STRONGHAND.
It is impossible to imagine what terrors night brings with it under its thick mantle of mist, when the earth is no longer warmed by the sparkling sunbeams, and darkness reigns as supreme lord. At that time everything changes its aspects, and assumes in the flickering rays of the moon a fantastic appearance; the mountains seem loftier, the rivers wider and deeper; the trees resemble spectres—gloomy denizens of the tomb, watching for you to pass, and ready to clutch you in their fleshless arms. The imagination becomes heated, ideas grow confused, you tremble at the fall of a leaf, at the moaning of the night breeze, at the breakage of a branch; and, suffering from a horrible nightmare, you fancy at every moment that your last hour is at hand.
In the American forests, night has mysteries still more terrible. Beneath these immense domes of verdure, which the sun is powerless to pierce even at midday, and which remain constantly buried in an undecided clear obscure, the darkness may, so to speak, be felt; nothing could produce a flash in this chaos, excepting, perhaps, the luminous eyeballs of the wild beasts, that dart electric sparks from the thickets. Here Night is truly the mistress; the darkness is peopled by the sinister denizens of the forest, whom the obscurity drives from their unknown hiding places, and who begin their mournful prowling in search of prey. From each clump, from each ravine, issue confused sounds that have no name in human language; some clear and sharp, others hoarse and low, and others, again resembling miauling, or sardonic laughter, are blended in horrible concert. Then come the heavy footfalls on the ground, and the sullen flapping of birds' wings, as well as that incessant indistinct murmur, which is nought else but the continual buzz of the infinitely little, mingled with the hollow moan always heard in the desert, and which is only the breath of Nature travailing with her incomprehensible secrets. A night passed in the forest, without fire or weapons, is a terrible thing for a man; but the situation becomes far more frightful for a woman—a girl—a frail and delicate creature, accustomed to all the comforts of life, and unable to find within herself those thousand resources which a strong man, habituated to struggle, manages to procure, even in the most desperate situations.
Without dwelling further on the subject, the reader can imagine without difficulty the painful situation in which Doña Marianna found herself. So long as she could hear the sound of her horse's hoofs, as it fled at full speed, she stood with her body bent forward and outstretched ears, attaching herself to life, and, perchance, to hope, through the sound which was so familiar to her; but when it had died out in the distance, when a leaden silence once again weighed on her, the maiden shuddered, and, folding her hands on her chest, sank in a half-fainting condition at the foot of a tree—no longer thinking or hoping, but awaiting death. For what succour could she expect in the tomb of verdure, which, though so spacious, was not the less secure?
How long did she remain plunged in this state of prostration, which was only an anticipated death—one hour or five minutes? She could not have said. For wretched people, whom everything, even hope, abandons, time seems to stand still—minutes become ages, and an hour seems as if it would never end. All at once a feeble, almost indistinguishable sound smote her ear, and she instinctively listened. This sound grew louder with every second, and ere long she could not be mistaken; it was a rapid mad gallop through the forest. This sound Doña Marianna recognised with terror; for it was produced by the return of her horse. For the noble animal to come back with such velocity, it must be pursued, and that closely, by ferocious animals, such was Doña Marianna's idea, and, unfortunately, she only too soon recognised its correctness. The horse gave a snort of terror, which was immediately answered by two loud, sharp growls. Then, as if dreaming, Doña Marianna heard prodigious leaps; she saw ill-omened shadows pass before her with the rapidity of a lightning flash, and then a fearful struggle, in which groans of agony were mingled with yells of delight.
However terrible the maiden's position might be she felt tears slowly course down her cheeks—her horse, her last comrade, had succumbed—the liberty she had granted it had only precipitated its destruction. Strange to say, though, at this supreme moment Doña Marianna did not think for an instant that the death of her horse probably only preceded her own by a brief space, and that it was a sinister warning to her to prepare for being devoured.
When terror has attained a certain degree, a strange effect is produced upon the individual; animal life still exists in the sense that the arteries pulsate, the heart palpitates; but intellectual life is completely suspended; the brain, struck by a temporary paralysis, no longer receives the thought; the eyes look without seeing; the voice itself cannot force its way through the contracted throat; in a word, terror produces a partial catalepsy, by destroying for a period, longer or shorter, all the noblest faculties of man. Doña Marianna had reached such a point that, even had she possessed the means of flight, she would have been incapable of employing them, so thoroughly was every feeling extinct in her—even the instinct of self-preservation, which usually remains when all the others are destroyed.
Fortunately for the girl, the jaguars—for there were several of them—were to leeward; moreover, they had tasted blood, and this was a double reason which temporarily saved her, by depriving their scent of nearly all its delicacy. No other sound was audible, save that produced by the crushing of the horse's bones, which the wild beasts were devouring, mingled with growls of anger, when one of the banqueters tried to encroach on its neighbour's share of the booty. There could be no doubt about the fact; the animals enjoying this horrible repast were the jaguars, so long hunted by the tigrero, and which her evil star had brought across the maiden's track.
By degrees, Doña Marianna became—not familiarized with the danger hanging over her head, for that would have been impossible; but as, according to the law of nature, anything that reaches its culminating point must begin to descend, her first terror, though it did not abandon her, produced a strange phenomenon. She felt involuntarily attracted towards these horrible animals, whose black outlines she could distinguish moving in the darkness; suffering from a species of vertigo with her body bent forward, and her eyes immoderately dilated, without, even accounting for the strange feeling that urged her to act thus, she kept her eyes eagerly fixed upon them, following with a febrile interest their slightest movements, and experiencing at the sight a feeling of inexplicable pleasure, which produced a mingled shudder of joy and pain. Let who will try to explain this singular anomaly of human nature; but the fact is certain, and among our readers many will, doubtless, bear witness to its truth.
All at once the jaguars, which had hitherto been greedily engaged with the corpse of the horse, without thinking of anything beyond making a hearty meal, raised their heads and began sniffing savagely. Doña Marianna saw their eyes, sparkling like live coals, fixed upon her; she understood that she was lost; instinctively she closed her eyes to escape the fascination of those metallic eyeballs, which seemed in the darkness to emit electric sparks, and prepared to die. Still the jaguars did not stir; they were crouching on the remains of the horse, and, while continuing to gaze at the maiden, gracefully passed their paws over their ears with a purr of pleasure—in a word, they were coquettishly performing their toilet, appearing not only most pleased with the meal they had just ended, but with that which was awaiting them.
Still, in spite of the calmness affected by the two animals—for the cubs were sleeping, rolled up like kittens—it was evident that for some unknown motive they were restless; they lashed the ground with their weighty tails, or laid back their ears with a roar of anger, and, turning their heads in all directions, sniffed the air. They scented a danger; but of what nature was it? As for Doña Marianna, they appeared so sure of seizing her whenever they thought proper, and saw how harmless she was, that they contented themselves with crouching before her, and did not deign to advance a step. All at once the male, without stirring, uttered a sharp, quick yell. The female rose, bounded forward, seized one of her cubs in her mouth, and with one backward leap disappeared in a thicket; almost immediately she reappeared, and removed the second in the same way; then she returned calmly and boldly to place herself by the side of the male, whose anxiety had now attained formidable proportions.
At the same instant a flash traversed the air—a shot echoed far and wide—and the male jaguar writhed on the ground with a roar of agony. Almost immediately a man dashed from the tree at the foot of which Doña Mariana was crouching, stood in front of her, and received the shock of the female, which, at the shot, had instinctively bounded forward. The man tottered, but for all that kept his feet: there was a frightful struggle for a few minutes, and then the jaguar fell back with a last and fearful yell.
"Come," the hunter said, as he wiped on the grass the long machete with which he had stabbed the beast, "my arrangements were well made, but I fancy that I arrived only just in time. Now for the cubs; for I must not show mercy to any member of this horrible family."
Then this man, who seemed to possess the faculty of seeing in the darkness, walked without hesitation towards the spot where the female had hidden her cubs. He resolutely entered the thicket, and came out again almost immediately, holding a cub in either hand. He smashed their heads against the trunk of a tree, and threw the bodies on those of their father and mother.
"That is a very tidy butchery," he said; "but what on earth is Don Hernando's tigrero about, that I am obliged to do his work?"
While saying this, the hunter had collected all the dry wood within reach, struck a light, and within a few minutes a bright flame rose skywards. This duly accomplished, the stranger hurried to the assistance of Doña Marianna, who had fainted.
"Poor girl!" he muttered, with an accent of gentle pity, as he lifted her in his arms, and carried her to the fire; "How is it that the fright has not killed her?"
He gently laid her on some firs he had arranged for her bed, and gazed at her for a moment with a look of delight impossible to describe. But then he felt considerably embarrassed. Accustomed to the hardships of a desert life, and a skilful hunter as he had proved himself, this man was naturally a very poor sick nurse. He knew how, at a pinch, to dress a wound or extract a bullet, but he was quite ignorant how to bring a fainting woman round.
"Still, I cannot leave her in this state, poor girl," gazing on her sorrowfully; "but what am I to do?—how can I relieve her?"
At length he knelt down by the young lady's side, gently raised her lovely head, which he laid on his knee, and, opening with his dagger point her closed lips, poured in a few drops of Catalonian refino contained in a gourd. The effect of this remedy was instantaneous. A nervous tremour passed over the maiden's body; she heaved a sigh, and opened her lips. At the first moment she looked around her wildly, but ideas seemed gradually to return to her brain; her contracted features grew brighter, and fixing her eyes on the hunter, who was still bending over her, she muttered, with an expression of gratitude which made the young man's heart beat, "Stronghand!"
"Have you recognised me, señorita?" he exclaimed, with joyous surprise.
"Are you not my Providence?" she answered. "Do you not always arrive when I have to be saved from some fearful danger?"
"Oh, señorita!" he murmured, in great embarrassment.
"Thanks! Thanks, my saviour!" she continued, seizing his hand, and pressing it to her heart; "Thanks for having come to my help, Stronghand, for this time again. I should have been lost without you."
"I really believe," he said, with a smile, "that I arrived just in time."
"But how is it that you came so opportunely?" she asked, curiously, as she sat up and wrapped herself in the furs, for the feminine instinct had regained its power over her.
At this question, simple though it was, the hunter turned red.
"Oh," he said, "it is very simple. I have been hunting in these parts for some days past. I had tracked this family of jaguars, which I obstinately determined to kill, I know not why; but now I understand that it was a presentiment. After pursuing them all day, I had lost them out of sight, and was seeking their trail, when your horse enabled me to recover it."
"What!—my horse?" she exclaimed, in amazement.
"Do you not remember that it was I who gave you this poor Negro on our first meeting?"
"That is true," she murmured, as she let her eyes fall beneath the hunter's ardent glance.
"I saw you for a moment this morning when you were going to Sanchez' rancho."
"Ah!" she remarked.
"Sanchez is a friend, of mine," he continued, as if to explain his remark.
"Go on."
"On seeing the horse, which I at once recognised, I feared that some accident had happened to you, and set out after it. But the jaguars had scented it at the same time, and in spite of my thorough acquaintance with this forest, it was impossible for me to run as fast as they did. Luckily, they were hungry, and amused themselves by devouring poor Negro; otherwise I should not have arrived in time."
"But how was it that you came by this strange road?"
"In the first place, I was bound to save your life, as I knew that if I killed one jaguar, the other would leap upon you, in order to avenge it."
"But you ran the risk of being torn in pieces by the horrible animals," she said, with a shudder of retrospective terror, as she thought of the frightful dangers from which she had been so miraculously preserved.
"That is possible," he said, with an unmistakable expression of joy; "but I should have died to save you, and I desired nothing else."
The maiden made no reply. Pensive and blushing, she bowed her head on her chest. The hunter thought that he had offended her, and also remained silent and constrained. This silence lasted several minutes. At length Doña Marianna raised her head and offered her hand to the young man.
"Thank you again!" she said, with a gentle smile.
"Your heart is good. You did not hesitate to sacrifice your life for me, whom you scarce know, and I shall feel eternally grateful to you."
"I am too amply repaid for my services by these words, señorita," he replied, with marked hesitation; "still I have a favour to ask you, and I should be pleased if you would deign to grant it."
"Oh, speak, speak! Tell me what I can do!"
"I know not how to explain it; my request will appear to you so strange, so singular—perhaps so indiscreet."
"Speak; for I feel convinced that the favour you pretend to ask of me is merely another service you wish to render me."
Stronghand bent a searching glance on the maiden, and then seemed to make up his mind.
"Well, señorita," he said, "it is this:—should you ever, for any reason neither you nor I can foresee, need advice, or the help of a friend, either for yourself or any member of your family, do nothing till you have seen me, and explained to me unreservedly the motives that impelled you to come to me."
Doña Marianna reflected, while the hunter gazed at her attentively.
"Be it so," she at length said; "I promise to act as you wish. But how am I to find you?"
"Your foster brother is my friend, señorita; you will request him to lead you to me, and he will do so; or, if you prefer it, you can warn me through him to proceed to any place you may point out."
"Agreed."
"I can count on your promise?"
"Have I not passed my word?"
All at once a loud noise, resembling the passage of a wild beast, was heard in the forest glade; the maiden started, and instinctively clung to the hunter.
"Fear nothing, señorita," the latter said; "do you not recognise a friend?"
At the same moment the tigrero's dog leaped up to fondle her, followed almost instantaneously by Mariano.
"Heaven be blessed!" he said, joyfully, "She is saved!" and pressing the hunter's hand cordially, he added, "Thanks; it is a service I owe you, brother."