"NOBODY is following," said Felipe, satisfaction in his words.
He came forward to join his companions, waiting where the obscure path which they had been following joined the king's broad highway that led to Monterey. Dawn had come before they emerged from the bosque through which Felipe had led them a cautious, winding way.
Henderson now recognized his surroundings. They had come to the camino real, or royal road, something more than a mile distant from Don Abrahan's house, near the point where the great highway branched, one road to enter the pass, one to go to San Gabriel Mission to the east.
"You are a master guide, Felipe," Henderson praised him.
"Before the sun rises hundreds of cattle and sheep will cross and follow the paths we have traveled, covering our tracks like rain. Do we go on, Gabriel?"
"On to Monterey," Henderson replied, giving his horse rein, "unless we meet better fortune in the road."
"Then we would join with better fortune, certainly," said Felipe, so well pleased with the beginning that his spirits were rising over the disappointment of having to quit his grandfather's retreat.
To one who might meet and casually pass them on the road, it would appear that three men were on their way to the north that summer morning. Helena had assumed man's attire the day Henderson and Felipe brought her to Pablo's house, partly for the disguise it might afford, mainly to facilitate her flight when it came to taking horse again. She seemed a handsome youth, fresh of cheek as an apricot in that growing day, her abundant hair—which she would have sacrified to her disguise only for Henderson's stern prohibition—gathered under her sombrero, the immense brim of which shadowed her face. Her all-enveloping cloak covered her limbs to the stirrups, leaving little of the lines of her body to betray her.
Helena's shocked mind had cast off its oppression of fear with the gloom of her underground hiding-place. She rode with a lively brightness in her eyes, a quick ear for every sound, a hearty determination in her pose, the fullest confidence in Gabriel Henderson's ability to carry her to safety in the face of the strongest army that ever marched. Now and then she turned to express this confidence in a smile that sprung in her sympathetic eyes and warmed her face with its glow.
They were approaching the dividing-point in the road, where the right-hand branch led eastward to San Gabriel, the left through the pass to the north, riding with slack rein, conserving their horses, not knowing what hot race might lay ahead. Felipe rode a little in advance, beginning now to show some new anxiety as day broadened and they approached the point of their greatest danger. The pass would be guarded, he told them. How they were to get through, whether by strategy or fight, he was leaving to his general, as he called Henderson, to decide when the question should rise before them in the road.
Helena drew up suddenly, lifting a cautioning hand.
"I thought I heard horses," she said.
Henderson listened, facing his horse about. Felipe turned in his saddle, his young beard as black on his face as a mask.
"Yes, there are horses behind us," Henderson said, the wing of this approaching trouble flitting its shadow across his merry eyes.
"They are crossing the rocky arroyo not a quarter of a mile back," Felipe said. He returned a little way, listening to judge their numbers by their noise.
"There must be a great many," Helena whispered, one hand on her lips as if to silence her own fear, the other lifted in cautioning appeal.
"We will go into the bushes and let them pass," Henderson directed. "If there are men guarding the pass we must not be caught between two forces at the very start."
"There is a sound of wheels," Felipe announced, as they waited well withdrawn from the road, screened by the thick bosque.
"Yes; it may be only freighters, I'll ride back for a glimpse of them," Henderson said. "If they are soldiers, we'll let them pass, then go on our way."
"Our way?" Felipe repeated. "But, my general, it will be full of soldiers."
"When I come back," said Henderson, assuring them with a smile.
Henderson dismounted when he had gone a little way on his reconnoitre, thinking his head might be seen above the bushes. The road here wound close against the foot of the hills, flanked by the natural growth of brushwood and small trees, with the rounded top of a dark-green live-oak lifting here and there.
Henderson had his plan of action in mind as he returned to spy out the nature and number of this party that came with so much noise along the road. He recalled how he had surveyed the valley of San Fernando from the mountain as he lay hidden on Helena Sprague's ranch; how the valley came down between the hills to join that of San Gabriel, like a river running into the sea. If these were soldiers, they would lie quiet in the bosque and let them go their way, then he would lead his little party to the mouth of San Fernando valley, around this pass where Roberto's trap was set and waiting.
This course would lead them far from the road they must follow to Monterey, delay them two or three precious days, perhaps. But the valley was broad and densely overgrown; an army could not cover it so completely that a determined few could not pass through.
The advancing party had crossed the stony bed of the dry wash—in winter a torrent of yellow, headlong water from the hills—and was proceeding with more speed. Now Henderson glimpsed them through the bushes. Soldiers. But far from the formidable force that he had expected from the clatter and loud clash of wheels. The sight of them gave Henderson a new hope, kindled the quick fire of an audacious plan.
Henderson saw a party of three soldiers, one of them a petty officer, conducting with a four-horse team if not the identical small cannon, then its twin, that Felipe had discharged in the plaza with such sanguinary toll. The detail must have left the pueblo before midnight to be so well on the way to the summit of the pass, whither Henderson supposed they were bound, doutless to reinforce the guard stationed there to stop the march of the Americans who were believed to be coming from Monterey.
The soldiers were dusty, tired, indifferent; poor material at their best. The petty officer rode a few paces in advance, his cap pulled down to his eyes, so confident of the security of the road that he seemed to be asleep. One man rode a saddled horse in the lead team, the third sat on the ammunition-box, wide enough awake from the jolting he had been given in crossing the rocky arroyo.
Henderson was still a short distance ahead of the soldiers, far enough that he calculated, together with his distance from the road, that he might mount and hurry back to carry out the scheme that had come to him with more boldness than reason to recommend it. The soldiers were approaching one of the innumerable short curves in the road. Henderson rode hard, careless of noise, to gain the farther side of this sharp bend in the king's highway.
Felipe heard him galloping through the bosque.
"It is the soldiers," he said, turning to Helena, pistol in hand. "If your poor defenders should prove too weak, ride fast to San Gabriel, seek a refuge there."
"No," she returned, calmly. "If my brave defenders fall, I shall fall with them. Don Felipe, you carry two pistols; give me one of them."
Felipe's admiration for her courage lifted him like the news of victory. He put the pistol in her hand as Henderson burst out of the brush into a fire-cleared opening not fifty yards away.
"He is riding past us, he is turning into the road!" said Felipe, consternation smiting him coldly. "It cannot be that he is leaving us!" He rode from the cover of the bushes, caution aside in the face of this astounding action by his friend.
"He is charging them!" said Helena. "He is a thousand men!"
"God protect him!" said Felipe. "Back—back to the shelter of the bosque until one of us returns!"
The officer had halted his little cavalcade, alarmed by the passing of somebody on his flank, whose noise he heard in the bosque like a whirlwind, but whose form he did not see. He was turning inquiringly, hand going slowly, as if he questioned the need of it, to his pistol; the man in the saddle behind him was leaning back on his hardmouthed mount, holding the beast with curses; the soldier who rode the ammunition-box stood half-risen, braced by rigid arms.
A sudden dash of hoofs in the road ahead of them, a clatter of galloping, a wild yell. The officer in advance—Henderson never knew what rank it was he held—snatched his pistol and fired one quick wild shot at the rider who leaped into his astonished sight around the bend in the road. This duty done to his honor and his country, the officer wheeled his horse and galloped away.
The man on the ammunition-box leaped over the wheel, tumbled into the roadside bosque, disappeared like a rabbit; the postilion lifted his hands high above his head, straining to his tiptoes in his stirrups to stretch them higher, begging for mercy, his fear no doubt making every grain of dust that rose behind Henderson a terrible American, such as took no aim but'never missed.
Felipe came charging through the curtain of dust to strengthen this illusion, looking around with fierce whiskered face for somebody who stood his ground and wanted a bullet to make him yield it to a proper man. He saw only Henderson whisking the pistol from the artilleryman's holster, and commanding him to sit still.
"It is the cannon, it is the very cannon!" said Felipe, his eyes bright in the joy of this tremendous feat.
"Quick! see if it is loaded," Henderson directed.
Felipe flung himself from the saddle, ran to the cannon to sound it for a charge.
"It is not loaded, general," the soldier said, his eyes big with the fear for his life.
"How many are coming behind you?" Henderson asked him.
"Not a man," the soldier returned.
Helena had come up, Felipe's imperious command having stayed her in the bosque a little while, but no longer than the sound of the shot the officer fired, the one shot of the encounter. She was fo thrilled by the sight she saw, her pride in the man who had seen his moment and employed it, rose with such well-ing tenderness that her eyes were blinded for a little by her tears. She rode forward, pistol in her hand. The frightened soldier again made his frantic signal of surrender, lifting his hands high.
"Do you know how to load it, Felipe?" Henderson inquired anxiously.
"I have been a colonel of artillery," Felipe returned somewhat haughtily, a little hurt.
"A million pardons, my good, brave friend. I might have known."
"It was nothing," Felipe waved it away, peering into the cannon's mouth; "it was not said."
Helena could not trust her voice to sound as a soldier's voice should ring in the moment of victory. She ranged her horse beside Henderson's, and paid him what she could with a smile. Felipe looked up from loading the gun.
"He is not only a thousand men; he is ten thousand!" he said. "Now, my general!" as he rammed the charge of grape-shot down.
"You are ready?"
"Ready, my general. To the pass! One shot will clear it, then on to Monterey!"
"No, not to the pass," said Henderson. "Turn it the other way; we're going back."
"Back, Gabriel?" Helena seemed to protest. The forces of her past anguish assailed her, driving her courage away.
"Back?" Felipe repeated, face blank in amazement. "Why, we'll meet the soldiers, they'll take the cannon away from us, Gabriel. With this little cannon we can go marching to Monterey like conquerors, we can clear our way like a fire."
"It is a long distance to Monterey," said Gabriel, "the situation there is doubtful. There is a better way. We will make terms with General Garvanza through Don Abrahan."
"But how?" Felipe inquired, full of perplexity and doubt. "One little cannon, not more than twelve rounds of ammunition, and two men!"
"One little cannon can knock down a man's house," Henderson said.
Felipe looked at him, the light of understanding spreading in his black-whiskered face.
"It is a fine scheme!" he applauded. "In that case one little cannon can make a very good argument."
"We'll be equal to an army of five hundred men."
"Ten thousand, five hundred men!" Felipe declared fervently. "Soldier," addressing the artilleryman in his native tongue, "do you fight with us?"
"With pleasure, brave colonel," the man replied.
"About, then, and forward!" Felipe commanded.