Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/206

 behind the pepper tree, where no man was thought to be. I heard."

Henderson reached out his hand, the two gold-pieces between his fingers like a man about to plant a seed. Simon's hand came through the bars, palm upward, as thirsty for what hung over it as autumn vegas for rain. Henderson seemed wrapped in an obscuring cloud of thought. He did not plant the seed of man's undoing in this yearning, fecund soil.

"I heard a man offer liberty for a fool girl's heart," Simon said. His hand came through a little farther; still the planting of gold was withheld. "And I heard a fool girl refuse to accept it unless your prison door was opened and you were permitted to go to your people. Then I heard a dagger strike on a bar of iron at a window, and there were curses in a man's throat. 'You love him too much!' he said. And that was all I heard. What will jealousy drive a man to do, Don Gabriel? You are wise in the books. Have I said enough?"

"You have said enough, Simon."

Henderson dropped the gold coins, but, due to his abstraction, as it seemed, they missed Simon's hand and fell softly among the straw that had been the prisoner's bed. Henderson made apology, stooping to recover the money, stirring the straw with vexed exclamations, scattering it impatiently about.

"The devil take them!" he said. "Strange how completely they have disappeared."