Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/268

 "It is a lie!" Don Ambrosio denied.

"Ask the governor, then. Or better—ask Don Michael. Here he comes."

"It is the shameful truth, Don Ambrosio," Don Michael, a portly man with sagging jaws, admitted. "The news reached me at midnight. There is one called General Fremont marching on this pueblo now."

"God save us!" said a woman.

"Your bank—our money in your bank, Don Michael!" another clamored.

"God knows!" said Don Michael, spreading wide his arms as if to show his own breast free of guile.

"Where are they? How near do they approach?" a small, sharp-faced man came elbowing forward to inquire.

"Close at hand, it is thought. They ride like the wind, the messenger said, Missouri men, hard scoundrels who do not even aim when they shoot, and never miss."

"What?" asked a soldier, pressing near, gun on shoulder, face eager for the right of it. "The Yankees, did you say?"

"Yes, soldier, a thousand of them, coming in a dust like the end of the world!"

It was the defiant young man who volunteered this, giving it to the soldier with excited breath. The soldier gulped it as if he had swallowed an oyster, turned and hurried away to spread the intelligence among his comrades, who were dusty,