The Road to Monterey/Chapter 20
PEOPLE began to collect in the plaza before the flare of dawn lifted. As the day grew, dimming the stars at the eastern horizon edge, and spread onward, engulfing the heavens, the arrivals increased. They came now in haste, with searching turnings of the head as if to question whether they had arrived too late, many women with rosaries in their hands, some men with the darkness of threat in their troubled faces.
All corners were directed by the sentinels, who still guarded each street where it opened into the square, to that side of the plaza where the church fronted. Here they stood in the chill of morning, shocked and afraid of this awful thing, yet lacking the courage either to interfere or deny the spectacle their presence.
At the first showing of the madrugada, the dawning of day, the general's proclamation had said, this traitress would be stood against the adobe wall and shot. Now it was broadening into day; the drum had not beaten, the door of the military jail had not opened.
"Perhaps General Garvanza has relented, perhaps he will spare her," a woman said. She was old; her hair was dusty-gray as trodden ashes; her mantilla had slipped from her head to her shoulders unnoticed.
"I saw her when they brought her," a younger woman said, and she was one whose hand seemed to have laid her child down to its pillow to slip away and stand with aching heart to wait the opening of the carcel door. "She is young and pretty; her hair is the color of wine-grapes. What a pity that bullets must tear her soft bosom and burst into her heart!"
"It is not a time of pity, doña; it is a time of war."
The speaker was a harsh, gray man, straight in the shoulders like one whose business had been arms. He turned with disfavor in his drawn brows, fixing the young woman with stern eyes.
"But there can be mercy, even in war," the woman insisted, undaunted by his glare.
"Yes, doña, but when the Yankees come, yelling like devils, what will you have to say about pity then? Who will pity you when they cut your throat and trample your children under their horses' feet? Ah, that will be another thing!"
"There must be an example," said another, and he also was old. "If this plotting with the enemy is permitted, every Yankee in this pueblo will turn on us and eat our hearts. This will be an example to them—this will keep them in their places."
"A pitiful example, then, Don Felix," one at his side declared, asperity in his voice. "It may be next to treason to say it, but to me this thing is cowardly and unpardonable. If this tyrant Garvanza"
"Silence!" the old soldier rebuked him savagely. "I will not stand by and hear treason spoken in my ear!"
"Then, if the Americans would come, I would help them set that poor young lady free," the young man declared, defiance in his reckless mouth.
"If the general hears of this"
"Curse the general! No man fights a woman—only a coward does that."
All around there was the murmur of voices, pitched in the note of pity, of helpless, hopeless pity which, dear as it might be to one who must walk forth soon to die, could not stay for one moment the general's vindictive decree.
"This is the liberty we have under the republic!" one who appeared to be a laborer said, speaking sneeringly, his broken hat pushed back from his flushed brow. "We had no tyranny like this under the crown; no woman ever was led out to die before soldiers in those times."
"When the Americans come"
"Hasten the day!" said the workman fervently.
"It is said they are humane people."
"Humane! Have you heard of the black men bound in slavery, bought and sold like pigs? Tell me, then!"
"Don Ambrosio, I have heard. But they do not stand the black women, or even the black men, against the wall and shoot them."
"Yes, and you are a traitor in the core of your heart! I would report you to the general for half"
"No? Haven't you heard? Impossible that you haven't heard!"
The speaker raised his voice above the subdued murmuring, in his surprise, what seemed his avidity, to spread a piece of news. He was of the common class, a thin, acidulous man. The low babbling of voices fell silent as this man drew himself up and looked around on his neighbors, two hundred or more of them now, gathered before the church.
"What is it, innkeeper?" the one called Don Ambrosio demanded, out of his position of authority, it seemed.
"I thought everybody knew; I thought it must have spread like oil on water," the innkeeper said. "He came last night to my hotel, the messenger who brought the news to the governor. It is of so great"
"What foolishness!" said Don Ambrosio. "Speak!"
"The Americans, Don Ambrosio," said the innkeeper.
"What of them, animal?"
"They have taken Monterey!" said the innkeeper with triumphant malevolence, it seemed, stretching himself to his greatest height, straining to tiptoes to fairly throw the news in Don Ambrosio's face.
"It is a lie!" Don Ambrosio denied.
"Ask the governor, then. Or better—ask Don Michael. Here he comes."
"It is the shameful truth, Don Ambrosio," Don Michael, a portly man with sagging jaws, admitted. "The news reached me at midnight. There is one called General Fremont marching on this pueblo now."
"God save us!" said a woman.
"Your bank—our money in your bank, Don Michael!" another clamored.
"God knows!" said Don Michael, spreading wide his arms as if to show his own breast free of guile.
"Where are they? How near do they approach?" a small, sharp-faced man came elbowing forward to inquire.
"Close at hand, it is thought. They ride like the wind, the messenger said, Missouri men, hard scoundrels who do not even aim when they shoot, and never miss."
"What?" asked a soldier, pressing near, gun on shoulder, face eager for the right of it. "The Yankees, did you say?"
"Yes, soldier, a thousand of them, coming in a dust like the end of the world!"
It was the defiant young man who volunteered this, giving it to the soldier with excited breath. The soldier gulped it as if he had swallowed an oyster, turned and hurried away to spread the intelligence among his comrades, who were dusty, red-eyed and weary from their long vigil of the night.
"By God!" the young man muttered; "I hope that will help little Felipe."
"The general has heard this; he is afraid," said one, expressing the hope that rose in the hearts of many.
The broad gate in the adobe wall surrounding the compound where the horses were kept, opened as this person spoke. Four horses appeared, drawing out acannon. One of the lead team was saddled, ridden by a soldier; another soldier rode on the limber of the small piece which they came wheeling into the plaza.
"That is for the Americans," said the soldierly old man. "Let them have a taste of that and we'll see how far they come. Good for General Garvanza—he is not asleep!"
"Over there is the place," said a woman, speaking almost in a whisper to another as they stood with heads drawn together, "there against the wall. They say the priest is still with her"
"I saw him go in long ago," an old woman volunteered. "They say it is his long prayers that delay"
"What a pity, and so young!"
The long roll of a drum sounded in the barracks. There was a noise of assembling men, of trampling feet. The soldiers in the plaza, eight of them there were, ten with the two who manned the cannon, stiffened to their duty, pushing the people sternly back into a close-packed front opposite the compound wall where the tragedy was to be set.
Two soldiers came and stood at the carce] door, one on either side; others were issuing from the barracks where the drum clamored. The waiting people caught their breath with a sound like a sob when the door opened. There were two soldiers in front, two in the rear; between them Helena, a dark-robed priest beside her.
"She does not die for treason to her country, but for fidelity to one she loves," said the young man who had expressed his willingness to help set her free.
"It is well known that the general's jealousy has burned the heart out of him, leaving him as hollow as a barrel," the innkeeper said.
An officer came forward and assumed command of the party conducting the prisoner. There was a pause before the prison door, while the priest seemed taking his farewell of Helena, who lifted her face, so white it seemed radiant, and smiled.
"I thank God I am not in that squad!" said a soldier at the edge of the crowd. He wiped sweat from his forehead. Women gave him their blessing with their eyes.
Helena was dressed as she was when the soldiers tore her from Don Abrahan's house, in the simple white gown she had worn when she came to the window to talk with Henderson. Her head was bare, her abundant hair gathered with care into a girlish braid which hung across her shoulder and down her bosom, as her hands had let it fall on the summons of the guard at her door. It gave her the appearance of having been interrupted in her toilet. The general was in such an urgent heat of vengeance that he would not spare her time to prepare to die.
The officer had his sword to his nose, a command on his lips. The priest fell back, to stand before the prison door with bowed head, eyes on the page of his little book. The guard closed in around the prisoner, the march to the place of execution began.
In the center of the plaza the two soldiers were bringing the cannon in place to command the road that came into the pueblo from the north. The horses were trampling with a great noise above the sad silence of the people, with a disturbance of yellow dust which rose like the pollen of wild mustard between those who stood waiting and the light of the east, where the sun seemed laggard out of pity. The drum in the barracks was still; soldiers were assembling before a certain door, which opened now to discharge General Garvanza, in green uniform laced with gold, his sword at his side.
"I cannot look!" said a woman, turning away.
The old mother whose mantilla had slipped from her ash-gray head sank softly to her knees in the dust. It was as if the leader of a flock of doves had settled down in a meadow. Scores of women bent to their knees, in a rustling of brocaded silk, a murmuring of plain linen, the whisk of poor cotton about their pious limbs.
They were marching along the wall to a certain pitted place which marked where others had stood before the soldiers' guns, Helena tall among the mean-statured, uniformed men. She walked calmly, no faltering in her feet, no turning of the head in the vain expectation, the unreasonable hope, that help might come. There was a pause now, waiting, it seemed, for the men with the cannon to unlimber the piece and remove the horses which obstructed the view of the people, whom the general desired so greatly to witness this deed, for the moral effect and repression of traitorous desires.
"Jesus! if there were ten men!" said the workman. He had pulled his broken hat down; it threw a shadow over his face.
"If there was one!" the young man who had been reproved by the old soldier said.
There was a great uprising of dust from the trampling of the four horses in the plaza, which the man in charge was lashing for some real or fancied fractiousness; those who were not praying, stood straining and stretching to see. The soldiers were placing her against the wall.
It seemed a long time to those who waited, the few moments that passed between the opening of the jail door and this short march beside the wall. The heart labored so in the bosom that it seemed smothering in the sea, the eyes strained until they burned as in smoke. Pity was in the throat, pity was dry on the lips. It gave pain to bestow so much pity; it was as if the heart had gone dry.
"Jesus!" said the workman, tearing his shirt open on his hairy throat. "If there was a man!"
The young man who had replied bitterly to him before stood silent now; his head was bowed, the blood was gone out of his lips. The only answer to the workman's passionate wish was the murmur of women's praying, the sighing of men's breath as they braced themselves as for a leap.
Then, what a start, what a surging to the feet, what a bristling of wild hopes and terrors in that crowd! What a yell it was that came like a crashing stone into the plaza! what a rush of charging hoofs! Now shots, and wilder cries, and dusty horsemen riding into the plaza, death flashing from their hands.
"The Americans!"
"Fly, fly—the Americans!"
Some ran for the church door, some crouched against the church wall, some ran in the confusion of beating feet and flying dust from the plaza. In a moment, it seemed, the crowd was swept from the place where it had stood, broken, dispersed as smoke is scattered by the wind. Dust was a cloud that obscured everything; it swirled yellow as the smoke of an autumn fire in green chaparral against the lifting sun.
There was shouting in the plaza, and many shots. Only two horsemen had come against the soldiers, it appeared, but they must be only the outriders of a thousand, they rode so boldly, shouting their defiance in the general's face, shooting down the soldiers as if they had pistols that never needed a ball.
Over against the wall one of them was engaged with three soldiers, the others who had formed the firing squad either having fallen or run away—there was such a tempest of dust that one could not see, except by glimpses as the desperate combat whirled. There was the gleam of the blessed young lady's dress—she was not hurt—there! A soldier had lunged out of the blinding cloud, the maddening, heart-stifling cloud, and driven his bayonet into the belly of the rescuer's horse! He was down, the legs of his horse turned upward like a toy, while it thrashed in the agony of death. Then the dust of the struggle closed around them; it was a blank.
The other of these daring, courageous angels—what could they be but heaven-directed to come in a moment of such pitiful need?—had flung himself from his horse, after driving the soldiers on that side of the plaza before him like leaves before a gale, and was now engaging the two artillerymen, who stood with bravery beside their gun.
"This is the time to help!" said the young man, looking about him with eager eyes as he stood against the padres' garden wall.
"I am with you, comrade," the workman answered. They ran together into the plaza, into the sirocco of dust, where the red flame of death was leaping from pistol and gun.
Others came after them like the surge of released waters. It was a shout that ran the breadth of the pueblo, startling old men as they turned in their beds.
Over against the wall, Gabriel Henderson rose out of the misfortune of his fall, the gun of a slain soldier in his hands. His pistols were lost, his horse was groaning with its last breath; the dust was thick around him as fog on the hills. A moment, a little gleam. Helena's white dress fluttered, her hand was on his arm, pressing a pistol into his hand. Out of the fog of dust a soldier leaped, his blood-red bayonet darting like a serpent's tongue.
Thank God for the eyes of love, that could see the flung pistol fall against the wall; thank God for the quick heart of love that could find its way to his side, even through the obscuration of death. The soldier's bayonet was in the dust, his comrades' feet sounded as they ran.
Henderson had left the extra horse tied behind the corral of Felipe's friend, afraid that his charge into the plaza might be impeded by its tugging. His own animal, upon which he had relied to carry both Helena and himself out of the plaza, if fortune should give him the passage, was dead.
Felipe was at the cannon, for what sane purpose no man could tell, dismounted, master of the situation for the moment, but peril before him, where General Garvanza was forming his panic-scattered men; behind him, it seemed, where the crowd came rushing like an overwhelming wave. Henderson was not cognizant of the people's friendly purpose. He believed they had won and lost.
"Fire! Charge them! Fire!"
It was the voice of Roberto, raised high in a shriek of fury at sight of this havoc among his forces.
"Come!" said Henderson, catching Helena by the hand.
"Charge them!" General Garvanza commanded, with no man steady enough to obey.
Panting, wild-eyed, bloody from wounds; amazed, confused, fearful that a force of these wild devourers was upon them, his soldiers huddled before him where he stood at the barracks door. He cursed them for their cowardice, threatened them with terrible punishment. Falteringly, confused in their movements, the soldiers from the plaza formed. Others came running out of the barracks, from the safety they had sought when the two comrades in this desperate chance had charged with the noise of twenty, the valor of a thousand.
Now another situation confronted the demoralized soldiers and their frantic general. The people had turned against them; they were pouring into the plaza, gathering around the man at the cannon, who stood with pistol raised in defiance of General Garvanza and all he represented. General Garvanza knew him and despised him. If curses could have blasted a man, poor Felipe must have fallen there.
A man out of the crowd stripped the harness from the saddled artillery horse, and put the bridle reins in Henderson's hand as he came up with Helena. A moment; Gabriel was in the saddle, Helena lifted to his arms by hands that touched her tenderly as if to soothe the hurt of the brutal usage that had bruised her heart.
It was a glad shout that bounded from the façade of the low brown garrison, fuel to the fury of Roberto's breast. He snatched a gun from a reluctant soldier, and shot him dead; from another, who fell to his knees in supplication at the general's feet.
"Charge!" Roberto shouted.
His fury descended to the soldiers, slow as they were to shake off their terror. They saw that no greater force was coming against them; that they had been shamed and defeated, their comrades slain, their general humiliated and defied, by two common men who were not even soldiers.
Now the people were against them, they were threatened with drawn pistols, with cobble-stones snatched from the top of the padres' wall. The soldiers crouched to the charge, bayonets fixed to tear out these treacherous people's hearts.
"Here—help me with this cannon!" Felipe shouted. "So! there now, back with you, my friends!"
"Your horse, comrade—go!" It was the young man who led the people, the friend whose wall had sheltered them in the night.
"I wonder if it is loaded?" Felipe muttered, training the cannon to bear on the soldiers, who came at the double on their charge.
"Felipe! Quick, your horse!" Henderson shouted.
Felipe raised his left hand like a fencer, seized the lanyard, the people fleeing from the impending discharge.
"Felipe!" Henderson appealed, reluctant, even in the peril that came charging across the plaza, to ride away and leave him there.
"Fire!" cried Roberto, lifting his sword high.
As the soldiers halted suddenly at the command, their pieces lifted in quick accord, Felipe pulled the lanyard. While the cannon rocked from the discharge he leaped to his saddle.
"Away then, comrade," he said.
Felipe waved his hat to the people as he passed, turning to see what slaughter that charge of grape-shot had made among General Garvanza's men.
"Yes, undoubtedly it was loaded," said Felipe, as he rode hard at his comrade's side.
The smoke of the cannon-shot still hovered blue in the early sun, shrouding from the shocked eyes of the people those who had fallen in its blast, when Don Abrahan came galloping into the plaza at the head of thirty men. His belated expedition for the rescue of his kinswoman from the hands of his vengeful son, in the expectation of which Roberto had placed the cannon in the plaza, swept with consequence before the eyes of the people, who thought at first the Americans, indeed, had come.
Don Abrahan would have been too late to stay one tragedy that day. He had come only in time to dismount and kneel in the dust of the plaza beside his fallen son.