ONE approached the seat of Don Abrahan's vast estate through a lane of olive trees when arriving from the south, as the master of the place and his strange companion came. These olives had been set by Don Abrahan's father, who had in mind the ancient Spanish saying when he made straight the two long rows of little trees:
"A man plants a vine for his son, an olive for his grandson."
Even so, with this slow maturing to the stage of fruitfulness of the olive, the trees which the patriarch had planted were now great and tall. Perhaps they had increased, in that beneficent clime and strong soil, out of a man's knowledge and calculation, compared with the trees of the Iberian slopes; or perhaps the allotment of their years of building had been fulfilled, indicating that Don Abrahan was approaching the bourne of a man's numbered days. Fruit swayed their branches heavily, promise of a profitable gathering; their laden branches sometimes touched the peak of Don Abrahan's tall sombrero as he rode under them.
Don Abrahan's homestead seemed a village set against the foot of the hill that rose high before it. Many corrals and sheds flanked the outlying buildings, many small adobe huts, straw-covered, squat, unlovely, clustered on the slope below the master's house. Great encinas, or live-oak trees, stretched knotted branches over these poor cottages, lending a certain air of protection and security, even peace.
Children playing about the doors of these mud huts stood in respectful attention as Don Abrahan rode by. If they were curious of the strange man who walked beside his stirrup, they submerged their feelings under a show of respectful deference, a trait of those gentle brown people, old and young, which seems to invest them with a dignity and superiority sadly wanting in so many of our own.
Don Abrahan's dwelling stood on the first bench of the hill, elevated perhaps fifty feet above the vast plain through which the travelers had passed. It was a low, simple house, large in its ground plan, built, like the more humble dwellings which lay in the shadow of its comparative grandeur, of sunbaked bricks bound by chopped straw. It was roofed with dull-red tile, for the tile-makers had brought their art early to California and pursued it with success.
Don Abrahan's father built the house, after the Spanish fashion, a patio between its protecting wing-walls. It was a house with few windows and many doors, the Spaniard being the sort of man who does not desire either to look from his own privacy into the doings of others, or to have others peer through many casements upon his own. But a house with many doors, there again a trait of the Spaniard appearing. There are exigencies in every gentleman's life when a door in every room becomes an expedient and convenient thing. This is doubly true when one's house stands all upon the ground, and the mere flinging open of a door introduces the world spread ready to his feet.
Pepper trees lifted their taller, greener branches among the somber encinas which sequestered the house so completely as to show but glimpses of brown wall and red roof to the eyes of those who passed upon the highway that wound on from that point through a pass in the hills, to Buena Ventura and the north. A pepper tree of immense girth, one of the first slips, it was said, brought by the Franciscans from Peru, grew in the patio of Don Abrahan's house, a beautiful and notable tree. But there were no shrubs, no flowers, to fill and brighten the open spaces between the trees of the spacious grounds. Beneath them the brown earth was as bare and smooth as if painstaking hands swept away every fallen leaf.
"So we arrive home," said Don Abrahan.
He looked down at the sailor, who had let go his supporting hold of the stirrup and was surveying with pleasurable surprise the scene of peaceful security. That wakening of something in his eyes which seemed the reflection of an inner smile animated for a moment the magistrate's thin and narrow face.
"You travel well; there is great endurance in your body," he said.
"The sea hardens a man's body, but I can't say as much for his feet," Henderson returned, looking ruefully at his worn shoes.
"Tomorrow will see you restored," Don Abrahan assured him, kindly enough for a man on a horse to a man in the road, it seemed to Henderson at that time. "I will take you to Felipe Guieterrez, my mayordomo, that is to say my steward, who will relieve your present needs and provide for your future, at least such of it as lies just beyond our shadows."
This Felipe Guieterrez, called Don Felipe by those immediately under his hand, came hurrying forward across the courtyard as his patron rode in, the sailor going somewhat lamely by his side. Don Felipe emerged from a long adobe shed-like building, which appeared to be a warehouse for storing the products of the ranch, judging by such of its contents as were discovered to the eye. Hay was there, and sacks of grain; hides of sheep and cattle; wood piled in high ranks. The mayordomo's office was in one end of this building. He came out of it bareheaded, leaving the door open, showing its smoky interior like the secret of a man's life surprised out of his keeping.
Don Felipe was a slight, short man, pale of face as if he kept himself hidden from the sun. His hair was almost blue in its intense blackness; small raised blotches, black with extraordinary growth of close-shaved beard, roughened his countenance, giving his face the appearance of carrying barnacles which needed scraping to clear him for more comfortable sailing among men. He held his patron's stirrup with servile diminution of his own importance, an office quite ignored by the lofty Don Abrahan, who spoke to him in slow, precise English, as if for the ears of one to whom the tongue was strange.
"This is Gabriel Henderson, deserter from the Yankee ship at San Pedro. There is a reward of fifty dollars, gold, offered for his return. I have given him sanctuary; he is under my protection. Feed him, give him a place to sleep."
"It shall be done, Don Abrahan," the mayordomo replied.
With that assurance, for which he seemed to be waiting, Don Abrahan dismounted, turned his back on them without more words, and walked off to his own refreshment.
Don Felipe clapped his hands as if applauding his patron's exit from the scene, a proceeding seen and heard by Henderson with astonishment. This feeling quickly passed to a better one of amusement when a Mexican youth appeared from among the piles of hides in the warehouse, all eagerness to relieve Don Felipe of the horse.
Don Felipe was master of more English than his patron's manner toward him would lead one to believe. It was rather abrupt, somewhat fragmentary, with misplaced tenses and a strong seasoning of profanity, yet it served very well. It was plainly that sort of English a foreigner would acquire by contact with traders and "such as drive eight mules."
There seemed to be magic in the clapping of the mayordomo's hands which produced surprising results. He clapped a second Mexican youth out of somewhere, who departed on the run, to return in incredibly short time and deliver a panted, quick-spoken communication at the mayordomo's door.
Don Felipe turned Henderson over to this boy, who conducted him to the kitchen of the mansion, where an Indian woman who came and went as silently as a shadow served him a satisfying meal of cold meat and vegetables, bread, claret, and cheese.
The sun had set; the dusk, which settles almost immediately thereafter in southern California winter days, was softening the scars and canyons of the hills when Henderson rose from this cheering repast and thanked the slim, dark woman who had served his needs. She smiled, understanding the spirit of it if not the words. The youth, who had waited outside the door meanwhile, rose now and guided Henderson to the adventure that closed that day.
This was nothing more thrilling than the disclosure of the sleeping quarters the mayordomo had ordered prepared for the stranger while he refreshed himself in the kitchen. A bed had been spread for him on a generous heap of hay in a little room behind the mayordomo's office. This appeared to be a room given over to the carriage harness of Don Abrahan's coach horses. The walls were hung with the expensive gear; the smell of neat's-foot oil was heavy. Yet, compared to the forecastle smell when the wet boots and clothing of twenty sailors hung there, this was balsam in Henderson's nostrils. Footsore and fatigued, thankful for this haven that had opened to him out of the uncertainty of the morning, the sailor threw himself upon his pallet of hay and slept.
Henderson woke suddenly, according to his sea habit, after he had slept the period of what would have been his watch below. He sat up in palpitating bewilderment, not able for a moment to adjust his senses to his situation, expecting the hail down the forecastle hatch summoning his watch on deck.
There was the soft whisper of rain on the thatch, a movement of men in the courtyard. By the light of lanterns Henderson saw the muddy freight wagon, just arrived from its long journey from the harbor. It was covered over by a tarpaulin; they left it there, the mules jangling off to their stables with weary heads drooping in the rain.
The sailor sighed, stretching himself in the relaxation of confidence and security on a bed that seemed softer than any that ever had blessed his tired bones. He was comfortable in the sanctuary that Don Abrahan had given him, thankful that no summons sounded on the deck overhead, hailing him out into the stormy night.
Early as Henderson left his bed next morning, Don Felipe was ahead of him in the business of the day. The pale little man was in his office, although it was scarcely dawn, a candle at his hand, a paper under his eye. Henderson saw that this appeared to be a list, such as a manifest or bill of lading. He concluded, rightly, as events proved, that it was the account of articles in the freight wagon. He wondered where he was to fit in the strange and foreign scene into which adventure had transported him as he stood in the door waiting to catch Don Felipe's eye and give him good morning.
As if in answer to this speculation, Don Felipe beckoned him in, without word, without glance, his attention still fixed on the list. He produced a small book from the shadows behind the wavering candle, which he laid on the edge of his desk, turning then to Henderson with cold and distant mien.
"This book you will take and put in your pocket," he directed, in slow, studied correctness of speech that seemed a reflection of Don Abrahan's own to the mayordomo on the day before.
Henderson took up the little volume, on the cover of which he read:
Diccionario Español-Ingles, Ingles-Español.
"You will assist in the store. There will be many to tell you what such and such a thing is called in Spanish. This little book will show you how the word is spelled. In that way you will learn fast the idioma española, of the great value and elevation to any man."
The mayordomo then directed Henderson to hasten to the kitchen where he had received his supper the evening before, get his breakfast and report back for duty.
It was a dun, melancholy morning. The lissom branches of the pepper trees drooped under the weight of clinging rain like weeping willow, the pleasant scent of their red berries strong in the moist air. The oaks showered sudden shakings of accumulated rain upon him as he passed under their far-spread, age-gray limbs.
The hills, which had stood forth with shrub and crumbling ledge, tawny brown blotch of barrenness, soft green of fresh leaf, bright quickening of winter flowers, in the sunlight of yesterday evening, were now hidden almost entirely in low-dragging clouds. Only the base of them could be seen, dark, drenched, forbidding, where the cloud-line reached, purled and dipped into canyon, swathed headland, changing the cheerful hacienda of yesterday into a sad and gloomy place. It seemed a lonely and unfriendly land.
Several men were at breakfast in the kitchen, among them Simon, the teamster, all of whom, with the exception of Simon alone, seemed to Henderson borne down by some trouble or tragedy that had left a cloud upon their spirits. They greeted the stranger kindly, Simon himself making room for him at his side with an air of protectorship that had a bit of haughty condescension about it. Henderson soon found that the teamster's design, and apparently sole design, in this was to air his knowledge of the English tongue.
He began to exercise this accomplishment upon the American with a volubility that was rather embarrassing, considering that expletives such as a mule-driver generally addresses to his animals formed the greater part of Simon's vocabulary. These he delivered with force and due regard for expression, coupling them up with words here and there that made a slender chain of sense which Henderson could, with great difficulty and nimble mental leaping, follow along its lurid course.
Henderson hurried through breakfast, uncomfortable under the fire of Simon's learning, anxious to get out of its range. He excused himself on the plea that the mayordomo was expecting him. He managed to gather from Simon's remarks that this was a bad precedent to establish, this concern for duty, this precipitate haste to rush away and work. It was a thing that would make a great amount of sadness in a man's lot. One fast mule in a team of slow ones, said the sage, was no end of distress, for its master, its mates, and itself. Simon was saying more as Henderson left the room, the gentle, silent Indian woman turning her head in slow gracefulness to watch him out of the door.
The nimbleness of the sea was in the sailor's legs, for the sea will purge young joints of their slothfulness as it will purify old ones of their ills. The pace that he set for those dreamy, sun-nurtured Indians and Mexicans in unloading the freight wagon was a thing that overturned the traditions of their lives.
Man was born but to traverse his way to the tomb. The dullest of them understood that fact as well as the most learned philosopher or theologian that ever wrote a book. Why should he hasten on his way, bringing the end quicker in the bitterness of unnecessary toil? Dark were the glances that followed the American in his bounding haste; deep the scowls that fixed upon their brows. If Don Abrahan should come, and see that foolish, hastening man, what exactions might he lay upon their shoulders in this revelation of the human capacity for work? Terrible thought! sorrowful, miserable thought!
Don Abrahan came. He stood under the eaves of the thatch smoking his cigar, watching this monkey of a Yankee, whose employment in the past had been clambering up high masts under the lash of the brutal task-master whose tyranny he had fled. Don Abrahan was seen to smile.
They remembered that day on Don Abrahan's ranch long after the American sailor had remedied his fortunes and mounted to his place; they judged him in the light of subsequent events by the bitterness he planted in them those first fevered hours of his service there. Not alone that day, but many days that came after, when the sailor was the quickening force of their sluggish endeavors.
When they worked at piling hides in the store-house, the sailor set the pace which Don Felipe and Don Abrahan expected the slowest, the oldest, of them to match. Instead of one hide, which was burden enough for any man, God stand as the judge, this sailor carried two, hoisting them to his head, which he covered by a cap of sheepskin to protect the small brain within it, and went off blithely as a man at a ball.
So it was in other labors; in bringing wood from the plain, where Don Abrahan was clearing a great field, in all the fetching and taking about the place. Simon was disturbed by the haste this Yankee made among their hitherto untroubled ways; he complained that a man could no more than smoke one cigarette between the arrival and the unloading of the wagon. Almost at once he would have to turn around and go after more. It was a molesta, it was a trouble, it was a thing to damn by all the Yankee gods, which were not true, Catholic gods, to be certain, and useful only for damning worthless men and obstinate mules.
Six weeks of this activity passed; winter rains gave way, blending out almost imperceptibly into the blue of untroubled summer days. Henderson knew that the ship had gone its way homeward long since; the danger that had kept him close within Don Abrahan's sanctuary was past. He felt that he might now look around a little, and see what this strange, this white-green, this beautiful, somnolent, lazy land contained.
All this time Henderson had seen nothing of the life or members of Don Abrahan's family. His duties had confined him to the back of the house; who inhabited the front of it, he did not know. His command of the Spanish language was limited to a few hundred words, most of which stood alone with no connecting web. If any of those among whom he lived and spent his active days had been disposed to tell him of the greatness of Don Abrahan's house, he could not have understood. Only that there was a son, coming home on a ship from Mexico, expected in the harbor almost any day. Simon had told him this. Simon was going with Don Abrahan in a day or two, with horses, to bring the young man home.
Henderson had not been beyond Don Abrahan's possessions since his arrival at the ranch. The magistrate had warned him, Don Felipe had stressed the warning, that it meant either delivery to the captain of the ship or jail if he stepped out of their protection.
Now the ship was gone; Simon had been at the harbor twice since its sailing, the danger, the incentive for his capture, was past. Surely the alcalde of the pueblo would not arrest and lodge in his jail a man with money to pay his way, and a willingness in him to work. Money he would have when Don Abrahan settled with him for his six weeks' work; a good reputation he would carry away with him, he felt assured. Don Abrahan always spoke kindly to him, calling him son. So thinking, he went to Don Felipe and requested an accounting.
Don Felipe received him coldly. That was something he knew nothing about; whatever arrangement stood between Henderson and Don Abrahan was their arrangement; Don Felipe had not been a party to its making. But no; he must not seek Don Abrahan in the mansion. Peones were not permitted to enter the mansion, save only the kitchen door.
Henderson started at the word, flushing with indignation.
"I'm not any man's peon," he denied.
"We speak of laborers so," said Don Felipe, with stern correction. "It is not the same in this country as where you came from. Men are not equals here. If you want to speak to Don Abrahan, he is there. Take off your hat when you approach him."