SIMON must wake disappointed to find the gold piece gone out of his pocket, Henderson believed; he doubted whether his humiliation over his downfall would be greater than that. As Simon lay with the light knocked out of him, his jaw pried wide, his own clasp-knife tied between his teeth like a bit, Henderson stood considering him a little while before leaving him to his bitter awakening.
He was a long man, stretched out so, and would be longer one day when he stretched with nothing for his feet to stand upon. Henderson was convinced that day was in reserve for him, and so spared the life that was in him to bring him to a more fitting end. But Simon's feet he had bound, and his hands, these with the rope that the sardonic braggart had drawn with unsparing cruelty about his own wrists only twenty-four hours since. So fate turns the fortunes of men around, Henderson thought, with a great deal of satisfaction in the reversal of Simon.
Henderson buckled Simon's notable pistol around himself, disappointed in his search for ammunition. Simon evidently had believed the six charges in the chambers sufficient for one scorned Yankee, and carried no more. Henderson was thankful for so much. He locked the doors on his late warden, put the keys in his pocket and left him to come out of his stunned condition as nature might repair him.
There appeared to be plenty of life in Simon, although it was pretty well driven back into its secret places. The water jar was heavy, of six quarts or more capacity; the broken pieces of it were half an inch thick. But not much thicker than Simon's head, Henderson thought. He had struck the rascal on his most vulnerable spot, over what in a well-balanced man would have been his small brain, but in Simon his principal seat of intelligence. He was only an animal.
Henderson passed out through the guard chamber where Simon's straw pallet lay heaped behindthe door, proof that he had been cautious last night, whatever cupidity had done for him today. Beyond this room the warehouse was familiar. It was a part not much frequented, only wood and lumber being stored there, piled in tiers high against the ceiling. Here Henderson paused to listen for what movement was about the place, and to form his plans upon the necessity of the moment.
Ordinarily an armed man could have taken all before him at Don Abrahan's place, few there being permitted to own or carry any farther-reaching weapon than a knife. But since the turmoil of the morning there was no knowing what guards Don Abrahan had set around his house, especially since there was a prisoner within it whom the magistrate was determined no other hand but his own should rob.
The quietude that had settled over the hacienda after the noise of the governor's arrival and departure continued unbroken. It was like a holy day when the peones were permitted to troop off to the pueblo and attend church, although Henderson knew that such was not the case. Outside the warehouse there was the frequent sound of passing feet, and low words spoken when two met and paused.
Henderson's watch had run down while his arms were tied, he had not seen the sun to gauge the height of day, but he reckoned that it must be well past noon. If Simon had told the truth about Roberto's intentions, they would be coming soon to take him from prison cell to whipping-post.
In the extreme end of the warehouse from Don Felipe's office was a room in which Don Abrahan stored wool and the hides of sheep. As these common commodities were of little value, and presented few attractions to thieves, the room never was locked. Henderson passed softly out of the first chamber, across the intervening passage and into this room, where great woolsacks lay buttressed against the walls.
There was a small window in this place, crossed by horizontal bars, reminiscent of a time when something more valuable than wool had been in its keeping. This opening gave an unobstructed view of the mansion, so called, and a great part of the courtyard through which the business of the place came and went as through the plaza of a town.
Simon had spoken truly of the improvement Roberto had ordered made in the whipping-post. A cross-piece of new wood had been nailed to the thick cedar post, at about the height of a man's outstretched arms. Two women with baskets of washed clothing were going by; they paused beside the station of degradation, talking earnestly. One of them touched the new wood, her hand reluctant and slow, as if she feared it as a thing that already had the blood of a man stained in its rough grain.
The whipping-post never had been used during Henderson's time on the ranch, Don Abrahan having other more subtle, more cruel means of breaking the soul of an insubordinate man. But the terrors of the thing were fresh in the recollection of all the people; some of them had shown Henderson how the wretched person brought there for chastisement was forced to embrace the thick timber, from which the bark had been removed or worn long ago, the gray lint of the years softening it in melancholy harmony with its unhappy use. Two heavy iron rings were set into the wood where the subject's hands reached as he stood clasping the post with his arms. There his wrists were bound, the skin of his back drawn so tight that the bite of the rawhide parted it with every blow.
The courtyard into which Henderson now stood looking from the warehouse window lay directly behind Don Abrahan's mansion. The windows opening on the patio gave a view into this courtyard, as the windows of a street running out from a square. Henderson wondered which of the barred windows Helena Sprague looked through upon the cross that stretched its arms to receive him; and whether she had been told of Roberto's vengeful planning to inflict this cowardly punishment before her eyes.
There were three of these barred oriel windows in the face of each wing of the house, and one at each end. As Henderson watched for a movement within, the glimpse of a face that might tell him which window was Helena's, a thing that he desired with a grave and urgent reason for knowing, Roberto came riding into the courtyard.
Roberto was riding a beautiful black gelding that Henderson recognized at once as Helena Sprague's property. She had shown him this animal in her stable, John Toberman comparing it on that occasion to a Yankee clipper for its fine proportions and speed. Roberto also had appreciated the animal's fine points, and had been somewhat more successful in coming into possession of it than he had been with its owner.
The young man presented a handsome figure, riding as securely and lightly as any vaquero, although the beast was restive and rebellious under his strange hand. Henderson thought it appeared resentful, spiteful, in its reluctance to obey rein and spur. It reared vainly in what appeared to be a determined effort to unseat the rider, and shied at the whipping-post as if some strange thing had sprung suddenly from the ground.
Roberto curbed the horse with unsparing hand, parading it back and forth across the courtyard with eye tugned always to the patio, his purpose as plain as if a herald had proclaimed it.
Roberto was dressed in the subdued lavishness which was a peculiar art with him, an art distinguishing him generally in gatherings since his return home, where the inclination of youth was for barbaric color without harmony or restraint. He wore a green jacket ornamented with silver braid, a sash of silver gray, its tasseled ends streaming a foot behind him when he rode. Henderson noted that he wore thrust into this belt the two Yankee pistols of the latest Massachusetts make which he had brought home from the capital.
When Roberto rode toward Don Felipe's end of the warehouse, he passed out of Henderson's sight; when he returned, he crossed the courtyard sometimes within a rod of where the half-free prisoner stood. While this parade was going on the people of the ranch, who appeared to have been given liberty to witness Don Roberto's valor that afternoon, began to gather along the face of the warehouse wall.
Some of these men and women had come to know Henderson well during the latter weeks of his servitude, and to put down their first suspicions and racial antipathy. There were sympathetic hearts among them, homely and ignorant as they were, timid and shuddering in their beliefs of witchcraft and curse and evil eye. Henderson doubted if any of them would interpose to stop him in his dash for liberty, though the patron himself should appear and command them. In this confidence he had little concern for their numbers, as they came in silence that was anything but festival to range along the wall and wait the young master's pleasure in the entertainment he had promised.
Now Don Felipe appeared, and stood in the courtyard near the whipping-post as if waiting Roberto's orders. He had come, Henderson well knew, to summon Simon with the prisoner.
Roberto appeared to be in no hurry to come to this, parading back and forth in such high and insolent state upon his borrowed, or confiscated, horse. He was waiting for the appearance of a face at one of the barred windows. No matter who attended and stood waiting, Roberto had set this entertainment for Helena alone.
The horse had either a short memory or a stubborn will; he would not accustom himself to the whipping-post, the outreaching cross of which seemed so menacing and prominent, the new wood against the old. Each time he came opposite the cross he pitched and shied in fright, shaking his defiant head until the trappings of the bridle clashed.
Roberto appeared to lose patience with the animal at last, determined that he was to break it to his will. He faced the horse toward the post, and, gathering his reins with strong hand, rasped his long-spiked spurs across its sides with sudden and vicious sweep.
Henderson heard the horse grunt in terrified pain as it crouched a moment under the barbarous inflection of this torture strange to it. When it sprang to escape, Roberto checked it harshly, bringing it up short, throwing it to its haunches in a cloud of dust. The animal seemed to throw off its terror with this hard usage, and to gather itself in an angry effort to rid its back of the tormentor. It reared, flung its head in wild defiance, arched its back, stopped with stiffened legs braced hard.
Roberto had given it only a gentle foretaste of the agony that lay in the two-inch rowels of his silver-gilt spurs. Now he clamped them to the beast's belly and pressed with slow and growing force, sinking the spikes through the glossy skin. Again the terrified, mad plunge to escape; again the hard, restraining hand. Henderson sweated in the resentment of this cruelty practiced on a creature that could neither strike in defense nor flee out of its tormentor's reach.
Still the horse defied its rider to urge it up to the terrifying cross. The torture of rasping spur, of grinding bit, could not overcome its magnificent spirit of defiance. Roberto drove it forward again and again, with all the mastery of his practiced hand. A certain distance from the cross it stopped, abruptly as if it met a palpable barrier there which it could not pass, legs set stiffly against all urging to compel it on. No amount of punishment that Roberto had in his heels could drive it a yard nearer.
Roberto had gained his desire in one thing, at least, if not over the horse. Helena Sprague had appeared at a window in the east wing of the mansion, where she stood grasping the bars, the agony of her white face plain to Henderson across the fifty yards or more that separated them.
Henderson had not seen her come to the window. Between caution to guard himself from discovery, and his furious resentment of Roberto's cruelty to the horse, he had not watched the house closely. Now he saw someone behind Helena, whom he concluded to be Doña Carlota, attempting to draw her away from the window. Helena turned on this person with the sudden bursting of anger, and drove her back into the room.
Now that he had won the spectator for whom he had been playing this prelude to his principal entertainment, Roberto's spirits plainly rose high. The anger that had distorted his features but a moment before cleared away; a smile broadened on his heavy lips, a flush darkened his face. Satisfaction was lined there, the triumph of vengeance realized. His teeth gleamed in his spreading smile, proof that his pleasure in Helena's evident suffering was both keen and sincere. It was such a satisfaction to show these new teeth of a man.
With Helena's appearance Roberto elaborated his tactics to compel the stubborn horse and break it to his will. He abandoned his attempt to force it directly to approach the whipping-post and smell away its fear of that object. Now he galloped to the opposite end of the courtyard, out of Henderson's sight, to come at headlong speed in a moment, thinking to win in this subterfuge what he had failed to gain before.
But with all this headway to impel him forward, the horse refused to be ridden to the post, where the fresh wood of the cross-arm shone yellow in the sun. It turned sharply, sliding, trampling, its maneuver carrying it over against the warehouse, making a scatterment among the people gathered along the wall.
The horse stopped within a few feet of the window at which Henderson crouched. Blood and sweat dripped from the frantic creature's sides, its breath was hoarse in its nostrils. Roberto gave the harried thing its way for a moment, permitting it to stand where it had stopped. He raised himself until he stood in his stirrups on his toes, his superb body in tense grace of stretched muscle and tendon, swept his hand in slow, expressive salute to Helena, something of mockery in the gesture, in his very pose. Thus far, he seemed to say, this has been a colorless affair. Now the show is about to begin.
Roberto rode slowly to the center of the courtyard, where he began again his heart-sickening atrocities upon the horse. He rodea circle around the whipping post, increasing the speed until the animal strained to its last pound of strength, Roberto leaning on the narrowing ring, an admirable figure, even in his despicable design.
Cunningly he drew the circle closer; nearer and nearer he approached the post. There was a murmuring near Henderson's window; caution made him draw back into the dark room. When he looked again presently, Roberto was throwing himself out of the saddle to save being crushed as the horse reared to fling itself backward with hoofs beating the air. Roberto had gained his poor desire. He had ridden the horse up to the post.
But it was a triumph marred, a victory only half won. The humiliation of being unseated before the owner of this unruly beast, who must be applauding its successful maneuver as Roberto scrambled to his feet out of the dust, was an abasement that no caballero could suffer to pass. Roberto had the reins in his hand while the horse was heaving itself up from the dusty turmoil of its hazardous fall.
Roberto drew the reins around the upright post, shortening them with adroit hand, dragging the unwilling beast up until its nose was within a foot of the thing it had fought so bitterly to avoid. A moment Roberto stood confronting the animal, as if to charge it with a greater terror of him by meeting it eye to eye. Then he seized its forelock, snatching out the dagger that he always wore in a leather sheath at his belt.
Helena Sprague, knowing his scoundrelly intention before it even dawned to Henderson, screamed as if the dagger threatened her own throat.
"No, no! you thief!" she cried.
She stood grasping a bar of the window with both hands, trying hopelessly to tear it out of its heavy bracket and go to the help of her horse, menaced by a danger that Henderson did not yet understand. Roberto lifted his dagger, sweeping it as if to salute her, to dedicate to her the sacrifice, the sun flashing on its bright blade.
"What a pity to blind such a horse!" a man near Henderson's window said.
There was a passage between the place where lumber was stored and this chamber of woolsacks, into which a wagon could be driven. The people who had gathered to see Don Roberto's entertainment stood across this passage as Henderson dashed from his concealment, Simon's big pistol in his hand. They parted like smoke before him; the murmur of their astonishment sounded in his ears as he bounded into the open and ran with the spring of his sea strength in his limbs, across the court.
Roberto turned at the sound of Henderson's feet, his dagger held high, as he had poised it to sink it in the eye of the unconquered horse.
Roberto had reason to fear the wrath of this man, burst from his prison as if he had grown strong in the purpose he had vowed to Don Abrahan only yesterday. Not only the blood of John Toberman, but the wrong of his own oppression, stood in this man's memory to be avenged. It seemed a miracle that had delivered him and sent him there as Roberto stood in the posture of a man who lifts his hands in supplication for his life, one grasping the forelock of the horse, the other lifting the dagger to blind its defiant eyes.
"Keep your hands where they are!" Henderson commanded him.
Roberto, seeming to obey, dropped the dagger, his calculative eye measuring his chance of drawing a pistol. Henderson was advancing, closing on him rapidly. Roberto was not a coward, neither a fool. He realized that Henderson's situation would not admit temporizing or empty bluster. When a man in that desperate pass stepped out with a pistol in his hand, he came in the determination to kill if necessary. Roberto's fingers twitched as he set them to reach for a weapon, but reason held them as they were.
"Permit me," said Henderson, his pistol against Roberto's breast as he took from his sash the modern Yankee pistol nearest to hand. He took the mate of it also, keeping it in his hand, kicked the dagger far out of Roberto's reach, while Don Felipe and all of them stood by with hearts fairly bursting to see the valor of this Yankee sailor with the laughter and soul of youth and friendship in his glad blue eyes. In the window of the patio there was the sound of applauding hands.
There were ropes at the foot of the whipping-post, ready for binding his own limbs, Henderson knew. And there lay coiled the rawhide whip with lash soaked in water to give it weight, that Roberto had intended to swing upon his victim's naked back.
"Pick up that rope," Henderson directed. Roberto, watching him with fear staring in his eyes as he stooped and blindly laid hold of the rope, appeared to believe that his moment to die had come.
Henderson put the Yankee pistol in his belt, leaving his left hand free, cast off the bridle reins from the post. The horse started back a step in retreat, only to stop according to its training when the reins fell to the ground, seeing that no more violence was aimed at its head. Henderson faced Roberto to the whipping-post, fashioned a noose in his deft sailor quickness, his pistol pressing Roberto's back, holding him close against the wood.
A turn, and the noose was around Roberto's neck; a pull, and he was bound to the post, shamed and humiliated in the eyes of his meanest servants, none of whom loved him well enough to come forward and lift a hand in his defense.
With quick turns of the rope around the cross-piece, Henderson tied Roberto's outstretched arms. While he was doing this Don Felipe came forward, trepidation in his manner, fear in his face.
"But, Don Gabriel, you are not going to whip him?" he asked, standing off a little way.
"No, Don Felipe. It is not the way of a gentleman of my country to strike a helpless man. I degrade him in your eyes, and leave him to consider what might have happened to him if I had been a Mexican."
Henderson turned to the people, who had come out a little way from the wall when they saw that the Yankee sailor did not shoot Don Felipe down at the first movement of his foot.
"The man that releases him will be the first man to die," he said.