Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/273

 burned as in smoke. Pity was in the throat, pity was dry on the lips. It gave pain to bestow so much pity; it was as if the heart had gone dry.

"Jesus!" said the workman, tearing his shirt open on his hairy throat. "If there was a man!"

The young man who had replied bitterly to him before stood silent now; his head was bowed, the blood was gone out of his lips. The only answer to the workman's passionate wish was the murmur of women's praying, the sighing of men's breath as they braced themselves as for a leap.

Then, what a start, what a surging to the feet, what a bristling of wild hopes and terrors in that crowd! What a yell it was that came like a crashing stone into the plaza! what a rush of charging hoofs! Now shots, and wilder cries, and dusty horsemen riding into the plaza, death flashing from their hands.

"The Americans!"

"Fly, fly—the Americans!"

Some ran for the church door, some crouched against the church wall, some ran in the confusion of beating feet and flying dust from the plaza. In a moment, it seemed, the crowd was swept from the place where it had stood, broken, dispersed as smoke is scattered by the wind. Dust was a cloud that obscured everything; it swirled yellow as the smoke of an autumn fire in green chaparral against the lifting sun.

There was shouting in the plaza, and many shots. Only two horsemen had come against the