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Updated: August 9, 2024
The man who attempts to come out gets a bullet through him." There had been shrill protestation in Mexican Spanish and Señora Moreno's strident tones when first he conveyed his orders to the master of the ranch, but Moreno himself had made no audible reply, and, as was conjectured, had enjoined silence on his wife, for after that outbreak she spoke no more.
"I will tell Father Salvierderra exactly what I took," she thought, "and ask him if it was too much." She did not like to think that all these clothes she must take had been paid for with the Senora Moreno's money. And Alessandro's violin. Whatever else she left, that must go. What would life be to Alessandro without a violin!
The troopers who followed the hoof-marks out about an eighth of a mile declared that, unwounded, both horse and rider were making the best of their way towards Moreno's ranch.
Don Miguel queried courteously. "Nothing, Don Miguel." Moreno's voice was strangely subdued. "It is a pleasure to serve you, señor." "You are very kind." And Don Miguel thrust the telegram, unopened, into his pocket. "However," he continued, "it will please me, Moreno, if you accept this slight token of my appreciation." And he handed the messenger a five-dollar bill.
Having passed the day at the Inn of the Stars, where they had been resting after the fatigues of the long night's ride, the Captain and José again directed their steps toward the town in the cool of the evening; José making for Pedro Romero's gambling-hall, the Captain for Carlos Moreno's theater, the Theatro Mexicano. Owing to the tardiness of his arrival, he found the house packed to the doors.
There they stood, summer and winter, rain and shine, the silent, solemn, outstretched arms, and became landmarks to many a guideless traveller who had been told that his way would be by the first turn to the left or the right, after passing the last one of the Senora Moreno's crosses, which he couldn't miss seeing.
All that Father Salvierderra could do, was to love Ramona the more himself, which he did heartily, and more and more each year, and small marvel at it; for a gentler, sweeter maiden never drew breath than this same Ramona, who had been all these years, save for Felipe, lonely in the Senora Moreno's house. Three watchers of Ramona now.
His heavy eyelids closed, and presently he was in dreamland. Meantime Sergeant Wing had busied himself in many a way. First he had gone to loosen old Moreno's bonds, enough, at least, to relieve his pain yet hold him securely. The soldier sitting drowsily on the rock beside the prisoner gladly accepted permission to put aside his carbine and go to sleep. "I'll watch him, Mat," said Wing.
Rage at the death of their leader's brother and ally, the thirst for vengeance, and the hope of securing such rich booty, all were augmented by Moreno's fiery assurances and encouragement. All the soldiers were gone, he said, except the "pig of a sergeant" and two drugged and senseless swine. Somebody among them was wounded. There were only three, possibly four, left.
A BAD beginning did not make a good ending of the Senora Moreno's sheep-shearing this year. One as superstitiously prejudiced against Roman Catholic rule as she was in favor of it, would have found, in the way things fell out, ample reason for a belief that the Senora was being punished for having let all the affairs of her place come to a standstill, to await the coming of an old monk.
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