“No, that is not my chief reason. Samaro, listen. The captain of that unhappy ship had a son—a boy—who was stolen from his parents, and carried into the interior—”
“No, no,” interrupted Samaro. “He was carried no farther than here at first. He was sold here at Riobamba as a slave, and by Indians taken away across the terrible mountains. Roderigo is a foul fiend! See here,” he continued, his dark eyes blazing with excitement. “Roderigo had a brother, a fierce Spaniard, likewise a fiend; I killed him. Here hangs his brother’s scalp, and I have sworn that Roderigo’s shall hang beside it.”
“Samaro, Roderigo is dead.”
Samaro laughed, a grim and ghastly laugh.
“I know the story. I too have a brother. It was my brother who slew Roderigo. He has his scalp by this time. The grave could not hide his foe long from my brother’s gaze.”
“Samaro,” said Tom, “you almost make me shudder. Surely this villain Roderigo has done you and your brother some irreparable injury?”
Samaro’s face grew dark as night.
“Had Roderigo a thousand lives,” he said, “he should yield them slowly up one by one before he could atone for the injury he did to me and mine. We will say no more now. Believe only this, he—this fiend Roderigo—slew my mother, burned our huts, and stole my brother’s wife and child.”
“So terrible a subject,” said Tom, “is best allowed to rest. But richly indeed did the wretch deserve his fate.”
Samaro sat in silence sipping his coffee for some time after this. But gradually the troubled look that had crept over his face left it, and soon he was talking again cheerfully enough.