"Do you suppose Benito can do anything that Baba cannot?" she
retorted, pressing on closely.
But Baba did not like it. Except for the stimulus of Benito ahead,
he would have given Ramona trouble.
"There is only a little, rough like this, dear," called Alessandro, as
he leaped a fallen tree, and halted to see how Baba took it.
"Good!" he cried, as Baba jumped it like a deer. "Good! Majella!
We have got the two best horses in the country. You'll see they are
alike, when daylight comes. I have often wondered they were so
much alike. They would go together splendidly."
After a few rods of this steep climbing they came out on the top of
the canon's south wall, in a dense oak forest comparatively free
from underbrush. "Now," said Alessandro, "I can go from here to
San Diego by paths that no white man knows. We will be near
there before daylight."
Already the keen salt air of the ocean smote their faces. Ramona
drank it in with delight. "I taste salt in the air, Alessandro," she
cried.
"Yes, it is the sea," he said. "This canon leads straight to the sea.
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