The Marquis and his son felt their curiosity increase from moment to moment. They saw the girl so gay, and so sure of herself, that they involuntarily began to hope, although they found it impossible to explain the nature of their hopes to themselves. Paredes and Mariano were also greatly puzzled about the purpose of the expedition in which they were taking part; but their thoughts did not travel beyond this: they supposed that there was some work for them to do, and that was all.
The young lady still walked on, stopping at times and muttering a few words in a low voice, as if trying to remember the instructions she had previously received, but never hesitating, or taking one walk for another; in a word, she did not once retrace her steps when she had selected her course. Night, especially when it is dark, imparts to scenery a peculiar hue, which completely changes the appearance of the most familiar spots; it gives the smallest object a formidable aspect; all is confounded in one mass, without graduated tints, from which nothing stands out: a spot which is very cheerful in the sunshine becomes gloomy and mournful when enveloped in darkness. The huerta, which was so pretty and bright by day, assumed on this night the gloomy and majestic proportions of a forest; the fall of a leaf, the accidental breaking of a branch, the dull murmur of invisible waters—things so unimportant in themselves—made these men start involuntarily, although they were endowed with great energy, and any real danger would not have made them blench.
But darkness possesses the fatal influence over the human organization of lessening its faculties, and rendering it small and paltry. A man who, in the midst of a battle, electrified by the sound of the cannon, intoxicated by the smell of powder, and excited by the example of his comrades, performs prodigies of valour, will tremble like a child on finding himself alone in the shadow of night, and in the presence of an unknown object, which causes him to apprehend a danger which frequently only exists in his sickly imagination. Hence our friends involuntarily underwent the formidable influence of darkness, and felt a certain uneasiness, which they tried in vain to combat, and which they could not succeed in entirely dispelling, in spite of all their efforts. They walked on silent and gloomy, pressing against each other, looking around them timidly, and in their hearts wishing to reach as speedily as possible the end of this long walk. At length Doña Marianna halted.
"Light the lanterns," she said.
This was the first remark made since they left the Blue Room. The lanterns were instantly lighted. Doña Marianna took one, and handed another to her brother.
"Show me a light, Ruiz," she said to him.
The spot where they found themselves was situated at nearly the centre of the huerta; it was a species of grass plot, on which only stubbly, stunted grass grew. In the centre rose a sort of tumulus, formed of several rocks piled on one another without any apparent symmetry, and which the owners of the hacienda had always respected in consequence of its barbarous singularity. An old tradition asserted that one of the old kings of Cibola, on the ruins of which town the hacienda was built, had been buried at the spot, which was called "The Tomb of the Cacique" after the tradition, whether it were true or false. The first Marquis de Moguer, who was a very pious man, like all the Spanish conquistadors, had to some extent authorized this belief, by having the mound blessed by a priest, under the pretext—a very plausible one at that time—that the tomb of a pagan attracted demons, who would at once retire when it was consecrated.
With the exception of the name it bore, this mound had never been held in bad repute, and no suspicious legend was attached to it. It was remote from the buildings of the hacienda, and surrounded on all sides by dense and almost impenetrable clumps of trees. Persons very rarely visited it, because, as it stood in the centre of an open patch of grass, it offered no shelter against the sun; hence the place was only known to the family and their oldest servants.
"Ah! Ah!" said the Marquis, "So you have brought us to the cacique's tomb, my girl?"
"Yes, father; we can now begin operations without fear of being seen."