The Road to Monterey/Chapter 29
THERE were twenty cavalrymen in the lane, Henderson estimated. They had come to a halt when their leader galloped ahead of them, bearing his signal for a truce, and now waited not more than two hundred yards from the gate, formed in a charging front of fours. The officer next in command was drawn off a little way ahead of them, waiting his superior's return.
Henderson had hurried to meet Roberto, whose dismounting to open the gate had interrupted his advance. Due to this barrier, the two met somewhat farther away from the cannon than the previous parley had been held. Roberto stopped his horse with the same regardless hand as before, throwing his weight suddenly on the reins, setting the creature back on its hams. It was not in a spirit of bravado or bold show that Roberto did this trick; it was the mode among the caballeros of his time and place.
Roberto could not conceal the surprise that the preparations for defense gave him. He looked at the two fresh heaps of brown earth beside the cannon, saying nothing for the moment, but lifting himself to his toes in his stirrups as if straining to see what forces the earthworks contained. Presently he seemed to remember that he had come under a signal of truce, which he still carried in his hand. He turned to Henderson quickly, severity in his face.
"I came to propose terms on account of my father," he said, a certain unmistakable deference, a well-defined doubt, showing through his bearing of hauteur and defiance.
Henderson read his mind as readily, in the strained and sharpened acuteness of his own senses, as if Roberto had come honestly and told him all. The man who had spiked the cannon had informed his general of this great service. Roberto had advanced in confident eagerness to overwhelm them, but on the way had been assailed by doubt of the man's honesty. Caution had come whispering that this might be a trick of the Yankee sailor who had bribed the soldier. The sight of the earthworks that had been thrown up in the short time he had been away seemed to give substance to this shadow of doubt. The Yankee might be leading him up to the cannon, only to destroy him in a breath. All this Roberto's face and manner seemed to betray.
Henderson felt the jumping of a new hope, the outspreading of a new plan. It came to him in a flash, as the exigencies of his life seemed to demand of him to plan and decide. The doubt that Roberto had carried there with him must be blown into a blaze of certainty. Circumstances had shaped with peculiar nicety to further this design.
Don Abrahan was there, in plain sight, as if they had brought him out to pay the threatened penalty. The fact that Felipe stood close by the patron, a gun in his hands, watchfulness in his attitude, and that old Pablo was posted behind him, likewise with a gun, seemed evidence of their grave and desperate intention. To add to Roberto's unrest and multiply his uncertainty, there stood by a third desperado in long black cloak, who, from the fairness of his half-face as he presented his side to Roberto, appeared to be a Yankee.
A flight of conjectures, which were more than slightly colored with fear, rose in Roberto's mind. Henderson could see the shadow of them cross his face. Who could this person be? Was it possible that the Americans had come, after all, and were lying that moment behind the mounds of earth?
"I am waiting to hear you speak, Roberto," Henderson prompted him, seeing that his growing perplexities had swallowed his words.
"I am willing to make a compromise with you," Roberto said, pulling his eyes away from the earthworks, the cannon, the stranger in the dark cloak, with a wrench, it seemed. "I am willing to allow compassion and humanity to obscure my duty. There is nothing bitter in my heart against you, Gabriel, when all is considered. You have been the companion of some happy hours. In exchange for my father's safety I will give you freedom. I will withdraw my soldiers until tomorrow morning; I will leave the way to the harbor open to you. There you will find a British ship that will give you refuge, and carry you back to your home."
"Does this condition apply to Helena Sprague and Felipe Guiterrez as well as to me, Roberto?"
"No, Gabriel; to you alone."
"You affront me in proposing it!"
"I cannot embrace the others in any condition of leniency," Roberto contended with harsh severity. "Where I find them, they are mine."
"If you will withdraw your soldiers, leaving the way open to all of us, in whatever direction we may choose to go, I will accept."
"It is impossible," said Roberto, coldly.
"There is nothing more," Henderson said, speaking his thought aloud.
It appeared, indeed, that his use of Roberto's doubtful state had turned out another failure. In more skillful hands Roberto might have been led, he believed, or intimidated by a bold and insolent face, and compelled to grant terms to them all. Now it seemed there could be nothing more.
"It is not possible to admit the other two," Roberto said. "That is a different matter; they are Mexican citizens—they must answer."
"They must be caught first," Henderson returned, still able to play his part of confidence, no matter how low his hope.
Roberto was looking toward the laborers' houses, lifting himself, shifting and straining to see. Curiosity was stronger than caution in the men who had been dismissed. They stood in their doors, wives and children behind them, watching with all eyes.
Roberto saw in this proof of disaffection the result of Simon's crafty work. He concluded that the poor-spirited fellows had taken fright and deserted, the promise of independence and ease from patriarchal restraint having lost its glamour beside the hard fact of impending punishment. He turned to Henderson, a gleam of mocking triumph in his face.
"I will have a word with my father," he said.
As he spoke, Roberto lifted his right hand, in which he still held the signal of truce, pressed spurs to his horse, sending it forward with a bound. 'Henderson, standing near the animal's head, sprang and caught the bridle rein as it passed. This interference brought the horse up sharply, in a confusing trampling of dust.
"Stop! You came here under a flag of true, not as a spy," Henderson said.
Between the restraint of Henderson's hand on its bridle, and the agony of the spurs which Roberto ground against its sides, the horse was wild. It reared, so violent in its efforts to escape that Roberto, one hand wound in the white signal of peace, was in danger of being thrown.
Henderson hung to the bridle, furious that Roberto should attempt such treachery as to spy on the state of their defenses under a white flag. Roberto, clinging desperately to the plunging horse, reached over his saddle-horn with his whiteswathed hand and fired a pistol in Henderson's face.
Henderson had the dust that made him indistinct, the lunging of the horse that made the pointblank shot uncertain, to credit for the bullet streaking a fiery channel through his cheek instead of through his brain. He felt the searing trail of it like a branding-iron laid against his face, and the blood springing out of it, cold it seemed, copious as water thrown from a cup.
Roberto was menacing him with the treacherously hidden pistol, the cloth that concealed it impeding his efforts to raise the hammer and fire again. So much Henderson saw through the swirl of dust and smoke as he dropped the bridle rein and sprang, grasping Roberto around the waist, dragging him to the ground.
Roberto's horse knew nothing of loyalty to a master so cruel. It galloped away as Henderson wrenched him from the saddle, the beat of its feet loud as it dashed through the gate and down the lane toward the cavalrymen.
Roberto fought to retain the pistol, his bright uniform in the dust, the blood from Henderson's wound streaming on it, brought to this abasement by his own treachery. His throat was like dough in Henderson's fingers, but the sailor curbed his just fury in time to leave a gasp of breath, a clouded spark of life. Henderson rose with the pistol in one hand, the burned cloth that had hidden it in the other, to see the cavalrymen come charging up the lane.
"Get up!" he ordered Roberto, jostling him with his foot.
Roberto lay stretched and limp as if life had gone out of him, his arms flung out in the road. His face was purple, his lips were distended with congested blood; he was breathing with difficulty.
"Get up!" Henderson repeated, stooping to press the pistol to Roberto's temple.
Roberto rolled his eyes in appeal for the fragment of life that still hung in his body. Henderson took him by the collar of his magnificent coat and heaved him up. And there, with Henderson's knee at his back, the general of forty men sat in the dusty road. His plumed cap was lying by him, crushed by his horse's foot; his heavy, black hair, powdered with dust, fell over his forehead and eyes. He was as bedraggled, limp, and vapid as a drowned man. The spectacle of his soldiers charging to his rescue did not electrify him with one perceptible thrill.
"If they come through the gate, I'll shoot you," Henderson declared in terrible earnestness. "Stand up—stop them!"
He pulled the overthrown general to his feet, where he stood weaving, groping to understand what was desired of him. He made no effort, by word or sign, to halt the approach of his men. Henderson stepped back a pace, and presented the pistol at Roberto's head.
This pantomime was understood by the officer who led the charge. He wheeled his horse, bringing his men to a halt. The soldiers leaned in their saddles to see what mischance had overtaken their general. The officer who led them rode forward alone. When he reached the gate Roberto lifted his hand, stopping him there.
"Fortune has thrown me," Roberto said, turning ruefully to Henderson.
"Treachery has defeated you, coward!"
"Well, what is to be done, Don Gabriel?" Roberto inquired, a tremor of fear and anxiety shaking his voice. It was plain that with every breath of growing strength the love of life increased in him. He stood ready to make a bargain that would sweep away everything but that.
"In a moment—look to your men first. If one of them enters the gate, you die."
Henderson glanced back to his friends, considering whether to march Roberto up the road and join them, risking a dash and a rescue by the soldiers, or hold him there and have Felipe bring Don Abrahan down. Helena had started towards him; she stood about half-way between him and the cannon, a gun in her hand, as if she had sprung at the moment of his greatest peril before the charging soldiers to throw her life away with his own. She had halted there when she saw the soldiers stop. Now she came running, her gun flung down, her long cloak streaming after her.
"Gabriel! You are hurt, you are bleeding!" She ran to him, pressing her hand to his wound. "Oh, you are hurt, you are hurt!"
"Run to Felipe; tell him to bring Don Abrahan," Henderson requested her.
Roberto turned his head at the sound of her voice, the hateful jealousy that had ridden him to such unmanly length burning through his humiliation and distress. Helena drew back into the shadow of Henderson's protection.
"If he moves, shoot him!" she whispered. "Do not trust him, Gabriel—shoot him dead if he moves a hand!"
She sped away to summon Felipe, who came marching Don Abrahan down the road.
"So there is a new stake on the table," said Felipe, full of admiration for Henderson's victory against Roberto's treachery. "But your wound, Don Gabriel?"
"A cat scratched me—it is nothing," Henderson returned.
"It is time to cut its claws. And here is the old stake, that had become valueless, worth a fortune now, beside the new." Felipe ranged Don Abrahan beside his son.
Helena stood near Henderson, who still held Roberto at his pistol's point. Pablo had followed the others down, no pressure in the lives of men sufficient to urge him out of his deliberate way. The laborers were coming out from the shelter of their doors, astonished by the fortune that seemed to wait on this unaccountable Don Gabriel's call.
"This is the condition upon which I will grant you life, Roberto Garvanza," Henderson said. "Tell me first, with the honesty of a man who stands condemned, whether there is a British ship in the harbor, as you have said."
"There is," Roberto replied.
Don Abrahan stood beside his son, a few feet parting them, his spare figure drawn erect, his thin face stern and severe. He had not said a word to the young man, although he had seemed on the point of addressing him once, only to frown and turn away. Now he looked at him sharply, drawing his brows as if he peered against the light.
"Then you will order your soldiers back to the pueblo, and you and your father shall ride with us to the harbor. I assure you solemnly that you shall both be shot the moment you attempt to escape, or that any rescue is attempted by your soldiers or friends. You will remain in our company as surety for our safety until we are on board the British vessel, when you may return ashore. On this condition I grant you and your father life. Do you accept the terms?"
"I accept, Don Gabriel," Roberto replied, his head bent, his voice shamed and low.
Don Abrahan turned to him, hand lifted as if to strike him, his face blanched with passion.
"Coward!" the old man denounced him. "Twice this day I have seen you a coward!"
"I consider your life," Roberto said. "As for my own"
"My life! Ivalue honor above life. Die like a man before you accept these terms!"
"I have passed my word," Roberto said sullenly, resentful of his father's arraignment.
"I have not!"
"Peace, Don Abrahan!" Henderson commanded.
"Peon!" the old man raged at him furiously; "only death can command my tongue!" He lifted his arm as if he held a sword. "Charge—to the rescue!" he shouted.
The officer at the gate dashed back to his men, who sat straining in the expectation of action. In a moment they were charging toward the open gate.
Henderson advanced his pistol until it touched Roberto's hair. He put out his hand toward Helena, not daring to remove his eyes a moment from the man whom he held under sentence of death.
"Go to Doña Carlota—run!" he said. "Roberto, if they pass the gate!"
"They stop!" said Felipe. "It is well for you, Don Abrahan!"
"Charge!" Don Abrahan shouted, sweeping his long arm as if he struck with a sword.
"They are turning—they are leaving!" said Helena, who had not retreated a step at Henderson's command.
"There is a dust in the road," said Pablo, pointing to the north. "There is a sound of"
"It is so," Felipe attested, his vigilance upon Don Abrahan relaxed a moment in his great wonder over this sudden deliverance.
All stood looking and listening, Roberto and Don Abrahan as greatly amazed by the action of the soldiers as the others. There was a dust in the road just beyond the head of the olive lane; it rose high, and yellow as the summer smoke of a fire in the green forest.
"There is a sound, like the sound of" said Pablo. He smiled.
The soldiers were galloping toward the pueblo, their officer riding after them as if threatened by some terror that would swallow him if he fell another rod behind.
At the turn of the road a flock of goats came pouring into the olive lane. In a moment they had flooded it, for they were being driven as no careful goatherd would urge a flock; in a moment they had found the open gate, and came running up the road to Don Abrahan's feet. After them there followed Liseta, carrying a long stem of the spearlike yucca that stands on the hillsides in summer tall and white as a stately bride.
Liseta's eyes were bright; her dark face was tinted with the red of her rich, racing blood. She was dusty, sweat-streaked, panting; her black hair blew in wild freedom about her face.
"Here are your goats, Don Abrahan Garvanza," she said, coming straight to the patron. "Count them—see that every one is there. I will watch them no more! The Americans are coming—I am free!"
Don Abrahan did not give the slightest heed to Liseta's defiant proclamation, although the others heard her eagerly. He was looking along the lane after the fleeing cavalrymen.
"What hope is there for a nation whose soldiers run from a flock of goats!" said Don Abrahan, contemptuous bitterness in his voice.
"Goats!" Liseta mocked him. "If you had seen the Americans, Don Abrahan, you would have run after the soldiers!"
"Where are they, Liseta?" Henderson inquired, doubting the girl's excited report.
"There, a little way behind me. I saw them coming through the pass. I had watched for them many days, since you told us, Don Gabriel, they would come. I gathered the goats"
"How many, Liseta? Where are they? There is nobody in the road."
"The road is full of them, I tell you, Don Gabriel. There are as many horses as Don Abrahan has goats."
All had turned to gaze through the falling dust-cloud raised by the goats. Helena ran to the defenses, mounted the cannon, and stood looking up the Monterey road.
"They are coming!" she announced, almost shrieking in the mounting of her sublime joy. She snatched off her sombrero and waved the others forward to share with her the sight of their deliverance.
Gabriel was thrilled with the hope that she had not seen a phantom worked out of the flying dust, but not sanguine enough to trust to any mischance by relaxing for one moment his vigilance over his two hostages. He signed to Felipe to bring Don Abrahan.
"There! Do you see them, Gabriel?"
Helena stood on the cannon, leaning and pointing, vibrant with delight. Her hair, coiled to fit into the crown of her sombrero, was falling from its anchorage in happy disorder; her eyes, her face, were alive with the fire of triumph kindled from the cold ashes of despair.
Henderson leaped to the mound of earth beside the cannon to see over the brushwood that grew close along the border of the road. He turned to Felipe, who stood expectantly.
"They are coming!" he said.
Roberto lifted his head from his crushed and humiliated shrinking.
"Don Gabriel, permit me to return and defend the pueblo," he requested. "My disgrace in your eyes is complete. Allow me to redeem myself, at least before my soldiers, and die for the republic like a man."
Henderson looked at Felipe. Felipe threw out his hand, raised his shoulders, shut his eyes, expressive of complete indifference in any further adventures, honorable or dishonorable, that might come in Don Roberto's days.
"What is a general more or less?" he said.
"What do you say, Helena? You have most to forgive."
"Let him go, Gabriel," she requested, her compassion making her voice gentle for one who deserved no gentleness.
"There are some horses in the stable that belong to your government," said Henderson. "Take one of them and go. And here—here is your flag of truce. It has a black smudge on it, like your honor. Go!"
The tramp of horses was coming near in the road at the head of the olive lane, and the rumble of heavy wheels. The sun was low on the hills; their shadows reached into the valley, over Don Abrahan's mansion, submerging the road along which the conquerors advanced.
The chaparral grew tall at the roadside just beyond the head of the olive Jane; those who stood waiting, pulsing, straining with bright eyes and parted lips, could not see the advancing column whose dust rose high. But there was more than dust to prove that strong men were advancing into that pastoral, sleeping land that placid summer evening. Gabriel Henderson, straining until his eyes ached for the sight of them, removed his hat when he saw the token that appeared above the green bosque like a flame.
"There the flag came, lifted high. The man who carried it—honorable distinction!—and they who marched with him, could not yet be seen through the intervening bosque, where the shadow of the hills fell on them, but the flag proclaimed them like a herald, lifted high above their heads into the sun. A beam of it was bright on the gilt spear of its staff; it was golden on the warm colors that stretched in the western wind.
Don Abrahan beheld it. He bowed his head as one who submits before a conqueror.