Rumors about Felipe ran swiftly throughout the region. The
presence in the Cahuilla village of a rich Mexican gentleman who
spent gold like water, and kept mounted men riding day and night,
after everything, anything, he wanted for his sick sister, was an
event which in the atmosphere of that lonely country loomed into
colossal proportions. He had travelled all over California, with
four horses, in search of her. He was only waiting till she was well,
to take her to his home in the south; and then he was going to
arrest the man who had murdered her husband, and have him
hanged, -- yes, hanged! Small doubt about that; or, if the law
cleared him, there was still the bullet. This rich Senor would see
him shot, if rope were not to be had. Jim Farrar heard these tales,
and quaked in his guilty soul. The rope he had small fear of, for
well he knew the temper of San Diego County juries and judges;
but the bullet, that was another thing; and these Mexicans were
like Indians in their vengeance. Time did not tire them, and their
memories were long. Farrar cursed the day he had let his temper
get the better of him on that lonely mountainside; how much the
better, nobody but he himself knew,-- nobody but he and Ramona:
and even Ramona did not know the bitter whole.
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