XIX.
AFTER leaving Father Gaspara's door, Alessandro and Ramona rode slowly through the now deserted plaza, and turned northward, on the river road, leaving the old Presidio walls on their right. The river was low, and they forded it without difficulty.
“I have seen this river so high that there was no fording it for many days,” said Alessandro; “but that was in spring.”
“Then it is well we came not at that time,” said Ramona, “All the times have fallen out well for us, Alessandro,—the dark nights, and the streams low; but look! as I say it, there comes the moon!” and she pointed to the fine threadlike arc of the new moon, just visible in the sky. “Not big enough to do us any harm, however,” she added. “But, dear Alessandro, do you not think we are safe now?”
“I know not, Majella, if ever we may be safe; but I hope so. I have been all day thinking I had gone foolish last night, when I told Mrs. Hartsel that I was on my way to San Pasquale. But if men should come there asking for us, she would understand, I think, and keep a still tongue. She would keep harm from us if she could.”
Their way from San Diego to San Pasquale lay at first along a high mesa, or table-land, covered with low shrub growths; after some ten or twelve miles of this, they descended among winding ridges, into a narrow valley,—the Poway valley. It was here that the Mexicans made one of their few abortive efforts to repel the American forces.
