Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/68

 Felipe declared, warm in his eagerness to bring about the establishment of another family to serve his patron in the working out of never-ending debt. "With a wife to help him, a man soon stands on his feet."

Henderson thought of Liseta, the proposed partner of his sacrificial years. She was about seventeen, a result of that peculiar cross-breeding of Spaniard, Mexican peon and native Indian, to the abasement of all involved. Her dark face was heavy and sullen; there was little promise in her but that of the capability to plentifully reproduce her kind. Liseta herded goats upon the scrabbled hills for her mighty patron, working out the debt that had been her inheritance, that would increase with her years and bind her in slavery all her life. Her mother, old Cecilia, was old indeed at little more than forty, sad in her peonage, a vessel worn out by the burdens of men.

"I will speak the word to Don Abrahan if you wish," Don Felipe offered.

"I think I can serve my patron better without a wife," Henderson replied, laughing the matter aside as if he considered it but a jest.

"Perhaps there is another in the land you left?" Don Felipe ventured.

He sighed, as if to let it be understood that he was a man who had known his romance, whatever tricks time might have played him since.

"Who knows?" Henderson returned, with as much sentimentality, softness, and longing as he