Sometimes Ysidro earned a little by days' works in the fields or gardens; but he was so old, people did not want him if they could get anybody else, and nobody would pay him more than half wages.
When he could not get anything else to do, he made mats to sell. He made them out of the stems of a plant called yucca; but he had to go a long way to get these plants. It was slow, tedious work making the mats, and the store-keepers gave him only seventy-five cents apiece for them; so it was very little he could earn in that way.
Was not this a wretched life? Yet they seemed always cheerful, and they were as much attached to this poor little mud hovel as any of you can be to your own beautiful homes.
Would you think any one could have the heart to turn those two poor old people out of their home? It would not seem as if a human being could be found who would do such a thing. But there was. He was a lawyer; I could tell you his true name, but I will not. He had a great deal to do with all sorts of records and law papers, about land and titles and all such things.
There has always been trouble about the ownership of land in California, because first it belonged to Spain, and then it belonged to Mexico; and then we fought with Mexico, and Mexico gave it to us. So you can easily see that where lands are passed along in that way, through so many hands, it might often be hard to tell to whom they justly belonged.
Of course this poor old Ysidro did not know anything about papers. He could not read or write. The missionaries gave the land to his father more than a hundred years ago, and his father gave it to him, and that was all Ysidro knew about it.
Well, this lawyer was rummaging among papers and titles and maps of estates in San Gabriel, and he found out that there was this little bit of land near the church, which had been overlooked by everybody, and to which nobody had any written title. He went over and looked at it, and found Ysidro's house on it; and Ysidro told him he had always lived there; but the lawyer did not care for that.
Land is worth a great deal of money now in San Gabriel. This little place of Ysidro's was worth a good many hundred dollars; and this lawyer was determined to have it. So he went to work in ways I cannot explain to you, for I do not understand them myself; and you could not understand them even if I could write them out exactly: but it was all done according to law; and the lawyer got it decided by the courts and the judges in San Francisco that this bit of land was his.
When this was all done, he had not quite boldness enough to come forward himself, and turn the poor old Indians out. Even he had some sense of shame; so he slyly sold the land to a man who did not know anything about the Indians being there.