Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/77

 to cover the foot in the stirrup, strapped beneath the instep to prevent them crawling up the caballero's leg when he rode.

The duty of personal attendant on Don Roberto was not heavy, outside the irksome waiting with the horses while he played the bear beneath some lady's window, or sat with another in company with her mother or duenna, or danced the night out on nimble, leaping, tireless legs. Dressed in his fine garments, Henderson made a handsome figure, a servant, indeed, who drew and held longer the glances of many a fair one met upon the road than the master who rode two rods ahead.

Always behind the master the man rode, a distance between them so great there could be no mistaking them for friends and comrades. This distance, in fact, was the one distinguishing mark of their relation in the case of Don Roberto and his man, as has been the case between master and man in other lands before and since that day.

During the two weeks of the festivities Don Roberto had ridden far and near between his home and the ranches of his neighbors, paying' his respects to old and young, smirking and bowing, easing himself of the vacuous insincerities which smother the little of genuineness in the polite speech of the Mexican hijo de familia. Henderson's duty was to dismount in the courtyard or at the gate where his master visited, receive Don Roberto's reins as he threw them imperiously, without so much as a glance in his varlet's direc-