"I am afraid we are indeed," sighed she sadly.
"Never mind," said he cheerfully, trying to keep up her spirits, which were failing somewhat at the strangeness of this lonely ride over lands unknown to her, under the immense vault of night. "Never mind that. Why, I have sown six bushels of wheat more than last year, and I am going to put in plenty of corn too. There is plenty of land, and if we have not enough the head Turquoises must give us some more. There is lots of water now in the ditch to sow a thousand bushels more than we used to."
"Yes," said Josefa thoughtfully. "I know how hard you have worked, dear Felipe, and that you will not be slack now, but are you quite sure of your father? Will he not turn us out?"
"How can he?" said the boy scornfully. "You know he is too poor to hire anyone to work for him. He cannot do without me. He is getting old and cannot put in a crop by himself, and Tomas is too young to be much good. It is I who do the work on the land. You know, Josefa, I would work ten times harder for you," and he pressed her closer to him again.
"Yes, yes, Felipe," she cried, "I know that. I am sure of that. I never could have trusted you so if I had not known you were good at home. But, Felipe dear, if they are cross to me at your house I shall hate it."
"They sha'n't be cross to you," he cried hotly. "I am a man now, and they must listen to me. If I support them they must do what I say—at least sometimes," he added, correcting himself. "Besides, my mother loves me, and when she sees how I love you, and how you are all the world to me, she will love you too; I know she will."
"Ah, perhaps not, Felipe," said the girl doubtfully. "You talk like a man. Women are not always like that, you know."
"But she will; she must," said Felipe decidedly. He had a comfortable masculine conviction that women's feelings were something that could always be put down or got round. He felt that he was acting a man's part now, and that it was time for him to assert himself. How could he feel otherwise with his arms round his sweetheart's waist, with the free sky above them and the broad mesas around, fifteen dollars in his pocket to pay the padre, and a good horse (he did not stop to think whose) to carry them to Ensenada! For the first time in his life he felt himself a man and free. They had left behind them the village with its narrow, cramping laws and customs, its parental tyrannies, and its hateful distinction of rich and poor. To Felipe, Ignacio with thirty cows was an odious monopolist. How delightful it was to have hoodwinked the watchful guardian of Josefa and baffled his miserly rival!
While the fugitives thus sped onward through the night, peace once more reigned supreme over the pueblo. The barking of the dogs at their departure had soon ceased, and no one took the trouble to inquire seriously into the source of their wrath. They might have been barking at a hungry coyote, come to explore the heaps of household refuse deposited day by day outside the village by the tidy squaws, or at some belated Mexican passing up or down the valley, or even at some stray donkey escaped from his owner's corral. At any rate, no one cared enough to prosecute his inquiries, and no movement was perceptible in the village till the first grey dawn.
Dawn caught the lovers descending the long hill that leads from the mesas down to the wide flats of the Rio Grande valley. The light was too dim as yet to do more than show vaguely the broad line of the wooded banks of the river, still some distance ahead of them. The sun rose as they were pushing across the sandy flats and passing through the poverty-stricken hovels of the Mexican village of La Boca, past a surprised-looking, unkempt peon, who blinked drowsily at the couple from his doorway. On they pressed and still onward, making for the point where the road forded the river.