At this moment a brand broke in the smouldering fire, and for one second a bright blaze shot up; only for a second, then all was dark again. But the swift blaze had fallen on Felipe's face, and with a start which he could not control, but which Felipe did not see, the Indian had recognized him. 'Ha, ha!' he thought to himself. 'Senor Felipe Moreno, you come to the wrong house asking for news of Alessandro Assis!' It was Antonio,—Antonio, who had been at the Moreno sheep-shearing; Antonio, who knew even more than Carmena had known, for he knew what a marvel and miracle it seemed that the beautiful Senorita from the Moreno house should have loved Alessandro, and wedded him; and he knew that on the night she went away with him, Alessandro had lured out of the corral a beautiful horse for her to ride. Alessandro had told him all about it,—Baba, fiery, splendid Baba, black as night, with a white star in his forehead. Saints! but it was a bold thing to do, to steal such a horse as that, with a star for a mark; and no wonder that even now, though near three years afterwards, Senor Felipe was in search of him. Of course it could be only the horse he wanted. Ha! much help might he get from Antonio! 'Yes, Senor, I knew him,' he replied. 'Do you know where he is now?' 'No, Senor.' 'Do you know where he went, from Temecula?' 'No, Senor.' 'A woman told me he went to Monterey. I have been there looking for him.' 'I heard, too, he had gone to Monterey.' 'Where did you see him last?' 'In Temecula.' 'Was he alone?' 'Yes, Senor.' 'Did you ever hear of his being married?' 'No, Senor.' 'Where are the greater part of the Temecula people now?' 'Like this, Senor,' with a bitter gesture, pointing to his wife. 'Most of us are beggars. A few here, a few there. Some have gone to Capitan Grande, some way down into Lower California.' Wearily Felipe continued his bootless questioning. No suspicion that the man was deceiving him crossed his mind. At last, with a sigh, he said, 'I hoped to have found Alessandro by your means. I am greatly disappointed. 'I doubt not that, Senor Felipe Moreno,' thought Antonio. 'I am sorry, Senor,' he said. It smote his conscience when Felipe laid in his hand a generous gold-piece, and said, 'Here is a bit of money for you. I am sorry to see you so poorly off.' The thanks which he spoke sounded hesitating and gruff, so remorseful did he feel. Senor Felipe had always been kind to them. How well they had fared always in his house! It was a shame to lie to him; yet the first duty was to Alessandro. It could not be avoided. And thus a second time help drifted away from Ramona. At Temecula, from Mrs. Hartsel, Felipe got the first true intelligence of Alessandro's movements; but at first it only confirmed his worst forebodings. Alessandro had been at Mrs. Hartsel's house; he had been alone, and on foot; he was going to walk all the way to San Pasquale, where he had the promise of work. How sure the kindly woman was that she was telling the exact truth. After long ransacking of her memory and comparing of events, she fixed the time so nearly to the true date, that it was to Felipe's mind a terrible corroboration of his fears. It was, he thought, about a week after Ramona's flight from home that Alessandro had appeared thus, alone, on foot, at Mrs. Hartsel's. In great destitution, she said; and she had lent him money on the expectation of selling his violin; but they had never sold it; there it was yet. And that Alessandro was dead, she had no more doubt than that she herself was alive; for else, he would have come back to pay her what he owed. The honestest fellow that ever lived, was Alessandro. Did not the Senor Moreno think so? Had he not found him so always? There were not many such Indians as Alessandro and his father. If there had been, it would have been better for their people. 'If they'd all been like Alessandro, I tell you,' she said, 'it would have taken more than any San Diego sheriff to have put them out of their homes here.' 'But what could they do to help themselves, Mrs. Hartsel?' asked Felipe. 'The law was against them. We can't any of us go against that. I myself have lost half my estate in the same way.' 'Well, at any rate they wouldn't have gone without fighting!' she said. ''If Alessandro had been here!' they all said.' Felipe asked to see the violin. 'But that is not Alessandro's,' he exclaimed. 'I have seen his.' 'No!' she said. 'Did I say it was his? It was his father's. One of the Indians brought it in here to hide it with us at the time they were driven out. It is very old, they say, and worth a great deal of money, if you could find the right man to buy it. But he has not come along yet. He will, though. I am not a bit afraid but that we'll get our money back on it. If Alessandro was alive, he'd have been here long before this.' Finding Mrs. Hartsel thus friendly, Felipe suddenly decided to tell her the whole story. Surprise and incredulity almost overpowered her at first. She sat buried in thought for some minutes; then she sprang to her feet, and cried: 'If he's got that girl with him, he's hiding somewhere. There's nothing like an Indian to hide; and if he is hiding, every other Indian knows it, and you just waste your breath asking any questions of any of them. They will die before they will tell you one thing. They are as secret as the grave. And they, every one of them, worshipped Alessandro. You see they thought he would be over them, after Pablo, and they were all proud of him because he could read and write, and knew more than most of them. If I were in your place,' she continued, 'I would not give it up yet. I should go to San Pasquale. Now it might just be that she was along with him that night he stopped here, hid somewhere, while he came in to get the money. I know I urged him to stay all night, and he said he could not do it. I don't know, though, where he could possibly have left her while he came here.' Never in all her life had Mrs. Hartsel been so puzzled and so astonished as now. But her sympathy, and her confident belief that Alessandro might yet be found, gave unspeakable cheer to Felipe. 'If I find them, I shall take them home with me, Mrs. Hartsel,' he said as he rode away; 'and we will come by this road and stop to see you.' And the very speaking of the words cheered him all the way to San Pasquale. But before he had been in San Pasquale an hour, he was plunged into a perplexity and disappointment deeper than he had yet felt. He found the village in disorder, the fields neglected, many houses deserted, the remainder of the people preparing to move away. In the house of Ysidro, Alessandro's kinsman, was living a white family,—the family of a man who had pre-empted the greater part of the land on which the village stood. Ysidro, profiting by Alessandro's example, when he found that there was no help, that the American had his papers from the land-office, in all due form, certifying that the land was his, had given the man his option of paying for the house or having it burned down. The man had bought the house; and it was only the week before Felipe arrived, that Ysidro had set off, with all his goods and chattels, for Mesa Grande. He might possibly have told the Senor more, the people said, than any one now in the village could; but even Ysidro did not know where Alessandro intended to settle. He told no one. He went to the north. That was all they knew.
