Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/54

 house, the sailor set the pace which Don Felipe and Don Abrahan expected the slowest, the oldest, of them to match. Instead of one hide, which was burden enough for any man, God stand as the judge, this sailor carried two, hoisting them to his head, which he covered by a cap of sheepskin to protect the small brain within it, and went off blithely as a man at a ball.

So it was in other labors; in bringing wood from the plain, where Don Abrahan was clearing a great field, in all the fetching and taking about the place. Simon was disturbed by the haste this Yankee made among their hitherto untroubled ways; he complained that a man could no more than smoke one cigarette between the arrival and the unloading of the wagon. Almost at once he would have to turn around and go after more. It was a molesta, it was a trouble, it was a thing to damn by all the Yankee gods, which were not true, Catholic gods, to be certain, and useful only for damning worthless men and obstinate mules.

Six weeks of this activity passed; winter rains gave way, blending out almost imperceptibly into the blue of untroubled summer days. Henderson knew that the ship had gone its way homeward long since; the danger that had kept him close within Don Abrahan's sanctuary was past. He felt that he might now look around a little, and see what this strange, this white-green, this beautiful, somnolent, lazy land contained.

All this time Henderson had seen nothing of