"Oh!" she murmured, in a voice soft and melodious as a bird's song, "Those men—those demons! Oh! Heaven! Protect me!"
"Reassure yourself, Señorita," the traveller answered; "you have nothing further to fear from those villains."
The maiden started at the sound of this strange voice; she fixed her eyes on the stranger without giving him any answer, and made an instinctive movement to rise. She doubtless took the man who had spoken for one of her pursuers. The latter smiled mournfully, and pointed to the two bandits lying on the ground.
"Look, Señorita," he said to her; "you have only a friend here."
At this sight an expression of unbounded gratitude illumined the wounded girl's face, and a sickly smile appeared on her lips; but almost immediately her features grew saddened again. She sprang up, and raising herself on the tips of her small feet, she stretched out her right arm toward a point on the horizon, and exclaimed in a voice broken by terror—
"There, there! Look!"
The stranger turned to the indicated direction. A party of horsemen were coming up at full speed, preceded about a rifle shot distance by another horseman, evidently better mounted than they, and whom they appeared to be pursuing. The stranger then remembered the furious galloping he had heard a few moments previously.
"Oh!" the girl exclaimed, clasping her hands in entreaty, "Save him, Señor! Save him!"
"I will try, Señorita," he replied, gently; "all that a man can do, I swear to do."
"Thank you," she said, offering him her pretty little hand; "you are a noble-hearted man, and Heaven will aid you."