along the way, on the road, by the road, in the road, in the street, on the ground (see Karttunen and Molina); roads needed to be swept (see attestations); roads were also places where people might congregate when concerned about something (see attestations)
Fr. Bernardino de Sahagún, Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain; Book 10 -- The People, No. 14, Part 11, eds. and transl. Arthur J. O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble (Santa Fe and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah, 1961), 177.