The Road to Monterey/Chapter 12
SIMON timed his arrival at the ranch for the theatrical effect that the simplest peon appreciates and introduces in the common transactions of life. It is this appreciation of the dramatic that makes political upheavals and armed revolutions so popular among the Mexican people, and from this very reason that so many of them turn out small and farcical affairs. The gravity of serious business seldom lies behind them; the passing sensation is sought, rather than the lasting effect.
It seemed that a fiesta must be going forward at Helena Sprague's place that morning. Although the sun was not yet up, and the morning was cool almost to chilliness, vestiges of the night fog still trailing across the hills, the working people of the ranch appeared to be all astir, together with the men who had come with Don Abrahan, all dressed in white shirts and holiday gear.
Some notable must have arrived, grander than Don Abrahan, Simon concluded, seeing a few green uniforms of soldiers mingled with the little crowd of household people. It was a firie setting for a man of valor to make his dramatic entrance, his prisoner bound to the back of the horse that he drove ahead of him.
Simon was puzzled, as he drew near the house, to account for the silence that lay upon the scene. There was none of the quick talk and merry laughter of a holiday. The children were quiet as they clustered around their mothers, their black heads sleek from the comb. Simon had leisure to note all this before so much as a dog discovered his approach.
The people of the ranch were so much taken up with this big thing that had happened, and given them a holiday, or was about to happen with the same profit to themselves, that they had neither eyes nor ears for the coming of one who, let other men in that house be as famous as they might, would take his place among the notables of that hour. So Simon told himself, secure in the belief of his own importance.
Henderson was greatly depressed as he rode in bonds ahead of his captor, his feet tied under the horse's belly, inglorious figure as man might well present. He had marked more than Simon, keen as the mule-driver's eyes, and that nothing less than military guards posted in the patio, and that the soldiers who mingled with the people carried guns.
It was due to the presence of these soldiers, Henderson believed, that all was so silent about the place. He wondered, above the discomfort of the rope that bound his hands, whether such an armed demonstration could have been made on his account. He dismissed the thought at once, in the light of his present situation and the means to which he owed it.
"Soldiers!" said Simon, riding abreast of his prisoner, scorn in his expression. "They will do to scare women and children, but for a man's work it takes a man."
Simon lifted himself in the saddle, distended his chest, trained his mustaches back with crooked fingers. The people gathered in the open space behind the ranch house, upon one side of which the dwellings of the laborers faced, the barns and corrals the other, now began to show interest in the riders who came from the direction of the hills. They began to point, some ran excitedly from group to group, leaving the soldiers to themselves. By the time Simon and Henderson reached the gate in the fenced enclosure, willing hands were there to open to them, sparing the dignity of Simon.
Soldiers stopped them as they rode forward toward the patio. Henderson's concern for the safety of his friends grew so great that his own danger was all but forgotten. He did not know to what extent they were involved in the plotting to overthrow the Mexican government in California. Toberman had told him little of the matter, Helena scarcely more. They had seemed to be feeling him out without trusting him completely. He recalled Helena's disappointment when he convinced her that he was nothing more than he appeared, not what she had thought him to be—an agent of the northern plotters working under this disguise.
Henderson had little time to pursue these disturbing thoughts. The sentry halted them within a few rods of the patio; through the windows Henderson could see people passing back and forth hurriedly.
"Call Don Abrahan," Simon commanded the soldier loftily.
The sentry turned to walk the length of his little beat, jerking hips and shoulders in the pride and contempt of his calling for a fellow who had nothing better to distinguish him than a pair of long mustaches and a captive foreigner tied about with a rope. His military ardor was so great that he kicked up a dust in his turning, marching away as if to dare Simon's courage with the unguarded line behind his back.
There was a movement of activity among the sentries in the patio—four of them Henderson counted, each apparently guarding a door—when an officer appeared issuing a rather lengthy order, no words of which Henderson could hear. Don Abrahan came to a door, his brown velvet garb somber in contrast with the green and gold of the offcer's uniform. For a moment Henderson saw Roberto's face at a window.
Two soldiers entered the room where Don Abrahan stood inside the door, their companions lined up on either side of the entrance. In a moment the two who had entered returned to the patio, bringing John Toberman with them, a pris oner, hands bound at his back.
Roberto followed, with another officer whose rank must have been considerable, appraised by the grandeur of his uniform. The two soldiers who conducted Toberman fell in behind the least consequential of the officers, the prisoner between them, their comrades following. After the soldiers came Don Abrahan and the most important military officer of them all, in gold braid, the black plume of his hussar cap standing high.
"Seven doctors! They've got a general for every man!" said Simon.
Henderson was at once astonished and alarmed by this portentous procession. It must be that Toberman was under military arrest, on his way to the pueblo for trial. But in such case why all this solemn parade? Henderson felt his throat constrict, his lips grow dry as if a parching wind blew in his face. This proceeding had all the formality of a set and studied program, one often rehearsed by the military men who were conducting it. There was something irrevocably final about it, as of a concluded and determined case. John Toberman already had been judged and condemned. They were taking him out to die.
Henderson quivered with resentment of this brutal proceeding, unjustified as he believed it must be. That this view was held by the Mexicans and Indians who had been under Toberman's authority on the ranch was evident in the precaution taken to awe them into submission. They were as powerless in the face of that small force of soldiers as himself, bound in humiliation with his pistol still strapped about him.
The small procession approached the line where the sentries held back the silent, submissive, sorrowful people from approaching the house. Toberman's head was bare, his thick, dark hair was in disorder. He evidently had not seen Henderson, absorbed as he was in this great affair which made the thought of other men and their troubles draw away and vanish, but now as he passed, only a few yards between them, he lifted his head.
Henderson marked, to remember all his years after, the baffled, perplexed, alniost incredible expression of Toberman's face. It was like that of a man who walked in a distracting dream, which he knew to be a dream, and blamed himself for the weakness that would not let him wake. It seemed that he did not credit the fact of his peril; that he did not believe these people whom it was his daily habit to override and despise, had come to their strength over him and were about to take away his life.
Henderson's amazing thought was that he must startle Toberman to a sense of his situation. If he could wake him out of that stunned dullness he might make a heroic effort, fling them down, bound as he was and escape.
"Toberman!" Henderson called, in the voice of one who rouses a sleeper; "Toberman!"
Toberman interpreted that wild hail as perfectly as the man who gave it. He swept a quick glance around the place, over the faces of the men who had come and gone all those years at his bidding, who, in the awe of this greater authority, would not lift a hand to save him now; looked down the far-spreading valley where the sun was rising redly out of the thinning fog, shook his head sadly, as if saying he knew that it was all a dream, but one out of which he would wake no more.
"Don Abrahan!" Henderson appealed, startling his horse into sudden bound by clamping its sides with his tied heels, "stop this thing, Don Abrahan! That man is an American, you can't"
A sentry sprang forward, menace in his uplifted piece; another caught the bridle, hurled the horse back, while Simon, roused out of his interest in the tragic pageant, drew hard on the rope that ran from his saddle-horn to the bit of Henderson's horse. Don Abrahan, not turning his eyes, not averting his fixed countenance, passed on as if he had not heard. In the dust that rose around him from his trampling horse, Henderson saw Simon leering at him dark threats.
"You are an American, also, and see where you are!" Simon said. "In a second I'll make a hole in you that the bees can fly through, you Yankee peddler out of a ship!"
They were placing Toberman with his back against the adobe wall of the sheep corral, afraid of him to the end, denying him the grace of dying with hands unbound. The officer of the squad advanced, a handkerchief in his hand, offering to cover the condemned man's eyes, not knowing that one who had sailed the seas so long, and looked familiarly on death so many times, would scorn to have its approach hidden from him now. Henderson could not hear his words, but he saw him draw himself up valiantly, and the officer stand back. The sun was yellow on the adobe wall above Toberman's head when he fell.
An overpowering rage swept Henderson, hot as aflame. He strained to lift his bound body in the saddle, to raise his bound arms in his denunciation.
"You damned cowards!" he shouted, voice vibrant with passion. "You damned, infernal cowards!"
There must have been something in the timbre of Henderson's voice that carried the realization to the very hearts of the men who had encompassed that deed that a delegate from a stronger race was among them; that they had heard the voice of vengeance from a source of authority. Even if they did not understand the words, the soldiers who had fired into Toberman's body felt the thought that they conveyed. They turned, their smoking weapons clutched, as if the tramp of cavalry had struck upon their ears.
Don Abrahan wheeled, shocked out of his studied dignity. The gilded and braided general in the plumed cap turned to look at this man who had sounded denunciation in the voice of judgment.
The smoke of the guns stood heavy between Henderson and the adobe wall. He could see Toberman's white shirt, his body stretched full-length where he had fallen on his face. The general spoke to Don Abrahan, looking again toward Henderson. They conferred together, as if considering some stroke of punishment fitting to the affront.
The officer in command of the firing squad gave a harsh command to the shrinking ranch laborers, who had been compelled to assemble and witness the degradation and death of the man whom they had respected and obeyed, some of them all their lives. A few went forward with reluctant feet, lifted Toberman's body and bore it away.
Henderson was careless of all consequences to himself, superior to the helplessness of his present state. The weariness of lying all night in ropes under Simon's unfeeling eyes was forgotten, the pain and stiffness dissolved out of his muscles and was gone. When Don Abrahan and the military commander approached, he leaned in the saddle, straining on his bonds.
"Don Abrahan Garvanza, you have done a cowardly and atrocious thing!" he charged.
Don Abrahan stopped, looking Henderson sternly in the eyes, gazing long, as if sounding him for the courage and manhood that lay within.
"So a traitor has died, so traitors must die," Don Abrahan said.
"The curs that have murdered him shall answer to the United States government," Henderson declared, as positively as if the power lay in his own hands.
"The United States government will be on its knees before Santana in a few weeks, my good Gabriel. Haven't the traitors with whom you have associated since you left the shelter of my house told you this? There is war, Gabriel; the United States forces have been defeated on every hand; they fly, Santana's victorious troops pursue them to the shadow of Washington itself. Who, then, is there left to bring this terrible retribution you threaten, my little son?"
"There is one, at least, if no more," Henderson replied.
"That might be yourself, then, my fine Gabriel?"
"Even myself, Don Abrahan."
Henderson's voice was steady when he took upon himself that obligation of retribution for the deed he had witnessed in the pain of his helplessness but a few moments past. It was so firm, and so deep in its gravity, that the braided general—and he was of no less rank, though his forces numbered but forty men—at Don Abrahan's side looked at the speaker, his eyes drawn as if to pierce him to the marrow. Perhaps he sounded deeper than Don Abrahan, and found the man.
Not so Roberto, who had come up from his conversation with the other officer to stand beside his father. He jerked his shoulder, his nostrils twitched in a sneer, a smile parted his heavy, petulant lips.
"A man must be valiant and vigorous for such an undertaking, Gabriel," Don Abrahan said with sinister gentleness, that light of laughter that was not yet a laugh lying deep in his eyes. "There is a process for hardening a man for a task like that, of testing the sufficiency of his fortitude and valor. We shall come to this. Simon, you have done well; you shall have your reward. Take the ropes from this pig that you have brought me."
Simon, who had disdained to set foot on the ground until this moment, flung himself from the saddle and set about undoing the rope that bound Henderson's feet.
"Soldiers!" Simon scoffed, bending at his task; "five of them to kill one old Yankee! And I, myself, have caught a better one, with not even the shadow of a pistol at my side."
"You have done well," Don Abrahan assured him. "Santana's army has no braver man."
Henderson's legs were stiff; he staggered when he came to the ground. Don Abrahan looked at him critically, that reflection of inner laughter deepening in his eyes.
"General, permit me the services of two soldiers with strong arms," he requested. "There is too much insolent blood in this young man; some of it must be let out through the skin of his back."
"With great pleasure, Don Abrahan," the general granted, in unmistakable endorsement of the program.
"There was a compact," said Roberto, stepping forward, addressing his father. "You will recall that certain matters in the business of this runaway peon were to be left in my hands."
"Your pardon, my son. That is so. Gabriel, you will see that I am a beneficent man. I forego your deserved chastisement and deliver you to the merciful hands of Don Roberto, your master from this moment. Let us go to breakfast, General Verdugo. I trust your appetite is keen."