Page:Helen Hunt--Ramona.djvu/246

240 “Took your horse!” cried Ramona, aghast. “Is that the law, too?”

“So Mr. Rothsaker told me. He said the judge had said he must take enough of our cattle and horses to pay all it had cost for the suit up in San Francisco. They didn't reckon the cattle at what they were worth, I thought; but they said cattle were selling very low now. There were not enough in all the village to pay it, so we had to make it up in horses; and they took mine. I was not there the day they drove the cattle away, or I would have put a ball into Benito's head before any American should ever have had him to ride. But I was over in Pachanga with my father. He would not stir a step for anybody but me; so I led him all the way; and then after he got there he was so ill I never left him a minute. He did not know me any more, nor know anything that had happened. I built a little hut of tule, and he lay on the ground till he died. When I put him in his grave, I was glad.”

“In Temecula?” asked Ramona.

“In Temecula.” exclaimed Alessandro, fiercely. “You don't seem to understand, Señorita. We have no right in Temecula, not even to our graveyard full of the dead. Mr. Rothsaker warned us all not to be hanging about there; for he said the men who were coming in were a rough set, and they would shoot any Indian at sight, if they saw him trespassing on their property.”

“Their property!” ejaculated Ramona.

“Yes; it is theirs,” said Alessandro, doggedly. “That is the law. They've got all the papers to show it. That is what my father always said,—if the Señor Valdez had only given him a paper! But they never did in those days. Nobody had papers. The American law is different.”

“It's a law of thieves!” cried Ramona.