"Yes, you do; ugly brute that you are."
The intoxication of the Opatas was at its height. Excited even more by the horse's gallop and the adventurer's artfully managed contradiction, Isidro felt passion mount to his head. The intoxication of Indians is horrible: they become raving madmen; their heated brain gives birth to the strangest hallucinations, and under the influence of spirits they are capable of the greatest crimes. The bandit was aware of all these peculiarities, by which he hoped to profit; he had drawn from the Indian all that he wanted to learn from him; he had squeezed him like a lemon, and now only wanted to throw away the peel. We need hardly say that at this hour of the night the road the two travellers were following was completely deserted, and that Kidd did not fear any overlookers of what he intended doing. They were riding at this moment along the course of a small stream, a confluent of the Rio Bravo del Norte, whose wooded banks afforded sufficient concealment. The adventurer made his horse bound on one side, and drawing his machete, exclaimed—
"Brute yourself, you drunken Opatas!" At the same moment he dealt the poor follow such a sudden blow that he fell off his horse like a log. But he rose to his feet tottering, and though stunned by the attack, and seriously wounded, he drew his sabre, and rushed on the bandit with a yell of fury. But the latter was on his guard; he attentively watched his enemy's movements, and urged his horse forwards. The Indian, thrown down by the animal's chest, rolled on the ground where he lay without stirring. Was he dead? Kidd supposed so; but the bandit was a very prudent man, Indians are crafty, and this death might be a feint. Kidd therefore watched quietly a few paces from his victim, for he was in no hurry.
A quarter of an hour elapsed, and the Indian had not made a movement. Reassured by this complete immobility, the bandit resolved to dismount and go up to him. All at once the Opatas rose; with a tiger leap he bounded on the adventurer, twined his arms round him, and the two men rolled on the ground, uttering savage yells, and trying to take each other's life. It was a short but horrible struggle. The Opatas, in spite of his wounds, derived a factitious strength from the fury that animated him and the excitement produced by intoxication, which was heightened by his ardent desire to take revenge for the cowardly treachery of which he was the victim.
Unhappily, the efforts he was compelled to make opened his wounds, and his blood flowed in streams; and with his blood he felt his life departing. He made a supreme effort to strangle the miserable adventurer in his clenched fingers; but the latter, by a sudden and cleverly calculated movement, succeeded in liberating himself from the Indian's iron grasp. He rose quickly, and at the moment when the asistente recovered from his surprise, and prepared to renew the fight, Kidd; raised his machete, and cleft the poor fellow's head.
"Dog! Accursed dog!" he yelled.
The Indian remained on his feet for a moment, tottering from right to left; he took a step forward with outstretched arms, and then fell with his face to the ground and the death rattle in his throat. This time he was really dead.
"Well," Kidd muttered, as he thrust his machete several times into the ground, in order to remove the blood, "that was tough work; these demons of Indians must be killed twice to make sure they do not recover. What is to be done now?"
He reflected for a few moments; then walked up to the corpse, turned it over, and opened the breast of the uniform to obtain the letter. He had no difficulty in finding it; he placed it in his own pocket, and then stripped his victim, on the chance that he might want to use his uniform. But two things troubled him: the first was the soldier's horse; the second, his bag. The horse he made no attempt to seize; so soon as its master was wounded, the animal started off at a gallop into the wood; and as it would have been madness to try and find it on so dark a night, the adventurer did not attempt it. Still the flight of the horse alarmed him. Any person who found it would take it back to the pueblo, and then suspicions would be aroused which might soon be fixed on him, although he felt almost certain that the soldiers who saw him leave the town with the asistente had not recognized him; but his absence from the pueblo would appear suspicious to the captain, who was acute, and as he knew Kidd so well, would not hesitate to accuse him.
The affair was embarrassing; but luckily for him, the adventurer was a man of resources. Any other person would have fastened a stone to the body, and thrown it into the stream, but the bandit carefully avoided that. Such an expeditious method, while getting rid of the victim, would only have increased the suspicions; besides water is not a good keeper of secrets; one day or another the body would rise perhaps to the surface, and then the nature of the wounds would reveal the hand that dealt them. Kidd hit upon a more simple or sure plan, or at least he thought so. With horrible coolness he scalped the corpse, and threw the scalp into the stream, after rolling it round a large stone; this first profanation accomplished, he made a cross cut on the victim's chest, plucked out his heart, which he also threw into the river, and then plaiting together a few flexible lianas, he formed a cord, which he fastened to the feet of the corpse, and hung it from the main branch of a tree.