Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/264



EOPLE began to collect in the plaza before the flare of dawn lifted. As the day grew, dimming the stars at the eastern horizon edge, and spread onward, engulfing the heavens, the arrivals increased. They came now in haste, with searching turnings of the head as if to question whether they had arrived too late, many women with rosaries in their hands, some men with the darkness of threat in their troubled faces.

All corners were directed by the sentinels, who still guarded each street where it opened into the square, to that side of the plaza where the church fronted. Here they stood in the chill of morning, shocked and afraid of this awful thing, yet lacking the courage either to interfere or deny the spectacle their presence.

At the first showing of the madrugada, the dawning of day, the general's proclamation had said, this traitress would be stood against the adobe wall and shot. Now it was broadening into day; the drum had not beaten, the door of the military jail had not opened.

"Perhaps General Garvanza has relented, perhaps he will spare her," a woman said. She was old; her hair was dusty-gray as trodden ashes;