"I will tell them to him myself," said the Tigercat, his mouth contorted with a strange expression.
Stoneheart and Don Estevan bade each other farewell; then the former rapidly approached the cavern, while the Tigercat, his four followers, and the mayor domo, went down the path into the plains. On reaching the nearest trees, the Tigercat halted for a moment, and turned to the cavern into which Stoneheart had just entered. "Aha!" he exclaimed, with a sinister smile, and rubbing his hands with delight; "At last I am sure of my revenge!"
He followed his companion, and they were soon lost to sight, behind the intervening foliage.
[CHAPTER XVIII.]
EL VOLADERO DE LAS ÁNIMAS.
We have already said that Don Fernando Carril, or Stoneheart, had passed the greater part of his life in the wilderness. Brought up by the Tigercat in the perilous calling of a bee-hunter, chance had occasionally brought him, most unwillingly we confess, to the district in which he now found himself. Thus he was well acquainted with the Voladero de las Ánimas, even to its inmost recesses. He had often sought shelter in the cavern where Doña Hermosa was now a prisoner, and found it again without difficulty, although the access to it was so well masked by certain features of the mountain, that any other would have been some time in discovering it. The cavern, one of the greatest curiosities of this part of the country; contains several chambers, extending far into the hill, and two broad passages, which terminate in two apertures, like gigantic windows, exactly under the peak of the Voladero, where they hang at a height of a thousand feet over the plain; the conformation of the mountain being so singular that, looking down from them, nothing is to be seen but the tops of the trees below.
Stoneheart entered the cavern, which by another remarkable peculiarity, was lighted throughout its whole extent by innumerable fissures in the rock, admitting sufficient daylight to enable objects to be perceived at a distance of twenty or twenty-five paces. He was very restless; the conditions imposed by Tigercat depressed his spirit to a degree he could not shake off. He could not help asking himself why the old chief had insisted on his remaining two days with Doña Hermosa on the mountain before he rejoined the camp. He suspected some treachery in these conditions; but of what kind? That was the riddle he could not solve.
He walked slowly through the cavern, looking right and left in the hope of finding her; and, for more than half an hour, could see no indications of her presence.