,
when it was made clear to him that this was what the Indian father
expected.

"Good Lord!" he said, turning to a crony who chanced to be lounging in
the office. "Listen to that beggar, will you? I wonder what he thinks
the Government pays me a year for doctoring Indians!"

Alessandro listened so closely it attracted the doctor's attention. "Do
you understand English?" he asked sharply.

"A very little, Senor," replied Alessandro.

The doctor would be more careful in his speech, then. But he made it
most emphatically clear that the thing Alessandro had asked was not
only out of the question, but preposterous. Alessandro pleaded. For the
child's sake he could do it. The horse was at the door; there was no
such horse in San Bernardino County; he went like the wind, and one
would not know he was in motion, it was so easy. Would not the doctor
come down and look at the horse? Then he would see what it would be like
to ride him.

"Oh, I've seen plenty of your Indian ponies," said the doctor. "I know
they can run."

Alessandro lingered. He could not give up this last hope. The tears came
into his eyes. "It is our only child, Senor," he said. "It will take you
but six hours in all. My wife counts the moments till you come! If the
child dies, she will die."

"No! no!" The doctor was weary of being importuned. "Tell the man it
is impossible! I'd soon have my hands full, if I began to go about the
country this way. They'd be sending for me down to Agua Caliente next,
and bringing up their ponies to carry me."

"He will not go?" asked Alessandro.

The interpreter shook his head. "He cannot," he said.

Without a word Alessandro left the room. Presently he returned. "Ask him
if he will come for money?" he said. "I have gold at home. I will pay
him, what the white men pay him."

"Tell him no man of any color could pay me for going sixty miles!" said
the doctor.

And Alessandro departed again, walking so slowly, however, that he heard
the coarse laugh, and the words, "Gold! Looked like it, didn't he?"
which followed his departure from the room.

When Ramona saw him returning alone, she wrung her hands. Her heart
seemed breaking. The baby had lain in a sort of stupor since noon;
she was plainly worse, and Ramona had been going from the door to the
cradle, from the cradle to the door, for an hour, looking each moment
for the hoped-for aid. It had not once crossed her mind that the doctor
would not come. She had accept