Ramona

He sighed. "There would not be land enough, to live here," he said.

"If there were, I too would like to stay here till I died, Majella, and never see the face of a white man again!" Already the instinct of the hunted and wounded animal to seek hiding, was striving in Alessandro"s blood. "But there would be no food. We could not live here." Ramona"s exclamation had set Alessandro to thinking, however. "Would Majella be content to stay here three days now?" he asked. "There is gra.s.s enough for the horses for that time. We should be very safe here; and I fear very much we should not be safe on any road. I think, Majella, the Senora will send men after Baba."

"Baba!" cried Ramona, aghast at the idea. "My own horse! She would not dare to call it stealing a horse, to take my own Baba!" But even as she spoke, her heart misgave her. The Senora would dare anything; would misrepresent anything; only too well Ramona knew what the very mention of the phrase "horse-stealing" meant all through the country. She looked piteously at Alessandro. He read her thoughts.

"Yes, that is it, Majella," he said. "If she sent men after Baba, there is no knowing what they might do. It would not do any good for you to say he was yours. They would not believe you; and they might take me too, if the Senora had told them to, and put me into Ventura jail."

"She"s just wicked enough to do it!" cried Ramona. "Let us not stir out of this spot, Alessandro,--not for a week! Couldn"t we stay a week? By that time she would have given over looking for us."

"I am afraid not a week. There is not feed for the horses; and I do not know what we could eat. I have my gun, but there is not much, now, to kill."

"But I have brought meat and bread, Alessandro," said Ramona, earnestly, "and we could eat very little each day, and make it last!" She was like a child, in her simplicity and eagerness. Every other thought was for the time being driven out of her mind by the terror of being pursued.

Pursuit of her, she knew, would not be in the Senora"s plan; but the reclaiming of Baba and Capitan, that was another thing. The more Ramona thought of it, the more it seemed to her a form of vengeance which would be likely to commend itself to the Senora"s mind. Felipe might possibly prevent it. It was he who had given Baba to her. He would feel that it would be shameful to recall or deny the gift. Only in Felipe lay Ramona"s hope.

If she had thought to tell Alessandro that in her farewell note to Felipe she had said that she supposed they were going to Father Salvierderra, it would have saved both her and Alessandro much disquietude. Alessandro would have known that men pursuing them, on that supposition, would have gone straight down the river road to the sea, and struck northward along the coast. But it did not occur to Ramona to mention this; in fact, she hardly recollected it after the first day.

Alessandro had explained to her his plan, which was to go by way of Temecula to San Diego, to be married there by Father Gaspara, the priest of that parish, and then go to the village or pueblo of San Pasquale, about fifteen miles northwest of San Diego. A cousin of Alessandro"s was the head man of this village, and had many times begged him to come there to live; but Alessandro had steadily refused, believing it to be his duty to remain at Temecula with his father. San Pasquale was a regularly established pueblo, founded by a number of the Indian neophytes of the San Luis Rey Mission at the time of the breaking up of that Mission. It was established by a decree of the Governor of California, and the lands of the San Pasquale Valley given to it. A paper recording this establishment and gift, signed by the Governor"s own hand, was given to the Indian who was the first Alcalde of the pueblo. He was Chief Pablo"s brother. At his death the authority pa.s.sed into the hands of his son, Ysidro, the cousin of whom Alessandro had spoken.

"Ysidro has that paper still," Alessandro said, "and he thinks it will keep them their village. Perhaps it will; but the Americans are beginning to come in at the head of the valley, and I do not believe, Majella, there is any safety anywhere. Still, for a few years we can perhaps stay there. There are nearly two hundred Indians in the valley; it is much better than Temecula, and Ysidro"s people are much better off than ours were. They have splendid herds of cattle and horses, and large wheat-fields. Ysidro"s house stands under a great fig-tree; they say it is the largest fig-tree in the country."

"But, Alessandro," cried Ramona, "why do you think it is not safe there, if Ysidro has the paper? I thought a paper made it all right."

"I don"t know," replied Alessandro. "Perhaps it may be; but I have got the feeling now that nothing will be of any use against the Americans. I don"t believe they will mind the paper."

"They didn"t mind the papers the Senora had for all that land of hers they took away," said Ramona, thoughtfully. "But Felipe said that was because Pio Pico was a bad man, and gave away lands he had no right to give away."

"That"s just it," said Alessandro. "Can"t they say that same thing about any governor, especially if he has given lands to us? If the Senora couldn"t keep hers, with Senor Felipe to help her, and he knows all about the law, and can speak the American language, what chance is there for us? We can"t take care of ourselves any better than the wild beasts can, my Majella. Oh, why, why did you come with me? Why did I let you?"

After such words as these, Alessandro would throw himself on the ground, and for a few moments not even Ramona"s voice would make him look up. It was strange that the gentle girl, unused to hardship, or to the thought of danger, did not find herself terrified by these fierce glooms and apprehensions of her lover. But she was appalled by nothing. Saved from the only thing in life she had dreaded, sure that Alessandro lived, and that he would not leave her, she had no fears. This was partly from her inexperience, from her utter inability to conceive of the things Alessandro"s imagination painted in colors only too true; but it was also largely due to the inalienable loyalty and quenchless courage of her soul,--qualities in her nature never yet tested; qualities of which she hardly knew so much as the name, but which were to bear her steadfast and buoyant through many sorrowful years.

Before nightfall of this their first day in the wilderness, Alessandro had prepared for Ramona a bed of finely broken twigs of the manzanita and ceanothus, both of which grew in abundance all through the canon.

Above these he spread layers of glossy ferns, five and six feet long; when it was done, it was a couch no queen need have scorned. As Ramona seated herself on it, she exclaimed: "Now I shall see how it feels to lie and look up at the stars at night! Do you recollect, Alessandro, the night you put Felipe"s bed on the veranda, when you told me how beautiful it was to lie at night out of doors and look up at the stars?"

Indeed did Alessandro remember that night,--the first moment he had ever dared to dream of the Senorita Ramona as his own. "Yes, I remember it, my Majella," he answered slowly; and in a moment more added, "That was the day Juan Can had told me that your mother was of my people; and that was the night I first dared in my thoughts to say that perhaps you might some day love me."

"But where are you going to sleep, Alessandro?" said Ramona, seeing that he spread no more boughs. "You have made yourself no bed."

Alessandro laughed. "I need no bed," he said. "We think it is on our mother"s lap we lie, when we lie on the ground. It is not hard, Majella.

It is soft, and rests one better than beds. But to-night I shall not sleep. I will sit by this tree and watch."

"Why, what are you afraid of?" asked Ramona.

"It may grow so cold that I must make a fire for Majella," he answered.

"It sometimes gets very cold before morning in these canons; so I shall feel safer to watch to-night."

This he said, not to alarm Ramona. His real reason for watching was, that he had seen on the edge of the stream tracks which gave him uneasiness. They were faint and evidently old; but they looked like the tracks of a mountain lion. As soon as it was dark enough to prevent the curl of smoke from being seen from below, he would light a fire, and keep it blazing all night, and watch, gun in hand, lest the beast return.

"But you will be dead, Alessandro, if you do not sleep. You are not strong," said Ramona, anxiously.

"I am strong now, Majella," answered Alessandro. And indeed he did already look like a renewed man, spite of all his fatigue and anxiety.

"I am no longer weak; and to-morrow I will sleep, and you shall watch."

"Will you lie on the fern-bed then?" asked Ramona, gleefully.

"I would like the ground better," said honest Alessandro.

Ramona looked disappointed. "That is very strange," she said. "It is not so soft, this bed of boughs, that one need fear to be made tender by lying on it," she continued, throwing herself down; "but oh, how sweet, how sweet it smells!"

"Yes, there is spice-wood in it," he answered. "I put it in at the head, for Majella"s pillow."

Ramona was very tired, and she was happy. All night long she slept like a child. She did not hear Alessandro"s steps. She did not hear the crackling of the fire he lighted. She did not hear the barking of Capitan, who more than once, spite of all Alessandro could do to quiet him, made the canon echo with sharp, quick notes of warning, as he heard the stealthy steps of wild creatures in the chaparral. Hour after hour she slept on. And hour after hour Alessandro sat leaning against a huge sycamore-trunk, and watched her. As the fitful firelight played over her face, he thought he had never seen it so beautiful, Its expression of calm repose insensibly soothed and strengthened him. She looked like a saint, he thought; perhaps it was as a saint of help and guidance, the Virgin was sending her to him and his people. The darkness deepened, became blackness; only the red gleams from the fire broke it, in swaying rifts, as the wind makes rifts in black storm-clouds in the heavens.

With the darkness, the stillness also deepened. Nothing broke that, except an occasional motion of Baba or the pony, or an alert signal from Capitan; then all seemed stiller than ever. Alessandro felt as if G.o.d himself were in the canon. Countless times in his life before he had lain in lonely places under the sky and watched the night through, but he never felt like this. It was ecstasy, and yet it was pain. What was to come on the morrow, and the next morrow, and the next, and the next, all through the coming years? What was to come to this beloved and loving woman who lay there sleeping, so confident, so trustful, guarded only by him,--by him, Alessandro, the exile, fugitive, homeless man?

Before the dawn, wood-doves began their calling. The canon was full of them, no two notes quite alike, it seemed to Alessandro"s sharpened sense; pair after pair, he fancied that he recognized, speaking and replying, as did the pair whose voices had so comforted him the night he watched under the geranium hedge by the Moreno chapel,--"Love?" "Here!"

"Love?" "Here!" They comforted him still more now. "They too have only each other," he thought, as he bent his eyes lovingly on Ramona"s face.

It was dawn, and past dawn, on the plains, before it was yet morning twilight in the canon; but the birds in the upper boughs" of the sycamores caught the tokens of the coming day, and began to twitter in the dusk. Their notes fell on Ramona"s sleeping ear, like the familiar sound of the linnets in the veranda-thatch at home, and waked her instantly. Sitting up bewildered, and looking about her, she exclaimed, "Oh, is it morning already, and so dark? The birds can see more sky than we! Sing, Alessandro," and she began the hymn:--

""Singers at dawn From the heavens above People all regions; Gladly we too sing.""

Never went up truer invocation, from sweeter spot.

"Sing not so loud, my Majel," whispered Alessandro, as her voice went carolling like a lark"s in the pure ether. "There might be hunters near who would hear;" and he joined in with low and m.u.f.fled tones.

As she dropped her voice at this caution, it seemed even sweeter than before:--

""Come, O sinners, Come, and we will sing Tender hymns To our refuge,""

"Ah, Majella, there is no sinner here, except me!" said Alessandro. "My Majella is like one of the Virgin"s own saints." And indeed he might have been forgiven the thought as he gazed at Ramona, sitting there in the shimmering light, her face thrown out into relief by the gray wall of fern-draped rock behind her; her splendid hair, unbound, falling in tangled ma.s.ses to her waist; her cheeks flushed, her face radiant with devout and fervent supplication, her eyes uplifted to the narrow belt of sky overhead, where filmy vapors were turning to gold, touched by a sun she could not see.

"Hush, my love," she breathed rather than said. "That would be a sin, if you really thought it.

"O beautiful Queen, Princess of Heaven,""

she continued, repeating the first lines of the song; and then, sinking on her knees, reached out one hand for Alessandro"s, and glided, almost without a break in the melodious sound, into a low recitative of the morning-prayers. Her rosary was of fine-chased gold beads, with an ivory crucifix; a rare and precious relic of the Missions" olden times. It had belonged to Father Peyri himself, was given by him to Father Salvierderra, and by Father Salvierderra to the "blessed child," Ramona, at her confirmation. A warmer token of his love and trust he could not have bestowed upon her, and to Ramona"s religious and affectionate heart it had always seemed a bond and an a.s.surance, not only of Father Salvierderra"s love, but of the love and protection of the now sainted Peyri.

As she p.r.o.nounced the last words of her trusting prayer, and slipped the last of the golden beads along on its string, a thread of sunlight shot into the canon through a deep narrow gap in its rocky eastern crest,--shot in for a second, no more; fell aslant the rosary, lighted it; by a flash as if of fire, across the fine-cut facets of the beads, on Ramona"s hands, and on the white face of the ivory Christ. Only a flash, and it was gone! To both Ramona and Alessandro it came like an omen,--like a message straight from the Virgin. Could she choose better messenger,--she, the compa.s.sionate one, the loving woman in heaven; mother of the Christ to whom they prayed, through her,--mother, for whose sake He would regard their least cry,--could she choose better messenger, or swifter, than the sunbeam, to say that she heard and would help them in these sore straits.

Perhaps there were not, in the whole great world, at that moment to be found, two souls who were experiencing so vivid a happiness as thrilled the veins of these two friendless ones, on their knees, alone in the wilderness, gazing half awe-stricken at the shining rosary.

XVII

BEFORE the end of their second day in the canon, the place had become to Ramona so like a friendly home, that she dreaded to leave its shelter.

Nothing is stronger proof of the original intent of Nature to do more for man than the civilization in its arrogance will long permit her to do, than the quick and sure way in which she reclaims his affection, when by weariness, idle chance, or disaster, he is returned, for an interval, to her arms. How soon he rejects the miserable subterfuges of what he had called habits; sheds the still more miserable pretences of superiority, makeshifts of adornment, and chains of custom! "Whom the G.o.ds love, die young," has been too long carelessly said. It is not true, in the sense in which men use the words. Whom the G.o.ds love, dwell with nature; if they are ever lured away, return to her before they are old. Then, however long they live before they die, they die young. Whom the G.o.ds love, live young--forever.

With the insight of a lover added to the instinct of the Indian, Alessandro saw how, hour by hour, there grew in Ramona"s eyes the wonted look of one at home; how she watched the shadows, and knew what they meant.

"If we lived here, the walls would be sun-dials for us, would they not?"