Part 31 (1/2)
Already the keen salt air of the ocean smote their faces. Ramona drank it in with delight. ”I taste salt in the air, Alessandro,” she cried.
”Yes, it is the sea,” he said. ”This canon leads straight to the sea. I wish we could go by the sh.o.r.e, Majella. It is beautiful there. When it is still, the waves come as gently to the land as if they were in play; and you can ride along with your horse's feet in the water, and the green cliffs almost over your head; and the air off the water is like wine in one's head.”
”Cannot we go there?” she said longingly. ”Would it not be safe?”
”I dare not,” he answered regretfully. ”Not now, Majella; for on the sh.o.r.e-way, at all times, there are people going and coming.”
”Some other time, Alessandro, we can come, after we are married, and there is no danger?” she asked.
”Yes, Majella,” he replied; but as he spoke the words, he thought, ”Will a time ever come when there will be no danger?”
The sh.o.r.e of the Pacific Ocean for many miles north of San Diego is a succession of rounding promontories, walling the mouths of canons, down many of which small streams make to the sea. These canons are green and rich at bottom, and filled with trees, chiefly oak. Beginning as little more than rifts in the ground, they deepen and widen, till at their mouths they have a beautiful crescent of s.h.i.+ning beach from an eighth to a quarter of a mile long, The one which Alessandro hoped to reach before morning was not a dozen miles from the old town of San Diego, and commanded a fine view of the outer harbor. When he was last in it, he had found it a nearly impenetrable thicket of young oak-trees. Here, he believed, they could hide safely all day, and after nightfall ride into San Diego, be married at the priest's house, and push on to San Pasquale that same night. ”All day, in that canon, Majella can look at the sea,”
he thought; ”but I will not tell her now, for it may be the trees have been cut down, and we cannot be so close to the sh.o.r.e.”
It was near sunrise when they reached the place. The trees had not been cut down. Their tops, seen from above, looked like a solid bed of moss filling in the canon bottom. The sky and the sea were both red. As Ramona looked down into this soft green pathway, it seemed, leading out to the wide and sparkling sea, she thought Alessandro had brought her into a fairy-land.
”What a beautiful world!” she cried; and riding up so close to Benito that she could lay her hand on Alessandro's, she said solemnly: ”Do you not think we ought to be very happy, Alessandro, in such a beautiful world as this? Do you think we might sing our sunrise hymn here?”
Alessandro glanced around. They were alone on the breezy open; it was not yet full dawn; great ma.s.ses of crimson vapor were floating upward from the hills behind San Diego. The light was still burning in the light-house on the promontory walling the inner harbor, but in a few moments more it would be day. ”No, Majella, not here.” he said. ”We must not stay. As soon as the sun rises, a man or a horse may be seen on this upper coast-line as far as eye can reach. We must be among the trees with all the speed we can make.”
It was like a house with a high, thick roof of oak tree-tops, the shelter they found. No sun penetrated it; a tiny trickle of water still remained, and some gra.s.s along its rims was still green, spite of the long drought,--a scanty meal for Baba and Benito, but they ate it with relish in each other's company.
”They like each other, those two,” said Ramona, laughing, as she watched them. ”They will be friends.”
”Ay,” said Alessandro, also smiling. ”Horses are friends, like men, and can hate each other, like men, too. Benito would never see Antonio's mare, the little yellow one, that he did not let fly his heels at her; and she was as afraid, at sight of him, as a cat is at a dog. Many a time I have laughed to see it.”
”Know you the priest at San Diego?” asked Ramona.
”Not well,” replied Alessandro. ”He came seldom to Temecula when I was there; but he is a friend of Indians. I know he came with the men from San Diego at the time when there was fighting, and the whites were in great terror; and they said, except for Father Gaspara's words, there would not have been a white man left alive in Pala. My father had sent all his people away before that fight began. He knew it was coming, but he would have nothing to do with it. He said the Indians were all crazy.
It was no use. They would only be killed themselves. That is the worst thing, my Majella. The stupid Indians fight and kill, and then what can we do? The white men think we are all the same. Father Gaspara has never been to Pala, I heard, since that time. There goes there now the San Juan Capistrano priest. He is a bad man. He takes money from the starving poor.”
”A priest!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Ramona, horror-stricken.
”Ay! a priest!” replied Alessandro. ”They are not all good,--not like Father Salvierderra.”
”Oh, if we could but have gone to Father Salvierderra!” exclaimed Ramona, involuntarily.
Alessandro looked distressed. ”It would have been much more danger, Majella,” he said, ”and I had no knowledge of work I could do there.”
His look made Ramona remorseful at once. How cruel to lay one feather-weight of additional burden on this loving man. ”Oh, this is much better, really,” she said. ”I did not mean what I said. It is only because I have always loved Father Salvierderra so. And the Senora will tell him what is not true. Could we not send him a letter, Alessandro?”
”There is a Santa Inez Indian I know,” replied Alessandro, ”who comes down with nets to sell, sometimes, to Temecula. I know not if he goes to San Diego. If I could get speech with him, he would go up from Santa Inez to Santa Barbara for me, I am sure; for once he lay in my father's house, sick for many weeks, and I nursed him, and since then he is always begging me to take a net from him, whenever he comes. It is not two days from Santa Inez to Santa Barbara.”
”I wish it were the olden time now, Alessandro,” sighed Ramona, ”when the men like Father Salvierderra had all the country. Then there would be work for all, at the Missions. The Senora says the Missions were like palaces, and that there were thousands of Indians in every one of them; thousands and thousands, all working so happy and peaceful.”
”The Senora does not know all that happened at the Missions,” replied Alessandro. ”My father says that at some of them were dreadful things, when bad men had power. Never any such things at San Luis Rey. Father Peyri was like a father to all his Indians. My father says that they would all of them lie down in a fire for him, if he had commanded it.
And when he went away, to leave the country, when his heart was broken, and the Mission all ruined, he had to fly by night, Majella, just as you and I have done; for if the Indians had known it, they would have risen up to keep him. There was a s.h.i.+p here in San Diego harbor, to sail for Mexico, and the Father made up his mind to go in it; and it was over this same road we have come, my Majella, that he rode, and by night; and my father was the only one he trusted to know it. My father came with him; they took the swiftest horses, and they rode all night, and my father carried in front of him, on the horse, a box of the sacred things of the altar, very heavy. And many a time my father has told me the story, how they got to San Diego at daybreak, and the Father was rowed out to the s.h.i.+p in a little boat; and not much more than on board was he, my father standing like one dead on the sh.o.r.e, watching, he loved him so, when, lo! he heard a great crying, and shouting, and trampling of horses' feet, and there came galloping down to the water's edge three hundred of the Indians from San Luis Rey, who had found out that the Father had gone to San Diego to take s.h.i.+p, and they had ridden all night on his track, to fetch him back. And when my father pointed to the s.h.i.+p, and told them he was already on board, they set up a cry fit to bring the very sky down; and some of them flung themselves into the sea, and swam out to the s.h.i.+p, and cried and begged to be taken on board and go with him. And Father Peyri stood on the deck, blessing them, and saying farewell, with the tears running on his face; and one of the Indians--how they never knew--made s.h.i.+ft to climb up on the chains and ropes, and got into the s.h.i.+p itself; and they let him stay, and he sailed away with the Father. And my father said he was all his life sorry that he himself had not thought to do the same thing; but he was like one dumb and deaf and with no head, he was so unhappy at the Father's going.”
”Was it here, in this very harbor?” asked Ramona, in breathless interest, pointing out towards the blue water of which they could see a broad belt framed by their leafy foreground arch of oak tops.
”Ay, just there he sailed,--as that s.h.i.+p goes now,” he exclaimed, as a white-sailed schooner sailed swiftly by, going out to sea. ”But the s.h.i.+p lay at first inside the bar; you cannot see the inside harbor from here.