Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/294

 not the kind that would stand sentinel at night along the road."

"The news of your brave rescue"

"Felipe! I'd have been like a gun without a bullet only for your counsel and help. It was more your success than mine."

"Not so, not so, Don Gabriel. What if the cannon had not been loaded? Ha! I was only a spark that the wind blew, falling in the right place at the right time."

"We'll not argue it over again now, Felipe," Henderson said, smiling at his friend's vehement depreciation of his part in that adventure. "Let's leave it for a contention between us when we're old. Is there no pass, no road, through these mountains called Santa Monica to the west of here?"

"There is a pass, coming down into the king's road to the north near Buena Ventura, but it is steep, long and difficult. Few travel that way. It would require two days, at least, to cross by that pass, only to come out into the arms of soldiers on the other side, I fear."

"That would be a road too slow for us, then."

"But here, sheltered as we are, soldiers may pass up and down, over our very heads, and never find us. If I did not know how the Franciscan fathers lay here, Gabriel, with eager soldiers of the republic hunting them, it would be a thing to doubt."