THE AVENGER.
In order fully to comprehend the ensuing facts, we are constrained to relate here an event which occurred about twenty years before our story commences.
At that remote period Texas belonged, if not de facto, still de jure, to Mexico. Marvellously situated on the Mexican Gulf, endowed with a temperate climate and a fertile soil, which, if tickled with a spade, laughs with a harvest, Texas is assuredly one of the richest countries in the New World. Hence, the Government, foreseeing the future of this province, did all in its power to populate it.
Unfortunately, it effected very little, incapable as it was of populating even Mexico. Still, a considerable number of Mexicans went across and settled in Texas.
Among the men who let themselves be tempted by the magic promises of this virgin soil were two brothers, Don Stefano and Don Pacheco de Irala, of the best families in the province of Nuevo-León. The active part they played in the war of independence had ruined them, and not obtaining from the liberals, after the triumph of their cause, the reward they had a right to expect for the services they had rendered—Don Gregorio, their father, having even paid with his life for his attachment to the party—they had no other resource but settling in Texas, a new country, in which they had hopes of speedily re-establishing their fortunes.
Owing to their thorough knowledge of agriculture, and their intelligence, they soon gave a considerable extension to their settlement, which they had the pleasure of seeing daily grow more prosperous, in defiance of Indians, buffaloes, tempests, and illness. The Hacienda del Papagallo (Parrot farm), inhabited by the two brothers, was, like all the houses in this country, which are continually exposed to the inrods of the savages, a species of fortress built of carved stone and surrounded by a thick and embrasured wall, with a gun at each corner: it stood on the top of a rather lofty hill, and commanded the plain for a considerable distance.
Don Pacheco, the elder of the two brothers, was married and had two daughters, little creatures scarce three years of age, whose joyous cries and ravishing smiles filled the interior of the hacienda with gaiety. Hardly three leagues from the farm was another, occupied by Northern Americans, adventurers of more than dubious conduct, who had come to the country no one knew how, and who, since they inhabited it, led a mysteriously problematical existence, which gave birth to the strangest and most contradictory reports about them.
It was whispered that, under the guise of peaceful farmers, these men maintained relations with the bandits who flocked into the country from every side, and that they were the secret chiefs of a dangerous association of malefactors, who had ravaged the country for several years past with impunity. On several occasions the two brothers had disputes with these unpleasant neighbours about cattle that had disappeared and other pecadillos of the same nature. In a word, they lived with them on the footing of an armed peace.
A few days previous to the period to which this chapter refers, Don Pacheco had a sharp altercation with one of these Americans of the name of Wilkes, about several slaves the fellow tried to seduce from hacienda, and the result was, that Don Pacheco, naturally hot-tempered, gave him a tremendous horsewhipping. The other swallowed the insult without making any attempt to revenge himself; but he had withdrawn, muttering the most terrible threats against Don Pacheco.
Still, as we have said, the affair had no further consequences. Nearly a month had passed, and the brothers had heard nothing from their neighbours. On the evening of the day which we take up our narrative, Don Stefano, mounted on a mustang, was preparing to leave the hacienda, to ride to Nacogdoches, where important business called him.
"Then, you are really going?" Don Pacheco said.
"At once: you know that I put off the journey as long as I could."
"How long do you expect to be absent?"
"Four days, at the most."
"Good: we shall not expect you, then, before."
"Oh, it is very possible I may return sooner."
"Why so?"
"Shall I tell you? Well, I do not feel easy in mind."
"What do you mean?"
"I am anxious, I know not why. Many times I have left you, brother, for longer journeys than this—"
"Well!" Don Pacheco interrupted him.
"I never felt before as I do at this moment."
"You startle me, brother. What is the matter with you?"
"I could not explain it to you. I have a foreboding of evil. In spite of myself, my heart is contracted on leaving you."
"That is strange," Don Pacheco muttered, suddenly becoming thoughtful. "I do not dare confess it to you, brother; but I have just the same feeling as yourself, and am afraid I know not why."
"Brother," Don Stefano replied in a gloomy voice, "you know how we love each other. Since our father's death, we have constantly shared everything—joy and sorrow, fortune or reverses. Brother, this foreboding is sent us from Heaven. A great danger threatens us."
"Perhaps so," Don Pacheco said sadly.
"Listen, brother," Don Stefano remarked, resolutely. "I will not go."
And he made a movement to dismount, but his brother checked him.
"No," he said, "we are men. We must not, then, let ourselves be conquered by foolish thoughts, which are only chimeras produced by a diseased imagination."
"No. I prefer to remain here a few days longer."
"You told me yourself that your interests claim your presence at Nacogdoches. Go, but return as soon as possible."
There was a silence, during which the brothers reflected deeply. The moon rose pallid and mournful on the horizon.
"That Wilkes is a villain," Don Stefano went on; "who knows whether he is not waiting my departure to attempt on the hacienda one of those terrible expeditions of which he is accused by the public voice?"
Don Pacheco began laughing, and, stretching out his hand in the direction of the farm, whose white walls stood out clearly on the dark blue sky, he said:—
"The Papagallo has too hard sides for those bandits. Go in peace, brother, they will not venture it."
"May Heaven grant it!" Don Stefano murmured.
"Oh, those men are cowards, and I inflicted a well-merited punishment on the scoundrel."
"Agreed."
"Well?"
"It's precisely because those men are cowards that I fear them. Canarios! I know as well as you that they will not dare openly to attack you."
"What have I to fear, then?" Don Pacheco interrupted him.
"Treachery, brother."
"Why, have I not five hundred devoted peons on the hacienda? Go without fear, I tell you."
"You wish it?"
"I insist on it."
"Good-bye, then," Don Stefano said, stifling a sigh. "Good-bye, brother, till we meet again."
Don Stefano dug his spurs into his horse's flanks and started at full speed. For a long time his brother followed the rider's outline on the sandy road, till he turned a corner, and Don Pacheco re-entered the hacienda with an anxious heart.
Don Stefano, stimulated by the vague alarm that oppressed him, only stopped the absolutely necessary period at Nacogdoches to finish his business, and hurried back scarce two days after his departure. Strangely enough, the nearer he drew to the farm, the greater his anxiety grew, though it was impossible for him to explain the causes of the feeling.
Around home all was tranquil—the sky, studded with an infinite number of glistening stars, spread over his head its dome of azure; at intervals, the howling of the coyote was mingled with the hoarse lowing of the buffaloes, or the roars of the jaguars in quest of prey.
Don Stefano still advanced, bowed over his horse's neck, with pale forehead and heaving chest, listening to the numerous sounds of the solitude, and trying to pierce with vivid glance the darkness that hid from him the point to which he was hurrying with the speed of a tornado.
After a ride of six hours, the Mexican suddenly uttered a yell of agony, as he violently pulled up his panting steed. Before him the Hacienda del Papagallo appeared, surrounded by a belt of flames. The magnificent building was now only a shapeless pile of smoking ruins, reflecting its ruddy flames on the sky for a considerable distance.
"My brother! My brother!" Don Stefano shrieked in his despair.
And he rushed into the furnace.
A mournful silence brooded over the hacienda. At every step the Mexican stumbled over corpses half-consumed by the flames and horribly mutilated. Mad with grief and rage, with his hair and clothes burned by the flames that enveloped him, Don Stefano continued his researches.
What was he seeking in this accursed charnel house? He did not himself know, but still he sought. Not a shriek, not a sigh! On all sides the silence of death!—that terrible silence which makes the heart leap, and ices the bravest man with fear!
What had taken place during Don Stefano's absence?—What enemy had produced these ruins in a few short hours?
The first beams of dawn were beginning to tinge the horizon with their fugitive opaline tints, and the sky gradually assumed that ruddy hue which announces sunrise. Don Stefano had passed the whole night in vain and sterile researches, and though he had constantly interrogated the ruins, they remained dumb.
The Mexican, overcome by grief, and compelled to acknowledge his own impotence, gave Heaven a glance of reproach and despair, and throwing himself on the calcined ground, he hid his face in his hands, and wept! The sight of this young, handsome, brave man weeping silently over the ruins whose secret he had been unable to discover must have been heartrending.
Suddenly, Don Stefano started up, with flashing eye, and a face on which indomitable energy was imprinted.
"Oh!" he shouted, in a voice that resembled the howl of a wild beast, "vengeance! Vengeance!"
A voice that seemed to issue from the tomb answered his, and Don Stefano turned round with a shudder. Two yards from him, his brother, pale, mutilated, and bleeding, was leaning against a fallen wall, like a spectre.
"Ah!" the Mexican exclaimed, as he rushed toward him.
"You come too late, brother," the wounded man murmured, in a voice choking with the death rattle.
"Oh! I will save you, brother," Don Stefano said, desperately.
"No," Don Pacheco replied sadly, shaking his head, "I am dying, brother; your foreboding did not deceive you."
"Hope!"
And, raising his brother in his powerful arms, he prepared to pay him that attention which his condition seemed to demand.
"I am dying, I tell you—all is useless," Don Pacheco continued, in a voice that momentarily grew weaker. "Listen to me."
"Speak!"
"Say that you will avenge me, brother?" the dying man asked, his eye emitting a fierce flash.
"I will avenge you," Don Stefano answered; "I swear it by our Saviour!"
"Good! I have been assassinated by men dressed as Apache Indians, but among them I fancied I recognised—"
"Whom?"
"Wilkes the squatter, and Samuel, his accomplice."
"Enough! Where is your wife?"
"Dead! My daughters, save them!" Don Pacheco murmured.
"Where are they?"
"Carried off by the bandits."
"Oh! I will discover them, even if hidden in the bowels of the earth! Did you not recognise anyone else?"
"Yes, yes, one more," the dying man said, in an almost unintelligible voice.
Don Stefano bent over his brother in order to hear more distinctly.
"Who? Tell me—brother, speak in Heaven's name!"
The wounded man made a supreme effort.
"There was another man, formerly a peon of ours."
"His name?" Don Stefano asked eagerly.
Don Pacheco was growing weaker, his face had assumed an earthy hue, and his eyes could no longer distinguish objects.
"I cannot remember," he sighed rather than said.
"One word, only one, brother."
"Yes, listen—it is Sand—ah!"
He suddenly fell back, uttering a terrible cry, and clutching at his brother's arm; he writhed in a final convulsion, and all was over.
Don Stefano knelt by his brother's corpse, embraced it tenderly, piously closed its eyes, and then got up. He dug a grave with his machete among the smoking ruins of the hacienda, in which he laid his brother's body. When this sacred duty was performed, he addressed an ardent prayer to the Deity in behalf of the sinful man who was about to appear before His judgment seat, and then, stretching out his arms over the grave, he said in a loud, distinct voice—
"Sleep in peace, brother, sleep in peace. I promise you a glorious revenge."
Don Stefano slowly descended the hill, found his horse, which had spent the night in nibbling the young tree shoots, and started at a gallop, after giving a parting glance to these ruins, under which all his happiness lay buried.
No one ever heard of Don Stefano again in Texas: was he dead too, without taking that vengeance which he had sworn to achieve? No one could say. The Americans had also disappeared since that awful night and left no sign. In these primitive countries things are soon forgotten: life passes away there so rapidly, and is so full of strange incidents, that the events of the morrow obliterate the remembrances of those of the eve. Ere long the population of Texas had completely forgotten this terrible catastrophe.
Every year, however, a man appeared on the hill where the hacienda once stood, whose ruins the luxuriant vegetation of the country had long ago overgrown; this man seated himself on the silent ruins, and passed the whole night with his face buried in his hands.
"What did he there?"
"Whence did he come?"
"Who was he?"
These three questions ever remained unanswered, for at daybreak the stranger rode off again, not to return till the following year on the anniversary of the frightful tragedy. One strange fact was proved however, after every visit paid by this man—one, two, or even sometimes three horribly mutilated human heads were found lying on the hill.
What demoniac task was this incomprehensible being performing? Was it Don Stefano pursuing his vengeance?
We shall probably see presently.