Don Sylvio and Blas, escorted by the two slaves, walked their horses through the crowd of idlers who had assembled in front of the fortress to hear the news; then they went at a sharp trot down the rather steep hill that leads from the citadel to old Carmen, and at length galloped towards San Julian.
They had not noticed the behaviour of sundry suspicious looking fellows who had followed them at a distance ever since they started, and were talking eagerly together.
The weather was stormy, and the clouds were gray and low. The air seemed motionless, a deep silence brooded over the solitude; a white cloud, light as a sand drift, collected in the southwest, which advanced, and each moment grew larger. All announced the approach of the pampero, that simoom of the prairies.
The clouds collected, the dust rose and ran along in dense columns, suspended between earth and sky. The clouds enveloped the plain as in a mantle, whose comers the gusts lifted at every moment, and which lightning flashes rent here and there. Puffs of hot air traversed the space, and suddenly the tempest rushed up furiously from the horizon, sweeping the Pampa with irresistible violence. The light was obscured by masses of sand; a thick gloom covered the earth, and the thunder mingled its terrible artillery with the howling of the hurricane. Enormous masses were detached from the lofty cliffs, and fell with a frightful din into the sea.
The travellers got off their horses, and sheltered themselves behind rocks on the seashore. When the worst of the storm had passed, they set out again, Don Sylvio and Blas riding silently side by side, while the two slaves, twenty yards ahead, trembled at the thought of seeing the Indians appear.
The storm had slightly diminished in intensity, the pampero had carried its fury further, but the rain fell in torrents, and thunder and lightning followed each other uninterruptedly. The travellers could not continue their journey, for they ran the risk of being thrown at every moment by their horses, which reared in affright. The ground and the sand, moistened by the rain, did not offer a single spot where the brutes could set their feet in safety; they stumbled, slipped, and threatened to fall.
"Whatever we may do," said the capataz, "it is impossible to go any further, so we had better halt again, and seek refuge under that clump of trees."
"Very good," Don Sylvio said, with a sigh of resignation.
The little party proceeded toward a wood that bordered the road. They were only some fifteen paces from it, when four men, whose faces were concealed by black masks, dashed out of the wood at a gallop, and silently attacked the travellers.
The slaves rolled off their horses, struck by two bullets the strangers had fired, and writhed on the ground in convulsions of agony. Don Sylvio and Blas Salazar, astonished at this sudden attack on the part of men who could not be Indians, for they wore the dress of gauchos, and their hands were white, immediately dismounted, and making a rampart of their horses, awaited the attack of their adversaries, with levelled rifles.