IT WAS past the turn of day when Don Abrahan concluded his business with the Yankee captain and took the road home again, with his goods coming after him in the great wagon, his Indian servants tramping beside it. Night would settle long before they could reach the ranch, there was the taste of rain already on the wind; but there would be no halting on the way either for night or rain. When Don Abrahan left an order behind him, men must forego all that was their right and desire to carry it out to the final word.
As for Don Abrahan himself, he rode in excellent spirits, already half-way to his hacienda, or estate, at least that part of it where his homestead lay. The estate itself would have required a day's journey to cross at its greatest width, although it did not extend so far as this toward the sea.
A matter of six or seven miles north of the pueblo of Los Angeles, Don Abrahan's ranch buildings lay snugly against the hills. Although much of his secular and political interest centered in the town, there was more that was dearer to him, ambitious man that he was, which he loved to sequester and nurture in the quietude of the hills.
A few miles ahead of him as he rode, the pueblo of Los Angeles lay, a dot of whitened walls and greenery of trees in the great plain spread between mountains and sea. Don Abrahan's most direct way home passed to the westward of the town. A matter of business, incidental in his life of large affairs, but one that gave him satisfaction to contemplate, far out of proportion to its importance, called him to deflect from the direct road and visit the alcalde, or mayor, of the place.
There was certain information to be placed before this official, a certain request appended to it. As he pondered this thing, riding lightly as a cushion, that quickening of laughter, which yet was not laughter, but more a reflection of inward satisfaction, as the comfort of a fire is suggested but not felt by one who watches from without its dancing glimmer upon the walls; that quickening of light grew again in his eyes, spreading to his face, softening it with a kindly gleam. It is a trait of some men to appear benevolent only when satisfied.
Between the harbor and the pueblo, a distance of twenty-five miles, there were few habitations, two or three large estates holding jurisdiction over that immense sweep of land. Such houses as there were by the roadside were only the huts and small adobe dwellings of the servitors on these estates. Freedom from imperial Spain had not meant freedom for all men, any more than it had assured equality.
Grazing lands these were, mainly through which Don Abrahan rode that day, patched by small cultivated areas, widely scattered, where grain was grown in its season, where orchards and vineyards were green in their time. Just ahead of him, a little way from the point where the highway branched to the pueblo, a homestead of considerable pretensions had been established many years. Here olive trees had been planted by the roadside. They had grown until their branches almost met above the narrow highway, speaking eloquently to one familiar with their slow increase, of the age of that hacienda. Such a man would have known, passing that way for the first time, that the hands that planted the olives had gone back to the dust long ago, as well as Don Abrahan was cognizant of that fact as he entered the aisle of gray-green sentinels.
As he rode between the olives, Don Abrahan quickened his pace, his head lifted alertly. It seemed that he would not be under the necessity of visiting the pueblo, after all. At the farther end of the avenue a man was plodding, that moment passing from the shadow of the olives into the sun. From the white trousers that he wore, from the light color of his uncovered hair, Don Abrahan knew him for the sailor who had deserted the Yankee captain's ship, with his own crafty assistance, only a few hours past.
It was a lucky thing that the sailor was such a poor traveler on land. A peon would have been in the pueblo long enough to have made himself drunk three hours ago, It was well, indeed, that the fellow had not yet come to the junction of the road, where the trend of traffic as marked in the soil would have told him on which hand the pueblo lay. The lucky circumstance saved Don Abrahan five or six miles; very likely, almost certainly, it saved him something more. What that additional gain to him might be, one who did not know Don Abrahan never could have read from the humane softening of his rather bony, harsh face. But it was sufficient in its hour to make Don Abrahan smile.
"It is you, then, my bold marinero?" said Don Abrahan, as the sailor drew aside to let the rider pass, scarcely lifting his head to mark who it was that came after him. It was certain that he had little fear of any of his mates pursuing him in that fashion.
The sailor's eyes spoke the gratitude of his heart ahead of his tongue for the magistrate's interference in his behalf that morning. He stopped, his brown-weathered face illumined by a smile.
"I'm grateful to you for stepping between me and that ruffian's pistol," the sailor said. "He'd have killed me if it hadn't been for you."
"It is nothing," Don Abrahan disclaimed, waving his gratitude away.
"It may be a little thing to you, sir, but life means a great deal to me," the sailor protested earnestly.
"Yes, you scarcely have taken hold of it yet. At your age a man has only one hand on the ladder, it might be said. Would you be going to the north?"
"To the pueblo Los Angeles. Is it far?"
"A matter of six miles. Would you have friends there?"
"Neither there nor in all of California. But it seems a land of kind strangers."
Again the smile, frank, winsome, flashed like a sudden light, Don Abrahan thought, and passed on as quickly, leaving the dark face with a fixed sadness that seemed a settled melancholy.
"Perhaps we are a kinder people, we Mexicans, than we are given credit for in your country," Don Abrahan said.
Even as he spoke he was weighing the sailor, marking his light bone structure, his small feet and hands, the evident hardness of his muscles, the promise of endurance in his deep chest. Not a common man, Don Abrahan, who had been among the Yankees even in their own Boston, recognized at a glance.
"Still it was not misfortune that made a sailor of you," he ventured, speaking what had come into his thought.
"Misfortune enough to be cursed by a romantic hunger for adventure that drove me to ship with that beast, Welliver," the sailor answered in bitter contempt for his own weakness.
"It is to be regretted that you lose your pay, as Captain Welliver assures me you will, by leaving the ship this way," Don Abrahan said, his voice finely modulated with regret, as only one of Spanish blood can seem to sympathize while the heart is as indifferent as wood. 'How long were you on board of that vessel?"
"Fourteen months," said the sailor, speaking it with a heavy sigh that was at once relief for his redemption to freedom and marvel that mancould, unbroken, endure oppression for so Iong.
"It is considerable money to lose. Have you any in your pocket?"
"Very little. But enough to keep me till I can find something to do—or I hope so, at least."
Don Abrahan rode on slowly, accommodating his pace to that of the man on foot, who went a bit lamely on account of his salt-hardened shoes having dried, and shrunk until they were unyielding as sheet-iron. Still, he could endure the galling of the leather better, he knew, than venture on the road in his bare feet, for the wheel-tracks were strewn with crushed cacti which grew close by and obtruded into the road. There were many prickly weeds, and broken bits of branches from thorny shrubs, besides, strewing the highway.
The sailor trudged on beside the man whom he regarded as his benefactor and friend. If Don Abrahan could have known that this man from the sea even yielded him the concession of social equality, as a just due for his humane interference, it is a question whether he would have been moved to laugh or sneer.
"So you would go to Los Angeles, even without a hat, and on foot," said Don Abrahan. "Only peones, servants of the so low class, go on foot in this part of California. They will think it strange to see an American brought to this level. In the pueblo the alcalde, I have no doubt, will put you in jail at once."
"I've been told there are some Americans in business at Los Angeles," the sailor said, plainly disturbed by the prospect Don Abrahan had revealed. He looked up almost appealingly as he trotted beside the horseman, who had quickened his gait as if impatient to be on his way.
"There are a few American-born men in business there, Mexican citizens now. The others are such as can drive eight mules to a freight wagon. Can you drive eight mules at one time?"
"No-o," doubtfully, "I don't believe I could."
"You cannot speak Spanish, you have little money, no hat to cover your head. Well, I tell you plainly, there will be no door open to you in the pueblo but the jail. You are an educated man; you have been to college, no doubt?"
"Not much to my credit in my present condition," the sailor said.
"But an educated man suffers more acutely than a peon, whose lot is suffering between the cradle and the tomb. I myself have been in one of your New England colleges. I know the pride of the Yankee heart. I would not go to the pueblo, young man. A wiser course would be to continue on with me to my ranch. There I can employ you, there you can learn the idioma española, the speech of the country. After that"
Don Abrahan finished it with a flourish of the hand, a lifting of the brows. After that, it was to say, as Dios might fashion, or a man's own merit might place him. The sailor brightened with the offer; it seemed a hand stretched out again in the moment of his need.
"I'll be glad to go; thank you for the opportunity, sir."
The sailor stopped, as if to give weight to his expression of gratitude with all the physical as well as mental force of his glowing young body. His face was bright with his engaging smile. Don Abrahan halted beside him.
"There would be no liberty for you in any other place," Don Abrahan said. "The captain of your ship has offered a reward of fifty dollars for your return to him, here or at San Diego, where he intends to stop next. That would be a great temptation to the alcalde of the pueblo; it would be riches to many an Indian. It represents the price of ten beeves, almost riches to any man in these penurious days."
"It's lucky for me that I fell in with you, sir, before I got to town. I didn't suppose Welliver would consider any man on earth worth fifty dollars to him. It is the anticipation of the cruelties he'd subject me to, cruelties beyond your humane understanding, that leads to an offer like that."
"Captain Welliver is a hard-souled man, and a dishonest one besides," Don Abrahan said, starting on his way again. "Shall we travel on?"
"I don't suppose you'll want to ride as slowly as I must tramp, but if you'll give me directions I'll follow you on to your ranch as fast as I can."
The sailor was plainly concerned by the information Don Abrahan had imparted. He looked back along the road as if in expectation of fleet Indians upon his track, the thought of what waited him on board the ship in the event of his capture drawing the blood out of his face.
"Take my stirrup," Don Abrahan instructed; "it will give you another pair of feet. You must travel with me. News passes quickly in this country; it may be known, I have no doubt that it is known, in the pueblo that you are on the way."
The young man accepted the offer. It was as Don Abrahan had said; holding by the stirrup gave him another pair of feet. In that fashion, like a feudal lord and bondman, they continued their way toward the distant ranch.
Don Abrahan looked down from time to time to see how the sailor bore the pace he set. It appeared to give him satisfaction to note that no indication of fatigue was apparent in the alert figure, no lagging in the long swing of the sea-toughened limbs. Perhaps it was the admiration of one good man for another that stood in the magistrate's eyes, or perhaps it was another thing. The pleasure in them was unmistakable, at any rate, honest or calculative as it may have been.
"What is the name you want to be called by in this country?" Don Abrahan inquired.
"There is no reason why I should change the only one I ever had for this or any other country," the sailor replied, trotting easily with hand on the big leather-covered stirrup. "I was Gabriel Henderson aboard the ship; I am Gabriel Henderson here."
"Gabriel; that is a good name for a Spanish-speaking country; they will have no trouble with it here. And mine is Don Abrahan Cruz y Garvanza. It is a name not unknown to California, perhaps other places as well."
"I am certain it stands for honor and humanity wherever it is known," Gabriel Henderson generously declared.
This part of the highway was more frequented than that portion lying between the pueblo and the harbor. The travelers met numerous people, from caballeros of Don Abrahan's class, who saluted him gravely, and managed their curiosity so well as to seem to overlook the sailor completely, to Mexican citizens of a somewhat lower order, farmers and drovers, who were not so respectful in their bearing to the magistrate. Some of them, indeed, passed stiff-necked and silent, not even turning their eyes. It seemed there must be some difference abroad in the land among men, the sailor thought, marking all that he met upon the road with shrewder insight, perhaps, than his conductor gave him credit for having.
There were still others lower in the social order than the independent small drovers, servile people, who almost cringed to Don Abrahan, who rode on with eyes fixed ahead of him, ignoring them quite. Yet not one of these people passed who did not roll wondering eyes at the man who ran in the road beside the magistrate's horse like a captive, marking his foreign appearance, his incongruous strangeness in that land.
Indian and Mexican, the mongrel and mixed of both races, searched the sailor with swift, keen eyes. Now and again in a glance of these sharp, inquiring eyes, Henderson felt something that seemed to speak to him, something more than curiosity, more than wonder. More than once he seemed almost to grasp the meaning of this strange scrutiny, yet it was so fleeting, so elusive, as to escape like water in the hand. Once, in the eyes of a young Mexican woman who rode behind her husband on a sweat-drenched horse, he felt that the look was pitying.