Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/34

 vated areas, widely scattered, where grain was grown in its season, where orchards and vineyards were green in their time. Just ahead of him, a little way from the point where the highway branched to the pueblo, a homestead of considerable pretensions had been established many years. Here olive trees had been planted by the roadside. They had grown until their branches almost met above the narrow highway, speaking eloquently to one familiar with their slow increase, of the age of that hacienda. Such a man would have known, passing that way for the first time, that the hands that planted the olives had gone back to the dust long ago, as well as Don Abrahan was cognizant of that fact as he entered the aisle of gray-green sentinels.

As he rode between the olives, Don Abrahan quickened his pace, his head lifted alertly. It seemed that he would not be under the necessity of visiting the pueblo, after all. At the farther end of the avenue a man was plodding, that moment passing from the shadow of the olives into the sun. From the white trousers that he wore, from the light color of his uncovered hair, Don Abrahan knew him for the sailor who had deserted the Yankee captain's ship, with his own crafty assistance, only a few hours past.

It was a lucky thing that the sailor was such a poor traveler on land. A peon would have been in the pueblo long enough to have made himself drunk three hours ago, It was well, indeed, that