Page:The Road to Monterey (1925).pdf/364

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ing neither hand nor eye. "When one starts, I'll kill him."

"The guns—I'll remove them; I'll put them in the office. Helena must be told to get ready. If they make a rush while my back is turned, can you stop them, Pablo?"

"Go, Don Gabriel, and see to the lady and your horses. There are men among them who know how I shoot."

Henderson gathered all the guns and carried them to the office, where he told Helena how his great plans and abounding hopes of the morning had shriveled and come to nothing. He told her frankly that flight was imperative, the chances of the road as perilous to them as before. He requested her to change with all speed her pretty dress for the costume she had worn that morning.

"I will be ready in a few minutes, Gabriel," she said, calm, undisturbed. Her trust in him filled her life so completely that fear, it seemed, had no footing there.

Henderson turned back to the men in the trenches, who had left off work to gather in a close bunch like flies on a piece of sugar. They were listening gravely to one of the oldest among them, who was speaking in a lowand earnest voice. Their ears were for this old man, their eyes for Henderson as he approached them, pistol at his side.

"That is very well done, men," Henderson said in hearty words, nodding to the work they had done. "You have done good work, and now you