was to lie at night out of doors and look up at the stars?”
Indeed did Alessandro remember that night,—the first moment he had ever dared to dream of the Señorita Ramona as his own. “Yes, I remember it, my Majella,” he answered slowly; and in a moment more added, “That was the day Juan Can had told me that your mother was of my people; and that was the night I first dared in my thoughts to say that perhaps you might some day love me.”
“But where are you going to sleep, Alessandro?” said Ramona, seeing that he spread no more boughs. “You have made yourself no bed.”
Alessandro laughed. “I need no bed,” he said. “We think it is on our mother's lap we lie, when we lie on the ground. It is not hard, Majella. It is soft, and rests one better than beds. But to-night I shall not sleep. I will sit by this tree and watch.”
“Why, what are you afraid of?” asked Ramona.
“It may grow so cold that I must make a fire for Majella,” he answered. “It sometimes gets very cold before morning in these cañons; so I shall feel safer to watch to-night.”
This he said, not to alarm Ramona. His real reason for watching was, that he had seen on the edge of the stream tracks which gave him uneasiness. They were faint and evidently old; but they looked like the tracks of a mountain lion. As soon as it was dark enough to prevent the curl of smoke from being seen from below, he would light a fire, and keep it blazing all night, and watch, gun in hand, lest the beast return.
“But you will be dead, Alessandro, if you do not sleep. You are not strong,” said Ramona, anxiously.
“I am strong now, Majella,” answered Alessandro. And indeed he did already look like a renewed man, spite of all his fatigue and anxiety. “I am no longer
