Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/245

 "Adobe walls without a roof over them soon look ancient, Gabriel. There is Pablo's fence, it seems a century old. He built it not twenty years ago."

"But what is there here, Felipe, to prevent soldiers or anybody else, following and finding us?" Gabriel inquired, puzzled to find himself in a place of such doubtful security.

"First, there is Pablo," Felipe replied. "He does not wake and become alert for everybody that approaches him. The soldiers, Don Abrahan, would find him only a sleepy, dull, deaf and dim-eyed old man. But you will understand what he means, what I mean, when you know him better. He could send the keenest soldier or officer of the law off on a chase that would take him a long time to find out was empty, as he has done many a time. The Franciscans outlawed by the revolution used to hide here, Pablo sitting beside the road as you saw him when we arrived."

"That is all very good, Felipe, but it seems to me not quite enough for security."

"There is more," Felipe said, discovering this with triumph, as if he had held it covered to remove his friend's last doubt. "Over there, behind that adobe wall, is a retreat built by my grandfather, designed as a refuge in time of the uprising of the abused Indian peones which he always expected would come in his day, but which never came. It once had an entrance from the mansion,