Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/82

 that smoothed it, to the secret admiration of many a pair of young eyes. For it was known that this was a gentleman, an inferior one, certainly, who had fallen through pride and misfortune to this low estate.

A lagging spirit came over the dancers as dusk began to settle on the hills. The overfed mamas began to stir out of their heaviness to seek more cabeza de toro, now cold on the lantern-lit tables, but delicious to the palate when spread with thick sauce of chili peppers and tomato. The young ones, with appetite that needed no sauce after their hours of dancing, attended them, followed by their languishing cavaliers.

Don Roberto carried a few close friends off to the stable to see a new horse about which he had been making arrogant boasts all day. He graciously permitted Henderson a spell of relief to regale himself at the servants' end of the long table, where there was bull's body in abundance, but not a morsel of the noble head.

Henderson lacked the peculiar, not to say amazing, capacity for eating enjoyed by these happy people, who reminded him not so much of so many coyotes as sacks of grain, which a man only had to shake down to get a little more into, even when it seemed impossible to add another kernel. He made his way along the table, the humor of his singular situation somewhat dulled.

It was becoming a serious business, this standing about in spectacular prominence waiting the