Ramona Part 41

Ramona knew many things that Alessandro did not. While he had been away on his hunts, she had had speech with many a one he never saw. She had gone to the store and post-office several times, to exchange baskets or lace for flour, and she had heard talk there which disquieted her. She did not believe that Saboba was safe. One day she had heard a man say, "If there is a drought we shall have the devil to pay with our stock before winter is over." "Yes," said another; "and look at those d.a.m.ned Indians over there in Saboba, with water running all the time in their village! It's a shame they should have that spring!"

Not for worlds would Ramona have told this to Alessandro. She kept it locked in her own breast, but it rankled there like a ceaseless warning and prophecy. When she reached home that day she went down to the spring in the centre of the village, and stood a long time looking at the bubbling water. It was indeed a priceless treasure; a long irrigating ditch led from it down into the bottom, where lay the cultivated fields,--many acres in wheat, barley, and vegetables. Alessandro himself had fields there from which they would harvest all they needed for the horses and their cow all winter, in case pasturage failed. If the whites took away this water, Saboba would be ruined. However, as the spring began in the very heart of the village, they could not take it without destroying the village. "And the Ravallos would surely never let that be done," thought Ramona. "While they live, it will not happen."

It was a sad day for Ramona and Alessandro when the kindly Hyers pulled up their tent-stakes and left the valley. Their intended three months had stretched into six, they had so enjoyed the climate, and the waters had seemed to do such good to Jos. But, "We ain't rich folks, yer know, not by a long ways, we ain't," said Aunt Ri; "an' we've got pretty nigh down to where Jeff an' me's got to begin airnin' suthin'. Ef we kin git settled 'n some o' these towns where there's carpenterin' to be done.

Jeff, he's a master hand to thet kind o' work, though yer mightn't think it; 'n I kin airn right smart at weavin'; jest give me a good carpet-loom, 'n I won't be beholden to n.o.body for vittles. I jest du love weavin'. I donno how I've contented myself this hull year, or nigh about a year, without a loom. Jeff, he sez to me once, sez he, 'Ri, do yer think yer'd be contented in heaven without yer loom?' an' I was free to say I didn't know's I should."

"Is it hard?" cried Ramona. "Could I learn to do it?" It was wonderful what progress in understanding and speaking English Ramona had made in these six months. She now understood nearly all that was said directly to her, though she could not follow general and confused conversation.

"Wall, 'tis, an' 'tain't," said Aunt Ri. "I don't s'pose I'm much of a jedge; fur I can't remember when I fust learned it. I know I set in the loom to weave when my feet couldn't reach the floor; an' I don't remember nothin' about fust learnin' to spool 'n' warp. I've tried to teach lots of folks; an' sum learns quick, an' some don't never learn; it's jest 's 't strikes 'em. I should think, naow, thet you wuz one o'

the kind could turn yer hands to anythin'. When we get settled in San Bernardino, if yer'll come down thar, I'll teach yer all I know, 'n' be glad ter. I donno's 't 's goin' to be much uv a place for carpet-weavin'

though, anywheres raound 'n this yer country; not but what thar's plenty o' rags, but folks seems to be wearin' 'em; pooty gen'ral wear, I sh'd say. I've seen more cloes on folks' backs hyar, thet wan't no more'n fit for carpet-rags, than any place ever I struck. They're drefful sheftless lot, these yere Mexicans; 'n' the Injuns is wuss. Naow when I say Injuns, I don't never mean yeow, yer know thet. Yer ain't ever seemed to me one mite like an Injun."

"Most of our people haven't had any chance," said Ramona. "You wouldn't believe if I were to tell you what things have been done to them; how they are robbed, and cheated, and turned out of their homes."

Then she told the story of Temecula, and of San Pasquale, in Spanish, to Jos, who translated it with no loss in the telling. Aunt Ri was aghast; she found no words to express her indignation.

"I don't bleeve the Guvvermunt knows anything about it." she said. "Why, they take folks up, n'n penetentiarize 'em fur life, back 'n Tennessee, fur things thet ain't so bad's thet! Somebody ought ter be sent ter tell 'em 't Was.h.i.+ngton what's goin' on hyar."

"I think it's the people in Was.h.i.+ngton that have done it," said Ramona, sadly. "Is it not in Was.h.i.+ngton all the laws are made?"

"I bleeve so!" said Aunt Ri, "Ain't it, Jos? It's Congress ain't 't, makes the laws?"

"I bleeve so." said Jos. "They make some, at any rate. I donno's they make 'em all."

"It is all done by the American law," said Ramona, "all these things; n.o.body can help himself; for if anybody goes against the law he has to be killed or put in prison; that was what the sheriff told Alessandro, at Temecula. He felt very sorry for the Temecula people, the sheriff did; but he had to obey the law himself. Alessandro says there isn't any help."

Aunt Ri shook her head. She was not convinced. "I sh'll make a business o' findin' out abaout this thing yit," she said. "I think yer hain't got the rights on't yit. There's cheatin' somewhere!"

"It's all cheating." said Ramona; "but there isn't any help for it, Aunt Ri. The Americans think it is no shame to cheat for money."

"I'm an Ummeriken!" cried Aunt Ri; "an' Jeff Hyer, and Jos! We're Ummerikens! 'n' we wouldn't cheat n.o.body, not ef we knowed it, not out er a doller. We're pore, an' I allus expect to be, but we're above cheatin'; an' I tell you, naow, the Ummeriken people don't want any o'

this cheatin' done, naow! I'm going to ask Jeff haow 'tis. Why, it's a burnin' shame to any country! So 'tis! I think something oughter be done abaout it! I wouldn't mind goin' myself, ef thar wan't anybody else!"

A seed had been sown in Aunt Ri's mind which was not destined to die for want of soil. She was hot with shame and anger, and full of impulse to do something. "I ain't n.o.body," she said; "I know thet well enough,--I ain't n.o.body nor nothin'; but I allow I've got suthin' to say abaout the country I live in, 'n' the way things hed oughter be; or 't least Jeff hez; 'n' thet's the same thing. I tell yer, Jos, I ain't goin' to rest, nor ter give yeou 'n' yer father no rest nuther, till yeou find aout what all this yere means she's been tellin' us."

But sharper and closer anxieties than any connected with rights to lands and homes were pressing upon Alessandro and Ramona. All summer the baby had been slowly drooping; so slowly that it was each day possible for Ramona to deceive herself, thinking that there had been since yesterday no loss, perhaps a little gain; but looking back from the autumn to the spring, and now from the winter to the autumn, there was no doubt that she had been steadily going down. From the day of that terrible chill in the snow-storm, she had never been quite well, Ramona thought. Before that, she was strong, always strong, always beautiful and merry, Now her pinched little face was sad to see, and sometimes for hours she made a feeble wailing cry without any apparent cause. All the simple remedies that Aunt Ri had known, had failed to touch her disease; in fact, Aunt Ri from the first had been baffled in her own mind by the child's symptoms. Day after day Alessandro knelt by the cradle, his hands clasped, his face set. Hour after hour, night and day, indoors and out, he bore her in his arms, trying to give her relief. Prayer after prayer to the Virgin, to the saints, Ramona had said; and candles by the dozen, though money was now scant, she had burned before the Madonna; all in vain. At last she implored Alessandro to go to San Bernardino and see a doctor. "Find Aunt Ri," she said; "she will go with you, with Jos, and talk to him; she can make him understand. Tell Aunt Ri she seems just as she did when they were here, only weaker and thinner."

Alessandro found Aunt Ri in a sort of shanty on the outskirts of San Bernardino. "Not to rights yit," she said,--as if she ever would be.

Jeff had found work; and Jos, too, had been able to do a little on pleasant days. He had made a loom and put up a loom-house for his mother,--a floor just large enough to hold the loom, rough walls, and a roof; one small square window,--that was all; but if Aunt Ri had been presented with a palace, she would not have been so well pleased.

Already she had woven a rag carpet for herself, was at work on one for a neighbor, and had promised as many more as she could do before spring; the news of the arrival of a rag-carpet weaver having gone with despatch all through the lower walks of San Bernardino life. "I wouldn't hev bleeved they hed so many rags besides what they're wearin'," said Aunt Ri, as sack after sack appeared at her door. Already, too, Aunt Ri had gathered up the threads of the village life; in her friendly, impressionable way she had come into relation with scores of people, and knew who was who, and what was what, and why, among them all, far better than many an old resident of the town.

When she saw Benito galloping up to her door, she sprang down from her high stool at the loom, and ran bareheaded to the gate, and before Alessandro had dismounted, cried: "Ye're jest the man I wanted; I've been tryin' to 'range it so's we could go down 'n' see yer, but Jeff couldn't leave the job he's got; an' I'm druv nigh abaout off my feet, 'n' I donno when we'd hev fetched it. How's all? Why didn't yer come in ther wagon 'n' fetch 'em 'long? I've got heaps ter tell yer. I allowed yer hadn't got the rights o' all them things. The Guvvermunt ain't on the side o' the thieves, as yer said. I knowed they couldn't be,' an'

they've jest sent out a man a purpose to look after things fur yer,--to take keer o' the Injuns 'n' nothin' else. That's what he's here fur. He come last month; he's a reel nice man. I seen him 'n' talked with him a spell, last week; I'm gwine to make his wife a rag carpet. 'N' there's a doctor, too, to 'tend ter yer when ye're sick, 'n' the Guvvermunt pays him; yer don't hev to pay nothin'; 'n' I tell yeow, thet's a heap o'

savin', to git yer docterin' fur nuthin'!"

Aunt Ri was out of breath. Alessandro had not understood half she said.

He looked about helplessly for Jos. Jos was away. In his broken English he tried to explain what Ramona had wished her to do.

"Doctor! Thet's jest what I'm tellin' yer! There is one here's paid by the Guvvermunt to 'tend to the Injuns thet's sick. I'll go 'n' show yer ter his house. I kin tell him jest how the baby is. P'r'aps he'll drive down 'n' see her!"

Ah! if he would! What would Majella say, should she see him enter the door bringing a doctor!

Luckily Jos returned in time to go with them to the doctor's house as interpreter. Alessandro was bewildered. He could not understand this new phase of affairs, Could it be true? As they walked along, he listened with trembling, half-incredulous hope to Jos's interpretation of Aunt Ri's voluble narrative.

The doctor was in his office. To Aunt Ri's statement of Alessandro's errand he listened indifferently, and then said, "Is he an Agency Indian?"

"A what?" exclaimed Aunt Ri.

"Does he belong to the Agency? Is his name on the Agency books?"

"No," said she; "he never heern uv any Agency till I wuz tellin' him, jest naow. We knoo him, him 'n' her, over 'n San Jacinto. He lives in Saboba. He's never been to San Bernardino sence the Agent come aout."

"Well, is he going to put his name down on the books?" said the doctor, impatiently. "You ought to have taken him to the Agent first."

"Ain't you the Guvvermunt doctor for all Injuns?" asked Aunt Ri, wrathfully. "Thet's what I heerd."

"Well, my good woman, you hear a great deal, I expect, that isn't true;"

and the doctor laughed coa.r.s.ely but not ill-naturedly, Alessandro all the time studying his face with the scrutiny of one awaiting life and death; "I am the Agency physician, and I suppose all the Indians will sooner or later come in and report themselves to the Agent; you'd better take this man over there. What does he want now?"

Aunt Ri began to explain the baby's case. Cutting her short, the doctor said, "Yes, yes, I understand. I'll give him something that will help her;" and going into an inner room, he brought out a bottle of dark-colored liquid, wrote a few lines of prescription, and handed it to Alessandro, saying, "That will do her good, I guess."

"Thanks, Senor, thanks," said Alessandro.

The doctor stared. "That's the first Indian's said 'Thank you' in this office," he said. "You tell the Agent you've brought him a rara avis."

"What's that, Jos?" said Aunt Ri, as they went out.

"Donno!" said Jos. "I don't like thet man, anyhow, mammy. He's no good."

Alessandro looked at the bottle of medicine like one in a dream. Would it make the baby well? Had it indeed been given to him by that great Government in Was.h.i.+ngton? Was he to be protected now? Could this man, who had been sent out to take care of Indians, get back his San Pasquale farm for him? Alessandro's brain was in a whirl.

From the doctor's office they went to the Agent's house. Here, Aunt Ri felt herself more at home.

"I've brought ye thet Injun I wuz tellin' ye uv," she said, with a wave of her hand toward Alessandro. "We've ben ter ther doctor's to git some metcen fur his baby. She's reel sick, I'm afeerd."

The Agent sat down at his desk, opened a large ledger, saying as he did so, "The man's never been here before, has he?"

"No," said Aunt Ri.

"What is his name?"

Jos gave it, and the Agent began to write it in the book. "Stop him."

cried Alessandro, agitatedly to Jos. "Don't let him write, till I know what he puts my name in his book for!"

"Wait," said Jos. "He doesn't want you to write his name in that book.

He wants to know what it's put there for."

Wheeling his chair with a look of suppressed impatience, yet trying to speak kindly, the Agent said: "There's no making these Indians understand anything. They seem to think if I have their names in my book, it gives me some power over them."