The Road to Monterey/Chapter 18
DON FELIPE'S way that no soldier could follow did not lead into the hills. Hender son was doubtful of the honesty of his intention, alert for betrayal, when Felipe turned from the royal highway, as this road was still called, into the great plain where Don Abrahan's vaqueros grazed his herds.
"Men commonly go into the hills, the world over, Don Gabriel, when they desire to hide from vengeance, oppression and the law," Felipe said. "By varying this general custom we secure our safety in the first step. Well, I have friends where we are going. That is something to a man."
"Yes, that is much, Felipe. Every friend is an extra pair of eyes and ears."
"And feet to run, and hands to strike, Don Gabriel, when they are friends such as mine. True, they are all of the common, the poor; some of them are old, with eyes pinched to little cracks. But you shall see."
They rode boldly, making no attempt to hide either their tracks or the fact of their passing. Sometimes they sighted cowboys in the distance, once they passed near one, whom they saluted with uplifted hand, after the manner of the open places and the long road the world over, also, as Felipe in his philosophy observed. It must have been half an hour that they held their way southward, skirting Don Abrahan's fields at times, again hidden in groves of oaks. Then they turned westward, toward the sea.
"This is the estate that liberty and equality cost me," Felipe said, when they had traveled in that direction several miles. "You have seen the equality among men in this country, Don Gabriel; you have tasted its liberty. I am to blame, along with other patriots who overthrew the ancient regime. But the oppression of the mission priests was better than this liberty. That I will say to any man."
"So, this was your estate, Felipe?"
Henderson paused. It was open country, bearing no trace of improvement, its grassy glades set here and there with clumps of dark-green oaks.
"Beginning at the arroyo, the dry creek, behind us, extending westward to the sea. From the hills on the north, beyond the first hills you see on the south, five leagues square. That was my grandfather's grant from the king. Not much, but my grandfather was a moderate man. What does it matter? There is still room in the world for a man to breathe."
"It's a beautiful stretch of country, the finest I've seen in California. Who owns it now, Felipe?"
"It was divided among several of liberty's aristocrats, none of whom live in California. They are all in the capital, their land lies here free of taxes, rented by small drovers and poor farmers. Where we are going there is a small settlement of people to whom my father gave land when he saw the republic would take it away from him. The new government respected the titles of these small beneficiaries, faithful servants of my father's house. They will conceal us, there will be willing feet to carry us the news."
"There's no need for you to hide, they can't molest you for leaving your position of mayordomo on Don Abrahan's estate."
"I brought away a little more of Don Abrahan's gold than he may compute to be my due," Felipe confessed, very openly, with entire ease of conscience. "But no amount of gold, Don Gabriel, would repay me for the humiliation of spirit I have suffered there since young Roberto came back home."
"And you paid yourself from Don Abrahan's treasury?" Gabriel said, seeing the humor of that convenient plan. "While you were about it, I wish you'd made a settlement for me."
"What is mine is my friend's," Felipe said, with such simple sincerity that Gabriel's last cloud of suspicion dissolved and blew away.
"Do you know anything about Don Abrahan's dispute with the governor over the custody of Helena Sprague? Simon told me, as a confidence given a dead man, as he considered me, that the governor went to the pueblo to send troops to take her away, and that Don Abrahan went after him to stop them."
"I think that was the state of the affair, Don Gabriel."
Gabriel turned to Felipe, brows drawn in a frown of annoyance. Felipe looked at him with startled eyes, for to him, even hero of the late revolution that he was, this sailor who had grown so great on the bitter nourishment of his vengeance that he had filled and burst Don Abrahan's prison in a day, was no less romantic, magnificent, invincible, than he had appeared to poor Liseta when she stood panting out her warning in the patio.
"Felipe, let's drop all this don formality when we speak to each other," Gabriel said. "Call me Gabriel, or Gabe, or anything you like, but leave off the don."
"Very well, Gabriel," Felipe agreed, but with reluctance that seemed a protest against giving up a dignity for his new friend that it was men's duty to respect.
"You noticed that the old man wasn't with the soldiers?"
"No, I only looked to see how near they were as I rode out of the gate. So, Don Abrahan was not there?"
"He must have failed to influence that Verdugo scoundrel. Maybe the governor offered him a bigger share."
"The highest bidder would get him, for he is a scoundrel with no more principle than a squirrel," Felipe said. "But let them take all of her land and cattle, they can't make her poor," he added, so completely satisfied with the declaration that he smiled.
"That would be impossible," Gabriel agreed. "Nature has endowed her with treasures of mind and heart that villains such as Verdugo can't steal."
"And her gold has been sent to Boston year by year. John Toberman attended to that, distrustful always of these descendants of the hidalgos. He had many friends on the Boston ships, it was an easy matter for him to send the gold to be put in the bank in Boston. Let them take all she has here, and she will still come to your arms a rich bride, Gabriel."
"You can plan faster than I, Felipe," Henderson said, shaking his head.
"I have seen it since the night you snatched her shoe from Roberto under the tree. I have seen it in her eyes."
"You're a better hand at reading the ladies' eyes than I am, then, Felipe," Henderson laughed. But his heart leaped when he remembered her benediction, and he knew that Felipe had learned his book very well.
"I have had my romance, even I," Felipe sighed; although he did not appear a likely subject for romance in relation to the ladies, especially, as he rode by Henderson's side. His black beard, its stubbles as thick as if plumbago smeared his jaws, gave him an aspect of fierceness that would not appear to admit a gentle thought.
Henderson pulled his horse up, drawing rein as if he intended to turn back.
"Felipe, do you suppose the governor sent those men to take her away from Don Abrahan's house?"
"Who knows?" Felipe replied, shifting the responsibility of a direct reply in the manner of his blood.
"I must find out. Felipe, I'm going back."
"That would be a perilous thing to do, Gabriel."
"Her peril is greater than mine. She was relying on Don Abrahan to protect her, she convinced me he would be able to do it, even against the governor. But Don Abrahan has lost his power. Felipe, they'll murder her."
"I doubt if they would go that far. They can confiscate her property without that."
"They hate her for her Yankee blood, because she speaks English. And I suppose she is guilty of treason, since the two countries are at war. Felipe, I was a fool not to bring her with me."
"That would have been better, if there had been time. But the soldiers would have come before you could have broken down the door."
"I'm going back!"
"It would be too rash," Felipe protested, laying his hand on Gabriel's rein to check his hazardous intention. There is a better plan."
"They'll murder her while we stand talking!"
"I know them, their ways are open to me. Wait till evening, when our horses are fresh for a hard run, then we'll go back. There is old Cecilia, Liseta's mother. She will know everything."
Henderson would not yield at once. It required a good deal of Felipe's sensible reasoning to convince him that he would only throw his life away by returning to Don Abrahan's before night. Don Abrahan would have summoned his friends, would have gathered then in the pueblo, to stand with him against the governor.
It would be a little revolution, Felipe said, such as were common to that country when the powerful landowners felt imported authority running counter to their interests and desires. More than one governor had been packed out of California in past years. It was very likely, Felipe said, that Don Abrahan would win, even if the military had succeeded in removing Helena from his house.
At length this argument prevailed. Henderson agreed to wait till sunset, and then proceed under Felipe's guidance to Don Abrahan's ranch.
A few minutes' ride from the place where they halted for this colloquy brought them to a well-traveled road, which they pursued several miles toward the sea. It was then something past midafternoon; the wind that always sets in from the sea in summer at that period of the day, was beginning then to dispel the heat of the hazy, drowzy valley. It came fresh and inspiring, with the scent of breaching seas, appealing to the sailor as he rode like a call from home.
"Where you see that sycamore," said Felipe, pointing, "there we stop."
The sycamore was a tree of great girth, its bole knotted, its branches distorted in grotesque twistings, angular elbows, as if it had grown in slow torture through its two hundred years and more. It was the largest tree of any species whatever that Henderson had seen in California, its branches covering not less than a hundred feet.
Close by in a little ravine a strong spring issued from the bank; a little way from this precious vein of water a small adobe house seemed to shrink and hide among fig and almond trees. An adobe wall could be seen through the intervening growth of cacti and chaparral, behind which maize was growing tall.
An old man was sitting in the sun near the spring, apparently indifferent to the passing of the two riders, no more concerned when they left the road at the sycamore as if to seek the refreshment of his spring. He was the framework only of what had been a magnificent man, bony now and dry, his tattered shirt of some once gay material loose on his gaunt shoulders, his thin, short beard as white as the ash of seasoned oak.
He sat with hands clasped around his updrawn knees, a man without a thought, it seemed, one who had lived his apportioned years and had crept to the roadside to save death the trouble of reaching within doors for him when it passed. A dark and wrinkled man, his sombrero, shaggy and mangy as the coat of an old burro, pulled down to shade his eyes.
The old man rose with surprising agility as the two riders came near. It must not be that he had an appointment with death for that day, or many days to come, Henderson thought, regarding him with surprise. He seemed as supple as a man carrying half his years; his step was quick when he advanced, evidence of pleasure was in his kindly, wrinkled face.
"Don Felipe! I thought my eyes were deceiving me, it has been so long since they had the good luck to see your face."
"Pablo, my friend."
Felipe leaned with outstretched hand to meet the old man's. It was plain by the fervor of that handclasp that equality between men was not altogether a poetic fancy with this Don Felipe, whom liberty had stripped of his lands.
"How have you passed, Felipe?" the old man asked.
"Oh, but so-so, Pablo. And you?"
"Like a tortoise. Well, I have had my day."
"I pray God to give you many more, old friend. I have the honor to present my comrade and friend, Gabriel Henderson. Gabriel, this is. Pablo Gonzales, my second father."
The old man looked up with quick interest, the sleepy lids of his eyes lifting, showing them keen and bright.
"You are the man from the ship who lived with Don Abrahan; I have heard of you," he said. He offered his hand, in the ease of perfect equality, with all the dignity of his years. "And you are the one who gave the young bear a green eye, and left him whining for the lady of his desire. It is a pleasure to grasp your hand, Don Gabriel."
Gabriel's embarrassment was little less than his surprise at hearing his exploits so widely known and so romantically embellished, but he gave old Pablo a warm return of his greeting, seeing that he was sincere.
"It is said the Americans are coming soon to take this country and add it to their own," Pablo said. "But I do not know. Have you heard of this, Don Gabriel?"
"They will come, Mr. Gonzales. How soon, I do not know."
"If they will leave me my house, and not break down the wall around my garden. I shall need them only a little while longer now, if they will leave them to me, Don Gabriel."
"No honest man will be poorer for their coming, your house and your garden will be secure, Mr. Gonzales. It is only the rascals and oppressors of the poor who will feel the difference."
"Some say they will set the peones free from the hands of such men as Don Abrahan, the magistrate. If so, I pray God to hasten the day."
"It will be done, Mr. Gonzales."
"I have been a free man all my life," the old man proudly declared, stretching his long arms wide, like an old eagle exulting in the freedom that still was his. "No man lives until he is free. Do you go to meet the Americans, Felipe, you and your friend?"
Felipe explained in as few words as could cover the situation, what had set the two of them upon the road that day.
"We have come seeking refuge, and the counsel of your wisdom in the dangerous hours that are before us," Felipe said, throwing the whole matter before his ancient friend for his judgment.
"This is a place where no enemy of my friends can find his way," said the old man, with such quiet, simple declaration of loyalty that made Henderson's heart quicken to hear.
"I told my friend I would lead him to such a place," Felipe said.
"Do they follow you?"
"Not yet, Pablo. We must go back tonight and break the hornets' nest."
Felipe told the old man of Helena's situation, arranging for her to hide there under his protection, also, if it should become necessary.
"Gabriel is going back tonight to take her away from them, let it be Don Abrahan, the soldiers or the devil who is shutting her up behind barred windows, and I am going with him, to load his pistols, if nothing more."
"You will show your friend the retreat," Pablo directed. "If there is nobody after you yet, there is nothing to fear, but the rabbit must know where to find its hole when the coyote comes."
Felipe led the way through a grove of live-oak and sycamore trees that bordered on Pablo's garden, into a cleared space a little distance behind the old man's house, where the crumbling walls of what must have been at one time an extensive homestead encumbered the ground. These ruins appeared to be of a day long past, their walls tumbled down, the frames gone from gaping windows and doors. Blackened ends of beams still held here and there in the walls, stood as evidence of the tragedy that had leveled this once consequential seat. Henderson was astonished when Felipe extended welcome with sweeping movement of his outstretched hand, saying:
"Gabriel, behold my ancestral walls."
"This was your home, Felipe?"
"Home, Gabriel. Here I was born, here my father and mother came from Spain, bride and groom, to join my grandfather, who had prepared this house to receive them. The soldiers of the revolution burned it after my father fled to Spain."
"It looks like an older ruin," said Gabriel, looking around with sad interest in the fallen strength of this once grand place. "But I see now it couldn't have been long ago, the trees that have come up between the walls are still small."
"Adobe walls without a roof over them soon look ancient, Gabriel. There is Pablo's fence, it seems a century old. He built it not twenty years ago."
"But what is there here, Felipe, to prevent soldiers or anybody else, following and finding us?" Gabriel inquired, puzzled to find himself in a place of such doubtful security.
"First, there is Pablo," Felipe replied. "He does not wake and become alert for everybody that approaches him. The soldiers, Don Abrahan, would find him only a sleepy, dull, deaf and dim-eyed old man. But you will understand what he means, what I mean, when you know him better. He could send the keenest soldier or officer of the law off on a chase that would take him a long time to find out was empty, as he has done many a time. The Franciscans outlawed by the revolution used to hide here, Pablo sitting beside the road as you saw him when we arrived."
"That is all very good, Felipe, but it seems to me not quite enough for security."
"There is more," Felipe said, discovering this with triumph, as if he had held it covered to remove his friend's last doubt. "Over there, behind that adobe wall, is a retreat built by my grandfather, designed as a refuge in time of the uprising of the abused Indian peones which he always expected would come in his day, but which never came. It once had an entrance from the mansion, which is closed now by the fallen walls. The exit remains, with shelter for us, as you shall see."
The ancient Guiterrez, grandfather of Felipe, had used this underground vault to store his wine casks, pending the day when he might need it to escape with his family from the just and long-sleeping vengeance of the oppressed Indians, who labored in virtual slavery on the vast mission estates, and the lands of the hidalgos who lived in harmony with them in the tyranny they jointly exercised over the land. It was an elaborate work for his day, no doubt, but in Gabriel Henderson's eyes it appeared crude and useless as either a place of concealment or defense against an intelligent and determined foe. But, like Don Abrahan's house, its chief commendable feature was the many means of escaping from it. There had been four of these long passages originally, two of which remained.
The existence of this old underground refuge was not known to many now, Felipe said. There were tales of it, romantic and tragic, but only three or four old men, Pablo included, could lead the way to it. And these were loyal men, who would die before they would betray him.
Within the underground recess there was room for several horses as well as people. At the word of alarm, one could mount and go before those who looked for him even gained suspicion from the cunning old Pablo that he was within miles of that spot.
Felipe's last and greatest revelation was the little bell that hung in the arch of the vault, to be connected by a string with Pablo's house. The string would be available to the old man's hand from many places, Felipe said. The cord that had moved the bell and warned the Franciscans was rotted away now; Pablo would run another one without delay.
It seemed a rather childish arrangement to Henderson, but, as Felipe had such evident pride and confidence in it, he tried to make it appear that he believed it a most masterly contrivance.
"Here we can lie," said Felipe, "until they believe we have gone from the country in some mysterious way and relax their vigilance. Then we can slip out, and make our way to Monterey. This is better than making a dash with them hot at our heels. It is the crafty, Franciscan way."
"There is good argument in it," Henderson admitted, feeling that it was so.
"And if some traitor betrays us, or some spy creeps like a snake and luck leads him to us, then the bell will warn us, we can ride away before they can arrive, and be miles ahead of them."
"That is excellent, Felipe," Henderson declared. He went to the door of the retreat, doubly hidden inside a high adobe wall and the young trees and shrubs which had sprung thickly there. It was concealed so well that one might pass within a yard of it and be no wiser.
"Asleep or awake the bell will warn us, for they must pass the house first to come here. Don't you think it is admirable, Gabriel?"
"Admirable!" said Gabriel warmly. "I wonder, Felipe, if those damned scoundrels took that girl to the pueblo and locked her in their dirty jail?"