The previous chapters
When Gabriel Henderson, young and keen for adventure, shipped aboard a Yankee ship, and sailed around the Horn to California, he little guessed how his future was to lie in that land of golden fortunes.
It was in the days of bucko skippers and Gabriel, driven beyond endurance by brutality and injustice, deserted ship while they were loading skins from the ranch of Don Abrahan Cruz y Garvanza, not far from the pueblo of Los Angeles.
He escaped, but only from one servitude to another, for Don Abrahan befriended him only to reduce him to peonage on his ranch. Don Abrahan was a power in all that district of California, his cattle grazed on a thousand hills, and his name was feared for many square miles.
Young Henderson finds that, though suave in manner, the don has him in his power, and he accepts his bondage—but only until he can plan escape, which is a difficult matter, owing to the power of Don Abrahan.
He is made the servant of Don Roberto, son of old Abrahan, and his lot is every moment a trial to his proud spirit. At the feast celebrating the coming of age of Don Roberto, Henderson is questioned by Helena Sprague, affianced wife of Roberto as to his presence as a servant. They are talking—which fact alone would compromise a woman in that country—when Roberto and a friend come along. Helena escapes up a tree, but her slipper falls into the hands of Roberto's friend.
Chapter VI
IN THE PATH OF THE GOATS
Henderson 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 these fast-maturing youths; rather a sober and studious type, her gray eyes wise and clear. 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 sheep-skin sandal?" Don Roberto inquired, a laugh in his voice over the thought of this interrupted love-scene 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 stumbled 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 lady'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 sprang 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 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.
"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 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. 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 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 hardtack, and months of disciplinary labor, was in that blow. Roberto's fine ruffled 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 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.
"Avoid the man called Fernando—the one who found your shoe," he whispered, his breath short 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 roble 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-by, 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."
"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 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 two ago. 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 hooves.
Chapter VII
A MESSENGER FROM SAN FERNANDO
Don 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 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 food. 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 conversation, entered the dwelling.
This was the evening of the fourth day since Henderson's escape. The mystery of his complete vanishment 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 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 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 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 put a 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, it seemed. 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 ruffianly 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?"
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 that 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 the 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 one 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 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. "And grant that it was her 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. 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 Mexican 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 evil 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 and demand him 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, 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." 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."
"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.
"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.
Chapter VIII
THE TEETH OF A MAN
Doña 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 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 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. 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 Dan 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 dooryard. 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 tranquility."
"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 finger's 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 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 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 night-dress 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 man."
"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 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 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.
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.
"Although I might forgive his debt, 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 a savage. 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 charge, unwise in her revelation, as she realized almost immediately.
"So, you have been alone with him again!" Roberto accused.
"Silence!" Don Abrahan commanded, turning 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.
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 peons 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 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 mid-day 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 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, low-walled 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 arm 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 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 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, 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 to 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 air like a magician, all now in the hands of this girl, all now about to take wing and fly out of his family's reach forever. "It cannot be done so easily, Helena. There is much to consider before pulling down shame upon my house, disgrace upon your own."
"Disgrace! And she would buy a lover for a price!" Roberto groaned, burning already in the fire of humiliation.
"It is only the—the—disgraceful sort you know so well, Roberto, who have love to sell for a price," she said. "Don Abrahan, I leave you to your repose."
"Youth is too quick," said Don Abrahan regretfully, as Helena disappeared down the dark hall, leaving her candle on the window-sill to light them to such repose as the night's upheaval had left them. "Tomorrow you will repair the damage with soft words."
"Tomorrow," said Roberto portentously, "it will be another thing. I am no longer a boy. I have grown the teeth of a man this night; I can bite."
Chapter IX
DON ROBERTO BITES
Roberto found the air of his room stifling, the confinement of its walls oppressive. It seemed that the teeth of a man, which he had become cognizant of possessing only that night ached for something to fasten upon and try their strength, urging him out into the open with savage restlessness.
His door opened into the wide patio between the wings of the house, where an immense pepper tree rose high above the roof, its softly draped foliage blue-tinted in the moonlight like a vast, still smoke. There was no light in the house as Roberto stood a little while in the patio drowned in the gloom of the great tree's shadow; if Helena's conscience troubled her on account of this night's rebellion, she hid the shame of it in the dark.
That was as it should be, Roberto thought. It would have been satisfying to him to know that she was bowed in remorseful shame at her prayers; he suspected, with resentful anger, that she was asleep in her bed.
All was as quiet outside the house as within. The men who had ridden from the ranch, but few in number, mean-spirited fellows all, excepting Simon alone, had found places to stretch themselves and sleep. It was nothing to them whether Gabriel Henderson went free or was taken, nothing to them whether the power and dignity of Don Abrahan's house rose or fell. Vengeful, bitter, contemptuous of them all, Roberto went to the front of the house and into the broad road that passed before it, the fire of his passion burning the desire for sleep.
Along this road a little way toward the north he walked, striding rapidly, his spurs clicking at his heels. The land in this valley was sandy, soft, almost white as snow in the bright moonlight, far different from the black, tenuous adobe of his father's homestead. Between the little groves of robles which grew in this rich valley the erratic highway ran, the royal road, the king's highway, of the old mission days. The Indians made it first between their villages, long before the zeal of the Franciscan fathers brought them to that shore; the traffic of the missionaries broadened it, and gave it the dignity of its name.
Roberto felt that his heart was nested in this valley, toward which he had yearned sometimes among the dissipations of the capital. He had intended, all the years of his betrothal to Helena, to establish the dignity of his house here on the land that the Yankee captain, who had been accepted as an equal of the best in that country, had acquired by grant for some service to the Mexican government, real or contrived, which was forgotten now. But the land remained, no matter for the evanescent memory of those who gave it or him who received. It yielded as no other ranch in that part of the country under the wise management of John Toberman, who had given up herding ships on the sea for the herding of cattle on the land.
It was a wrench to give up that plantation, with its green vegas, its stream of living water that came down from the mountains to refresh the great herds, its groves of oak and sycamore trees, its barley and wheat fields, its mansion by the roadside. Yet honor was dearer to a man than lands and herds. At least custom made it so, Roberto said, beginning to feel his anger against Helena diminish in weighing it against what it would cost him. Custom was wrong in many things, as the constant abandonment of old usages proved. Custom was cruel when it separated a man from his dreams and desires in such manner as this.
Roberto's feet found a slower pace, the boiling turmoil of his anger cooled, as these considerations assailed him. Helena was only guilty of being modern; the Yankee blood of that old captain had drowned the Castilian in her veins. It was wrong to judge her by the standards of that country, as it would be wrong for him to throw away a fortune on no sounder proof than this. It was a thing to pace slowly up and down here in the shadow of the roadside oaks and consider, hands behind the back like a thinking man.
A man must leave home, hunger for it, sigh for it, to return and perceive its beauties hitherto unknown, to feel its friendliness as he felt it here tonight. His heart rose in him, a tenderness of poetic feeling blended out the last shred of his anger, as he stood in the moonlight at the margin of the oak trees' shade, viewing the beauty of that place.
In the south stood the low chain of hills separating this broad valley from that in which the pueblo of Los Angeles lay; close at hand on the north, higher mountains rose, the crumbling granite ledges on their rough sides and summits glistening like snow.
Dark, repellant, the canyons of these mountains appeared, rough and unfriendly their steep and mangy slopes. No trees graced them, little verdure. They seemed the great cinder-heap of a burning world that the sea had rushed upon and extinguished in some long-distant age. Even with their austerity chastened in the moonlight, there was no invitation to man in the face they presented.
Yet Roberto knew that their sides were covered with low-growing shrubs, with sweet-scented plants, with sage and holly and honey-bearing flowers, which left a man's clothing perfumed by their touch when he threaded the tangle of their barring limbs. Green things grew there which sheep and cattle fattened on; the sage-bloom called the bees to gather such honey as never gladdened man's tongue in any other land. There was a great beneficence, a gentle kindness, even in the forbidding hills.
To the east Roberto could not see far, the vision hemmed by trees, but there he knew the valley came down to a point, like a river flowing between the hills. To the west it broadened for miles, closing again before coming quite to the sea. In that direction the road turned from San Fernando Mission, threading to Santa Barbara and, in its weary course, to Monterey.
It was clear in the valley this night, not a curl of mist drifted along the hills, a sweet languor in its placidity that embraced a man and made him glad. He could dissemble, he could put pride aside, stoop to soft words to beguile a foolish girl's ear, for the blessings of that place. This knowledge that he had teeth to bite made a man wiser, fortified his courage like a pistol in the belt.
With these reflections over him, the thought of his vengeance against Gabriel Henderson put aside for that hour, Roberto walked on up the road, thinking nothing of the time, sleep a stranger to his eyes. There grew mesquite and screw-bean by the roadside, cactus and chaparral, and grass in bunches that put up tall plumes. Soon Roberto was far beyond sight of the ranch-house, his eyes on the white road, the weight of his new manhood upon him making him grave.
Roberto was startled out of his meditations by the beat of a horse's feet in the road to the north. Before the rider came in sight around one of the goat-path windings of the highway, Roberto knew that the horse had been ridden hard, and far. He stood in the middle of the road, curious to know who had come from a distance in such pressure, whither he was bound, and the mission that urged him to ride in haste through the night.
The rider halted suddenly when he rounded the turn of the road, seeing his way blocked by a man. He seemed to hesitate for a moment between advance and flight. Roberto, prickling with a keen suspicion that all was not honest with the rider, hailed him.
"Advance!" he said, in commanding voice.
The rider lifted his right hand in signal that he understood, and came forward slowly.
"Can you direct me to the Sprague ranch?" he inquired, in the speech of a common man. Roberto saw that he wore the dress of a cattle-herder. His carriage in the saddle fixed him as one of that calling.
"It is close by," Roberto replied, laying hold of the bridle rein as a man might do a friend's. Yet there was nothing of friendliness in the young man's bearing; much of suspicious severity, and question of the other's right to pass. "Who is it you have business with there at this late hour?"
"It is a man's own business, whatever it may be," the horseman replied, undisturbed by Roberto's hostility. "Would you deny a man the road, like a bandit?"
"I am a kinsman of Miss Sprague, I have the right to stop any stranger who comes looking for her at this hour of the night. If your business is honest, you will not hesitate to tell me what it is."
"You might be her brother?"
"No, not her brother. I am a distant relative, but my authority is not to be questioned."
"Only a distant relative!" said the rider, with a short laugh. "But you stop a man in the road with a pistol under your fingers. If you were a near relative, a brother or a cousin, maybe you would shoot a man if he even looked in the lady's direction? You are too quick for me, young gentleman. Let go my bridle—I must be on my way."
He seemed to hold Roberto in little seriousness, in trifling account. His teeth flashed in a quick smile; he sat in a posture of graceful indulgence, one hand on his hip, his bridle reins held high in the other.
"Who sent you?" Roberto demanded with all the sternness of his privileged class.
"A man with fingers on his hands, and money in them to pay for what he wanted. That's enough for me to know; it will have to be enough for you."
"Where do you come from, impertinent scoundrel?"
"Have you heard of Monterey, little man?" the cattle-herder asked, patronizingly insolent, as a free man who knows his strength and despises that of another. "Well then, I come from Monterey. I bring letters for the young lady. Whether they are from a lover, that is another thing. Now let go my bridle—permit me."
The man leaned as he spoke, laying hold of Roberto's wrist to remove his hand from the rein. His cool insolence, his impertinent disregard of any force that his challenger might use to prevent his going, seemed to Roberto a mighty insult to his new manhood, as it doubtless was intended to be.
"Get down!" Roberto commanded, presenting his pistol at the rider's ribs.
"Presently—at the lady's door," the messenger replied, his teeth white in the moonlight as he laughed.
With the words he set spur to his horse, waking in the agony of the cruel thrust the spirit that seemed beaten out of the weary animal. It bounded forward, the dust of its high-flung hooves in Roberto's face.
The chaparral echoed with a sound strange and discordant in the placidity of that night. Don Roberto had snapped his teeth.
Chapter X
THE MAGISTRATE SPEAKS
"I only know that Don Roberto has killed a man, that they have brought his body wrapped in tentcloth and laid it near the olive press, under the trees. That is all I know."
Doña Carlota was not greatly moved by the event. Dead men had come in her way before, and men who had fallen by violence. She was less agitated in the relation of this news than over the prospect last night that her betrayal of the American's presence on the ranch might be discovered by her niece. She was keen enough to see that the agitation had passed to the other side of the hearth, so to speak. It was Helena's face that grew white, and set in little lines of pain, when this news of Don Roberto's exploit was related.
"You didn't hear them say who it was, when, where, it happened?" Helena inquired.
She sat as she had started from sleep at her aunt's summons to hear this news, the bedclothes flung aside, her hair showering on her shoulders, dread and anxiety staring from her eyes.
"It may be the one they came to find. It was of about that length—I saw it as they carried it by the window. I'll send Rosa with coffee——"
"No. But, Auntie Carlota, ask them. Find out who it was, why it was that Roberto——"
"There is Don Abrahan calling me, roaring again like a bear. These men! What a trouble!"
Doña Carlota left hurriedly, the sound of Don Abrahan's voice welling as she opened Helena's chamber door.
"Doña Carlota, Doña Carlota!" the summons sounded. And fainter, as the door closed, as if he had turned his back, "Doña Carlota!" with impatient clapping of the hands.
Doña Carlota made no haste to appear before her kinsman and learn his pleasure. She stood a moment at Helena's door, a look of supreme satisfaction in her face, crossed the hall to the door opening into the patio and stood a little while looking at the tender morning sun in the leaves of the pepper tree.
"I was right, I was justified; my conscience is clear," she said. "Yes, Don Abrahan. I am here, I am here."
Helena hastened her toilet, oppressed by a dread that made her morning dark. Sleep had been long coming to her last night; she had lain planning and devising, her mind flooded by this breaking down of traditional submission. When sleep came, it had locked her fast, she had heard nothing of the coming and going when the body of the slain man was brought and laid beneath the olive trees. Had she slept while they hunted this trusting stranger and killed him at her very door?
The thought wrung her heart with poignant regret. It seemed equal to betrayal to offer a man sanctuary that she could not insure, a refuge that had become a trap. She had not looked deep enough into Doña Carlota's crafty eyes when she related this tragic intelligence; not deep enough to see that her purpose was only one of leading her young ward on to the betrayal of what hid in her heart. Now Doña Carlota knew; she knew better than Helena herself, or more than Helena would have owned, at least, if confronted with the demand of her own conscience.
Doña Carlota was back at Helena's door while she was still braiding her hair. This time with a summons from Don Abrahan that amounted to a command. As quickly as she could dress she was to attend the pleasure of Don Abrahan in the parlor. It must be something terrible, Doña Carlota said, now unmistakably alarmed. There was a look in Don Abrahan's face to make a woman's heart sink low.
Don Abrahan sat at a small table near the window, papers spread before him; Roberto waited at the door like a butler, closing it behind Helena sharply when she entered, shutting Doña Carlota out with summary rudeness. Don Abrahan rose, tall, gaunt, his roomy clothing loose upon his limbs. Helena stood in questioning hesitation, looking from Don Abrahan to his son. She seemed a stranger in her own house, these two had taken such authoritative control.
Don Abrahan turned his hand in slow, graceful motion to a chair, remaining standing in his punctilious way of deferential grace until she was seated. Roberto stood with his back to the door, his pistol at his side.
This house was not so pretentious as Don Abrahan's, there being nothing grand in its proportions at all, compared with the bright and beautiful homes which stand in that same valley today. It was a squat, flat building of gray adobe, severely simple, conforming in all particulars with the traditional plan of houses of the gentry in California of that period, following the older traditions of an older land. The form was that of a letter E without the centre bar. All rooms faced upon the patio, with doors admitting to it. In the front of the house there was the hall in the centre, a room on either hand; in the wings the kitchen and sleeping rooms.
The parlor in which this small party gathered this morning was not a large room. The morning sun did not brighten it, the house facing the west. Its cedar beams across the ceiling, its dark draperies and sombre furnishings gave it a solemnity fitting to a solemn hour.
And this seemed to Helena a most solemn and portentous hour, indeed. Don Abrahan's face was grave, his demeanor judicially severe. Roberto, standing with arms folded on his breast, appeared like one waiting to enforce the judgment of some stern and pitiless court. They might have been officers of the Holy Inquisition, Helena thought, judged by the unsympathetic harshness of their faces, their fixed determination upon the business that lay in their hands.
Don Abrahan sat silent a little spell, drawing the written sheets of paper together before him, arranging them in a way that seemed to tell of his thoughts being detached from the action of his hands. Helena's heart was laboring as if it lay under a stone; her limbs trembled, her hands were cold. She did not know that Don Abrahan was a master of suspense; that every movement of his hand was calculated, every moment of silence gauged against the perturbation of her breast.
"There is a matter of gravity on our hands, Helena, my desired," Don Abrahan began, his measured words, his slowly lifted head, his deliberate, searching eyes, all adding to the weight of that cold stone which seemed pressing upon the warmth of her redundant heart. "If I have your permission, I will speak."
"Assuredly, Don Abrahan."
"We spoke last night, Helena, of your betrothal to my son."
Don Abrahan paused; his eyes sought the papers on the table, the first of which he lifted, seeming to read beneath.
"That is ended, Don Abrahan," Helena said, the tremor of her heart in her words.
"It is a heavy thing to speak of lightly, and in haste, as I said last night, my dear. Let us go back a little way, let us reconsider. Do you realize the affront, the humiliation, the insult, you are laying on my son, my house, by this hasty, capricious act?"
"There is neither insult nor humiliation intended, sir. I realize that I could not be happy with your son. That is the first consideration. I could not honor him, love him, or even respect him, as a woman should the man she marries."
Helena's spirit began to lift, the dread to ease its compression on her bosom. She looked Don Abrahan in the eyes, a flush enlivening her pale cheeks.
"In what way has my son forfeited his claim upon your respect, my love?"
"I told you last night."
"Rumors may easily grow into slanders between here and the capital," Don Abrahan said, in stern reproval. "If we are to credit all our suspicions, believe all we hear, accept every small circumstance as damning evidence, we will soon drive happiness and tranquility out of our lives. Who of us is pure in all things? Who has not transgressed?"
"The source of my information cannot be impeached," Helena replied. "If you have called this solemn court to try me, Don Abrahan, you have exceeded any and all authority that I grant to your position and your years. I am free, I am in my right mind. I will not marry Roberto. You cannot force me to it, even with your valiant son guarding the door!"
"The small frivolities, the mild indiscretions—all this the world grants a man in his youth, Helena. It is different with a man."
"Let it pass; there will be many ready to accept the defense. As for me, I cannot, Don Abrahan."
"It is strange that you should come to this conclusion at this late hour, Helena. There was no word of it before the last day of the fiesta."
"Two days after I left your house, Don Abrahan, letters came from my friends in the capital. But I doubt, even without the things revealed to me——"
"Lies, slanders," said Don Abrahan, disdain in the swelling of his nostrils, the rocking of his head. "Have I not been young? It is the fashion to slander such."
"Your son has an able advocate, Don Abrahan," she said, smiling a bit scornfully. "Do we have to go on with the discussion, only to come to nothing in the end?"
"It is soon done," Don Abrahan declared with sudden sternness, rising to his feet. "My son stands ready to forget the past, out of his great and honorable love for you."
Helena sprang up.
"Generous gentleman!" she mocked. "And if I refuse to marry him, the penalty will be publicity, disgrace."
"No. A gentleman learns early in life when to keep silent," Don Abrahan returned.
"You will reconsider your hasty words?"
"No!"
"You will think slowly, and speak slower. My son forgives the escapade of the oak tree."
"Forgives! What absolution can he show for his own crimes?"
"He will forget what has passed, he will accept this restored compact as if you never had broken it by word or deed."
"How magnificent!"
"Do you yield?"
"No, Don Abrahan, I do not yield. There is no act of purgation, there is no fire of penance, that can cleanse him in my sight. To add to his other crimes, it is said he killed a man last night. Who was it? Why was it done, here at my very door?"
"We are coming to that," Don Abrahan said.
He motioned her to her chair again, an invitation that passed unheeded. Seeing that she did not sit, he remained standing, lifting the papers from the table.
"It becomes necessary to tell you now what I have known these three days," Don Abrahan said. "The insolent aggressions of the Americans have driven our patient nation to resent them at last. War has been declared; battles have been fought on the Rio Grande. The triumphant Mexican army is sweeping forward to Washington. The man whom my son challenged in the road last night was a spy, carrying intelligence to spies. This correspondence before me was taken from him. Part of it was addressed to you."
Don Abrahan held up the written sheets, half a dozen or so in number. Helena put out her hand quickly, more in appeal than demand. Don Abrahan pressed the correspondence against his breast, denying her, lifting a checking hand. His face was forbidding, his accusing voice was cold.
"I have suspected Toberman a long time of plotting with the Americans and traitors in the North, but I lacked absolute proof until this day. It was beyond the limit of reason to include you, Helena."
Helena was not thinking of herself that moment; she was not crushed and confounded as her silence might be misunderstood. Her heart was beating fast, the warm blood was surging into her brain, quickening it to all the alert resourcefulness that was her heritage. Toberman had escaped, Toberman was safe, thank God! That was her thought, that was her exultation. Toberman was riding free. For herself and her peril, she had no thought.
"Perilous as your situation is, Helena," Don Abrahan said, "there is a door open to your salvation. You are young, you are under the influence of this man who has had your affairs in his hands since your father's death. He has misled you, he has brought you to this unwittingly, he——"
"No, Don Abrahan," she denied, lifting her head proudly.
There was something in her voice, the ring of it, the proud defiance, that started Roberto out of his pose before the door. His folded arms fell to his sides, his fingers shaped as if to snatch a weapon. He moved a step toward her, his eyes distended in astonishment of the spirit revealed.
"I offer you this door," Don Abrahan said, unheeding her defiance. "I trust in my heart you will accept the exit from this most grave situation. Let this compact between you and my son continue, let us proceed at once to the priest and celebrate the marriage. My son has begged me to offer you this out of the manly love he bears you, Helena, and from no other consideration. Accept, and you will be relieved of this taint of treason. It will be an easy matter in such case to place the burden of guilt where it belongs, on the head of the traitor who involved you in this, innocently, we——"
"Roberto, forgive me!" Helena begged, turning to the young man impulsively, a light in her eyes that he never had seen before. "I have misjudged you. You must have a true, an honorable affection for me to offer me this."
"May God judge between us!" said Roberto, with such feeling that his words trembled on his lips.
"There is something in you better than I knew," she confessed, the honesty of her nature not permitting the covering of one little spark of gratitude. "I thought all the time you were anxious only to have my money and my lands, but this—but this I——"
"The lands? Curse them! The gold? Sink it in hell!" Roberto said, flinging his arms wide, his head thrown back in his dramatic fervor.
"Forgive me if I have wronged you by word or thought, Roberto. There is much in you that is manly, much, I am sure, that is good. I owe you the confession of that much. But the compact cannot be renewed. We stand parted, never to unite. I would not buy my life with the betrayal of a friend."
"Think—" Roberto began to plead.
"What a cowardly thing it would be," she seemed to conclude for him, but with a far different thought.
"If you refuse, it means loss of your estate, degradation, imprisonment, perhaps death," Don Abrahan warned.
"Let it be so, then. I do refuse."
"What is this man, this alien who plays citizen for the purpose of introducing the enemy into this country, to you?" Roberto asked, perplexed, baffled, not able to understand. "Let him bear the blame, as he deserves to bear it. Nobody will believe you guilty."
"But I am guilty," she said, proud in the confession. "I have prayed for this war, I have prayed for the day when the United States army would march into this land and——"
"Silence!" Don Abrahan commanded in stern, loud voice.
"The cruelties and injustices, the oppression of the strong, the misery of the poor—all this would come to an end, all of it will come to an end, when the United States army marches here!"
"Helena Sprague, as a magistrate of the republic I arrest you on the charge of treason," Don Abrahan solemnly declared. "I seize your lands and properties in the name of the republic; I lay hold upon your cattle, your goods, your money, your effects, in the name of the republic. Such as spurn mercy when it is offered, must burn in the fire of justice."
"Take them, then, and my life if the republic wants it!" she said. She turned to Roberto, who stood by torn between loyalty to his country and love for its betrayer. "Toberman, is he gone, is he safe?" she asked.
"Toberman is under arrest, safely kept," Don Abrahan answered her. "I have sent to the pueblo for the military. Tomorrow Toberman will be shot as a spy."
Chapter XI
THE VALOR OF SIMON
Henderson had waited all that day in the appointed place for Toberman, who was to bring him news of what he had learned regarding the feasibility of escaping out of that country by the northern road. It was within half an hour of sunset now, and no sign of Toberman.
Although he was well equipped with horse, pistol and clothing which Toberman had supplied him, out of his own resources, the overseer had given him to understand, placing the fugitive under no obligation on that score to the owner of the ranch, Henderson hesitated over making a start toward Monterey. Since coming to the Sprague ranch he had learned more of Abrahan Garvanza's power and influence in that part of California. A feudal baron never lived who could stretch a longer arm.
The governor of California, now stationed at Los Angeles, that pueblo having been made the capital lately, was a man under Don Abrahan's control. The forty soldiers who garrisoned the capital, given the choice between service in this distant land and completing their sentences for various felonies in the prisons at home, were at the beck and call of Don Abrahan, the general in command being a relative of the Garvanza family, owing his station to its wide influence.
Toberman had told Henderson, and Helena Sprague had confirmed it, that the news of his escape from Don Abrahan's enforced service would have been carried to Monterey by the third day, incredible as it appeared to him. News spread with great rapidity among the Indians and lawless Mexicans who worked on the cattle ranches, and Don Abrahan had posted a reward of twenty dollars, gold, for the fugitive's capture and return.
Twenty dollars gold on the California coast in those pastoral days was equal to four head of cattle. A laborer would toil many months to earn that much. A vaquero did not gain a sum like it in half a year's riding after the herds. It would not be a matter of enmity toward him, Henderson understood, but the plain business one of making a handsome sum of money quickly, that would set the hand of every man, high and low, between Los Angeles and Monterey against his passage.
But there was an obscure way through the mountains, Toberman had told him, long and rough, that might lead to freedom if a trustworthy guide could be found. There seemed to be none in his employ whom he would trust in that capacity. It was on this business that Toberman had engaged to return this day and report.
Henderson watched the valley for his coming from the peak of a hill which seemed a mountain that had sunk into the earth, a feature common to those rugged foothills. There was spread in the broad valley, running up into the inlets of the canyons, a haze of such density that it seemed as if the sea must have swept in to reclaim its ancient domain. This was as blue as the smoke of wood-fires, the Indian summer haze of other lands intensified until it seemed almost palpable; blue as the upper ether of the clearest October skies.
This strange inflooding of what seemed smoke from mysterious and hidden fires obscured the view of the valley, where it stood at a level against the walls of the hills as definitely marked as water. Above this level the little mountains stood clear and sharp. Henderson gazed out over this transformation, moved by a strange feeling of friendliness and desire for this land.
An hour ago the sun had fallen brightly upon garish shoulder of scrub-patched hill, upon yellow break of sand in the valley among the green. It had revealed harshly the forbidding features of the country, as daylight strips an aged beauty of her sad pretense. Now a veil had been drawn; the sublimity of the change was such as hurt the heart with longings for the sympathetic vibration that could quiver with it and make it wholly understood.
Henderson gave up his vigil on the hilltop at dusk, returning to his camp. This was a little hut built of boulders from a mountain stream, laid together with mud, a sheep herder's shelter against the winter rains. The place was a sequestered canyon, many miles from the homestead of the ranch, unfrequented by herdsmen at this season. Toberman had assured the fugitive that he might rest in security there until his affairs took a better turn.
This feeling, doubtful at first, had gradually laid its spell over Henderson as the days passed without sight of any human invasion. Toberman had conducted him to the place secretly, at night, by cunning ways which he believed left no track. Henderson's surprise was the greater, as a consequence of all this caution, to find Simon sitting placidly in the cabin door when he came down from watching the valley for Toberman.
Simon sat with his long knees updrawn, hands idly hooked in front of them, in the patient, immobile fashion such as becomes a habit in people only who have served long in subjugation and waited without hope. The tragedy of his race was in his pose, the watcher who had been set over other men's treasures, none of which he ever was destined to touch or share. But in Simon's case, at least, it was only a racial trait. There was nothing of humility in him, even in the presence of Don Abrahan, although of patience for long and unrewarded vigils he must have owned his share.
He rose at Henderson's approach, unfolding his thin length with considerable spryness, advancing with hand extended in demonstration of keen friendship.
"Is it you, my little friend Gabriel?" he hailed, great pleasure in his voice. "I thought you were dead, I thought the wolves had made a dinner on you. Come on, my boy. How are you, how have you passed?"
Henderson's horse was picketed some distance down the canyon; Simon was directly in the way between them. Henderson distrusted the friendly show, although Simon appeared to be unarmed and quite genuine in his expression of pleasure.
Henderson replied to the flood of affectionate inquiry that all was well with him; asked of Simon's family, according to the custom, shook hands with him, accepted a cigarette. He wondered whether Toberman had betrayed him, dismissing the suspicion at once as unworthy.
He could not know, certainly, of the little talk between Don Abrahan and Simon the night before, or of the small pieces of gold that had passed from the patron's hand in the dark. He could not have known, indeed, that the old men who sit in the sun, wrapped in introspection, see more than passes by them in the road.
"So, then, all is forgiven, my little Gabriel," Simon hastened to explain, with evidence of great joy in his news. "Don Abrahan has sent me, on the directions for finding you that the good John Toberman gave us. I have come with Don Abrahan's forgiveness in my hand for the wrong you did the good patron in running away from him. As for the little blow you gave Roberto, there is nobody in thirty miles that does not say bravo to that good deed."
"Toberman told you where to come, did he?"
Henderson questioned that declaration; it set a new current of suspicion and distrust running. Yet, on the other hand, Toberman might have sent Simon, saving himself the time from his activities that the journey would take. It seemed only the natural thing for a man of Toberman's consequence to do. He could not be expected to ride messenger in a matter that had lost its bottom like a barrel in the sun.
It must be that Don Abrahan had seen a new light. Perhaps the long-expected news had come from the north that the United States had seized California and added it to its domain. In such case, Don Abrahan's forgiveness would find a ready explanation.
"He says to tell you," Simon replied, "that there is no longer any need for you to think of going away to the north, and Don Abrahan speaks in the same voice. Don Abrahan says he will get you a ticket home in a ship that is in the harbor now, loading hides. It is a Boston ship, with such trees sticking out of it that it made my head swim to look at the tops of them. Yes. I, myself, saw this ship three days ago at the harbor. So you will return?"
"Are you here alone, Simon? There's no treachery in this?"
"As I hope to have two teeth when I am ninety, I am here alone, Gabriel."
"Where is your horse?"
"Down there in the canyon with yours, like a man that has come to dinner with his friend."
"And Don Abrahan said he'd let it all pass, the little trouble with Roberto, and everything?"
"Don Abrahan said, 'Tell my little son, Gabriel, that all is forgiven.' He said the ship would sail in three days. We must hurry, Gabriel."
"First, we can't do better than imitate our horses," Henderson said, his confidence growing, suspicion all but dispelled. "Let's get some supper before we start, Simon. I'm hungry; your news is good for the appetite."
Although largely assured by Simon's manner of open honesty, Henderson watched him closely. He had heard the mule driver air his peculiar morals often enough to ground deep and abiding distrust of his ability to do anything exactly straightforward. Simon was apparently unarmed, but Henderson suspected that a pistol was concealed somewhere in his loose clothing, ready to his hand.
"Don Abrahan has come to Helena Sprague's ranch, where he is waiting to welcome you and take you to his breast," Simon said, sitting in the light of the little fire after the hastily-prepared supper had been eaten. "We think he has found out something about you, that you are the son of a family, or something grand."
"And Roberto, is he there?"
"Roberto went on to Monterey today, I heard it said. What dark night it is here in the hills!"
"It will be darker before it's lighter. We'd better go."
"Yes, the ship will not wait, Don Abrahan will wonder at our delay. What was that?"
Simon started, listening, hand lifted to impose silence.
"Coyotes, very likely," Henderson replied, unconcerned. "They come around here at night."
"It sounded like a horse." Simon rose, leaning into the dark, listening hard, "If mine has got loose!"
He walked away a little distance, going softly, almost immediately disappearing in the dark, which was deeper for the wooded side of the canyon forming the background of the camp. Henderson heard him swearing presently around the corner of the hut, disturbing the bushes softly as if he sought a passage through.
"A bird in the bushes, I think," Simon said, turning back. "Do you leave your fire uncovered these dry days?"
"I drown it," Henderson said.
"Go ahead, then; we must get down out of this dark place. Don Abrahan will think I'm slower than seven doctors."
Henderson took up the pail to pour what water it contained over the dying fire. He was standing with it poised, held in both hands, when something came toward him from Simon's direction with the swishing sound of a bird's wing. Quick as the leaping of his intuitive warning that treachery was afoot behind him, Henderson stooped and sprang aside.
But Simon, with all the vaquero's cunning in casting the lariat, had planned his part too carefully, and risked too much, to fail. The rope fell true to calculation, tightening with Simon's vicious jerk, binding Henderson's arms to his body, one impotent hand within a few inches of his pistol. Simon threw all his sinewy strength into the struggle that followed, cutting Henderson's resistance short by dragging him to the ground. In a moment additional coils of rope webbed the over-trustful sailor as a spider binds a bug.
Nothing was said between the men while this treacherous capture and desperate resistance were going forward. Now, when Simon had his prize securely tied and thrown on the ground, he stirred up the fire, added branches of dry cedar, and blew it to a blaze.
"So I, without a pistol on my body, take this smart Yankee and tie him like a hog," Simon boasted, great and arrogant satisfaction in his voice. He lifted his arms to display his body free of a belted pistol, and sat down near the fire, his back against a small tree.
"I'll remember this treachery, Simon, in the day that will come," Henderson said.
"The day that is coming for you is one when Roberto will cut you to pieces with his whip," Simon sneered. "Well, there is no hurry now. We will wait till daylight comes, then ride down the canyon. It would be foolish to arrive at midnight, for Don Abrahan would be asleep."
Simon smoked a while, legs stretched toward the fire, blowing smoke luxuriously, chin lifted high.
"What did I say to them when I left my pistol behind, all the foolish ones looking at me like men whose jaws were out of joint? I said, 'I need no pistol for this work. I am going to catch a Yankee, and that is not the same as a man.' When they see me come back with you, tied like a pig for sale in the plaza! seven doctors, what a laugh!"
(To be continued in the next issue of Short Stories)
