"What!" added the mayor domo, "Are you already satisfied? You are not clever enough for highwaymen; the man who pays you might have made a better choice."
In fact, the two remaining men in masks had withdrawn a few paces, and held themselves on the defensive.
Suddenly four other masked men appeared, and all six rushed upon the Spaniards, who awaited them firmly.
"The devil! I wronged you by my suspicion," said Don Estevan. "I see you are up to your work;" and he discharged a pistol point-blank into the midst of his adversaries.
The latter, still without a word, answered his fire, and the struggle was renewed with fresh fury.
But the two brave Spaniards could not defend themselves much longer: they were exhausted with fatigue; and it was not long before they, in their turn, fell on the dead bodies of two more of their assailants, whom they had sacrificed to their fury before they fell.
When they saw Don Fernando and Don Estevan stretched on the ground, the strangers uttered a shout of triumph. Without troubling themselves about the mayor domo, they seized the body of Don Fernando, threw it over the neck of one of their horses, and rapidly vanished amongst the manifold complications of the road.
The tempest continued to rage with fury. A lugubrious silence reigned in the spot where this tragedy had been acted, and where seven corpses were now lying, round which the vultures and hideous zopilotes, uttering their hoarse cries, began to sail in narrowing circles.