CHAPTER XV
We must now return for a space to Inez and her captors. The unfortunate girl had but a very confused idea of where she was being conveyed. When the party reached the ranch she was taken from her horse, and carried rather than led, into the building.
She was taken down a narrow flight of steps into what appeared to her to be a subterranean apartment. And such, in fact it was, for the dwelling to which she had been taken had formerly been a portion of one of the old mission establishments, which are so numerous in California. The vaults beneath it, had doubtless been excavated as a place of retreat in case of attacks from hostile Indians, or as a depository for the sacred vessels of the church.
At length they reached the bottom of this subterranean flight of stairs, and then she was borne along a narrow passage of considerable length, the footsteps of her ruffianly abductor raising dismal and prolonged echoes. Her brain began to reel before the appalling idea that she was being carried into the bowels of the earth, perhaps to be immured for life in some dungeon, where the atmosphere would be close and damp—where moisture would trickle down the green and slimy walls—perhaps, to be deprived of life; or, maybe, and the thought made her shudder convulsively, subjected to the brutal lusts of some vile miscreant whose crimes had made him shrink into gloomy vaults from the light of day and the arm of retributive justice.
Her bearer seemed to be fatigued with her weight for he twice set her down and rested a few moments. At length the end of the journey appeared to be reached, and she was now laid down upon some blankets, and the gag removed from her mouth, and the covering from her head, and when she cast a glance of terrified apprehension around the place to which she had been brought she was alone and in profound and impenetrable darkness.
Almost frantically the unfortunate maiden gave vent to her long-suppressed emotions in a piercing shriek, and then sank into insensibility.
How long Inez lay in that state of insensibility which came upon her when she found herself alone and in utter darkness, in the place to which she had been borne, she had no means of ascertaining; but at length consciousness returned to the bewildered maiden by slow degrees. Back from the memory cells of her brain came the recollection of her retiring to bed the evening previous beneath her father’s roof, then the midnight abduction, the long and fearful ride, and her falling insensible in the dark and gloomy chamber in which she now was.
‘Where was she? Why was she brought there?’
She rose from the floor, and groping with her hands to avoid coming in contact with any projecting article of furniture, she made a few cautious steps in the direction of the door, by which she had been borne into the room by her abductor, but her hands encountered no tangible indication of an entrance.
The secret door, the darkness that seemed palpable, all must be parts of some infernal contrivance to shroud in secrecy and mystery some diabolical outrage, from the contemplation of the probable nature of which she shrank in horror. Through that concealed door which she could not discover, but which she yet knew to exist, the perpetrator would enter—those walls would shut in every sound, and deaden every shriek—that palpable darkness would veil the crime, and guard from the chance of future recognition the criminal! It was dreadful for one so innocent, so defenceless to stand there alone, enveloped in darkness, anticipating all that was horrible and revolting to her pure mind, and fearfully conscious of her utter powerlessness to evade her impending doom.