Ramona into the hut. "She's nigh abaout froze stiff!"

But the sight of her baby safe and smiling was a better restorative for
Ramona than anything else, and in a few moments she had fully recovered.
It was in a strange group she found herself. On a mattress, in the
corner of the hut, lay a young man apparently about twenty-five, whose
bright eyes and flushed cheeks told but too plainly the story of his
disease. The woman, tall, ungainly, her face gaunt, her hands hardened
and wrinkled, gown ragged, shoes ragged, her dry and broken light hair
wound in a careless, straggling knot in her neck, wisps of it flying
over her forehead, was certainly not a prepossessing figure. Yet spite
of her careless, unkempt condition, there was a certain gentle dignity
in her bearing, and a kindliness in her glance, which won trust and
warmed hearts at once. Her pale blue eyes were still keen-sighted; and
as she fixed them on Ramona, she thought to herself, "This ain't no
common Mexican, no how." "Be ye movers?" she said.

Ramona stared. In the little English she knew, that word was not
included. "Ah, Senora," she said regretfully, "I cannot talk in the
English speech; only in Spanish."

"Spanish, eh? Yer mean Mexican? Jos, hyar, he kin talk thet. He can't
talk much, though; 'tain't good fur him; his lungs is out er kilter.
Thet's what we're bringin' him hyar fur,--fur warm climate! 'pears
like it, don't it?" and she chuckled grimly, but with a side glance of
ineffable tenderness at the sick man. "Ask her who they be, Jos," she
added.

Jos lifted himself on his elbow, and fixing his shining eyes on Ramona,
said in Spanish, "My mother asks if you are travellers?"

"Yes," said Ramona. "We have come all the way from San Diego. We are
Indians."

"Injuns!" ejaculated Jos's mother. "Lord save us, Jos! Hev we reelly
took in Injuns? What on airth--Well, well, she's fond uv her baby's enny
white woman! I kin see thet; an', Injun or no Injun, they've got to stay
naow. Yer couldn't turn a dog out 'n sech weather's this. I bet thet
baby's father wuz white, then. Look at them blue eyes."

Ramona listened and looked intently, but could understand nothing.
Almost she doubted if the woman were really speaking English. She had
never before heard so many English sentences without being able to
understand one word. The Tennessee drawl so altered even the commonest
words, that she did not recognize them. Turning to Jos, she said gently,
"I know very