Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/166

 Toberman interpreted that wild hail as perfectly as the man who gave it. He swept a quick glance around the place, over the faces of the men who had come and gone all those years at his bidding, who, in the awe of this greater authority, would not lift a hand to save him now; looked down the far-spreading valley where the sun was rising redly out of the thinning fog, shook his head sadly, as if saying he knew that it was all a dream, but one out of which he would wake no more.

"Don Abrahan!" Henderson appealed, startling his horse into sudden bound by clamping its sides with his tied heels, "stop this thing, Don Abrahan! That man is an American, you can't"

A sentry sprang forward, menace in his uplifted piece; another caught the bridle, hurled the horse back, while Simon, roused out of his interest in the tragic pageant, drew hard on the rope that ran from his saddle-horn to the bit of Henderson's horse. Don Abrahan, not turning his eyes, not averting his fixed countenance, passed on as if he had not heard. In the dust that rose around him from his trampling horse, Henderson saw Simon leering at him dark threats.

"You are an American, also, and see where you are!" Simon said. "In a second I'll make a hole in you that the bees can fly through, you Yankee peddler out of a ship!"

They were placing Toberman with his back against the adobe wall of the sheep corral, afraid