Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/42

 There were still others lower in the social order than the independent small drovers, servile people, who almost cringed to Don Abrahan, who rode on with eyes fixed ahead of him, ignoring them quite. Yet not one of these people passed who did not roll wondering eyes at the man who ran in the road beside the magistrate's horse like a captive, marking his foreign appearance, his incongruous strangeness in that land.

Indian and Mexican, the mongrel and mixed of both races, searched the sailor with swift, keen eyes. Now and again in a glance of these sharp, inquiring eyes, Henderson felt something that seemed to speak to him, something more than curiosity, more than wonder. More than once he seemed almost to grasp the meaning of this strange scrutiny, yet it was so fleeting, so elusive, as to escape like water in the hand. Once, in the eyes of a young Mexican woman who rode behind her husband on a sweat-drenched horse, he felt that the look was pitying.