But he derived small comfort from this.
Alessandro's face haunted him, and also the memory of Ramona's,
as she lay tossing and moaning in the wretched Cahuilla hovel. He
knew that only her continued illness, or her death, could explain
her not having come to the trial. The Indians would have brought
her in their arms all the way, if she had been alive and in
possession of her senses.
During the summer that she and Alessandro had lived in Saboba he
had seen her many times, and had been impressed by her rare
quality. His children knew her and loved her; had often been in her
house; his wife had bought her embroidery. Alessandro also had
worked for him; and no one knew better than Judge Wells that
Alessandro in his senses was as incapable of stealing a horse as
any white man in the valley. Farrar knew it; everybody knew it.
Everybody knew, also, about his strange fits of wandering mind;
and that when these half-crazed fits came on him, he was wholly
irresponsible. Farrar knew this. The only explanation of Farrar's
deed was, that on seeing his horse spent and exhausted from
having been forced up that terrible trail, he was seized by
ungovernable rage, and fired on the second, without knowing what
he did.
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