogether more comfortable and nearer the requirements of a human abode, than those of the other laborers in that feudal village of huts. Simon was a free and independent man, whose wages were twenty dollars a month, it was said, a sum named by the poor peones with distended eyes and low breath. Added to this was the privilege of taking his meals

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/69


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/70

 on work-days at the patron's expense, a privilege that Simon never had been known to forego.

Simon did not owe the patron. He was not obliged to pledge his services, and the services of his unborn, for the chunks of thick, age-yellow salt pork, the cuts of tenuous beef, the pounds of Yankee lard, issued from the great patron's store. Simon's lot was that of a man who could take his wife and children and depart on the day that suited his fancy to go.

Simon was loitering between his house and Don Felipe's office, where he had been dawdling in the aimless, lounging way that a Mexican can pass the time with his cigarette, as Henderson started on his merciful mission to the stable. He joined Henderson when he passed, continuing with him on his way after asking the object of his activities at that hour.

Lately Simon had installed himself as preceptor to Henderson in his struggle with the Spanish tongue. He insisted that the only way a man could learn a language was to use it, in the way that he must handle the lines for himself if he ever expected to drive eight mules. Henderson agreed with him in this contention, although it was a strain on his slender knowledge of the language to keep abreast with the fervid flow of the teamster's speech.

When a doubt rose in Simon's mind he made himself clear with an English word, if he had it; if not, with some expletive that was picturesque on

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/70


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/71

 his tongue where it would have been only coarse on another's. In that way Henderson had made progress amazing to himself, satisfactory to Simon, although the pupil had grave doubt of the elegance that the muleteer boasted as the strong point of his expression in his native tongue.

Simon seemed to have a tender interest in the black stallion's injury, although he was as cruel in his treatment of beasts as the officers of the ship that Henderson had deserted were brutal to their men. Even the mules, unimaginative, indifferent creatures of short memory that they are, cringed and squatted when Simon approached them in their stalls. Now, as Henderson treated the ugly wound in the magnificent stallion's shoulder, Simon stood solicitously by holding the lantern.

"So, that is done," said Simon, putting out the light. "Do you go to your repose?"

"I think not immediately. The moon is so bright it seems like a comrade tonight," Henderson replied in his slow, halting Spanish.

Simon stood a little while looking at the moon, his head thrown back, his long gaunt neck showing a sharp protuberance like a bent elbow.

"It is a good night to talk to the girls," he said, his head still back, the light of the moon in his face.

Simon was a tall and shambling man, long of limb, and thin. He was dressed, as always, in loose trousers and jumper, his inseparable hat with silver filagree work on its pointed crown fixed on his small head. There was not much to

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/71


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/72

 the upper works of Simon; he had little more head than a worm. The most impressive feature in his physiognomy was his mustache, which grew long, with a reddish tinge to its villainous blackness, distinctive mark in an otherwise indistinctive man.

"Yes," said Simon meditatively, "it is a fine night to talk to the girls."

He turned from the moon with that, having exhausted its possibilities in mundane affairs as far as he ever had discovered and applied them.

"Yes. And there was a peon who tried to run away from his debt to Don Abrahan about a year ago. I went after that man; I shot a hole in him that the bees could fly through."

Simon turned away to go to his repose with that word. It was sufficient; he had delivered his message.

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/72


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/73

ON ROBERTO, the magistrate's son, had been two years in Mexico City wearing off his rusticity, taking on the polish of a gentleman. On his arrival home the widespread connections of Don Abrahan's house became apparent to the Yankee sailor.

Festivities in celebration of the heir's return extended over a period of two weeks, during which time the friends and relatives of the family arrived from great distances, even by ship from Monterey. Don Abrahan's two married daughters came from the region of Capistrano; there was laughter of children under the grave encinas.

Daughters were not accounted very highly, in the houses of California gentry in those times, until married safely and set about the business of increasing the ranks of the dons. Prior to that felicitous event they were held to be rather a liability than an asset. These two ladies, on account of their prolific contribution to the cause of gentility in this respect, were highly esteemed by Don Abrahan. Both were married to men of substance. Their arrival in the latest model of Yankee coaches was equal to a royal visitation, with such ceremony of outriding to meet them, such trooping of horse-

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/73


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/74

 men on matters which seemed to begin in nothing and end in dust.

Musicians were quartered in the mansion for the period of the festivities; there was the sound of harp and violin far into the night. Carcasses of beeves were spread on spits over deep channels of coals; white bread, viands of the mighty of that land, were set out each evening when the laborers returned from the fields. It was a season of generosity for those under the hand of Don Abrahan, transcending any event of the kind within the recollection of the oldest peon.

On the last day of this celebration Don Abrahan feasted his guests on cabeza de toro, which is to say bull's head, a dish not unknown to Californians who are descendants of the dons of that period, even in this unromantic day. On this climax of the celebration of Don Roberto's return, four bulls' heads were served, a magnificence of entertainment unequaled, attesting to the love Don Abrahan bore for his only son.

The manner of preparing cabeza de toro grew out of expediency in the beginning, perhaps; in the end it had become a thing almost reverential, equal to a sacrificial rite. The head was taken, just as separated from the body, horns, hair, ears, eyes, and all, and singed as carefully as might be over a blaze of light brushwood. No water ever touched the head in process of preparation. Water would have been a profanation of ancient customs; perhaps one drop would have spoiled the dish.

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/74


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/75

 When the head was duly singed of such hair as burned readily, the mouth and nostrils were crammed with seasoning that gladdened the palate of the don, in such manner as garlic, strong pepper-pods, spices of the orient, and sage. Thus charged, the dainty thing was put into a large stone oven heaped over with earth, in which a wood fire had burned a long time, heating it to the temperature required.

A stone was set to close this oven, earth was heaped around it to seal it against the loss of one little savory whiff of vapor, and the cabeza was left to cook without the further interference of man. Hours afterwards the oven was unsealed, the sweet roast was withdrawn, cooked to such tenderness that the flesh shredded from the bones. Ah! that was a dish for a gentleman of so barbaric magnificence as the Spanish don. Cabeza de toro! There is romance in the name.

Henderson bore a curious part in these festivities. His good sense had shown him, on the night of his talk with Don Felipe, that it would be impossible to escape from Don Abrahan's tyranny by running away. Simon had been delegated to make this plainer to him than the mayordomo's reasoning. The sailor had done well to pretend that gratitude rose in him and bound his feet in the service of the great patron. Don Felipe had spoken his good word, as he promised; Henderson was restored in Don Abrahan's patriarchal regard, at least to all outward appearances.

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/75


text:
Page:Tales from Shakespeare - Lamb C and M, Rackham A (1908).djvu/271

 pretend to consult his taste as to the merits of it; nothing more was wanting to persuade the liberal-hearted lord to buy it. If a jeweller had a stone of price, or a mercer rich costly stuffs, which for their costliness lay upon his hands, lord Timon's house was a ready mart always open, where they might get off their wares or their jewellery at any price, and the good-natured lord would thank them into the bargain, as if they had done him a piece of courtesy in letting him have the refusal of such precious commodities. So that by this means his house was thronged with superfluous purchases, of no use but to swell uneasy and ostentatious pomp; and his person was still more inconveniently beset with a crowd of these idle visitors, lying poets, painters, sharking tradesmen, lords, ladies, needy courtiers, and expectants, who continually filled his lobbies, raining their fulsome flatteries in whispers in his ears, sacrificing to him with adulation as to a God, making sacred the very stirrup by which he mounted his horse, and seeming as though they drank the free air but through his permission and bounty.

Some of these daily dependents were young men of birth, who (their means not answering to their extravagance) had been put in prison by creditors, and redeemed thence by lord Timon; these young prodigals thenceforward fastened upon his lordship, as if by common sympathy he were necessarily endeared to all such spendthrifts and loose livers, who, not being able to follow him in his wealth, found it easier to copy him in prodigality and copious spending of what was not their own. One of these flesh-flies was Ventidius, for whose debts, unjustly contracted, Timon but lately had paid down the sum of five talents.

But among this confluence, this great flood of


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/76

 That this show of gentle patronage was only a form, Henderson was certain, even before the son of the family returned from Mexico. Don Abrahan did not like Americans. He held them in contempt as a lower order of humanity, an aggressive, rough-handed order, to be certain. Once Henderson had heard Don Abrahan say, the patron not being aware of his ward's progress in the Spanish tongue, that Americans were heavy-stamping ruffians who must be excluded from that pastoral land.

Don Roberto had taken a sort of humorous fancy to the American, as toward some strange, or perhaps fantastic, creature from a distant land. Almost immediately on his arrival he selected Henderson as his personal attendant, elevating him, if advancement this peculiar preferment could be called, from a life of drudgery and long hours in the storehouse and fields to one of comparative luxury and ease.

Henderson was fitted out with a wardrobe that would have gladdened many of his late sailing mates, clothing of no less distinction than off-cast articles of Don Roberto's own. The tailor that Don Roberto kept as part of his personal entourage adjusted these garments to Henderson's body, little alteration being necessary, the young men being almost of exact height and general build. Velvet and silk garments: these were, jackets braided in silver and gilt, pantaloons of gray, green, black, and fawn velvet, large at the bottom

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/76


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/77

 to cover the foot in the stirrup, strapped beneath the instep to prevent them crawling up the caballero's leg when he rode.

The duty of personal attendant on Don Roberto was not heavy, outside the irksome waiting with the horses while he played the bear beneath some lady's window, or sat with another in company with her mother or duenna, or danced the night out on nimble, leaping, tireless legs. Dressed in his fine garments, Henderson made a handsome figure, a servant, indeed, who drew and held longer the glances of many a fair one met upon the road than the master who rode two rods ahead.

Always behind the master the man rode, a distance between them so great there could be no mistaking them for friends and comrades. This distance, in fact, was the one distinguishing mark of their relation in the case of Don Roberto and his man, as has been the case between master and man in other lands before and since that day.

During the two weeks of the festivities Don Roberto had ridden far and near between his home and the ranches of his neighbors, paying' his respects to old and young, smirking and bowing, easing himself of the vacuous insincerities which smother the little of genuineness in the polite speech of the Mexican hijo de familia. Henderson's duty was to dismount in the courtyard or at the gate where his master visited, receive Don Roberto's reins as he threw them imperiously, without so much as a glance in his varlet's direc-

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/77


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/78

 tion. There he must stand, let it be minutes or hours, hot sun of noonday or chill wind of midnight, until Don Roberto appeared.

Don Roberto did not speak English. He let it be known that the sound of it was distasteful to him, a discordant grinding of coarse consonants not fit for either the ear of God or man. Spanish was the one language worthy the ear of a caballero; but since Henderson made such lame going at it, they would speak French between them, seeing that the yanqui had been given some of the advantages of gentlemen of more enlightened lands to the extent of tutelage in that next most godly tongue.

The fact that Henderson would have been a gentleman in his own land, counted by his station in society, no other qualification being necessary in Don Roberto's world, gave the young Mexican added pleasure in his attendant. That pleasure came from his power to abase one whom he knew, in the core of such manhood and courage as nature had given him, to be a better man than himself.

Manhood seemed scarcely to have hardened upon Don Roberto yet, although he was a year or two older than Henderson. There was the softness of boyishness in his face, the petulance of adolescence in his lips. Only his eyes seemed mature. These were dark and heavy-lidded, languorously oriental, as his father's were. When he rode, or sat alone in a meditative way that seemed his inheritance, he held his lids half shut; yellowish

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/78


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/79

 tinted lids, thick, with a velvet softness in their appearance, like the petals of some rank, gross rose. When he talked, especially with women, his eyes were more expressive than his tongue. They dilated and glowed, contracted and glistened; seemed to retreat and to leap, to laugh and draw near, lending a charm of marvelous animation to his face.

The closing day of Don Abrahan's celebration had come in a happy climax of cabeza de toro, as has been said. At midday the ovens had been opened, the savory bulls' heads withdrawn and served on long tables under the oak trees. The custom of this feast was immutable in this observance. All laws of tradition would have been transgressed in offering the cabeza de toro under a roof.

The guests, numbering more than a hundred, counting old and young, gathered at these tables with appetites which seemed to Henderson never satisfied, in spite of the long season of feasting that had gone before, gorging themselves to the very eyes. Large-waisted mamas became dull as sated toads after this last and greatest stuffing event. On the long veranda, supported by flying arches like a cloister of Franciscan friars, they dozed in arm-chairs, their ordinarily sharp vigil over their daughters relaxed.

But their generally tall and lank husbands, vinous of blood, worn down to sinew and hard muscle by continual life in the saddle, were as wide

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/79


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/80

 awake as customarily. They sat at card games under the trees, or talked in close and confidential groups. That day many a match was arranged for sons and daughters among the heads of illustrious families in that land.

There were mamas sufficient, not under the lethargy of much bull's head and wine, to keep decorum according to the standards of Spanish tradition among the young men and women. These young ones were dancing in Don Abrahan's great, cool hall. Henderson's not altogether enviable office during this diversion was to stand by holding his young master's cape, hat and cigarettes. No other caballero had a valet to attend him in such close relation as Roberto. This distinction alone would have been one affording great pleasure to the vain, shallow young man. The fact that Henderson was a foreigner, of a race at once proud and barbarous, added much to the pride and happiness that Don Roberto gathered from his servile estate.

It was the custom of the young gallants, on the completion of a dance, to conduct their partners at once back to the jealous custody of mamas, aunts, or other duennas who sat severely along the wall. There was no strolling off together, even in the sunlight of day. A girl who would have ventured out of her duenna's eyes in company with a man, would have lost her good name forever. Between dances the young men went out to smoke brief, tiny cigarettes, walking up and down the deep

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/80


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/81

 porticoes in the eyes of the palpitating beauties whom they lately had relinquished from their arms in the furious dance.

Henderson's duty was to proceed with respectful dignity, as became a gentleman reduced from his own estate attendant on one whose authority and magnificence he never could hope to equal, throw the bright satin cape around Don Roberto's shoulders, present his flat Spanish hat, proffer his cigarettes with downcast eyes. All this done, according to previous instructions, he took his stand at the door to relieve the young caballero of his trappings when he came again to join the dance.

Alert, muscular, his head held high, a glimmer of something that was nearer amusement than contempt in his lively blue eyes, Henderson drew many a glance, many a wondering, warm sympathetic look from the fair ones who danced that afternoon across Don Abrahan's polished floor. There was no man in the company as handsome in the manly strength that the female eye so quickly and surely appraises.

Don Roberto had ordered Henderson's long, unruly hair shorn short. His shapely head was revealed to added advantage by this sacrifice, the short hair glistening like the scales of a new-caught perch when he crossed the slant sunbeams falling through the windows upon the great hall floor. The barber had spared him a foretop which betrayed its crinkled unruliness under the pomade

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/81


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/82

 that smoothed it, to the secret admiration of many a pair of young eyes. For it was known that this was a gentleman, an inferior one, certainly, who had fallen through pride and misfortune to this low estate.

A lagging spirit came over the dancers as dusk began to settle on the hills. The overfed mamas began to stir out of their heaviness to seek more cabeza de toro, now cold on the lantern-lit tables, but delicious to the palate when spread with thick sauce of chili peppers and tomato. The young ones, with appetite that needed no sauce after their hours of dancing, attended them, followed by their languishing cavaliers.

Don Roberto carried a few close friends off to the stable to see a new horse about which he had been making arrogant boasts all day. He graciously permitted Henderson a spell of relief to regale himself at the servants' end of the long table, where there was bull's body in abundance, but not a morsel of the noble head.

Henderson lacked the peculiar, not to say amazing, capacity for eating enjoyed by these happy people, who reminded him not so much of so many coyotes as sacks of grain, which a man only had to shake down to get a little more into, even when it seemed impossible to add another kernel. He made his way along the table, the humor of his singular situation somewhat dulled.

It was becoming a serious business, this standing about in spectacular prominence waiting the

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/82


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/83

 nod of Roberto. He felt that he could not endure much more of it. Come what might, he was in the spirit for taking a flying chance at liberty, making his way to Monterey, even San Francisco, and finding a ship that would carry him home.

Don Felipe was among the guests, the equal of any of them, it appeared. His black pepperings of whiskered barnacles were more apparent than ordinarily, groomed up as he was in his finery. No amount of shaving could reduce their prominence. It seemed as if they must be exceptionally fertile spots in which his beard took prolific root, as the holly and sage thrived in little communities of green luxuriance where the soil was deep on the hills.

Don Felipe turned his back as Henderson drew near. Whatever had passed between them once on the level of man to man could not be renewed in that company, his action plainly said. Henderson was moved by a reckless desire to approach the mayordomo with familiar address, but put the temptation of humiliating the little man, who was not so bad in his way as he might have been, behind him, and made his way to the servants' end of the table.

There were many among his late companions in the fields who now looked on Henderson as a strong reflection of Don Roberto, such being the virtue of even the cast-off garments of the great. These were deferential to a degree little short of embarrassing as Henderson now came among

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/83


text:
Page:Tales from Shakespeare - Lamb C and M, Rackham A (1908).djvu/272

 visitors, none were more conspicuous than the makers of presents and givers of gifts. It was fortunate for these men if Timon took a fancy to a dog or a horse, or any piece of cheap furniture which was theirs. The thing so praised, whatever it was, was sure to be sent the next morning with the compliments of the giver for lord Timon's acceptance, and apologies for the unworthiness of the gift; and this dog or horse, or whatever it might be, did not fail to produce from Timon's bounty, who would not be outdone in gifts, perhaps twenty dogs or horses, certainly presents of far richer worth, as these pretended donors knew well enough, and that their false presents were but the putting out of so much money at large and speedy interest. In this way lord Lucius had lately sent to Timon a present of four milk-white horses, trapped in silver, which this cunning lord had observed Timon upon some occasion to commend; and another lord, Lucullus, had bestowed upon him in the same pretended way of free gift a brace of greyhounds, whose make and fleetness Timon had been heard to admire; these presents the easy-hearted lord accepted without suspicion of the dishonest views of the presenters; and the givers of course were rewarded with some rich return, a diamond or some jewel of twenty times the value of their false and mercenary donation.

Sometimes these creatures would go to work in a more direct way, and with gross and palpable artifice, which yet the credulous Timon was too blind to see, would affect to admire and praise something that Timon possessed, a bargain that he had bought, or some late purchase, which was sure to draw from this yielding and soft-hearted lord a gift of the thing commended, for no service in the world done for it but the easy expense of a little


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/84

 them. They made way for him, offered him wine, suggesting choice cuts of meat from the fire-blackened hunks which weighted down the bare oak planks.

Yet there were others who, envying his preferment after the manner of the mean in all society, held high heads and passed disparaging remarks. Simon was among these. He stood by the table, legs spread, a cup of wine to his mouth. He broke off his drinking as Henderson passed, wiped his great mustache with the back of his hand, turning eyes red with his long carousal to look after the Yankee in contempt.

"It is the vapor of Don Roberto's body that blows past," he said, with immeasurable disdain.

Henderson made a pretense of taking a bite and a sup among the older men who were neither afraid nor ashamed of him, who had lived too long in drudgery to envy with bitterness one who seemed rising above it. Then he left them, with as little notice as possible, withdrawing to have a few minutes to himself.

Under the slant of the hill, near the gate letting in from the harbor road where the olives grew, there was a bench built around the bole of an ancient live-oak, whose limbs extended far, whose foliage made dusk of noonday, darkness of moonlight. There, in its restful shadow, withdrawn from the noise of the closing celebration, Henderson sat down to ponder his situation once more.

It was coming to the point when he must clear

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/84


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/85

 himself of the contempt of these provincial people by asserting his manhood in no uncertain terms. When Don Felipe had spoken of the impossibility of escape from that country by one under peonage, Henderson had not been entirely convinced. True, the mayordomo's picture of the thousand hands that would reach out to restore a man to his master, for the reward impelling the deed; the more direct and personal emphasis that Simon had added in his own picturesque manner; the charge of ingratitude laid to him by Don Abrahan himself—all this had worked to the deferment of Henderson's intention. But to deferment only, not the abandonment for a moment. There was a means of escape for a man of the right temper. The time was approaching near when he intended to prove this in the face of their hostility and contempt of the Yankee breed.

How did his account with Don Abrahan and his petulant, overbearing, shallow son stand by now? he wondered. Certainly, not a dollar less than at the beginning. There was no telling what they had charged up against him for this abandoned finery, but if the sum stood in proportion te the jeans and brogans, it would be sufficient to bind him a peon all the rest of his life.

He had been on Don Abrahan's ranch almost five months now. Putting his services at twenty dollars a month—surely he was worth as much as Simon—the original debt, outrageous as it was, had been paid long since. As for gratitude, that

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/85


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/86

 was a fabrication of his own. There could be no debt of gratitude to a man who had acted as Don Abrahan had that day at the harbor, planning in his deliberate craftiness to profit by the reward for the sailor's return or, failing in that, to add another slave to his plantation. There was nothing owing Don Abrahan on that score.

Henderson's conception of the inland geography of that country was vague. He only knew that it was a land of weary distances, guarded well, as Don Felipe had said, by mountains and deserts on the east, the sea on the west. Baja California, at the south, was a land of torment, he had been told by sailors who had been cast away on its shores. To the north there were leagues of dark forest, he knew from sighting them from the ship. Of the social and political conditions he knew no more than a sailor had opportunity of learning, which was very limited, indeed. This slight knowledge he had not been given any opportunity to enlarge during his enforced service with Don Abrahan. He had not talked with any of the Americans in the pueblo Los Angeles on his visits there in Don Roberto's company. A child of today knows more of California than Gabriel Henderson, graduate of a venerable New England university, knew in that summer time of the year 1846.

There had been talk of war breaking out between the United States and Mexico long before Henderson deserted his ship. News came so slowly, over such great distances to that seques-

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/86


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/87

 tered land, that war might already have been declared, might even then be going forward, in which case he would be in double peril when his day came to leave Don Abrahan's ranch. Don Felipe would know; it would be worth while to play the sycophant to Don Felipe to find out.

The moon stood full at the head of San Gabriel valley; the leaves of the olives turned and flashed in its strong beam like little fish in the sunlit sea. But beneath the gray old oak all was somber and unseen. It was as if it held its hand over this fugitive from a distant land, offering him the temptation of security to slip away from his bondage into the vast white freedom of the sleeping plain.

Henderson stood, this thought making his heart go faster, his breath quickened in a desire that was more than half a sudden resolution. A quick passage of the olive lane to the turn of the road, where the moon would reveal him for a moment as he crossed; a scramble up the shoulder of the hill, where the path worn by Liseta's goats was white like a scar; over that first range but a little way, into the valley that he had seen from the summit. From there, picking his way between hiding and foraging to keep himself alive, on to Monterey.

How far to the north the bay and town of Monterey lay he did not know. Computing by the sailing time of the ship, it must be nearly five hundred miles. It would take a hunted man weeks to make the journey. It was an appalling obstacle

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/87


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/88

 between him and the bare hope, the gambling chance, of freedom.

There were many Americans in and around Monterey. Chance it that war had not begun, there was some sort of United States agent, consul, or what he might be, in the place; Henderson had seen his flag flying from a tall pole before his place. The road to freedom from this slavery which would have no end but of his own making, lay toward Monterey. A man might

"Why are you masquerading here? Who are you?"

Henderson started; his muscles jumped. It was a woman's voice, soft and low; the words were English without a taint of foreign accent. But there was nobody in sight as he turned quickly to encounter the speaker, nobody behind the thick trunk of the tree.

It was incredible that anybody could have come, spoken and vanished in a breath, neither the sound of the approach nor the retreat heard by him. But there was nobody under the tree. His eyes, accustomed to the gloom of the deep shadow, would have found the speaker if she were there.

"Who are you?" Henderson demanded in vexed surprise, doubt, even, that he had heard a voice at all. "Where the devil are you, any way?"

"Here," the voice answered, coming to him on a little laugh.

Above him it seemed, in the tree. He peered into the foliage of the oak and saw her there, sit-

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/88


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/89

 ting on a limb a little above his head. Her dark dress was one with the shadows; he could not tell whether she was a guest, or some impertinent intruder.

"I think you'd better come down," he suggested, diverted by her unconventional prank, let her be whom she might prove.

"No, I just came up here this minute," she returned. He saw her lean toward him as she spoke, her voice scarcely'more than a whisper. "I got up here," she hurried on to explain, "while you were standing over there by the gate looking at the hill. If you're waiting for somebody, I'll run away."

"No need," he said, putting out his hand in appeal to stop the suggested flight. "There's nobody in this land for me to be waiting, or who would wait for me."

"You're lonely, poor boy!" she said, sympathy in her tone that thrilled him. Then quickly, as if the words had broken from her and must be retrieved: "Of course not; a man never is lonely. But what are you doing here, out of your station, carrying Don Roberto's cloak and hat?"

"I am a servant in the house of Don Abrahan," Henderson replied.

"Oh, I know," impatiently, "but what are you truly?"

"A sailor who ran away from his ship, a silly fellow who jumped from one hard master and ultimate freedom, to a soft-spoken one and pros-

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/89


text:
Page:Tales from Shakespeare - Lamb C and M, Rackham A (1908).djvu/273

 cheap and obvious flattery. In this way Timon but the other day had given to one of these mean lords the bay courser which he himself rode upon, because his lordship had been pleased to say that it was a handsome beast and went well; and Timon knew that no man ever justly praised what he did not wish to possess. For lord Timon weighed his friends' affection with his own, and so fond was he of bestowing, that he could have dealt kingdoms to these supposed friends, and never have been weary.

Not that Timon's wealth all went to enrich these wicked flatterers; he could do noble and praiseworthy actions; and when a servant of his once loved the daughter of a rich Athenian, but could not hope to obtain her by reason that in wealth and rank the maid was so far above him, lord Timon freely bestowed upon his servant three Athenian talents, to make his fortune equal with the dowry which the father of the young maid demanded of him who should be her husband. But for the most part, knaves and parasites had the command of his fortune, false friends whom he did not know to be such, but, because they flocked around his person, he thought they must needs love him; and because they smiled and flattered him, he thought surely that his conduct was approved by all the wise and good. And when he was feasting in the midst of all these flatterers and mock friends, when they were eating him up, and draining his fortunes dry with large draughts of richest wines drunk to his health and prosperity, he could not perceive the difference of a friend from a flatterer, but to his deluded eyes (made proud with the sight) it seemed a precious comfort to have so many like brothers commanding one another's fortunes (though it was his own fortune which paid all the


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/90

 pects extremely doubtful. Will you do me the kindness to come down and let me see your face? Surely I must not have seen you among the guests. Your English speech is not the kind that comes out of a Spanish mouth."

She made no movement to comply with his request, earnestly and respectfully, almost entreatingly, made. From the rustling of the leaves around her, he was certain that she shook her head.

"I climbed up here to be safe, in case they missed me and came hunting for me," she said. "Men cannot be trusted alone with women in this country. If they found me here talking with you, I'd be under a cloud all the days of my life."

"Damn them!" said Henderson, the sailor in him leaping ahead of the conventional man.

"I have, many a time," she said, in sober earnestness.

"You're not one of them, these lotus-eaters?"

"Yes, one of them. Perhaps only half would be better to say. My father was a Yankee, a Boston ship captain. His name was Isaac Sprague. It isn't fair to ask more than one is willing to tell, so I tell you this. Now, who are you, and what are you masquerading here to find out?"

"I have told you, Miss Sprague. My name is Gabriel Henderson"

"I know that."

"And I am a foolish chap who didn't know any better than to get into debt to the benevolent Don Abrahan. He says I shall not leave this place until

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/90


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/91

 the last penny is cleared. At the rate I'm going, that will never happen in the course of my natural life."

"I know all of that. But I don't believe you'd stay, I don't believe Don Abrahan and all the powers he can command, could keep you here a minute longer than you wanted to stay."

"I am afraid I'm neither so brave nor so resourceful as you seem to do me the honor of believing," Henderson told her.

He wondered if her desire to know about him, to penetrate the mystery that she had clothed him with in her own romantic imagination, could be entirely her own, unprompted by some dictator who stood out of sight.

"I must go back," she said, rustling in the tree as if she were coming down. "I left my aunt asleep in a corner of the porch; she will be frantic if she wakes and does not see me near. Please walk away and look at the hill again, and I will come down."

"Give me your hand; let me help you, Miss Sprague. Make me happy by standing in the moonlight just one moment, so I may see and remember your face."

"You're talking like a native," she said, between disappointment and scorn. "I ran away from them. I risked everything, just for a minute's speech with a natural man. Yov're letting the insincerities of our tinkling little language get hold of your tongue, Mr. Gabriel Henderson."

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/91


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/92

 "I would like to see your face," he pleaded, downcast and reproved.

"If you'll not go and look at the hill, I must stay in the tree," she said. "You'd only be disappointed if you saw the face I'd have to show in the bright moonlight, Mr. Henderson. I am the red-haired beauty with freckles, hovered over by a large lady in green. You couldn't have missed seeing me; I was as prominent as a worm on a leaf. The lady is my aunt; she is Don Abrahan's cousin, and I—I am to marry his devoted son. So there, you know it all. Go away and look at the hill."

"Somebody is coming," he warned her, his words quick, cautious.

"God help me! I am lost!"

Henderson saw her standing on the great branch, unsteady as if she might fall in the tremor of her fright.

"Climb higher; hide among the leaves," he directed her.

He began walking back and forth, his head bent, in the manner of a sorrowful man who unburdens himself to his own heart.

Don Roberto and a companion, laughing in the merriment of their confidences, strolled in the moonlight not a rod beyond the fringe of the great tree's shadow. In the leaves overhead Henderson heard the rustling of the girl's movement to conceal herself, and a little gasp when something came falling among the close-knit small branches,

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/92


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/93

 and struck the ground softly a little distance from where he stood.

Don Roberto and his companion were approaching along the broad roadway that ran down beneath the old encina to the gate; there was no time to search for the thing she had let fall. Henderson could not see anything against the intensified darkness of the bare ground. Some trifle, he supposed, that a branch had wrested from her. He hoped Don Roberto and his friend would pass.

"Ha, it is our friend, Don Gabriel,' Roberto said, applying the name of honor to his valet in slurring levity.

"Keeping a tryst for a lady," the one who walked with him laughed. He stooped, his foot striking something in the dark. "And by my life, here is her shoe! Don Roberto, we have broken a romance; we have frightened her away."

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/93


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/94

ENDERSON felt his wits revolving for a moment like a straw in a whirlpool. The unlucky arrival of Don Roberto, the doubly unfortunate chance upon the lost shoe by his companion, had forced him into a situation that would require either great audacity or greater diplomacy to come out of with the lady's honor untouched in the eyes of those jealous and biased moralists.

He recalled her vividly in the light of the brief description she had given of herself, but with nothing of either the insignificance or the humility of the worm. She had not been present at the celebration before that day; her appearance among the belles of the ranchos, whose dark beauty was becoming rather tiresome, had been like a green hill to the mariner's eye.

He had puzzled over her that day, trying to account for the wide difference of type she presented, not knowing that Yankee marriages were common among the first families of California. Her hair was of a reddish brown, dusky in its depths where the Saxon strain mastered the Latin; her fair skin was dashed, as she had said, with a little partridge flight of freckles across her nose. Not of a prettiness such as would be appealing to

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/94


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/95

 these fast-maturing youths; rather a sober and melancholy type, her gray eyes wise and clear of the small pretenses and subterfuges of feminine vanity. There was a thinness in her cheek, as if whetted by a sorrow, the reflection of trouble in her eyes. This he remembered, picturing her again, swiftly, as he stood trying to make fast a line to his swirling thoughts.

He must get hold of the shoe; he must create some sort of diversion that would lead the two strollers away from the tree, whatever their curious humor to pry into his supposed romance might be. The girl must be brought down out of the tree and taken to the house by some sequestered way, and all must be done in a matter of minutes, before her absence from the side of her duenna could connect her with the lost shoe.

The two young men had stopped beneath the tree, laughing over their discovery. Henderson feared the girl's fright might betray her, not knowing how improbable it was that a Mexican gentleman would look in a tree for a lady, though the rustling of her movement might be plain in his ears.

"What kind of a shoe is this—a sheepskin sandal?" Don Roberto inquired, a laugh in his voice over the thought of this interrupted lovescene between his valet and some day-laborer's girl. "Come to the moonlight with this precious discovery, Don Fernando; let us see."

Don Fernando, the young man who had stum-

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/95


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/96

 bled upon the shoe, hesitated, the small thing in his hand.

"It seems to be a lady's dancing-shoe. I believe such as might be meeting your servant under a tree by night would not wear a shoe of this kind, Don Roberto. Somebody has lost it in a stroll, and could not find it again in the dark."

"Is it possible?" Don Roberto asked, something more than surprise in his voice, a thing ominous, suspicious." Let us have a look at it over here."

"It is just a little thing of silk and kid," said Don Fernando, temporizing as if undecided what to do.

"Step into the moonlight, Don Fernando—it is half as bright as day. We'll see this pretty shoe, then watch for the mate of it. What a joke it will be to give back her shoe!"

"Oh, Don Roberto, Don Roberto!" his friend protested gently.

"But the shoe—give me the shoe, then, Don Fernando."

"If you will pry into a Jady's misfortune," Don Fernando laughed, passing the shoe to his friend's outstretched hand.

"Permit me," said Henderson, snatching the shoe from Roberto's fingers.

"Impertinent dog!"

Roberto sprank back a step with the malediction thrown in his servant's face, as if to be out of reach of violence that he expected to follow it. The leap carried him into the moonlight, where he stood

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/96


text:
Page:Tales from Shakespeare - Lamb C and M, Rackham A (1908).djvu/274

 costs), and with joy they would run over at the spectacle of such, as it appeared to him, truly festive and fraternal meeting.

But while he thus outwent the very heart of kindness, and poured out his bounty, as if Plutus, the god of gold, had been but his steward; while thus he proceeded without care or stop, so senseless of expense that he would neither inquire how he could maintain it, nor cease his wild flow of riot; his riches, which were not infinite, must needs melt away before a prodigality which knew no limits. But who should tell him so? his flatterers? they had no interest in shutting his eyes. In vain did his honest steward Flavius: try to represent to him his condition, laying his accounts before him, begging of him, praying of him, with an importunity that on any other occasion would have been unmannerly in a servant, beseeching him with tears to look into the state of his affairs. Timon would still put him off, and turn the discourse to something else; for nothing is so deaf to remonstrance as riches turned to poverty, nothing is so unwilling to believe its situation, nothing so incredulous to its own true state, and hard to give credit to a reverse. Often had this good steward, this honest creature, when all the rooms of Timon's great house have been choked up with riotous feeders at his master's cost, when the floors have wept with drunken spilling of wine, and every apartment has blazed with lights and resounded with music and feasting, often had he retired by himself to some solitary spot, and wept faster than the wine ran from the wasteful casks within, to see the mad bounty of his lord, and to think, when the means were gone which brought him praises from all sorts of people, how quickly the breath would be gone of which the praise was made; praises won in feasting would be


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/97

 with hand at his sash, feeling for the weapon which, for the occasion, was not there.

"Restore me the shoe! This instant give it back!" he commanded.

"I was sent for it; I will restore it to the owner," Henderson replied, his manner lofty and severe.

"Who commands you?"

"That is for me to know, Don Roberto."

"Very well," said Roberto, indifferently, as if the humor of the situation had mended the affront given him by his valet; "go on, then, and take the shoe to its owner. We will accompany you; we will go by your side, to see the pretty foot that it fits."

"No, Don Roberto. Let the poor fellow have his hour of romance, if he can. I am not one with you to pry into it, or into the lady's confusion, let her be whom she may."

Fernando turned away with these words, going toward the house. Henderson felt his heart warm to the young fellow, glad to know there was some of the delicacy of chivalry still living in that race.

"Yankee thief! you'll feel the bite of rawhide for this," Roberto threatened. "Come, take me to the owner of this shoe."

Henderson stood in the bright moonlight confronting this petulant tyrant who believed himself master not only of the present situation but the future as well. The little shoe was soft in Henderson's hand; he held its pliant, thin sole bent in his palm, hiding it from Roberto's curiously hungry

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/97


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/98

 eyes. It was a moment for swift consideration, quick arrival upon a course that would save the shoe's owner from the blight of scandal. Don Fernando was walking away rapidly; he passed out of sight among the low-hanging branches of the pepper trees.

"Very well," Henderson yielded, after what seemed a struggle against himself.

"Half of your lashes will be remitted for this, my fine Gabriel," Roberto generously declared. "But for snatching the shoe out of my hand, may rats eat my heart if I do not find your ribs with my whip tomorrow!"

"This way, then," said Henderson, leading off in the direction of the laborers' huts below the brow of the hill.

Where there had been merely contempt for Roberto's pampered pride, his oppression and disdain, there leaped hot in Henderson's breast this moment a desire to bring him low. The snarl of the fellow's heavy lips when he threatened the lash, the greedy tightening of his eyes, betrayed the cruelty that lay under his callow exterior. As quick as the flash of his vengeful desire, Henderson's lively mind contrived a way.

"Who is there in this direction wearing the shoes of a lady?" Roberto inquired, halting suspiciously after they had gone a few rods from the tree.

"It remains for you to see," Henderson replied. If Don Roberto had been schooled in the inflections

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/98


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/99

 of the human voice, he would have turned back that moment.

"Here now, Gabriel, give me the foolish shoe and let us be friends," Roberto coaxed, holding out his hand. "I promise you I will forgive you for taking it out of my hand, although you shamed me before a friend. Give it to me, and take my forgiveness."

Henderson looked behind him. They were only a little way from the tree where the girl trembled among the leaves, fearful of losing the good name that was more to her than life; not far from the long tables spread under the trees before the mansion, from which the laughter and clatter of those who fed around them came clearly.

"Why do you hesitate, little Gabriel?" Roberto asked impatiently. "The shoe, and be forgiven."

"Damn your generosity!" Henderson replied. The weight of his body was behind the blow that he struck Roberto under the ear.

Roberto fell as limp as wet leather, for the iron of salt-horse and hard-tack, and months of disciplinary labor, was in that blow. Roberto's fine ruffed shirt made the gag that stopped his mouth, his silk necktie the bond for his hands; the sleeves of his shirt served well to secure his feet, and there the sailor left him, stretched behind the trunk of a great oak, his overfed heart fluttering like a moth caught in wax.

"Quick—your foot!" Henderson whispered, mounting the seat encircling the tree-trunk where

title: Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/99


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/100

 Don Roberto's betrothed prayed softly for deliverance among the leaves.

"You haven't killed him, Don Gabriel?" she asked.

She clambered down from her higher perch as she spoke, leaning to lay her hand on his shoulder. He felt the tremor of her body, the dread anxiety of her low-spoken word.

"He'll be ready for the wedding tomorrow, Miss Sprague, if you need him so soon," Gabriel assured her.

"I pray that day will never come!" she said, with such feeling that caution was forgotten. "But I would not have him dead, of all things dead at your hands, Don Gabriel," she added softly, her hand still on his shoulder, her breath on his cheek.

Henderson had found her unshod foot; he was replacing the slipper with such haste that impeded his work, anxious for her to come down and hurry back to her duenna's side. For his own road was calling to him; the moon marked its way over the hill among the greasewood and the sage.

"Now go," he said, having fastened the buckle on its silken strap across her vaulted instep; "run for it, Miss Sprague!"

She came down lightly, her hand in his, her weight thrown on his shoulder, and stood so a moment, as if she had climbed to give him some sweet confidence unseen among the boughs.

"Avaid the man called Fernando—the one who found your shoe," he whispered, his breath short


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/101

 with something that was not fatigue from the fastening of her shoe.

"I know a way," she panted. "I shall be safe now."

It seemed as if shortness of breath were a contagion that had laid hold of both of them under the gray, solemn oak that moonlit night. Both of them knew well enough that they had no moments to gamble away, but she lingered. Her hand was still cold in the chill of her past fright.

"Have you heard from the north?" she asked eagerly, whispering close to his ear.

"The north?"

"I came to ask you; I wanted to know if you were—if you had a friend in the north who had sent you the news?"

"I haven't a friend in California," he replied, thinking in the same breath that he ought to be half-way up the hill by now.

"One, at least," she corrected him, touching his shoulder in assuring comfort, speaking hurriedly, the necessity of the moment urging her now. "Where is Roberto? Have you hurt him much?"

"Behind that tree, not hurt. He's likely to get loose any moment—I must go. Good-bye, Miss Sprague. My greatest wish is for your happiness."

"Go to my estate in the valley over there—it is near San Fernando Mission, the Sprague ranch—everybody knows it. I'll be there before you, unless you are taking a horse?"

"No."


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/102

 "It is better that way; there would be a legal accusation if you took a horse. Come straight to my home, then. I have something to tell you—there is news from the north."

This last she emphasized as though she believed it had a meaning he would understand. He waited, standing as she left him on the seat, his head among the low branches, watching her until she disappeared under the pepper trees near the house. Then he leaped down and ran to the olive lane, and up the road by which he had arrived on a day that seemed to him now long ago, holding like a vassal to Don Abrahan's stirrup, to be betrayed by the treacherous hospitality of that place.

Henderson was hatless; his finery, his light shoes, were not calculated to withstand the rigors of flight in the rough country where his small chance of safety lay. His velvet and bright satin would mark him in the eyes of every person that met him. He would leave a trail behind him like a fire. But he was confident; he was not flying friendlessly into the unknown.

He knew in a general way where San Fernando Mission was, across the first range of hills in the valley of the same name, twenty miles or more away. There was little likelihood that they would start the pursuit of him tonight, hot as Roberto would be for revenge; the vast assurance of their mighty ability to reach out and drag a fugitive back with their thousand hands would hold them in their beds till day. But the word of his escape


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/103

 was sure to be sent abroad by Indian messengers the moment it was discovered.

Henderson proceeded on his way with a feeling of security in spite of his knowledge of this. He was certain there was no treachery in Miss Sprague's offer of a refuge, and profession of friendship.

Don Felipe had spoken frequently of Roberto's betrothed, but never by name. She had been away, in school at Santa Barbara, Felipe had said. She must have come home only a day or twoago. That accounted for Roberto never having ridden to San Fernando, his valet at his back. Unlucky chance, thought Henderson, for then he would have known the road.

Where the olive lane ended, and the road swept away eastward to the pass and on its way to Buena Ventura and the North, Henderson paused. There was no break in the sound of festivity around the tables beneath the trees; it was certain that Roberto had not broken his insecure bonds and given the alarm. Here the fugitive must leave the highway and take a shorter line across the hills. Little chance that any would find his tracks in the goat path that he must follow up the first steep slope. At dawn Liseta would come with her flock; the tracks of his passing would be cut out of the path by two hundred scrambling hoofs.


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/104

ON ROBERTO rode into the courtyard at evening, dust on his shoulders. He flung himself from the saddle with impatience, throwing out his hands in baffled expression of emptiness when Don Abrahan came hastily from the house to meet him.

"The earth has swallowed him," Don Roberto said.

He drew his shoulders up, lifted his eyebrows, pulled down the corners of his large, flexible mouth, emphasizing his report of complete failure in his quest.

"You have made his grave, then? It is very good."

Don Abrahan spoke with well-simulated gratification, as a man hearing good news. But that light of something in his eyes that seemed laughter and was not, told Roberto that he was being scorned.

"I have not made his grave," Roberto replied shortly, with surly tongue. "No man has seen him; he leaves no tracks."

"The earth opens to swallow a man but once," Don Abrahan said gravely. That is when it makes the little grin called the grave. As long as this sailor is not in his grave, he walks the ground


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/105

 to be brought back to this plantation and serve his time."

"I'll cut the heart out of him with a rawhide when I find him!" Roberto said.

"Cut him till his back runs blood, you may; but his heart you will leave whole in his body to suffer for the great insult he has put upon this house. Never mind," laying his hand on Roberto's shoulder in comforting caress, "we shall find him. There is no way for him to escape but through the mountains into the desert. He had no arms, no money; his shoes are cut to pieces on the rocks by now; he runs lame; he is hungry. Soon he must come out of his place to beg foode. Then the word will come; we shall have him in our hands."

Don Felipe came for the horse, led it away unnoticed by father and son, clapped his genie signal for the young man who always seemed just out of sight in the warehouse. Don Abrahan and his son, in close and earnest conversation, entered the dwelling.

This was the evening of the fourth day since Henderson's escape. The mystery of his complete evanishment troubled Don Abrahan, not so much because his son had failed in the search which he headed, as that it seemed to show that his hitherto dependable machinery had failed and broken down. This would seem to indicate that the peon class was growing in defiance of the privileged few who had held them in subjugation so completely and so long. It was a state of affairs to cause a man to wrinkle


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/106

 his brow and consider, with beard bent upon his breast.

And so Don Abrahan sat in what would have been called his library in an American house, but in this place termed office. Here the records of his business transactions were kept; here such books as the family owned, which were neither many nor important. Don Abrahan's father had occupied the room for the same purpose, contriving it when he built the house.

This was a room of two tall, narrow Venetian windows set in the deep adobe wall. There were dark beams of cedar overhead, a dark door of broad panels and great thickness shutting off the rest of the house. There was a picture of a cavalier in a ruff and pointed beard, a sword at his side, his hand on the hilt, hanging in a dark, deep frame between the windows. In the center of the room Don Abrahan's strong oak table stood, two silver candlesticks flanking the great inkstand.

There was more to trouble Don Abrahan than the thought of peon defiance in concealing a fugitive, or the revolution in the peon mind and conscience which would no longer permit one to seize and deliver an unhappy human chattel for the reward of five dollars. The greater thought that rose in the mind of Don Abrahan, like a cloud out of season upon the eye, was nothing less than that of American plotting and contriving to lay hold of California and add it to their domain.

That such plotting was going on, Don Abrahan


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/107

 and others of his estate had proof; that it was being furthered and supported by men of his own nation who hoped to profit through it, and by Spaniards who had lost their lands, was more than suspected.

Proof was wanting there, but proof Don Abrahan hoped to secure, to the happy hanging of some of his neighbors, the exile and expatriation of others. Then there would be land to divide as a reward among the patriots. The thought brought a smile to Don Abrahan's face; it stood in twinkling reflection in his eyes long after its ripple had passed through his beard.

Roberto entered presently, refreshed by razor and clean garments. His face was gloomy for all the brightness of his raiment; there was a sulkiness in the corners of his drooping lips as of a resentful child. He sat at the end of the table, dark, handsome; soft in his habit of indolence, yet enduring from the very breed of him, more boy than man in spite of his years. There was promise in his well-carried head, capability in his small, compact hands. Experience, hardship, renunciation by force, might harden this indulged boy into a formidable man, such as the gray, sharp-featured one across the table.

"You are wrong, father, when you think he roams the hills without a friend," Roberto said.

He scarcely had settled in the rough chair with rawhide seat, but with the words he got to his feet again, walked rapidly across the room, stood at a


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/108

 window where a last spear of sunlight came through, filtered of its white strength by the smoky haze of the hills.

"You believe some American in the pueblo is hiding him?" Don Abrahan asked.

He was unmoved by his son's perturbation. He watched the young man furtively, head bent, fingers interlaced meditatively at the tip of his beard. It was as if he tried an experiment in psychology, and waited the result.

"No, there is no American in the pueblo who would risk it. But there is another, not in the pueblo. He is not without a friend."

Don Abrahan lifted his head, his eyes open wide. He puta hand to the table, leaning forward as if to rise.

"What is it you have learned today?" he asked.

Roberto turned from the window to stand with hands on the back of his chair, deliberating his next word, itseemed. He sat down, drew the chair close to the table, leaning confidentially toward his father, eye to the windows to see that nobody loitered near.

"There is something to be told to the shame of this house," he said, with such intense feeling that caused his father to stare. "There is a thing I have kept from you since the night of this rufianly assault. Now you must hear it, but it burns my heart with shame to speak the words."

"How? What is this thing you preface with such terrible beginning?"


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/109

 Don Abrahan was thoroughly aroused. He glanced behind him to see that the door letting into the rest of the house was closed; and over his shoulder to make certain the door opening out of it into the convenient courtyard that might, in time of stress, contain a man's saddled horse, did not show a crack.

"It is infidelity and disgrace of one that was most dear," Roberto said, his head drooping with shame of the confession. "Helena—it was Helena who met him under the tree that cursed night. It was Helena's slipper that Don Fernando picked up. She lost it when she fled."

"But no, no. Did you see her, my son?"

"I held the shoe a moment before the dog snatched it from me. It was of the shoes I bought her in Mexico City, silk and fine kid. There is no mistake; there are no shoes of that kind in this country."

"And Don Fernando? You were not fool enough to betray this suspicion to him?"

"Don Fernando does not know, thank God! This affront to my honor is known only to you and me, and the guilty pair that shamed me. And by the breath of God I'll wash my hands in their blood before another sun goes down!"

"But Helena, that is not like her. I would not condemn Helena without greater proof than the circumstance of a shoe picked up under a tree. You did not see her run away. Perhaps she lost it, passing there for the air with Doña Carlota, and


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/110

 could not find it in the dark. I will make inquiry of Carlota. Let us be calm; let us wait."

"It is well enough for you to say all this, but I, who know better, want no further proof."

"It is not like Helena," Don Abrahan persisted. "Why should she want to meet a servant by night under a tree? It is preposterous!"

"It is her Yankee blood; there is a baseness in it," Roberto declared.

"Grant that it was Helena's shoe that caused you to suffer at this rough fellow's hands—and I am not convinced yet that it was, for ships from Mexico bring many shoes—there would be no harm in the prank of meeting this sailor for a word. Helena is more Yankee than Mexican. It is a strong blood; it is not always base. Captain Sprague was as much a gentleman as ever came to California from any land."

"No harm in meeting him!" Roberto repeated bitterly. It seemed that he had not heard his father beyond these words.

"No harm. It is the custom of Americans to permit their young of the opposite sexes together in all places, at all hours. Custom gives it a different color in their eyes than ours. It is likely she only wanted to practice a little English with one fresh from Boston, to get from him the latest words. She has dreams of going there some day; she doesn't want to go with a stiff tongue."

"It isn't her native speech, her native land. She is Mexican, as I am. Captain Sprague was a Mexi-


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/111

 can citizen; there is no Yankee custom that can absolve her."

"I think she is innocent of any wrong intention, however bold her deed, if she is guilty of meeting him as you charge, my son. There is no smirch on Helena; she is a good girl, and a rich one. I cannot permit you to think of throwing aside this betrothal on account of a foolish episode such as troubles you so deeply, Roberto. It is our secret. Call it a child's prank and forgive it."

"And this Yankee sailor? Do you expect me to forgive him, as well?"

Don Abrahan sat in meditation a little while, his beard bent upon his breast. When he looked up—presently there was that reflection of inner laughter in his eyes.

"The devil first tempted woman under a tree," he said. "If Adam had killed the devil in Eden, it would have been for the happiness of mankind."

Roberto sprang to his feet, his nostrils twitching, his face white.

"I know where to find him!" he said. "This country could not hide a man four days without a strong friend to cover him. Give me permission to go to San Fernando and demand this Yankee at her door."

"Without absolute knowledge that he is there, it would be an affront that Helena never would forgive," Don Abrahan returned in politic softness.

"Forgive! Helena forgive! I swear to you,


text:
Page:Tales from Shakespeare - Lamb C and M, Rackham A (1908).djvu/275

 lost in feasting, and at one cloud of winter-showers these flies would disappear.

But now the time was come that Timon could shut his ears no longer to the representations of this faithful steward. Money must be had; and when he ordered Flavius to sell some of his land for that purpose, Flavius informed him, what he had in vain endeavoured at several times before to make him listen to, that most of his land was already sold or forfeited, and that all he possessed at present was not enough to pay the one half of what he owed. Struck with wonder at this presentation, Timon hastily replied: "My lands extend from Athens to Lacedaemon." "O my good lord," said Flavius, "the world is but a world, and has bounds; were it all yours to give in a breath, how quickly were it gone!"

Timon consoled himself that no villainous bounty had yet come from him, that if he had given his wealth away unwisely, it had not been bestowed to feed his vices, but to cherish his friends; and he made the kind-hearted steward (who was weeping) to take comfort in the assurance that his master could never lack means, while he had so many noble friends; and this infatuated lord persuaded himself that he had nothing to do but to send and borrow, to use every man's fortune (that had ever tasted his bounty) in this extremity, as freely as his own. Then with a cheerful look, as if confident of the trial, he severally despatched messengers to lord Lucius, to lords Lucullus and Sempronius, men upon whom he had lavished his gifts in past times without measure or moderation; and to Ventidius, whom he had lately released out of prison by paying his debts, and who, by the death of his father, was now come into the possession of an ample fortune, and well enabled to requite Timon's courtesy: to request


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/112

 Don Abrahan my father, that I will not have her, polluted by his kiss."

"This is folly," Don Abrahan reproved him coldly. "What is a kiss more or less, if he kissed her? The sailor never met her alone, never spoke a word to her. But I give him to you. Do with him what your desire leads you to do—when you find him."

"If we find that she is hiding him, will that be proof enough for you of her guilt?"

"It is preposterous; she could not hide him—nobody could hide him," Don Abrahan declared, but contrary to his own deep conviction that somebody, indeed, must be concealing the fugitive. "He has crawled into a cave in the hills; hunger will drive him out tomorrow."

"It is a thing that touches a man's honor. One does not marry a woman whom he has discovered alone with a man."

Roberto judged Helena as Helena judged him and his kind, as revealed in her significant speech to Henderson, explaining why she had hidden herself in the tree. Men were not trusted alone with women in the Spanish-Mexican society of that time; they are not trusted in any greater degree in the same society today.

"Proof would be necessary," Don Abrahan insisted, with such firmness that Roberto knew could not be shaken. "You did not see her. The touch of a shoe, which seemed of the same material you brought from the capital"


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/113

 "Sixteen dollars, gold, they cost me!"

"Such evidence is weaker than the testimony of a blind man. It does not convict Helena, in my judgment. I will not consent to your throwing away her lands, her herds, her gold won by that magician Sprague as if he clutched it out of the air. It is too much for a trifle of suspicion to wreck. When you cool, when you are reasonable, you will see it as I do."

"In my own heart she stands convicted. There is not another pair of shoes like that this side of the capital."

"Who comes?" Don Abrahan asked, leaning to listen as the sound of someone riding into the courtyard in haste passed the window like a gust of wind.

Roberto turned to the window to see. The rider had passed; only the dust of his swift arrival could be seen. He opened the window and leaned out.

"Felipe is coming with the intelligence," he announced.

"It is time for the fish to show himself in the net," Don Abrahan said, going to the door which opened into the courtyard. "I knew we must have news of him soon."

Roberto stood by the table, lips compressed, hands clenched, as if he struggled against vengeful emotions. Don Abrahan turned from the door, and closed it. He stood a moment reading the written message his mayordomo had put into his hand.


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/114

 "It is a message from Doña Carlota, at the San Fernando ranch," he said, looking his son straight in the eyes. Don Abrahan stood then a moment, taking his breath in such long inspiration as a man draws it when he fortifies himself for some tremendous ordeal.

"Your suspicions are confirmed. She is hiding him," he said.


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/115

ONAOÑA [sic] CARLOTA, cousin of Don Abrahan, kept her candle burning late that night. She drew the drapery of her chamber window aside to show that the house was awake, herself seated discreetly out of sight of any passing eye. With crochet needle and fine silk thread she worked upon the mantilla that had employed her fingers many months, and would so employ them until the ripening of grapes.

There was a weight of trouble upon the breast of Doña Carlota that night, a haven broad enough to harbor many troubles, yet in which few had come to anchor in her placid years. She was as round and fat as an old hen pigeon, small in the face, her chin merged into her neck, her black hair pulled rigorously back from her shallow forehead in what seemed an attempt to give sternness to a countenance that had no more severity in it than a cake. Even trouble could do no more than give it a comical little look of appeal.

Between love and duty Doña Carlota had suffered these two days. At the last she had yielded to duty, as she would have deferred to religion, and the thing was done. Now she waited as it drew on toward midnight, listening for the sound of


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/116

 horses coming from the south. When she felt a flood of drowsiness coming over her, threatening to smother her like a clam on the beach, she fumbled beneath the half-finished mantilla for her rosary, moving her lips in a Hail Mary. In that manner of fending off sleep Doña Carlota felt that she had built a solid wall of Hail Marys around that house which harm could not surmount even with a dragon's wings. Yet she had quakings and doubts; she suffered tremors of cold fears.

At ten minutes before midnight, Doña Carlota believed she had expected too much of Don Abrahan; he would not come that night. At five minutes past the hour, as she stood with hand on the drawn drapery to let it fall and shut the candlelight from the road, a dog barked before an Indian shepherd's hut. His alarm was taken up, as a cock's crow goes onward over the land from straining throat to throat, from the edge of the world in the west to the very shores of dawn. Men came riding into the patio. Don Abrahan was at the door.

Doña Carlota hastened to open to the magistrate's command, even to the command of his presence, before his hand was lifted to the panel.

"So you have come," she said. "May Jesus protect us all! Enter, Don Abrahan."

"There is no cause for your perturbation, my good cousin,' Don Abrahan said, laughing at her magnification of a thing that he considered only commonplace, troublesome, small. "A runaway peon is not a thing to disturb your tranquillity."


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/117

 "But the anger of Helena! She will blast us with the passion that has come to her from that terrible captain. When she knows that I sent for you"

"Peace, peace, Doña Carlota. Who is going to tell her, but yourself?"

"She is so shrewd, she can see through a wall, Don Abrahan."

Don Abrahan laughed again, seeming in pleasant humor for one who had ridden so far from his bed. He pinched Doña Carlota's cheek, finding no trouble to get his fingers full.

"A wall is another thing," he said. Doña Carlota was not quick at a jest. She did not understand his mirth.

Roberto entered, a pistol at his belt; Simon, the teamster, stood in the beam of Doña Carlota's candle outside the door.

"Where is the Yankee dog?" Roberto demanded, harsh, disrespectful, his hat insolently on his head.

"Gently," Don Abrahan cautioned; "not so loud. Lead us to the room where he is hidden—the house is guarded at every door; he cannot escape."

"The house, the room?" Doña Carlota gasped in scandalized amazement. "Do you believe, Don Abrahan, that my niece would conceal a man in her house? Jesus save"

"Where, then?" Roberto demanded.

"I do not know, Don Roberto; but somewhere


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/118

 on the ranch. The Yankee mayordomo can tell you that."

"A tree would tell as much!" Don Abrahan said. "Call Helena."

"She has heard; she is coming. There is her candle in the hall!" Doña Carlota pressed her elbows to her sides, drew her shoulders as if trying to shrink upon herself.

Helena appeared, lifting her candle high to peer beneath it at the intruders upon her midnight peace. The flaring bottom of the candlestick threw a shadow on her face, only her hair coming into the light. She was draped in a long, dark, voluminous cloak, her arms bare in its wide sleeves, the white frill of her nightdress peeping at her throat out of its austere envelopment.

"It is a late hour for a visit, Don Abrahan, Roberto," she said, looking from one to the other in questioning surprise. "I heard horsemen in my patio. What does it mean?"

"We have come to you for a man who has run away from a debt, like a thief," Don Abrahan replied. "Your mayordomo is hiding him on your ranch, I have been told. It is to your authority I appeal, as a magistrate of the law, Helena, to compel the delivery of this fugitive alien into our hands."

"My mayordomo is only obeying my orders," Helena replied.

She placed her candle on the deep window-sill, gathering her cloak closer about her neck, standing


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/119

 so, clasping the mantle delicately, its loose sleeve slipping down to the bend of her arm.

"You are humane, but mistaken," Don Abrahan chided her gently. "This man is a ruffianly sailor who ran away from his ship; he has committed a murderous assault on my son. He is entirely unworthy of your protection and tender sympathy."

"I am sorry that it was necessary for Roberto to suffer at his hands," she said, yet withholding from Roberto even the sympathy of her glance. "I have talked with the young sailor, Mr. Henderson. He is a gentleman; he does not deserve the hard usage you have given him, any more than he does the hard name, Don Abrahan. I intended to go down and see you about his case tomorrow."

"Then I rejoice that I have spared you so much fatigue," Don Abrahan said, inclining his thin body in graceful obeisance, sombrero in his hand.

"I am sure Mr. Henderson has repaid you, many times over, all that he ever owed you legally," Helena said. "He has told me that he came into your service in February; it is now July. You cannot rate the services of an American with those of an ignorant peon, Don Abrahan. Be generous; call it paid."

"What he owes me is another matter," Roberto said.

He had found the grace to remove his hat on Helena's appearance; in his fierce show of hungry vengeance now he let it fall, the hand that had held it clenched, the other on his pistol.


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/120

 Helena surveyed him in this dramatic pose with cool curiosity, running her eyes over him as if searching the cause of his animosity against a man whom he had degraded to a servile station and now pursued in vindictive hate.

"Although I might forgive his debt as you propose, under such kindly argument by his lovely advocate, that would not free him of his assault upon my son. But you are mistaken in the matter of his debt to me; the man has lied."

"He cannot escape," Roberto said fiercely, bending toward her as he spoke, his face flushed, his eyes drawn small.

"It is impossible for him to reach the north and join the Americans who plot against our country there," Don Abrahan declared. "The road is guarded well; he cannot pass."

"I doubt if he thinks of escaping—to the north, or anywhere, at present, Don Abrahan. A man who has done no wrong has nothing to fear."

"There is no reason in the heart of youth—only fire and sympathy," Don Abrahan said. "Yankee men of this common type are brutes. This one I saw strike his captain down with a broken oar, like asavage. What weapon he held when he assaulted my son we do not know, but the bruise of it is still to be seen on his face. No, the man cannot be permitted to go free and unpunished. The safety of the community demands his correction."

"He told me he struck Roberto with his hand, and no weapon," Helena said, indignant over the


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/121

 charge, unwise in her revelation, as she realized almost immediately.

"So you have been alone with him again, cheek by cheek!" Roberto accused, with insolence malevolent and threatening.

"Silence!" Don Abrahan commanded, turning a stern face upon his son.

"I was not alone with him; John Toberman was present."

"What cruelty to say she was alone with a man!" said Doña Carlota. "The four angels who guard her chamber are not more innocent, Don Roberto."

"Then if you will call Toberman and order him to lead us to the sailor's hiding-place," Don Abrahan suggested, yet with the imperative inflection of a command.

"I heard him among your men; he is not one to sleep when an invasion like this is going on. Call at the door, or send Simon around to the patio."

John Toberman, mayordomo of the ranch, appeared at the front door presently with Simon, who had bounded away at Don Abrahan's nod to find him. He came into the light of Doña Carlota's candle, which she still held in her hand, its flame on a level with her stubby nose. He was bareheaded, his pistols were belted around him, his shirt was open on his grizzled neck. He came into the house without ceremony, no show of deference, and little of respect, in his bearing toward Don Abrahan and his son.


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/122

 Toberman was a broad-shouldered, lean Yankee, once mate of the ship that Captain Sprague had commanded. He was sixty years of age or more, his heavy, bushy hair of a pepper-and-salt gray, his bearded face, dark as a Mexican's, keen and alert. He stood in the door, severe, questioning, a cloud of displeasure on his face.

"What does this clatter around here at this time of the night mean, Garvanza?" he demanded, fixing the magistrate with searching eyes.

"In the name of the law, to demand a fugitive who is to be judged for his crimes," Don Abrahan replied.

"You want that young man Henderson, do you? Well, if you think you're goin' to drag him back to work for you till the United States army marches in here and sets the peones free, you're mistaken. If you want to try him for slappin' your son's jaw, set the date and I'll guarantee he'll be on hand."

"There is more than you understand," Don Abrahan said coldly. "You are a Mexican citizen; it is treason for you to talk of an American army taking possession of this country. Bear that in mind when you open your mouth hastily in the future, Toberman."

Toberman seemed to grow two inches as he drew himself up, his chest swelling with no knowing what defiance. Helena lifted her hand, slightly, seeming to speak to him with her eyes. The blast of words that might have knocked Don Abrahan off his feet, and haled Toberman into court for trial


text:
Page:Tales from Shakespeare - Lamb C and M, Rackham A (1908).djvu/276

 of Ventidius the return of those five talents which he had paid for him, and of each of those noble lords the loan of fifty talents; nothing doubting that their gratitude would supply his wants (if he needed it) to the amount of five hundred times fifty talents.

Lucullus was the first applied to. This mean lord had been dreaming overnight of a silver basin and cup, and when Timon's servant was announced, his sordid mind suggested to him that this was surely a making out of his dream, and that Timon had sent him such a present: but when he understood the truth of the matter, and that Timon wanted money, the quality of his faint and watery friendship showed itself, for with many protestations he vowed to the servant that he had long foreseen the ruin of his master's affairs, and many a time had he come to dinner to tell him of it, and had come again to supper to try to persuade him to spend less, but he would take no counsel nor warning by his coming: and true it was that he had been a constant attender (as he said) at Timon's feasts, as he had in greater things tasted his bounty; but that he ever came with that intent, or gave good counsel or reproof to Timon, was a base unworthy lie, which he suitably followed up with meanly offering the servant a bribe, to go home to his master and tell him that he had not found Lucullus at home.

As little success had the messenger who was sent to lord Lucius. This lying lord, who was full of Timon's meat, and enriched almost to bursting with Timon's costly presents, when he found the wind changed, and the fountain of so much bounty suddenly stopped, at first could hardly believe it; but on its being confirmed, he affected great regret that he should not have it in his power to serve lord Timon, for unfortunately (which was a base falsehood) he had made a great purchase the day before, which had


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/123

 on a serious charge, was checked. Toberman contented himself with adjusting his hands on his hips, in a pose that was at once expressive of defiance and disdain, and standing so in silence.

"Where is the fugitive hiding?" Don Abrahan demanded.

"You're free to go and find out," said Toberman.

"The time has come to teach these Yankees who are masters of this country," Roberto said, turning to his father in fury. "Why will you temporize with them—permit them to throw insult and defiance in your face? Give me permission and I will find a way to make this man answer, and answer with respect."

"Peace!" Don Abrahan commanded, yet with more admiration than severity. "There is a way; in due time it will be seen. Toberman, the iron hand of the law is over you; it must not, it shall not be defied. I will give you until midday tomorrow to produce this fugitive. Go about the business immediately."

"Don Abrahan, you have no right to come into my house with such commands!" Helena protested.

"Garvanza, ever since the new governor has been established in the pueblo, with the thieves and off-scourings of the Mexican prisons in his military force, you've swelled up like a toad," Toberman said. He moved forward a step as he spoke, his hand lifted, pointed finger driving his words into


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/124

 the magistrate's face. "I'm not taking orders from the governor, I'm not taking orders from you. I get my orders from this little lady right here, and from nobody else."

Toberman glared around as he pronounced this defiance of the constituted authorities, hands back again on his hips in convenient reach of his pistols, a fearless man who had passed through many conflicts, to whom the imminence of another was nothing but an incident in his day.

"Don Abrahan, I will pay you what this fugitive owes you, according to your own reckoning of it," Helena offered, drawing a little closer to the magistrate, closing the little group in the wide, lowwalled hall. It seemed as if defiance and appeal pressed upon Don Abrahan in the same breath.

"It cannot be permitted," Don Abrahan replied.

He retreated a step from her advance, from her white arms outstretched in supplication for permission to do this humane service.

"He is a stranger, far from home, without money, without friends," she pleaded. "I will pay it in his name—seven times the amount, Don Abrahan, if you demand it."

"It cannot be adjusted in this manner," Don Abrahan refused. "Prepare quarters in this house for me and my son, "he directed, turning gruffly to Doña Carlota.

Doña Carlota started, her growing nervousness reaching its climax in the order, given with such affront to the hospitality of that house. She shifted


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/125

 the position of her candle to look past it at Helena, plainly asking instructions from one whose authority she held in greater fear than Don Abrahan's wrath.

"You will know where to accommodate them," Helena said coldly. "There will be nothing more tonight, John," to Toberman, in kindness that had no taint of patronage.

Toberman left the house the way he had entered, Don Abrahan's order in little prospect of being carried out, that was plain. Doña Carlota had hastened down the hall to open the guest rooms; Don Abrahan turned to the door, where he leaned out peering into the dark, as if watching Toberman. He summoned Simon in low voice, and stood there for some time talking with his teamster in hurried manner, Simon answering with a short word here and there, interspersed in hasty eagerness.

"So you would buy a lover!" Roberto said, his breath audible in his nostrils as he leaned to whisper the insult in Helena's ear.

Helena drew away from him, her cloak gathered close, afraid of him for the fierce cruelty of his eyes. Roberto reached quickly, roughly grasping her wrist where her hand held the mantle at her throat.

"There is a dagger for a heart so false!" he said.

Don Abrahan turned from the door as Roberto flung her hand away with such gesture of contempt,


text:
Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/126

 such complete abandonment, that the magistrate stood stiffly, his limbs checked in their function by his great amazement.

"This is not well," he said sternly.

"False!" Helena repeated in scorn. "Who is it that has mooned and sighed under windows, and caught flowers thrown by coquettes—and worse? What have I heard from the capital of the doings of Don Roberto that would turn my heart to him or make him dear? Roberto, if there ever was any obligation to you on my part, I have been absolved from it long ago."

"You were betrothed ta me—it was a holy compact," Roberto said.

His voice shook with sickness of the shame he believed had been put upon him; he stood clenching his hands and scowling, ready, it seemed, to begin the chastisement that he had threatened.

"This is folly," Don Abrahan said, attempting to soothe their young passion with the unction of his steady word. "All the world knows there was a betrothal between you two, years ago."

"It wasn't of my making," Helena reminded him, bitterly accusing in the recollection of that bargain and conveyance, after the country's custom, "What you and my father arranged between you when I was a child cannot bind me now, Don Abrahan. I repudiate it; I throw it in your face!"

"It cannot be done so lightly," Don Abrahan said, thinking of the lands and herds, and the gold that the Yankee captain had plucked out of the air