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- Author: Mayne Reid
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While speaking the colonel has poured out a glass of the distilled mezcal juice. This the peon takes from his hand, and, nothing loth, spills the liquor between his two rows of white glittering teeth.
Upon his stomach, late unused to it, the fiery spirit produce! an effect almost instantaneous; and the moment after he becomes freely communicative—if not so disposed before. But he has been; therefore the disclosures that follow are less due to the alcohol than to a passion every whit as inflammatory. He is acting under the stimulus of a revenge, terrible and long restrained.
“I’ve missed you from about here, Manuel,” says the colonel, in kindly tones, making his approaches with skill. “Where have you been all this while, my good man?”
“With my master,” is the peon’s reply.
“Ah, indeed! I thought your master had gone clear out of the country?”
“Out of the settled part of it only, señor.”
“Oh! he is still, then, within Mexican territory! I am glad to hear that. I was very sorry to think we’d lost such a good citizen and patriot as Don Valerian Miranda. True, he and I differ in our views as regards government; but that’s nothing, you know, Manuel. Men may be bitter political enemies, yet very good friends. By-the-way, where is the colonel now?”
Despite his apparent stolidity, the Indian is not so stupid as to be misled by talk like this. With a full knowledge of the situation—forced upon him by various events—the badinage of the brilliant militario does not for a moment blind him. Circumstances have given him enough insight into Uraga’s character and position to know that the tatter’s motives should somewhat resemble his own. He has long been aware that the Lancer colonel is in love with his young mistress, as much as he himself with her maid. Without this knowledge he might not have been there—at least, not with so confident an expectation of success in the design that has brought him hither. For design he has, deep, deadly, and traitorous.
Despite the influence of the aguardiente, fast loosening his tongue, he is yet somewhat cautious in his communications; and not until Uraga repeats the question does he make answer to it. Then comes the response, slowly and reluctantly, as if from one of his long-suffering race, who has discovered a mine of precious metal, and is being put to the torture to “denounce” it.
“Señor coronel,” he says, “how much will your excellency give to know where my master now is? I have heard that there’s a large bounty offered for Don Valerian’s head.”
“That is an affair that concerns the State. For myself, I’ve nothing personally to do with it. Still, as an officer of the Government, it is my duty to take what steps I can towards making your master a prisoner. I think I may promise a good reward to anyone who, by giving information, would enable me to arrest a fugitive rebel and bring him before the bar of justice. Can you do that?”
“Well, your excellency, that will depend. I’m only a poor man, and need money to live upon. Don Valerian is my master, and if anything were to happen to him I should lose my situation. What am I to do?”
“Oh, you’d easily get another, and better. A man of your strength— By the way, talking of strength, my good Manuel, you don’t seem to have quite recovered from your journey, which must have been long and fatiguing. Take another copita; you’re in need of it; ’twill do you good.”
Pressure of this sort put upon an Indian, be he bravo or manso, is rarely resisted. Nor is it in Manuel’s case. He readily yields to it, and tosses off another glass of the aguardiente.
Before the strong alcohol can have fairly filtered down into his stomach its fumes ascend to his skull.
The cowed, cautious manner—a marked characteristic of his race—now forsakes him; the check-strings of his tongue become relaxed, and, with nothing before his mind save his scheme of vengeance, and that of securing Conchita, he betrays the whole secret of Colonel Miranda’s escape—the story of his retreat across the Staked Plain, and his residence in the lone valley.
When he further informs Uraga about the two guests who have strayed to this solitary spot, and, despite his maudlin talk, minutely describes the men, his listener utters a loud cry, accompanied by a gesture of such violence as to overturn the table, sending bottle and glasses over the floor.
He does not stay to see the damage righted, but with a shout that reverberates throughout the whole house, summons his adjutant, and also the corporal of his guard.
“Cabo!” he cries, addressing himself to the latter in a tone at once vociferous and commanding; “take this man to the guard-house! And see you keep him there, so that he may be forthcoming when wanted. Take heed to hold him safe. If he be missing, you shall be shot ten minutes after I receive the report of it. You have the word of Gil Uraga for that.”
From the way the corporal makes prisoner the surprised peon, almost throttling him, it is evident he does not intend running any risk of being shot for letting the latter escape. The Indian appears suddenly sobered by the rough treatment he is receiving. But he is too much astonished to find speech for protest. Mute, and without offering the slightest resistance, he is dragged out through the open doorway, to all appearance more dead than alive.
“Come, Roblez!” hails his superior officer, as soon as the door has closed behind the guard corporal and his captive, “Drink with me! Drink! First to revenge! I haven’t had it yet, as I’d thought; that has all to be gone over again. But it’s sure now—surer than ever. After, we shall drink to success in love. Mine is not hopeless, yet. Lost! she is found again—found! Ah, my darling Adela!” he exclaims, staggering towards the portrait, and in tipsy glee contemplating it, “you thought to escape me; but no. No one can get away from Gil Uraga—friend, sweetheart, or enemy. You shall yet be enfolded in these arms; if not as my wife, my—margarita!”
“Oh that the desert were my dwelling-place,
With one fair spirit for my monitor!
That I might all forget the human race,
And, hating no one, love but only her.
Ye elements, in whose ennobling stir
I feel myself exalted, can ye not
Accord me such a being? Do I err
In deeming such inhabit many a spot—
Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot.”
Oft during his sojourn in the sequestered valley do these lines occur to the young prairie merchant. And vividly; for, in very truth, he has realised the aspiration of the poet.
But, though dwelling in a desert, far different is the scene habitually before his eyes. From the front of the humble chalet that has so opportunely afforded him a shelter, seated under the spreading branches of a pecan-tree, he can look on a landscape lovely as ever opened to the eyes of man—almost as that closed against our first parents when expelled from Paradise. Above he beholds a sapphire sky, scarce ever shadowed by a cloud; a sun whose fierce, fervid beams become softened as they fall amid the foliage of evergreen oaks; among clustering groves that show all the varied tints of verdure, disporting upon green glassy glades, and glinting into arbours overshadowed by the sassafras laurel, the Osage orange, and the wild China-tree, laced together by a trellis of grape vines. A lake in the centre of this luxurious vegetation, placid as sleep itself, only stirred by the webbed feet of waterfowl, or the wings of dipping swallows, with above and below a brawling rivulet, here and there showing cascades like the tails of white horses, or the skirts of ballroom belles floating through waltz or gallopade.
In correspondence with these fair sights are the sounds heard. By day the cooing of doves, the soft tones of the golden oriole, and the lively chatter of the red cardinal; by night the booming note of the bull-bat, the sonorous call of the trumpeter swan, and that lay far excelling all—the clear song of the polyglot thrush, the famed mocking-bird of America.
No wonder the invalid, recovering from his illness, after the long dark spell that has obscured his intellect, wrapping his soul, as it were, in a shroud—no wonder he fancies the scene to be a sort of Paradise, worthy of being inhabited by Peris. One is there he deems fair as Houri or Peri, unsurpassed by any ideal of Hindoo or Persian fable—Adela Miranda. In her he beholds beauty of a type striking as rare; not common anywhere, and only seen among women in whose veins courses the blue blood of Andalusia—a beauty perhaps not in accordance with the standard of taste acknowledged in the icy northland. The vigolite upon her upper lip might look a little bizarre in an assemblage of Saxon dames, just as her sprightly spirit would offend the sentiment of a strait-laced Puritanism.
It has no such effect upon Frank Hamersley. The child of a land above all others free from conventionalism, with a nature attuned to the picturesque, these peculiarities, while piquing his fancy, have fixed his admiration. Long before leaving his sick couch there has been but one world for him—that where dwells Adela Miranda; but one being in it—herself.
Surely it was decreed by fate that these two should love one another! Surely for them was there a marriage in heaven! Else why brought together in such a strange place and by such a singular chain of circumstances?
For himself, Hamersley thinks of this—builds hopes upon it deeming it an omen.
Another often occurs to him, also looking like fate. He remembers that portrait on the wall at Albuquerque, and how it had predisposed him in favour of the original. The features of Spano-Mexican type—so unlike those he had been accustomed to in his own country—had vividly impressed him. Gazing upon it he had almost felt love for the likeness. Then the description of the young girl given by her brother, with the incidents that led to friendly relations between him and Colonel Miranda, all had contributed to sow the seed of a tender sentiment in the heart of the young Kentuckian. It had not died out. Neither time nor absence had obliterated it. Far off—even when occupied with the pressing claims of business—that portrait-face had often appeared upon the retina of his memory, and often also in the visions of dreamland. Now that he has looked upon it in reality—sees it in all its blazing beauty, surrounded by scenes picturesque as its own expression, amid incidents romantic as his fancy could conjure up—now that he knows it as the face of her who has saved his life, is it any wonder the slight, tender sentiment first kindled by the painted picture should become stronger at the sight of the living original?
It has done this—become a passion that pervade his soul, filling his whole heart. All the more from its being the first he has ever felt—the first love of his life. And for this also all the more does he tremble as he thinks of the possibility of its being unreciprocated.
He has been calculating the chances in his favour every hour since consciousness returned to him. And from some words heard in that very hour has he derived greater pleasure, and draws more hope than from aught that has occurred since. Constantly does he recall that soliloquy, speech spoken under the impression that it did not reach his ears.
There has been nothing afterwards—neither
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