AFTER they reached the highway, and had briskly on for a mile, Alessandro suddenly put out his hand, and taking Baba by the , began turning him round and round in the road.  
“We will not go any farther in the road,” he said, “but I must our tracks here. We will go for a few paces.” The obedient Baba backed slowly, half dancing, as if he understood the trick; the Indian , too, curvetted awkwardly, then by a sudden bound under Alessandro's guidance, leaped over a rock to the right, and stood waiting further orders. Baba followed, and Capitan; and there was no trail to show where they had left the road.
 
After the pony round and round again in ever-widening circles, cantering off in one direction after another, then backing over the tracks for a few moments, Ramona following, though much bewildered as to what it all meant, Alessandro said: “I think now they will never discover where we left the road. They will ride along, seeing our tracks plain, and then they will be so sure that we would have kept straight on, that they will not notice for a time; and when they do, they will never be able to see where the trail ended. And now my Majella has a very hard ride before her. Will she be afraid?”
 
“Afraid.” laughed Ramona. “Afraid,—on Baba, and with you!”
 
But it was indeed a hard ride. Alessandro had to hide for the day in a canon he knew, from which a narrow trail led direct to Temecula,—a trail which was known to none but Indians. Once in this canon, they would be safe from all possible pursuit. Alessandro did not in the least share Ramona's confidence that no effort would be made to overtake them. To his mind, it appeared certain that the Senora would never accept the situation without making an attempt to recover at least the horse and the dog. “She can say, if she chooses, that I have stolen one of her horses,” he thought to himself bitterly; “and everybody would believe her. Nobody would believe us, if we said it was the Senorita's own horse.”
 
The head of the canon was only a couple of miles from the road; but it was in a nearly impenetrable of chaparral, where young oaks had grown up so high that their tops made, as it were, a second of thicket. Alessandro had never ridden through it; he had come up on foot once from the other side, and, forcing his way through the had found, to his surprise, that he was near the highway. It was from this canon that he had brought the ferns which it had so delighted Ramona to arrange for the decoration of the . The place was filled with them, growing almost in tropical luxuriance; but this was a mile or so farther down, and to reach that spot from above, Alessandro had had to let himself down a sheer wall of stone. The canon at its head was little more than a in the rocks, and the stream which had its rise in it was only a spring at the beginning. It was this precious water, as well as the of the spot, which had decided Alessandro to gain the place at all hazards and costs. But a wall of would not have seemed a much more insuperable obstacle than did this wall of chaparral, along which they rode, vainly searching for a break in it. It appeared to Alessandro to have thickened and knit even since the last spring. At last they made their way down a small side canon,—a sort of wing to the main canon; a very few rods down this, and they were as hidden from view from above as if the earth had swallowed them. The first red of the dawn were coming. From the eastern horizon to the zenith, the whole sky was like a dappled fleece.
 
“Oh, what a lovely place.” exclaimed Ramona. “I am sure this was not a hard ride at all, Alessandro! Is this where we are to stay?”
 
Alessandro turned a look upon her. “How little does the wood-dove know of rough places!” he said. “This is only the beginning; hardly is it even the beginning.”
 
Fastening his pony to a bush, he reconnoitred the place, disappearing from sight the moment he entered the chaparral in any direction. Returning at last, with a grave face, he said, “Will Majella let me leave her here for a little time? There is a way, but I can find it only on foot. I will not be gone long. I know it is near.”
 
Tears came into Ramona's eyes. The only thing she was the losing sight of Alessandro. He gazed at her anxiously. “I must go, Majella,” he said with emphasis. “We are in danger here.”
 
“Go! go! Alessandro,” she cried. “But, oh, do not be long!”
 
As he disappeared in the thicket, the tough crackling and snapping before him, it seemed to Ramona that she was again alone in the world. Capitan, too, bounded after Alessandro, and did not return at her call. All was still. Ramona laid her head on Baba's neck. The moments seemed hours. At last, just as the yellow light streamed across the sky, and the crimson fleeces turned in one second to gold, she heard Alessandro's steps, the next moment saw his face. It was with joy.
 
“I have found the trail!” he exclaimed; “but we must climb up again out of this; and it is too light. I like it not.”
 
With fear and trembling they urged their horses up and out into the open again, and a half-mile farther west, still keeping as close to the chaparral thicket as possible. Here Alessandro, who led the way, suddenly turned into the very thicket itself; no apparent opening; but the boughs parted and closed, and his head appeared above them; still the little pony was trotting bravely along. Baba snorted with displeasure as he into the same pathway. The thick-set, branches Ramona's cheeks. What was worse, they caught the nets swung on Baba's sides; presently these were held fast, and Baba began to rear and kick. Here was a real difficulty. Alessandro dismounted, cut the , and put both the packages securely on the back of his own pony. “I will walk,” he said. “It was only a little way longer I would have ridden. I shall lead Baba, where it is narrow.”
 
“Narrow,” indeed. It was from sheer terror, soon, that Ramona shut her eyes. A path, it seemed to her only a hand's-breadth wide,—a , path,—on the side of a , down which the stones rolled, and rolled, and rolled, echoing, far out of sight, as they passed; at each step the beasts took, the stones rolled and fell. Only the yucca-plants, with their sharp bayonet-leaves, had made shift to keep foothold on this precipice. Of these there were thousands; and their tall flower-stalks, fifteen, twenty feet high, set thick with the shining, smooth seed-cups, like satin in the sun. Below—hundreds of feet below—lay the canon bottom, a solid bed of chaparral, looking soft and even as a bed of . Giant sycamore-trees lifted their heads, at , above this; and far out in the plain glistened the loops of the river, whose sources, unknown to the world, seen of but few human eyes, were to be waters of comfort to these this day.
 
Alessandro was cheered. The trail was child's play to him. At the first tread of Baba's dainty steps on the rolling stones, he saw that the horse was as sure-footed as an Indian pony. In a few short hours, now, they would be all at rest. He knew where, under a sycamore-clump, there was running water, clear as crystal, and cold,—almost colder than one could drink,—and green grass too; plenty for two days' feed for the horses, or even three; and all California might be searched over in vain for them, once they were down this trail. His heart full of joy at these thoughts, he turned, to see Ramona , her lips parted, her eyes full of terror. He had forgotten that her riding had hitherto been only on the smooth ways of the valley and the plain, There she was so fearless, that he had had no about her nerves here; but she had dropped the , was clutching Baba's mane with both hands, and sitting unsteadily in her saddle. She had been too proud to cry out; but she was nearly beside herself with fright. Alessandro halted so suddenly that Baba, whose nose was nearly on his shoulder, came to so sharp a stop that Ramona uttered a cry. She thought he had lost his footing.
 
Alessandro looked at her in dismay. To dismount on that trail was impossible; moreover, to walk there would take more nerve than to ride. Yet she looked as if she could not much longer keep her seat.
 
“Carita,” he cried, “I was stupid not to have told you how narrow the way is; but it is safe. I can run in it. I ran all this way with the ferns on my back I brought for you.”
 
“Oh, did you?” Ramona, diverted, for the moment, from her contemplation of the abyss, and more by that change of her thoughts than she could have been by anything else. “Did you? It is , Alessandro. I never heard of such a trail. I feel as if I were on a rope in the air. If I could get down and go on my hands and knees, I think I would like it better. Could I?”
 
“I would not dare to have you get off, just here, Majella,” answered Alessandro, sorrowfully. “It is dreadful to me to see you suffer so; I will go very slowly. Indeed, it is safe; we all came up here, the whole band, for the sheep-shearing,—old Fernando on his horse all the way.”
 
“Really,” said Ramona, taking comfort at each word, “I will try not to be so silly. Is it far, dearest Alessandro?”
 
“Not much more as steep as this, dear, nor so narrow; but it will be an hour yet before we stop.”
 
But the worst was over for Ramona now, and long before they reached the bottom of the precipice she was ready to laugh at her fears; only, as she looked back at the lines of the path over which she had come,—little more than a brown thread, they seemed, flung along the rock,—she .
 
Down in the bottom of the canon it was still the dusky gloaming when they arrived. Day came late to this fairy spot. Only at high noon did the sun fairly shine in. As Ramona looked around her, she uttered an of delight, which satisfied Alessandro. “Yes,” he said, “when I came here for the ferns, I wished to myself many times that you could see it. There is not in all this country so beautiful a place. This is our first home, my Majella,” he added, in a tone almost solemn; and throwing his arms around her, he drew her to his breast, with the first feeling of joy he had experienced.
 
“I wish we could live here always,” cried Ramona.
 
“Would Majella be content?” said Alessandro.
 
“Very,” she answered.
 
He sighed. “There would not be land enough, to live here,” he said. “If there were, I too would like to stay here till I died, Majella, and never see the face of a white man again!” Already the instinct of the hunted and wounded animal to seek hiding, was striving in Alessandro's blood. “But there would be no food. We could not live here.” Ramona's exclamation had set Alessandro to thinking, however. “Would Majella be content to stay here three days now?” he asked. “There is grass enough for the horses for that time. We should be very safe here; and I fear very much we should not be safe on any road. I think, Majella, the Senora will send men after Baba.”
 
“Baba!” cried Ramona, aghast at the idea. “My own horse! She would not dare to call it stealing a horse, to take my own Baba!” But even as she , her heart her. The Senora would dare anything; would misrepresent anything; only too well Ramona knew what the very mention of the phrase “horse-stealing” meant all through the country. She looked piteously at Alessandro. He read her thoughts.
 
“Yes, that is it, Majella,” he said. “If she sent men after Baba, there is no knowing what they might do. It would not do any good for you to say he was yours. They would not believe you; and they might take me too, if the Senora had told them to, and put me into Ventura jail.”
 
“She's just wicked enough to do it!” cried Ramona. “Let us not stir out of this spot, Alessandro,—not for a week! Couldn't we stay a week? By that time she would have given over looking for us.”
 
“I am afraid not a week. There is not feed for the horses; and I do not know what we could eat. I have my gun, but there is not much, now, to kill.”
 
“But I have brought meat and bread, Alessandro,” said Ramona, earnestly, “and we could eat very little each day, and make it last!” She was like a child, in her and eagerness. Every other thought was for the time being driven out of her mind by the terror of being pursued. Pursuit of her, she knew, would not be in the Senora's plan; but the of Baba and Capitan, that was another thing. The more Ramona thought of it, the more it seemed to her a form of which would be likely to commend itself to the Senora's mind. Felipe might ............