"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.