The Road to Monterey/Chapter 26
CECILIA'S repute as a needlewoman was as wide-reaching as her daughter's fame as a fleet-footed keeper of goats. All the years that Cecilia herself had followed the flocks of Don Abrahan on hill and valley pasture, she had taken her sewing with her. From the crudity of untutored beginning in necessity of clothing herself, she had advanced to artistry such as few among the deft-handed women of her race attain. Many a wedding garment she had fashioned by candle after her long hours with the goats, no compensation for her labor but the benefaction of love.
Once, when Helena was a child, Cecilia had worked for weeks, perhaps months, decorating with fine silken flowers a sash for the occasion of her first communion. It had been her tribute for some kind act on the child's part, some considerate, sympathetic little thing that would have meant no more in the lives of thase intimately associated with her than the rustle of a leaf. In Cecilia's barren existence, her heart hungry for human kindness, it had been a noble, a sweet, memorable deed. The passing of the gift had been accepted as a pledge of friendship by both; that dainty sash, wrought by rough fingers in the devotion of gratitude, had bound them in strange sympathy all the years after.
Now Cecilia was gray and wrinkled, aged by the hardship of her lot twenty years before her time, but no older, indeed, than Doña Carlota, whose hair was showing only a little sprinkling of the salt of time, and this easily hidden by drawing the untainted locks down over it. But Cecilia's fingers remained as cunning as ever, and to Cecilia's art Helena turned for assistance in contriving the flag that Henderson required for his staff.
"We cannot make all the little stars, Helena, and have it finished before Roberto comes," Cecilia said. "The stitching around the edges to hold them when the wind blows would take hours alone."
Cecilia looked out of the door as she spoke, and turned her ear to listen for horses on the hard road.
"They are not coming yet, Cecilia?"
"No, but they will come. Roberto will be full of fire and spite, like a cat. Let us cut two stars for each side, one for you, one for Don Gabriel."
Helena hesitated, shears idle a moment in her hand. Presently she shook her head.
"No. I do not know that my star belongs with Don Gabriel's," she said.
"There is no doubt of that. Two stars"
"One," said Helena decisively, shaping it hastily.
The little community had been laid under tribute to furnish the color for the flag, but it was the most willing contribution to any cause they ever had made. Helena provided a white satin gown for the foundation of it, two poor women produced cloth for the red stripes, one a scarlet bit of silk, treasured long in the hope of adding to it some fortunate day enough to make a dress; another a red cotton sash that had graced her girlish waist in fiestas long ago. Cecilia herself furnished the blue for the field, silk as delicate as the impalpable curtains that spread in the canyons at eventide.
While Cecilia stitched the star in place, Helena sat in pensive attitude, chin in hand, gazing through the dusty window where Don Felipe's back used to be seen by those who passed. Henderson was talking with the captured artilleryman, who had changed his allegiance with his clothes. The man was pointing toward the pass, doubtless giving information concerning the destination of the cannon. Men were arriving from the fields, where they had dropped scythe, hoe, and plow on hearing the news. There was doubt and fear in the bearing of most of them, eagerness in a few.
Felipe was receiving these arrivals from Don Abrahan's fields, whither they had gone before sunrise to begin their long and burdensome day. A group of them collected around him, listening with turnings of the head as if to watch against some treacherous surprise. Some of them seemed ready to follow the former mayordomo who appeared before them today in open and armed defiance of the authority that he had been the embodiment of in their eyes but a little while ago. Others withdrew, still with that doubtful turning of the head, that silent movement of fear, the promise of a larger liberty too dim and improbable to tempt them out of their established ways.
Helena felt doubt and fear cloud coldly over her as she sat watching this scene so strange for the courtyard of Don Abrahan Garvanza. There were but two out of the many who came and went, and stood at arms in her sight, that bore the unquestionable stamp of determination—Gabriel, steady and grave; Felipe, a flame in the wind.
These two alone could be relied on if it came to a desperate stand of days against Roberto's harassing forces. The poor fellows who strutted now with their arms would dwindle away into the safety of the bosque if the test of vigilance by night and defense by day should try them. Their kind and nature she knew too well.
"Here is the flag," said Cecilia, "the last stitch done in time."
Helena held it by its corners at arms' length before her, looking at the curious effect of their hasty collaboration. The result was not artistic, rather crudely flamboyant, but it was better than she had expected.
"Call Don Gabriel," she requested, drawing back according to her breeding and the traditions of her caste from so forward a thing as hailing a man from the door.
Henderson hurried to her, appearing at the door with his dusty hat in his hand. She spread the flag before him, lifting it until she was all hidden but her eyes.
"What a beautiful flag you've made!" said Henderson, looking over the blue field of it into her eyes.
"We hurried to finish it," she explained; "there wasn't time for all the stars. So we made only one; Don Gabriel—Gabriel. One star—for you."
"Why, Helena," he said, pleased, embarrassed, flushing to his fair hair, "you made it—it's your star."
"No," shaking her head gravely, "mine would be so lonely all alone."
Henderson let his thorn-pinned hat fall as he stretched his arms to receive the flag, laying hold of the hands that held it, lowering them a little to uncover her face.
"There is no star in the heavens as lonesome as mine would be without one for you beside it," he said.
Cecilia withdrew a little from the door, wise in her hour. She stood aside like a sentinel, guarding the romance within.
"Then, if it is neither your star nor mine, Gabriel?" Helena asked, glad in what he had declared.
"It is California's," he answered, with happy inspiration.
Henderson raised the flag with his own hands, Helena watching from the window. Felipe saluted it as it stretched in the wind; the women and children stood in the road before their houses to see. But in the expectation of Roberto's coming, and the doubt and uncertainty that waited on that event, nobody but those under arms was now permitted to approach the courtyard.
According to Felipe's calculations, it was time for Roberto to answer the summons, either by courier or alone, as directed, or at the head of his soldiers, as expected. Felipe and his assistant gunner stood ready to train the cannon on the quarter from which a charge might come. It was Felipe's pride that he had disposed his artillery in such position that this could happen in only two points.
It was past midday; the men who had volunteered in the precarious cause of liberty as championed by Henderson and Felipe had been served bountiful rations from Don Abrahan's storehouse. There was no dust of Roberto's coming in the road to the pueblo—only the sound of a tinkling bell out of sight beyond the olive lane. Henderson paused in his impatient, disturbed striding up and down beside the storehouse wall.
There was a familiar sound in that bell, but he was unable to determine where, under what conditions, he had heard it before. And the picture of Pablo Gonzales and his burro rose in his mind, provoking a smile. In a little while Pablo himself, seated in dignity and ease on Benito's back, came in sight between the olive trees.
Pablo was not unattended. A man trudged ahead of him, and from the carriage of that man it was easy to see that his hands were tied at his back. It was easier to determine, in the eyes of all who knew him, that the man whq marched in such public disgrace was nobody but Simon Villalobo, the driver of eight mules.
The discovery of this fact set up no small commotion among the people gathered before their houses on the slope of the hill. They passed the word from one to another that Simon was to be shot, without any foundation for it at all, except, perhaps, their belief that he deserved no less, and their hope that he might be paid according to his merits. Simon's wife appeared, weeping and frantic, and had to be restrained from rushing to meet him. Her neighbors held her back with gentle determination. Don Gabriel would have her shot if she set foot near the cannon, they said. It was a thing to see, the look in Don Gabriel's face, so calm and cold it made a man's blood sink to his heels.
When Pablo came through the gate it was seen that the rope which bound Simon's hands was snubbed around Benito's thick little body also. Not trusting the long legs of his prisoner, in spite of the two pistols and knife which he carried at his belt, Pablo had anchored him so he could not run without dragging the burro after him.
The old man's face was as drowsily dusty as if he had just been stirred from a nap beside the road when he pressed Benito's sides and stopped him' near the cannon. He was smoking a little cigarette in corn-husk wrapper; it seemed as if he closed his eyes against the sharp savor of it as he sat with dangling legs, toes almost on the ground, never a word out of his bearded, dry old mouth. There was a look of cynical pleasure on his face that Henderson never had seen before.
Henderson knew him well enough to give him his own time to tell what there was to be told. Simon stood looking at the flag, the cannon, the men with guns, plainly very much concerned over his situation.
Pablo united the rope that passed around his donkey's body and gave the end of it to Henderson.
"Here is an old goat," he said.
"There's rope enough to hang him here," Henderson remarked, as seriously as if the speculation were a forecast of his intention.
"It will do the work," Pablo nodded.
"But it would seem like a waste of a good rope," said Henderson. "What have you got to say for yourself? you sneaking scoundrel!"
"For the love of Our Señor, Don Gabriel, do not hang me!" Simon pleaded.
"What do you think, Pablo?"
Pablo raised his thin shoulders, lifted his shaggy eyebrows, spread his hands, in expression of complete surrender of all opinion in the case. That done, he lapsed into an attitude of serene and complete indifference.
Simon was an unhappy figure to see, dusty and jaded between fear and fatigue. His big mustache hung over his mouth; his lean jaws were black with a beard-growth of several days. He saw his neighbors strutting around the courtyard under that strange flag, with guns on their shoulders; he saw Don Felipe, grown fierce in a day, looking at him as if to put a pistol behind his ear and blow out his light. Still the rascal had the vanity in him, the foolish confidence in his own cunning, to attempt another tale.
"Now, it was this way, Don Gabriel," he began, setting his voice in confidential pitch. "When Don Abrahan left me there to watch the house of my old friend Pablo, it was a thing that I despised myself for doing. But what was a poor man, whose wife and children were at Don Abrahan's mercy, to do? I wanted to come to your side, always; I swore a vow to Our Señora that I would not lift my hand against you at any man's order again. So the word came that you had caught the cannon, and had hung Don Abrahan to a tree for his crimes. Then I told myself it was the time for me to desert and go to your side, Don Gabriel. But Don Roberto might catch me; he might hang me for a deserter, although I am not a soldier. That would be a small matter to Don Roberto. Is it not so, Don Gabriel?"
Henderson indicated by an impatient movement of the hand that he was to hurry on with his defense. Simon turned a shade paler, and swallowed like a man breathing smoke.
"So I put my back against Pablo's wall and went to sleep, making it easy for the old man to tie my hands. It was the way I had planned it. Pablo would have no fear of me asleep. So I arranged it, knowing that Don Roberto would not have cause to hang me for being forced to fight on your side, Don Gabriel. But you see that I wink my eye when I say forced. Give me a gun. I will fight like seven doctors."
"All right," Henderson said. "Don Felipe, give this fellow a gun, and post him in the most dangerous place. If he falters before the enemy, or fails in his duty in the slightest degree, shoot him without a word."
"With the greatest pleasure," Felipe replied. "Go to the gate," he ordered Simon, "and when General Garvanza arrives presently, open it and let him pass."