Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/370



HERE were twenty cavalrymen in the lane, Henderson estimated. They had come to a halt when their leader galloped ahead of them, bearing his signal for a truce, and now waited not more than two hundred yards from the gate, formed in a charging front of fours. The officer next in command was drawn off a little way ahead of them, waiting his superior's return.

Henderson had hurried to meet Roberto, whose dismounting to open the gate had interrupted his advance. Due to this barrier, the two met somewhat farther away from the cannon than the previous parley had been held. Roberto stopped his horse with the same regardless hand as before, throwing his weight suddenly on the reins, setting the creature back on its hams. It was not in a spirit of bravado or bold show that Roberto did this trick; it was the mode among the of his time and place.

Roberto could not conceal the surprise that the preparations for defense gave him. He looked at the two fresh heaps of brown earth beside the cannon, saying nothing for the moment, but lifting himself to his toes in his stirrups as if straining to see what forces the earthworks contained. Pres-