Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/63

 He stood so, his small hands on his hips, a despicable sycophant, Henderson believed, in his place of authority over men and women who were little better than slaves. Henderson would have passed without speaking, but Don Felipe raised a hand to halt him.

"You have had your accounting, you understand Don Abrahan?" he asked.

"I understand him perfectly," Henderson replied, his indignation over the imposition that had been put upon him still outweighing all other concern.

"You think you will run away from this debt and cheat Don Abrahan," the mayordomo said, squaring himself around to stand directly in front of Henderson, as if to block this treasonable intention with his own body. "That is a thought of foolishness. Look!"

Don Felipe laid hold of Henderson's arm, turning him to face the hills at the foot of which the ranch buildings stood. Mangy, shaggy, harsh and forbidding as these hills, almost mountainous in height, appeared in the glare of day, they now seemed softened and subdued, friendly and secure, in the chastening twilight. There was a dying flush upon the sky, repeated faintly in the canyons where the mists were gathering; the gray of crumbling ledge, the brown blotches of barren soil, soothed out and blended in harmonious beauty with sage and greasewood, the dark green of chaparral and holly. Sharply the line of the hills stood against