Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/272

 a murmuring of plain linen, the whisk of poor cotton about their pious limbs.

They were marching along the wall to a certain pitted place which marked where others had stood before the soldiers' guns, Helena tall among the mean-statured, uniformed men. She walked calmly, no faltering in her feet, no turning of the head in the vain expectation, the unreasonable hope, that help might come. There was a pause now, waiting, it seemed, for the men with the cannon to unlimber the piece and remove the horses which obstructed the view of the people, whom the general desired so greatly to witness this deed, for the moral effect and repression of traitorous desires.

"Jesus! if there were ten men!" said the workman. He had pulled his broken hat down; it threw a shadow over his face.

"If there was one!" the young man who had been reproved by the old soldier said.

There was a great uprising of dust from the trampling of the four horses in the plaza, which the man in charge was lashing for some real or fancied fractiousness; those who were not praying, stood straining and stretching to see. The soldiers were placing her against the wall.

It seemed a long time to those who waited, the few moments that passed between the opening of the jail door and this short march beside the wall. The heart labored so in the bosom that it seemed smothering in the sea, the eyes strained until they