I was not insensible to the cold which began to prevail in this deep valley, and I threw over my shoulders the manga that the Biscayan had given me in exchange for my cloak. I began to share in my servant's fears; but I judged it better to keep my anxiety to myself, and continued to advance, certain besides of being in the right road, although it was becoming rapidly darker and darker. Abrupt precipitous rocks, with whitened crests, rose before and on each side of us. Already the mountains were throwing their long shadows across the valleys; the evening mist was mounting in light flakes from the deep bottoms in which the brooks purled to the mountain tops that the sun was touching with his departing beams; and the Giant Peak, which seemed to me so near, rose always at the same distance, encircled with a purple halo, overtopping the neighboring heights with an appearance of gloomy majesty, as if placed there as the guardian of the mysterious treasures inclosed in the bowels of the Sierra.
"You know the proverb, master," continued Cecilio: "those who go to seek wool often come back shorn. Something tells me that we have got ourselves into a terrible mess. Who can this Don Tomas be whom every body on the road knows, but whom we can never catch? Some bandit chief, I fear, who has his own reasons for not showing himself; and I think," he continued, in a low tone, "that these gorges are not so solitary as they seem. Mother of Jesus! did you not see the gleam of a musket-barrel among those branches up there?"
I carried my eyes involuntarily in the direction pointed out by Cecilio; it was nothing but the wind agitating the thick branches which crowned the crest of a precipice, and I could not see far on account of the fog. I affected to laugh at my servant's fears, when I thought I heard a sound resembling the click of a gun-lock. Our horses could advance but slowly, owing to the rocks with which the bottom of the ravine was covered. I quickened my pace, however. All at once a flash burst forth over our heads, the whiz of a ball shot past our ears, and the report of a gun echoed through the ravine, accompanied by a dull sound, as if the ball had been flattened against the rocks.
"Ah! the scoundrel," cried a voice, which seemed to come from the top of the precipice, "I have missed him."
My first impulse was to close my eyes, in the expectation of hearing another report. An instant passed in terrible anxiety, during which the echoes reverberated among the rocks. I then raised my head to seek for the place from which the shot had been fired, but the fog lay so thick on the heights that I could distinguish nothing. A strip torn off the pennon of my lance, which was within two feet of my body, clearly proved that I had been aimed at.
"'Tis lucky I escaped that shot," said I to Cecilio; "but come, let us climb the rocks on both sides, and lay hold on the scoundrel who is seemingly so sorry that he has missed."
"But," cried Cecilio, who was not at all pleased with the task I had assigned him, "there is no indication whatever that they aimed at you; besides, I won't leave you. It is the duty of a good servant to be always at his master's side."
I gained the top of the rocks before him. As far as my range of vision extended, I saw nothing but the distant hills deeply bathed in violet, a few fields of maize whose heavy heads swung slowly backward and forward, and some deep gorges in the Sierra, denoted by deeper tints of color. The country round had a sad, melancholy look in the gray of the evening that was creeping over all. It would have been imprudent to have turned, so I continued my march. In a short time I perceived in the distance a building of considerable size; no smoke rose above the roof. Indeed, it seemed quite deserted. It had probably been at one time a work-shop. I was confirmed in this opinion by the dilapidated state of the walls, and the large holes in the tiling. Just when Cecilio was alighting to assure himself that the place contained no inhabitant, a horseman issued from a by-road, and came galloping up with a carbine in his hand. He stopped suddenly on seeing me, and continued to look at me for some seconds with an air of fear and visible distrust. All at once he burst into a loud roar of laughter.
"You are not, then, Remigio Vasquez?" he inquired.
"I don't know him," I replied.