Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/221

 "Paper or no paper, I will come back, Gertrudis, if you will wait for me at San Fernando. Give me a year, and we will fill a basket of roses for our wedding day."

"A year, or ten years, Juan. I will be waiting here, if San Fernando stands."

"I am not a poor man in my own country, Gertrudis, and more than I own I can command. It will be a simple thing for me, if I ever reach the Mississippi, to go to Boston and sail with a ship for California. There is trade waiting anybody that will brave the barbarous laws of this country and sail a ship here freighted with the things that are needed, to be exchanged for the hides there is no market for in Mexico."

"It might be a hazardous undertaking, but you, but you, my brave, strong Juan, you do not know peril where another falls."

"The coast is unguarded, Tula; there isn't a ship in these waters that could turn back a Boston brig. We could lie off San Pedro—I looked it over the day we went for you—and run to sea if anything threatened from land. But I believe the authorities would wink at the law to get a cargo of yankee goods. Give me a year, then, Tula, and I will return."

"As long as San Fernando stands."

"Your trust will carry me through. It may be for the best, after all, that I must go."

"There was a forecast in your heart of this go-